In her Regius Lecture at the University of Southampton, Verity Harding, author of AI Needs You, set up two competing views of the geopolitics of AI: is it like the space race (competitive but cooperating around agreed rules) or the arms race (zero sum, winner takes all)?

In what must have been an exhausting week for Southampton’s Web Science Institute (disclosure: I used to be summat in the WSI, although I never really knew what), two major and successful events were held in early October: first, a summit on the Turing test at the Royal Society, and then the Regius Lecture with Harding. I will write a few words about the former in another blog.

Harding’s talk was sensible and measured (as befits a former advisor to that Clegg person who, whatever he fails at, never seems to go away). AI, on her account, is potentially valuable, but not perfect. It won’t turn us all into paperclips, keep us as pets, or solve all the world’s problems. AGI is a silly red herring, and what is Godfather Hinton playing at? National ambitions in the area are entirely appropriate, as it will be a leading and strategic industry. Specialisation and cooperation are far more sensible means to this than trying to reduplicate the full stack within national borders. Populist and nationalist rhetoric, however, is shouting down this judicious analysis.

Harding’s book is curiously unsatisfying. It is not, ultimately, about AI at all. It analyses four different institutional and policy solutions to technological dilemmas of the past – the exploration of space, IVF treatment, the early Internet, and the Internet following the September 11^th attacks. They don’t really have a great deal in common with each other, or with AI, and they don’t seem to deliver the advice that Harding wants to give, which is “to empower us to join the conversation about the future of AI”. In fact, all these dilemmas were resolved, in Harding’s view successfully, by experts, boffins, propellor heads, diplomats, politicos and spooks, with minimal impact from you and me.

The talk itself focused on the first of these, the space race, and argued, convincingly, that the rhetoric driving AI development is more like that of another mid-century roughhouse, the arms race. The space race was certainly full of nationalist rhetoric, and it was a genuine race that could only be won by one country and one system, but behind the scenes, as she argues in the first substantive chapter of her book, there were treaties, cooperation, and aspirations for humanity. The plaque that Neil Armstrong left on the moon says “we came in peace for all mankind”, and Harding might have added that they also left behind memorials to two Soviet cosmonauts, messages of goodwill from 73 leaders from around the world, and a golden olive branch. Would that our current leaders were able to conduct themselves at that level of courtesy, dignity and decorum.

They much prefer Strangelove-era arms race rhetoric. Putin’s declaration that whichever country becomes the leader in AI will rule the world was rightly taken by Harding as the classic statement of the challenge. The ravings of a wannabe Bond villain can indeed dictate policy. Leaders line up to bang their shoes on the podium. We not only have to win, but whoever is first will take all the rewards, and everything must be produced in-house, without trade, advice or expertise from elsewhere.

This is, as Harding emphasised, extremely silly, as AI is patently not a zero sum game. Everyone learns from everyone else: the Americans invented generative transformers, the Chinese hack them for a fraction of the price and computing resource, the Indians and others adapt them for local conditions, the Taiwanese make the chips on which they run, we all supply the data for them, and the Europeans arrogate to themselves the role of conscience. Everyone will make money, apart from the data suppliers and the conscience. Everyone will declare success, except the suppliers. Competitive cooperation would enhance quality and accelerate development; antagonistic partition would slow things down and raise costs.

Harding is right about this. The game is not zero sum; the arms race metaphor is inappropriate. But she herself seems to fall into the same rhetorical trap as her subjects: how will failure to adopt the right metaphor damage AI? If we live in a populist ‘arms race’ world, then we miss a trick, but it’s hardly disaster. The conditions for cooperation will always be there, whenever we are sensible enough to take advantage of them.

In other words, just because AI is spoken of as a zero sum game, it won’t become one. And there are hints of this in the history about which Harding has written. Sabres were indeed rattled in the real and dangerous arms race, but behind the scenes there was a lot of communication, methods of verification, the NPT, START and so on. Simply put, it was not possible to live at the intensity implied by the heightened rhetoric of the arms race; reality took control.

But equally, hands-across-the-water isn’t always sustainable either. Politics is always local, and won’t go away. Of course, as Harding explains at length, the space race did produce stuff like the UN Outer Space Treaty, but that was easy to sign when there was no chance of putting people into space. Nowadays everyone is now blithely ignoring it (or exploiting its gaps, e.g. creating space debris), and the Russians even toying with putting a nuclear weapon into orbit.

And we all know who won (America) and who lost (the space race and the arms race ultimately combined to bankrupt Russia’s sclerotic economy). It is easy enough to put olive branches on the moon, but who remembers them? The space race was kind of zero sum, not only globally, but also within the United States; the key position of Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson of Texas for crucial Sputnik-era funding decisions is the reason that the first word spoken on the moon was ‘Houston’. And in that context, let’s also remember Gil Scott-Heron’s magnificent Whitey on the Moon.

Space race/arms race were not the ends of a scale. They met in the middle, driven by the exigencies of an ideologically-divided bipolar world. In neither case did rhetoric alter reality much.

So where does that leave us, with our post-ideological multipolarity? It’s a mixed message: AI is not an arms race, and never can be, so then why would silly rhetoric be so damaging? It will slow things down and lower quality, sure, but a missed trick won’t bring the ceiling down upon us. While much of the lurid imagery surrounding AI stems from the properties of the technology itself (check out the impressively ludicrous title If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies), Harding forbore to point out that the political rhetoric is actually a polluting by-product of the post-globalisation world. For our populist leaders, all strategic industries need to be made secure. The longer and more complex the supply chain, the more beholden we are to foreigners. The collapse of American cooperation means that even Europeans are decoupling and reshoring in the name of Macronian strategic autonomy. Trade is a risk, allies are unreliable, win-wins are out.

This isn’t an AI problem, it’s wider, geopolitical and ideological. As the 5AIMS papers which I have co-authored with Dame Wendy Hall pointed out, technology governance can be managed with at least five strategies (Artificial Intelligence Management Strategies – AIMS) – openness and access, rights, commercial and business, paternalistic security, and gloves-off competition. As our book Four Internets explained, the Internet was built thanks to emphasis on the first. The trend nowadays is toward the last two, in all sorts of areas, from managing climate change and the electrification of the global economy, to the Internet, to AI, to pandemic control, to outer space, to defence. This is not good, but as globalisation recedes, it is perhaps inevitable.

The message for Starmer and leaders of the EU, relatively minor players in AI, is that this is the world they have to prepare for, while also preparing for cooperation both with each other, and with the AI superpowers if and when the opportunity presents itself. They need to understand the 5AIMS, the range of options open to them, the parts of the AI stack they can and can’t reproduce, and navigate deftly between them – especially if they aspire to joining the AI big league.

Indeed, maybe they should think about how much industrial policy is necessary at all. Maybe all it means is that Whitey is back on the moon.

While reading Jan Philipp Reemtsma’s interesting book Trust and Violence, published in English translation by Princeton University Press in 2012, I came across his description of a little-known 19^th century novella by Ludwig Tieck, The Witches’ Sabbath. In the week that the appalling President Fart caused former FBI Director James Comey to be indicted on unconvincing charges, the latest step in the establishment of his gangster state, Tieck’s story, from 1832, of a bishop’s trashing of an enlightened society seems right up to the minute.

Here is Reemtsma’s précis, as translated by Dominic Bonfiglio, on pp.188-189.

“… the dean is wrong about ‘the terrible darkness’ being a thing of the past, and the diminutive bishop he pokes fun at will be the very one who initiates a new witch hunt in Arras. The bishop succeeds not because the people of Arras really believe in witches or are susceptible to collective hysteria. What Tieck presents is a chilling set of accidental circumstances – intrigue, jealousy, political maneuvering – which result in no one standing up to a man who has clearly gone mad. But the fact that people burn at the stake on the market square represents more than a failure to act. It also requires someone to set in motion the disaster that in retrospect will seem authorless. Someone like the bishop: a person who, with a mere glance, purports to discern conspiracy, sex with the devil, black magic, and other forms of transgressions behind the façade of normality. Tieck’s masterful grasp of psychology shows us there is nothing mysterious about such people and the violence they unleash, even if their victims have no clue.”

I’d like to read the book, but a little bit of research suggests that it remains untranslated. Perhaps an opportunity for an enterprising publisher?

The American Democratic Party is trying to get its act together ready for the mid-terms next year. The headwinds against it are pretty powerful, and the dilemmas tough. Should it turn left or to the centre? How can you do politics when the constitution itself is being dismantled, clause by clause, with the connivance of Congress and a supine Supreme Court?

The polls are scary. One at the beginning of the month showed Trump’s ratings 42% favourable, 56% unfavourable, and the Republicans 39-53. The Republicans are spineless lickspittles, watching their President convert the world’s foremost democracy into a gangster state. Yet both the Hoodlum-in-Chief and his party are ahead of the Democrats, who poll 34-58. Indeed, 20% of Democrats and 31% of 2024 Harris voters have an unfavourable view of the Democrats (as do 51% of young people, 54% of women, 34% of black people and 47% of Hispanics – so much for the rainbow coalition).

How can this be, when the Republicans are so extreme? The problem is that ‘extreme’ is a relative term. When you compare the extremities to ordinary experience, then it may not be the Republicans who are the most out there, especially if we focus on the so-called ‘progressives’ who have cornered Democrat activism, as well as dominating the media, social media and many public institutions.

Sure, Trump is building a gangster state and dismantling the rule of law. This is extreme on anyone’s measure. But is it more extreme than the progressives’ antipathy to capitalism – the motor of the economy and the one single institution that has dragged humanity from universal poverty to its current level of prosperity? People have tried before to convert societies from capitalism to other systems, invariably resulting in violence, poverty and repression. Anti-capitalists, who only talk to each other, seem oblivious to the extremity of their own position, given the myriad ways that capitalism is interwoven into our social and economic arrangements.

Or consider progressives’ gender ideology, following Judith Butler’s ideas on gender performativity. Given that broadly mainstream ideas of gender (or dominant societal norms, if you prefer the term) are common to 100% of societies, and underpin the individual lived experience of virtually every human being on the planet and back through history, to try to erase them could hardly be a more extreme aspiration.

Compared to these ideas, which jointly would undermine virtually every social relation we rely on, Trump’s gangsterism is quite familiar. Think of the endemic corruption in Louisiana, or the machine politics of Chicago, New York and New Jersey, or the pre-civil rights segregationist racism of the South. Of course, he is deliberately killing democracy. But then, isn’t it the progressives who have been reminding us for decades that American democracy is a sham, a tool of the powerful, a means of repression, a reproducer of racism and sexism? If so, it’s hard to see the deep objection to Trump’s constitutional vandalism.

Don’t get me wrong: Trump is the embodiment of all that is wrong with politics. But if that is the case, let’s not forget how mainstream he looks next to his progressive enablers, and how their extremism serves to justify and legitimise his paranoid style. As I argued in my book Blockchain Politics, progressive politics undermines social trust; no wonder even a scoundrel like Trump looks preferable to many.

There is debate about whether the Israeli Defence Forces’ pounding of Gaza should be counted as a genocide or not. A lot hangs on it, not least in the articulation of Israel’s national narrative and its place as a democracy. The case against Israel gets stronger by the day.

By now, when due consideration is given to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s clear policy to sustain the war, eschewing all options for peace, even a temporary one, and effectively condemning the hostages to their grim fate, it is hard to see what legitimate military, diplomatic or political purposes the IDF’s pounding is serving. The distribution of food aid by quasi-gangster groups seems to add misery, not nutrition. The Supreme Court, hardly Netanyahu’s ally in normal circumstances, appears paralysed or supine. Add in some of the statements from members of the war cabinet, such as Bezalel Smotrich or Itamar Ben-Gvir, and it is hard not to draw the conclusion that the government’s aim is to take over the remaining slivers of Palestinian territory in Gaza and the West Bank, and maybe even Southern Lebanon as well, cleansing at least Gaza of the remaining population.

One minor caveat is that Netanyahu seems to have no agenda of any kind, genocidal or not, beyond remaining in power for as long as possible, despite his responsibility for the massive failure of the government to protect Israeli citizens from Hamas terrorists in October 2023. Presumably this is partly in order to delay the unrelated court cases against him. Delay, deflect, promise, procrastinate: all characteristic of the Netanyahu bad faith playbook. But that this appalling man chooses to preside over genocide for selfish rather than ideological reasons doesn’t make it any less of a genocide.

It is certainly true that the original atrocity by Hamas in 2023, an orgy of murder, sexual violence and kidnapping, was horrific and disgusting, and demanded a strong Israeli response. The outburst of joy on the Western left in the first few days after the attack was unforgiveable. Hamas, if it cared a jot for those who elected it to government, should have factored the effect of the inevitable retaliation on the people of Gaza into its planning. It does not seem to have done.

Yet at some point – we can debate exactly when the lines were crossed – retaliation became disproportionate, and then disproportion shaded into crimes against humanity, and now those crimes are on any sensible measure adding up to genocide.

After all, the Chinese government likes to dabble in genocidal pursuits, but nothing it has done in recent years is anything like as murderous as Israel’s actions in Gaza.

There’s probably not a great deal that Britain or the EU can do about this immediately in practical terms, while Trump has Netanyahu’s back. In particular, stopping Israel will involve not only deterring its government (possible, if unlikely), but also taking on the fanatical and racist settler movement (and no likely force has the stomach for that). Diplomatic attempts will only draw Trump’s ire, and at the moment he holds most of the cards.

But part of the essential process of dismantling the Western alliance and disentangling Europe from America must be to insert and increase distance from Israel and America. At some point, not necessarily now, we must use the appropriate words to describe Israeli war crimes and support the probably futile attempts to bring Netanyahu and his war cabinet to justice. It is hard to see who a sensible Palestinian interlocutor might be, but hopefully diplomatic channels are open with Qatar and other Arab states. Yet they may not be interested in talking – the EU is such a peripheral player – and may prefer the promise of American arms and trade deals.

In an extract from my forthcoming book Blockchain Politics, I describe how social and political trust are essential for cross-party, multi-electoral projects which chart a nation’s future and resilience. The obvious example is Brexit. I should declare my own position. I voted Remain, more because of the risks of leaving, than from any great love of the EU. I also opposed a referendum, an utterly flawed way of making decisions and establishing consensus. But, as one was held and the result pretty clear, the decision to leave had to be respected, if politics was to be seen as a trustworthy profession. A second referendum should have been out of the question.

Where trust has broken down, politics can’t properly be done, just as wars cannot be won if no-one ever surrenders. Brexit is one of the totemic issues dividing Puritans and Peasants, and the botch that was made of it was entirely down to the lack of trust and trustworthiness in polarised British politics. The getting-things-done political task was to craft a post-EU project that would build on the advantages of returned sovereignty, while retaining good relations with the EU, the UK’s nearest neighbour, largest trade partner, and closest geopolitical ally.

Why was it so bungled? I would say the lack of trust: between Leavers and the Remainer establishment; between Remainers and voters; between the Conservative Party leadership and its troops; within the Tory leadership itself; between the Tories and the Labour Party; between the Labour leadership and Parliamentary Party; between the Parliamentary Labour Party and the membership; within the Remain group. For the Parliamentary mess, see Wager. The EU didn’t help; its sole aim was to punish Britain for leaving, thereby making a mockery of Habermas’ argument that the Lisbon Treaty democratised the EU by making it possible to leave.

Article 50 was triggered too early by Remainer Theresa May because she felt she had to demonstrate her trustworthiness to the Leavers in her party. She tasked figures she did not trust, David Davis, Liam Fox and – demonstrably the least trustworthy politician around – Boris Johnson, with carrying out the negotiations. Davis and Johnson reneged on that trust by failing to negotiate seriously and resigning the moment a withdrawal agreement looked on the cards. May demonstrated her lack of trust in the three by sidelining them with officials. The cross-party Parliamentary Remain majority, egged on by the wretched Speaker John Bercow, got absolutely everything wrong because it was unable to unite in a purposeful coalition, making Johnson the only plausible Prime Minister by the Summer of 2019. This was a triumph of beggar-thy-neighbour politics and, in Euro-lingo, un petit-dejeuner d’un chien.

What might have happened, had trust not been on short rations? The political class might have pulled together, not in agreement, but behind a democratic and constitutional process. Those parties with large Leaver factions should have committed to leaving. The next election was due in 2020, giving each party time to work out a precise negotiating position to put before the electorate in its manifesto. Labour might have wanted to keep close to the EU for its social benefits, while the Tories might have promoted free trade, and UKIP could aim to cut immigration, for instance. Consistent Remainer parties like the Liberal Democrats or Scottish Nationalists might have decided to campaign for a second referendum or even to reverse the decision. It would have been a struggle in most parties to produce such manifestos, but groups of people who trust each other can make the necessary compromises.

Election called, manifestos presented, a new Parliament would have a mandate to trigger Article 50 and negotiate something specific (or to call the whole thing off). The meaning of Brexit, unclear during the referendum, would have been decided by the election, and the project would be the major task of that Parliament. The EU, wanting to punish Britain, would doubtless still have negotiated in bad faith, but the UK would at least have had clear goals and a mandate to push for them.

There are many other such areas. The response to COVID is an obvious one, which involved a complex trade-off between citizen trust of government, citizen trust of science, government trust of science and scientists, scientists’ trust of government, everyone’s trust of the media, as well as the Puritan/Peasant divide which in some countries even politicised the pandemic suppression measures, and on top of that the influence of social media and misinformation, and on top of that issues about the reliability of statistics in some countries, and on top of that the point that levels of uncertainty for policymakers were extraordinarily high. A trusting political culture would at least allow coordinated and depoliticised responses (although even then they may be based on erroneous science).

In an extract from my forthcoming book Blockchain Politics, I describe the characteristics of a trustworthy supplier of information or news. These characteristics don’t seem too difficult to navigate. The problem may well be that demand for misinformation is actually stronger than supply.

How can information suppliers be as trustworthy as possible to the widest range of people? Trustworthy information suppliers go beyond their commitment to the truth. A conspiracy theorist who believes that the world is being run by shape-shifting lizards is no doubt sincere, and wishes to persuade others from the best of motives, but – since the world is patently not so run – she is hardly a trustworthy source. A rough set of guidelines setting out the commitments an information provider should make to a wide audience should include:

(i) Provide information even if it might be disappointing or disillusioning to the supplier, and encouraging to opponents.

(ii) Search for reliable evidence from dependable sources, and, where a source is not known to be trustworthy, test its claims.

(iii) Be sceptical (i.e. not automatically trusting) of all information, even that which it favours.

(iv) Be properly respectful, if not deferential, to relevant acknowledged expertise.

(v) Try to avoid vocabulary or presentational effects that might sway the reader, or provoke particular positive or negative reactions, without a justification in terms of content.

(vi) Be respectful of the possibility of alternative views, without necessarily giving them credence.

(vii) Do not try to micromanage the reader’s response.

(viii) Nurture and protect a reputation across partisan divides for trustworthy reporting, based on the highest standards of public and collective epistemology.

(ix) Be prepared to acknowledge fallibility, by following up criticisms, publishing admissions of error, or explaining conclusions in more detail, where feasible and reasonable.

These nine measures would have to be supported by a business model (and compete with all sorts of clickbait), but in aggregate they set out an ideal of trustworthiness. They also demand managerial intervention – they are not amenable to automation, so that the human editor cannot be disintermediated.

If the provider is subsidised by the state, it may be hard for it to resist a political steer. If it is independently-financed, then it is likely that providers for business consumers will be the most trustworthy, since investors risk losing money if they are misinformed. They care! Providers for the general public may have to compete with other forms of diversion, and so may be more likely to judge information on its entertainment value. Ideologically-slanted providers may provide biased news, as readers/viewers are not materially affected by false or misleading stories. But even where the provider is biased because funded by the state or ideologically partisan, it can still be trustworthy according to principles i-ix.

Trustworthy providers will sustain and signal trustworthiness to a wide audience, rather than a narrow, partisan group, but the trustworthiness principles neither assume a neutral or disinterested view, nor preclude attempting to persuade the reader of the merits of a particular view. Nothing about the nine commitments rules out a partisan channel. There is a difference between those who wish to persuade readers using reason and argument, and those who wish to provoke readers using the techniques of advertising, cognitive psychology, public relations, rhetoric, sophistry, manipulation, and at worst misinformation.

The situation certainly shouldn’t be exaggerated to support censorship or regulation of news media. For example, many, especially the young, seem to trust information from social media almost as much as they do professional news organisations. This is an attitude that they need to grow out of, and probably will, but it may not matter very much if they don’t. It may be that those who now get their news from a cartoon fish on TikTok got no news at all when it had to be sought out in newspapers or at set times on broadcast TV. Was that better or worse than our current situation? Probably worse.

Returning to the pre-Internet days is not a runner, but the partisanship, mistrust and Manichaeanism of politics, journalism and academia is the part of the current malaise that can probably be most easily jettisoned by audiences, if not by successfully managing our anger, by rediscovering the value provided by information intermediaries. This may already be happening – as social media companies have pivoted to entertainment, the proportion of people who read news on them has been falling in the mid-2020s. Many users are migrating from open networks with their clickbait to closed groups on messaging apps such as Telegram and WhatsApp. These are unmoderated, but at least the presentation of news need not be influenced by sensationalism.

We generally respond to crises in trust neither by carrying on as usual, nor by ceasing to trust, but by reorientating to new circumstances, and positing (however hopefully) a new, stable normal. It is quite possible that as awareness of misinformation spreads, this is happening in the information space.

Certainly, since the demand for misinformation exceeds supply, attempting to cut off supply won’t work, for exactly the same reason that the War on Drugs has failed. Tackling demand, including via the provision of trustworthy information, is surely the way to go.

For anyone confused by the MAGA philosophy, its foundations were neatly encapsulated over 50 years ago in 5 minutes, 7 seconds of music by the great Randy Newman. For foreign policy, see his song ‘Political Science’, from the Sail Away album of 1972. For domestic policy, then seek out ‘Rednecks’, from Good Old Boys of 1974. This last, you need to be warned, is absolutely not suitable for work. Not at all. Oh no.

The image above is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication by Rob Bogaerts.

In my forthcoming book Blockchain Politics, I try to debunk the excessive pessimism of a recent book review by The Economist’s Free Exchange columnist. The reviewer was impressed by the book’s case, but “For all the striking statistics in the book, the author does not offer an especially rousing call to arms.” Why not? Because she demanded norm changes and “it is doubtful that governments can do all that much to alter social norms, just as they hold little responsibility for the fact that they changed in earlier decades,” while “knowledge of what produces successful adults is most useful to individuals planning their own lives.”

This is an extraordinary argument. These statements are of course true, but incredibly the reviewer appears to believe that between state and citizen there is nothing that affects norms at all; if people don’t spontaneously shift en masse, and if government coercion is powerless, all options are exhausted. But there are plenty of institutions, associations and little platoons in the private sphere between state and citizen that are immensely influential. If these are allowed to flourish, not whittled away by attacks on freedom of association and incursions of the public sector into the private, then their good influence may grow.

Perhaps even more importantly, let us remember the enormous influence on social norms of teachers, college educators, social researchers and journalists (including the Free Exchange reviewer). If these people are impressed or persuaded by an argument, and cease to promote policies discredited by the evidence, that would be very helpful. If they were to do it in sufficient numbers, in schools, colleges and the media, it might actually help to shift the norm in the direction urged by the evidence. That’s how an intellectual community is supposed to work within civil society.

That doesn’t guarantee that norms will shift in the right direction, but it can only help. The liberal elite has often acted as a vanguard for social attitudes more widely, often to the detriment of society as a whole, as long-cherished institutions, traditions and behaviours have been sidelined by new liberties and a general air of licence. If commentators were prepared to boost rather than undermine trust, to celebrate and defend their nations instead of critique them, and to make the good will of political opponents the default assumption, it may be that such attitudes, filtered through the media and social media, could diffuse through the population, undoing some of the damage of the culture wars.

As an example that is not explored in the book, let us take the defence of Western societies. This is a vital requirement; the defence dividend that followed the ending of the Cold War is no longer available. Services need to be upgraded, not only with high tech kit, but also – as the progress of the war in Ukraine has demonstrated – with people prepared to fight. There is a recruitment crisis in Europe, with a number of nations employing conscription and national service. Greater recruitment could have a number of positive effects, including the socialisation and training of a diverse cohort of young people within an association supportive of mutual trust and trustworthiness,  making them both valuable to and valued by wider society. Regimental structures could help re-establish pride in local communities, at a time when many feel ‘left behind’. One way of doing this is through the education system, perhaps restoring some of the cadet training programmes of past generations.

It would be an uphill struggle. No doubt it is not a magic bullet, but equally we have to ask whether today’s educationalists would be able, never mind willing, to convey messages about the importance of dedication and contribution, of national and local patriotism. They may prefer their culture wars. One recent article discussed “army recruitment advertisements that reject traditional conceptions of hegemonic military masculinity”. You would think that would please the left wing Puritans, but no: it was a bad thing because “discourses and practices positioning the army as less aggressive, less white and more female-bodied (perhaps even as progressive) serve to obscure militarized violence by repackaging it in a more palatable form”. One wonders whether the defence of the realm could ever be palatable to the author.

I’m not sure any country, however troubled, has fallen from democracy to gangster state in such a short period of time. It’s too early to suggest that the predictions that President Fart would turn to fascism were correct – much depends on what he does with the power he is amassing as he brushes aside the checks and balances that formerly characterised the American Constitution. But there is currently zero cause for optimism.

It’s not so much the betrayal of Zelinskyy and Ukraine, appalling though that was. Worse in strategic terms is the incredible, and incredibly stupid, decision to deny the clear and evident Russian cyberthreat. America now stands with our direct and immediate enemies. Normalisation of diplomatic relations would have been bad enough. This will utterly fragment the Western alliance – where do the Five Eyes stand now? If America opens its back door like this, then we can assume any intelligence shared with them will go, with or without American connivance, straight to our enemies. Europeans didn’t make the zero sum world, but we (including Britain) now have to treat it as such.

What a vile man Fart is. One of the most shocking things he has done is to remove the security detail from people at serious risk, such as John Bolton and Mike Pompeo. I have always been mystified by the willingness of perhaps controversial but otherwise respectable people to go along with Fart’s self-centred lawlessness and make fools of themselves, from Giuliani to McConnell and now Rubio. It may seem sensible and transactional to brown-nose him in the present, but in the history books it will be evident, say, what a lickspittle Lindsay Graham has been, consistently prepared to jettison supposed ‘principles’ at a word from Fart. Even if Fart’s policies don’t plunge us into global depression or World War III (big ‘if’), these egregious toadies can take no credit, since they have adopted the roles of flunkies devoid of will or integrity.

I am thrilled that the mercurial Anglo-Welsh writer Cledwyn Hughes is being rediscovered; particularly happy as I am his son-in-law. Partly thanks to the efforts of my wife and her sister Janet, his 1947 novella The Inn Closes For Christmas is being republished by Baskerville later this year (spoiler alert: it’s a treat). This follows the inclusion of his short story ‘The Strong Room’ in Martin Edwards’ recent Crimes of Cymru, in the British Library’s wonderful Crime Classics series.

I never met Cledwyn – John Cledwyn, as his family still calls him, as they remember his gentleness and his eccentricities. He died all too early in 1978, leaving behind a goodly trove of novels, stories and topographic non-fiction, virtually all set in the rural North Wales and Border country he loved. He was born in what we probably can’t call Montgomeryshire any more, and ended his days in Arthog, near Dolgellau, a village the size of a largish postage stamp.

It would be lovely to see some of his oeuvre back in print. No reason why it shouldn’t be. Cledwyn was critically applauded in his day, even if his youthful promise wasn’t entirely fulfilled. His style was macabre; The Inn Closes … unfolds like something by Poe. I’m not sure if his genre has a name: Welsh Gothic, Celtic Noir. Definitely unsettling, eerie, dark. Not supernatural though; the mysteries and savage turns of fate have their roots in human imperfection, not divine indifference.