In the final seconds of BBC One’s Weekend News bulletin yesterday, Reeta Chakrabarti squeezed in an extra story in just 25 words:

Just before we go, President Biden has just tweeted that he intends to address the nation later this week, saying that it has been a great privilege to serve. We’ll bring you more at ten.

We know now, of course, that in the judgement of mere seconds, the team had perhaps overlooked the more significant message of Biden’s message: his decision to withdraw from his re-election campaign.

It’s not hard to see why: Biden’s statement refers only to standing down, without complete clarity on what from. It’s a letter that’s hard to parse on a scan-read, with the eyes of a nation watching.

Wendy and I switched over to the news channels, and after minutes of slightly desperate filling, the airwaves were thick with discussion of the political consequences of the decision, with hot takes and commentary on who might replace him and what it may mean for an election that’s still months away.

Nobody seemed keen to take a step back. It’s not hard to imagine the sense of profound grief Biden must feel at this moment. This is surely a moment that marks a painful shift in the way Biden sees himself: judged irreversibly incapable by dint of age of doing something he’s done before.

As Peter Wehner wrote in The Atlantic last night:

Coming to terms with mortality is never easy. We rage against the dying of the light. Many elderly people face the painful moment of letting go, of losing independence and human agency, when they are told by family they have to give up the keys to the car; Biden was told by his party to give up the keys to the presidency.

It must cut deep; I hope he’s okay.

It’s funny, really, how little attention the news pays to the universal aspects of stories like this. How the immediate reaction focuses on predicting what might happen next, rather than on sitting with what’s just happened. How it refuses to dwell on the humanity, those moments of insufficiency most of us have faced and will continue to face in life.

The news runs away from the lessons of others’ experience, the things we might take and apply in our own lives. And that seems like a shame.

When The Times started publishing its ‘compact’ edition in 2003, initially alongside the broadsheet format, there was a lot of debate about the potential impact on its journalism. One concern its journalists wrote about publicly was that in a compact size, it becomes more tempting to ‘hang’ stories around photographs, which can pervert the way that stories are covered.

Two decades on, this feels a bit quaint: large numbers of journalists for most media outlets work in multiple formats, writing stories, taking photographs, and filming videos, for example. But it feels undeniable that this has changed the weight that is given to different aspects of stories.

For example, over the last few days, we’ve been subjected to a huge amount of news coverage about a widespread computer fault. A huge proportion of the coverage—the lede in most cases—has been the impact on air travel. Yet, there is no reasonable interpretation of this story in which air travel is the most significant angle. The effect on GP services, for example, will have affected far more people and almost certainly caused more harm—and the underlying technical issue, and the way it has affected so many system across many countries, is a much more interesting analytical story.

I posit that the reason for the heavy weighting towards air travel is the multimodal way in which journalists now operate. It’s very difficult to create images of the problems with GP systems, and even more so to illustrate IT problems, yet airports provide an immediately available endless supply of emotive imagery of huge queues. That imagery can be easily supported by information on flight cancellations that’s freely available on websites journalists can access from their desks.

The lede becomes what’s easy rather than what’s important. Images become more important than analysis. We’re all less well-informed as a result.

There are more guns than people in the USA. More than 100 US citizens are killed each day by gun violence, mostly poor young black men.

When ’black lives matter’ became a slogan, some complained that ‘all lives matter’. Of course they do, but seeing that as a counterargument to the original statement misunderstands the desperate cri du cœur for the poor young black men who are killed in massively disproportionate numbers.

The repudiation of political violence in the USA over the past 36 hours strikes me as similar. Of course political violence is abhorrent. But where is the force of anger, the outpouring of rage, the flood of statements condemning the gun violence that killed tens of young black men in the last 36 hours? How is it that US society condemns an old white man’s grazed ear with so much more fervour than the deaths of thousands of other citizens every week?

Yesterday, I read Emilio Casalicchio’s excellent Politico article which gave a glimpse into the Conservative’s election campaign. I was struck by the line ‘launching the first attack by shooting yourself in the head doesn’t look so clever’.

But I was even more struck by the notion that the campaign had been led by a headstrong small team, which neither sought nor responded to external feedback. This is redolent of the flaws of Theresa May’s 2017 election campaign.

Perhaps responding well to feedback counterintuitively conflicts with the egotism necessary to seek public office. Perhaps this is only exacerbated for those seeking the top office in an era of ‘strongman leadership’.

It was certainly true that Sunak’s public response to even a hint of public criticism during the campaign was primarily defensive: he did not give the impression of being curious to better understand the alternative viewpoint, let alone to change course in response to it. It’s not like he’s alone; this behaviour is common.

Over the years, I’ve read quite a lot about the skill of constructively receiving feedback. I don’t think it is something that comes naturally to anyone, but it is a skill that’s particularly well-developed among people that I admire. Getting better at it has certainly been useful for me and has helped my professional development.

I recently read one of Arthur C Brooks’s articles in The Atlantic covering this topic, too. I enjoyed his observation that ‘once you depersonalize criticism, you can start to see it for what it is: a rare glimpse into what outsiders think.’

This is both blindingly obvious and yet also often missed: it’s easy to get too caught up in judging the person who wrote the comment or perhaps being defensive. But taking feedback exactly as it is offered—as in, this person thought X—can be radically helpful. One doesn’t need to agree with the other person’s viewpoint, but having knowledge of it can nevertheless be extremely useful.

After reading Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen’s book Thanks for the Feedback a few years ago, I added a link in my work email signature which gives people the opportunity to offer anonymous feedback. This has served me very well, giving me lots of opportunities to reflect and develop my understanding of others’ viewpoints. Philippa Perry’s book also offered some useful insights into contextualising and using feedback in a personal (as opposed to professional) context.

I can’t help but think that the world would be a better place if people were better equipped to receive criticism—politics would certainly be better for it. Failing to make use of feedback feels a bit like ‘shooting yourself in the head.’

The image at the top of this post was generated by DALL·E 3.

I wrote the other day about the effect on Britain of the last fourteen years. But politics is personal too.

When David Cameron became the first Conservative Prime Minister of the twenty-first century, Keir Starmer had been Director of Public Prosecutions for less than two years. He surely cannot have imagined that he’d be the next Labour Prime Minister. And yet here we are.

And yet, it must surely feel daunting. The New York Times yesterday talked about him inheriting a ‘legacy of ashes’, while Le Monde talked of ‘creaking public services and a flatlining economy’.

On top of that, he’s got a unsupportive press looking to land every possible blow, and an insurgent Reform party primed to cause as much political instability as they can muster.

It’s a tough old job he’s got on his hands, and I don’t envy him.

A battered, faded and slightly wonky UK goes to the polls today, with the incumbent party dogged by scandal and ‘rotted through with individually minor corruptions, increasingly detached from the nation it governed, seemingly on the verge of final collapse’. Even The Sun, never shy about regurgitating Conservative talking points, couldn’t bring itself to back them.

As we tune in this evening to watch the results, we’ll witness the peculiarly British spectacle of election winners surrounded by defeated novelty candidates in outlandish costumes, only one of which will be called Jacob Rees-Mogg.

We also have to listen to a lot of blowhards making outlandish claims about the result. In the aftermath of the 2019 election, Donald Trump promised ‘a massive new Trade Deal’ between the UK and USA but couldn’t deliver it; Sir Ed Davey called the end of Nicola Sturgeon’s 2019 campaign ‘not very dignified’, before he spent most of the 2024 campaign deliberately falling in lakes; and the received wisdom among most political commentators on election night was that the Tory ’80-strong majority could be big enough to repel Labour’s next advance in five years’. Ho hum.

But not all of the commentary is nonsense. In the aftermath of the 2019 election, The Guardian’s view was that ‘Mr Johnson has won a great victory. But his problems are only just beginning.’

We couldn’t know at the time how salient that observation was. One suspects that the same will be true for tomorrow’s occupant of 10 Downing Street.

The final Survation MRP poll of the UK general election campaign was published yesterday evening, predicting that the Conservative Party will secure only 64 Parliamentary seats. I don’t have much faith in that number—I reckon they will end up on three figures—but it is undeniable that the self-styled ‘most successful political party in the world’ may be losing its touch.

It’s less than three years since we were told that Boris Johnson—out campaigning for the first time yesterday—was preparing for a further decade in power, aiming to beat Thatcher’s longevity as Prime Minister. He’s now the last-but-one Prime Minister and seems likely to gain his third successor by the end of the week.

As it seems likely that the latest era of Tory government is finally limping to a conclusion, it’s worth reading William Davies in The LRB summing up the approach to government over the last fourteen years.

It is mind-boggling to contemplate that of those fourteen years, only three and a half were spent with a Prime Minister enjoying a majority they secured at a general election.

Of those, two and a half were achieved thanks to Johnson and Dominic Cummings installing the Vote Leave campaign in Downing Street, kicking high-profile Tory Remainers out of the parliamentary party, and then fighting an election on the single pledge to ‘Get Brexit Done’. That leaves just the single year Cameron enjoyed following the 2015 election, which he had fought on a promise to hold the referendum that ended his premiership.

It’s also startling to think that, in many ways, the most politically stable years were those between 2010 and 2015, with hardly any turnover of cabinet ministers despite—or perhaps because of—the fundamental challenges inherent to coalition government. If it weren’t for all that followed, we might reasonably conclude that an unstable foundation begets unusually stable government.

International politics looks set to cause some significant instability in the next fourteen years—indeed, in the next fourteen months—so goodness knows how our new Government will fare. On hope so much depends.

The image at the top of this post was generated by DALL·E 3.

There was a story by Vanessa Friedman in The New York Times recently about the dress code in the Royal Enclosure at Royal Ascot, which included the startlingly specific fact that hats:

must include a base that is at least four inches in diameter. That means “fascinators,” those bizarre concoctions of net and sparkle that sit on the edge of a headband like a bird on a twig, are not allowed.

There are few things I’m less likely ever to need to know than this dress code, but it made me wonder quite how specific the requirements could possibly be. The answer is ‘very’.

Friedman quotes a milliner: ‘To err on the side of extravagance as opposed to modesty is a joy for everyone.’

I find within myself a surprising degree of sympathy for that perspective, but it seems a shame that it applies only to women. Men are prohibited any hint of extravagance: my choice is only of a grey or black top hat, about which colour ribbons, feathers or other embellishments are expressly prohibited. Even for ties—the definition of a useless embellishment—‘novelty patterns’ are disallowed. It’s just a sea of boring men in dull grey (or black or navy) suits.

It feels like such a strange choice in the modern world. It doesn’t even feel particularly traditional for a country with quite outlandish masculine fashion traditions—there will be working blokes there wearing scarlet jackets, gold buttons, winged epaulets with bloody great bear skins on their heads for goodness’ sake, with a far longer history than a Moss Bros top hat.

If it were me, I’d go full on ‘suits of armour’, ‘gold-threaded royal tabards’ and ’mandatory codpieces’. The current option just seems terribly boring… but then, it was never my thing to begin with.

The image at the top of this post was generated by DALL·E 3.

On Tuesday, I recommended an election-themed tour of Britain from Le Magazine du Monde. Perhaps I just like plebiscite travelogues, because today I’m recommending this one from Jennifer Williams in the FT Magazine, where she tours parts of Northern England.

At Stockport’s recently renovated train station, the familiar words, “We are sorry to announce… ” bounced from the tannoys and around the platforms like abandoned campaign promises. My eastbound train was late. The westbound Liverpool train was also late. So was the northbound service from London to Manchester.

It was 11am on a weekday, but my train was standing room only. It was so tightly packed with passengers clutching luggage from nearby Manchester airport, so crammed with students, business people, families and pensioners headed towards Sheffield, that the member of staff pulling the catering trolley struggled to get it past us.

A couple of days later, a friend sent me a TikTok of the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, who had apparently caught a train. “The train was great, thoroughly enjoyed it,” he said. “Been taking lots of pictures and videos and sending them back to my kids.” My eyes narrowed.

I liked how Williams captured the sense that ‘everywhere, people were doing remarkable things to move their places forward, but were losing faith in the state’s will or ability to help.’

That chimes with my experience, and I think offers a good explanation as to why the election polls portend poorly for the incumbent Government. It’s a theme she returns to at the end of the article, with the ’Stockport isn’t shit’ carrier bags.

I also smirked at a line from one of Williams’s interviewees:

On a visit to Grimsby in summer 2022, the levelling-up secretary Michael Gove toured the East Marsh estate. “We call it the poverty safari, don’t we, when all the rich white men come.”

In my line of work, we have similar epithets for when politicians or other national leaders visit, one of which is ‘the fascination tour’—for the number of times we’re told how ‘fascinating’ our work is.

Williams mentions the dominant narrative of ‘broken Britain’ in politics, which is clichéd—but clichéd for a reason. Across this article and the one I recommended yesterday, the fundamental observation seems to be that the state isn’t working, not just at one level, but at many.

The state is not protecting the most vulnerable in society, as exemplified by James Picken from Hartlepool in yesterday’s article, or the tripling of the number of tooth extractions in Bradford’s children in William’s article. But nor is it working at the higher level, as shown by yesterday’s observation about the pound losing 20% of its value, or Williams’s point about Local Authority bankruptcies.

The problem for Labour—if we accept that Labour is almost certain to form a Government next week—is that none of this is easily fixed.

In Le Magazine du Monde, Eric Albert—Le Monde’s departing London correspondent—takes a tour around the country to assess how it has changed since he first arrived:

On May 31, 2003, on an unusually warm spring day, I arrived in London somewhat by chance. I was living in Thailand at the time, and my partner had found a job in the UK capital. Arriving with no particular preconceptions, I discovered a surprisingly dynamic country, open to the world and happy with its multiculturalism.

At the time, the French were arriving in droves. An organization was set up to welcome young adventurers who arrived on the Eurostar with their rucksacks, helping them find a job and accommodation within a matter of days. At the other end of the social spectrum, graduates of France’s top business and engineering schools were snapping up trading jobs in the City. The fee-paying French Lycée in London could no longer keep up with demand.

Twenty-one years later, I’m about to return to France for professional reasons. The UK I’m leaving bears no resemblance to the one that welcomed me. The pound has fallen by almost 20%, immigration has become an obsession and the French Lycée has closed its doors, after many families left.

It is well worth reading the whole thing. The distance afforded by both time and an outsider’s perspective brings into sharp relief the sense of decline across the country.

It feels to me like so much of our election coverage in the UK focuses on the political parties rather than the state of the nation. I think Albert’s article offers more insight into the state of the election polls than any number of headlines about senior Tories’ alleged gambling crimes, or any other of the myriad campaign gaffes. The campaign isn’t working because the country isn’t working.

I was particularly struck by Albert’s mention of James Picken, a Hartlepool resident. It feels to me like this sums up so much:

Picken’s story is complicated. The 42-year-old didn’t need the current British decline to fall into poverty. His mother died of a Valium overdose when he was 15. His brother died of a heroin overdose. Having been a welder on gas platforms and worked in Norway, among other places, he then fell into a downward spiral. Alcohol, drugs and prison – the vicious circle began almost two decades ago.

What has been more recent is the harshness of the system, which pushes him back into a rut each time he tries to climb out of it. A few months ago, he missed an appointment at the Jobcentre state employment agency. The penalty was immediate. “Normally, I get £276 in welfare benefits every month. My rent is taken care of, but that has to cover all my bills – electricity, gas and phone – and all my food. After the penalty, I only got £18 for the whole month.”

What was bound to happen happened: Picken stole a stash of chocolate bars (“I was craving sugar”) and some chicken from a store. “When I got caught, I was almost relieved, thinking that at least in prison I’d have two guaranteed meals a day.” This system infuriates Bedding from the Annexe organization. “Who benefits from this situation? We put him in prison for eight weeks, which cost society thousands of pounds, because they wanted to save £200 initially on his welfare benefits. What was the point?”

‘What was the point?’ is, perhaps, a question with wider relevance and resonance.