The Mirror Crack'd

No, I haven't come over all religious suddenly but on the eve of the Muslim holy month I'm prompted to reflect on a couple of news items from the Islamic world, one somewhat encouraging, the other not at all so. To start with the (potentially) good news. Writing in the journal, Building Design , Emma Dent Coad, an architectural historian and former Labour MP for Kensington & Chelsea, charts Palestinian efforts already underway to reimagine the reconstruction of Gaza. These have nothing whatsoever to do with Donald Trump's crass vision for the Strip (more Vegas than Gaza) as promoted recently in a video posted on his Truth Social ( sic ) platform. It has to do with Gazans reclaiming and rebuilding their destroyed or damaged communities for themselves. We probably won't see this widely reflected in the mainstream Western press and media but, as reported by Coad, the reconstruction by Gaza municipality has officially commenced. Maher Salem, director of the planning and...

Ahead of his visit to Washington DC on Thursday Sir Keir Starmer has just made a statement on defence spending to the House of Commons. In it, he committed to increasing spending as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product  (GDP) from its current 2.3% per annum to 2.5% by 2027, with an aspiration to increase it to 3% in the next parliament (ie after July 2029). Labour's manifesto commitment was to increase spending to 2.5% - where it had been under the last Labour government - by 2030 so this is a significant policy gear-shift. It is no coincidence that this is precisely the direction of travel Donald Trump has stipulated (or is that demanded?) for NATO members. Offering up this gift will be Starmer's opening gambit at the White House on Thursday when he pays court, today's Commons statement being merely the preamble. Usually a bottle of whisky or embossed cufflinks suffices but this is a time for some serious diplomacy, hence a gift amounting to £13.4bn of additional spendin...

You wouldn't want to be in Volodymyr Zelensky's shoes right now - or ever. Assailed as he is by a megalomaniac President on one side (and I don't mean Donald Trump - although, come to think of it...) and fairweather European 'friends' on the other, the beleaguered Ukrainian leader finds himself in an unenviable position. It must be at least three years since he started seriously questioning the wisdom of giving up the comedy circuit for politics. He and his country have had precious little to laugh about since Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and even less since the full-scale assault of 2022. His role now, in response to Trump's second presidency, seems to be to shadow American diplomacy, popping up unexpectedly firstly in Munich after the US delegation had departed the Security Conference, then tailing them to the UAE before swerving Saudi Arabia for a meeting with Türkiye's President Erdoğan. Like those other famous characters with names beginnin...

Starmer is in Paris to participate in Macron's hastily-convened gathering of European leaders, but he has a foot in another camp. Rightly or wrongly, he still clearly believes the UK enjoys a special relationship with Trump's America. How far that extends beyond warm words will become apparent when Starmer arrives at the White House next week. If they even get above room temperature it will be something. It has to be said that the rhetoric emerging from Washington DC has had a distinctly chilly edge to it since Trump's inauguration a month ago. One thing must be apparent to Starmer, even at his most upbeat: their Oval Office chat will be no reprise of Churchill and Roosevelt. Different times, different circumstances, very different personalities. After the stark, almost insulting, warning issued by JD Vance in Munich last Friday - an event that will go down in the annals as the St Valentine's Day Massacre of the post-war transatlantic entente cordial - US Secretary of S...

As JD Vance lectured the 61st Munich Security Conference the delegates had no choice but to suck it up. He might have been speaking on St Valentine's Day but there was clearly no love lost on either side. Not that Vance will have cared one jot for that; he was speaking from a position of power and was obviously determined to give it to the assembled European elite with both barrels. As with his boss, Donald Trump, we may dislike the messenger but we have to heed the message, like it or not. And the message was, bluntly, you're on your own now, sort your shit out. Delegates looked stunned as they watched an eighty year-old world order go up in smoke. Trump's America is focusing its attention and resources on Asia, in response to a perceived threat of Chinese expansionism, and Europe is yesterday's story. He who pays the piper calls the tune. The renewed bromance between Trump and Putin leaves Ukraine dangerously exposed and, by extension, Europe too. It appears, even bef...

Donald Trump has a downer on paper straws: "they don't work, bring back plastic". Well, it's good to see that the President of the United States has his eye on the little details that make such a difference to us all. I had vowed, wherever possible, to ignore the ramblings of this deranged megalomaniac, on the basis that if we all stopped reacting to him he might just go away.  We know he's a shameless attention-seeker but the wider the gap gets between pledges and delivery, the more likely it is that the American people will lose faith. Zeus may have thundered from Mount Olympus but once people stopped believing in him he simply faded into irrelevance. If only real life were like that. It pains me to say this, and perhaps I'll regret doing so, but, for all the performative bluster, he does sometimes hit on an important issue, though usually for the wrong reasons and drawing the wrong conclusions from it. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day and simply be...

I don't get out much these days so my trip to Sadler's Wells East in Stratford was a heady experience. Given the observations I'm about to make about the place of culture in contemporary British society, I should perhaps confess that I had not gone for a performance, despite the coincidence of it being the venue's first night, but simply to meet a friend in the bar for a drink (how very British!).  Having arrived early I had the opportunity to take in my surroundings, eventually settling down with a copy of the programme and a surprisingly reasonably-priced (for London) pint on a comfortable orange sofa facing the panoramic view afforded by the full-height windows. The imaginative planting of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park has now matured to provide a pleasing foreground to West Ham football club (the former Olympic stadium), Anish Kapoor's emblematic ArcelorMittal Orbit and Zaha Hadid's swooping Aquatics Centre roof, framed to dramatic effect, with the vista...

As a pensioner in his early-seventies, I spend a lot of time, when not doing crosswords, watching TV. It's a harmless enough occupation I suppose and can be quite diverting, offering a (not invariably but mostly) welcome window on the world. Channel 4 News, my go-to intelligencer, is becoming an increasingly depressing watch I must say (not its fault) and I have exercised the off-option on several occasions recently - a cowardly act I know - as watching the unfolding horror becomes almost voyeuristic, akin to disaster porn. Then I feel guilty because, unlike millions of starving, brutalised, displaced victims of conflict, genocide, starvation and climate collapse I can switch off, or over, and go and make a cup of tea. Life just isn't fair. And that, in a way, was a shared theme of two watches recently which brought this home powerfully: Channel 4's two-part docu-drama Brian and Maggie and Apple TV's screening of Ken Loach's 2023 film The Old Oak. The former recreat...