Convenience Big Store: Britain’s risky new alliance

25 September, 2021

Hello,

How inspired of Auberon Waugh to invent the Bad Sex Prize back in 1993. Writing about sex in fiction is very difficult to get right – Jane Austen was so lucky not to have to try (though arguably, because of all that buttoned-up passion, Pride and Prejudice is one of the sexiest novels in the language). This week in The Times Janice Turner discussed Sally Rooney's sex scenes. She's good at them, apparently, even if she sometimes makes being young and in love sound rather joyless – and in her latest novel, a little clinical: the characters keep talking to each other during sex and asking each other if they're allowed to do things. See Love etc below.

All good wishes,

Jon Connell

Editor-in-chief

AUKUS

A US carrier taking off in the South China Sea. Getty Images

Britain's risky new alliance

Connoisseurs of "fine French pique" enjoyed a rare feast last week, says Walter Russell Mead in The Wall Street Journal. France reacted "volcanically" to its exclusion from the AUKUS defence partnership between the US, UK and Australia, and the cancellation of its submarine pact with Australia. It's a "massive public humiliation" for Emmanuel Macron – the French don't elect their presidents to be "hapless patsies hornswoggled by stupid Americans, provincial Australians and unspeakable Brits". But while the US could have been more tactful, there are "few elegant ways to cancel a wedding". Far more important is the message it sends: "high-maintenance" European allies are expendable, "America's pivot to the Indo-Pacific is real".

Xi Jinping's sabre rattling in the South China Sea means the need to contain China has become "self-evident", says Francis Pike in The Spectator. The problem for the West is deciding "whose task this is". AUKUS adds to a "confusing smorgasbord of alliances" already competing to stand up to Xi. Why does Britain need a piece of the action? We have enemies closer to home. In terms of naval tonnage, Russia (927,000 tons) ranks only marginally behind China (973,000 tons). Would it not make sense for Europe to focus its naval defence on nearer waters? Indo-Pacific security should be left to the navies of the US, India and Japan. They have "the might and the motive" to keep the peace in the South China Sea. "Britain simply doesn't."

Remember, it was the arms race that crippled the Soviet Union, says Minxin Pei in Bloomberg. China might have plenty of cash, but it's no match for the combined military spending power of the US and its allies. With this "dramatic strategic move", the US is effectively challenging China to a new and "likely astronomically expensive" arms race. Any hope Beijing has of matching US spending is upended by the combined economic heft of the Quad Nations – the US, Japan, India and Australia. With a total GDP of $30tn, the Quad's economic power is twice as large as China's. Alliances like AUKUS are how America will win, and China will lose.

But AUKUS also creates serious risks, says James Forsyth in The Spectator. The submarines will take years to materialise, and the danger is that Beijing tries to get ahead in the meantime, perhaps tightening its grip around Taiwan. Like Wilhelmine Germany or Imperial Japan in the 1940s, China might conclude that if it doesn't act now its moment will pass. This is what makes the next few years so dangerous, and important. The French want Europe to have "strategic autonomy". Britain and Australia recognise that countering China requires American leadership, just as taking on the Soviet Union did. Support for the US and our other Pacific allies will now be a defining feature of British foreign policy. Britain's alliances are being deepened by this new deal, giving this country a relevance in the Pacific that it has not had for decades.

Long reads shortened

How the red wall started crumbling

Convinced something deeper than Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn was responsible for Labour's worst defeat since 1935 in the so-called "red wall", I spent a year visiting the constituencies there for my new book, says Sebastian Payne in the Financial Times. And what's striking is the economic transformation of County Durham's mining towns – something people rarely talk about. Where there used to be Consett Iron Company, for example, there are now "spacious" new homes, a college, a McDonald's and lots of small businesses. Upmarket brands of cars "speak of a wealth the miners and steelworkers never had". Many residents commute to the nearby cities of Newcastle and Durham.

When the steelworks dominated Consett, life revolved around it and mining. The workplace was heavily unionised, which in turn tied employees to the Labour Party. Socialising happened at the working men's clubs and pubs. Voting Conservative "was as alien to many of its residents as putting on a suit and tie and going to an office". Even in the 1980s, people here used to vote Labour without a second thought, saying things like, "my dad would just kill me if I didn't". But when the pits closed, life "became more individualistic".

Society's fabric has utterly changed. The red wall is more prosperous, thanks to Margaret Thatcher's economic revolution, but memories of job losses and the upheaval caused by the collapse of the steelworks are still strong. That's why Boris Johnson's "cocktail of conservatism and Blairism" works. Labour has found itself out of step in the "culture wars", while Johnson's gut instincts have found the new centre ground, says political philosopher John Gray. It's big-state paternalism, a dash of patriotism and a shot of Thatcher's individualism – leftwards on economics, right on culture. Johnson's conservatism speaks to the present, not the past. That's why it won.

Read the full article here (paywall).

Property

THE HIDEAWAY This converted 18th-century barn is set in the Tuscan hills, with views over the Val d'Orcia valley. Recently restored to enhance its original character, it has two bedrooms, a study, an open-plan kitchen and dining area, a covered patio, hot tub and garden. The medieval town of Pari is just five minutes' drive away, while Siena is half an hour. £455,000.

Life

Airbnb

The whole world comes to me

When Kitty Mrache put her cabin on Airbnb in 2009, she didn't expect much, says Zachary Crockett in The Hustle. First, it's in the middle of nowhere: the surrounding Californian woodland is so thick that no phone signal can reach it, and to find it you have to follow printed-out directions. Second, it's tiny. The handmade, mushroom-shaped hut is just 100 sq ft and was originally built for a homeless friend who needed a place to stay. Still, within two weeks of Mrache listing it, it was fully booked, going on to become the most popular Airbnb of all time.

There are 5.6 million properties on Airbnb, but Mrache's humble "mushroom dome" is the most booked and wish-listed. More than 5,800 people have visited, travelling from more than 40 countries. To bag a stay in the $156-a-night mushroom, guests have to book at least eight months in advance. Before, Mrache scraped by on social security payments of $250 a month. Now she rakes in $96,000 a year from Airbnb alone.

Part of her success was that she joined Airbnb early. Almost all the other listings were city buildings, so Mrache's woodland dome stood out. Plus, the company loved her. Mrache embodied Airbnb's purpose – "helping everyday people monetise their extra space". It stuck her on advertising hoardings in five US cities and built a replica of her pad in its San Francisco HQ. But the real secret is Mrache herself. Guests love the 71-year-old, who swears by crystal healing and is a trained meditation practitioner. And she loves the guests. "Sometimes I think I'd like to go travel and see the world," she says. "But then again, the whole world has come to me instead."

Love etc

BBC

Where to find great sex – literally

When Sally Rooney finished her latest book, Beautiful World, Where Are You, she had a crisis. There's too much sex, she told her editors in a flap. "I was like, 'I don't want to even read this, let alone write it'," She told crowds at a Southbank Centre event. The author begged to cut the sex scenes, but her editors refused. Thank God, says Amil Niazi in The Cut. These are the best literary love scenes I've read – "the Rooney brand of lust is cerebral, detached and centred on longing". She doesn't shy away from the nitty-gritty, but the sex is decidedly unsexy. Somehow that's what makes it work. Everything feels real. "There is a sense of comfort in the normalcy of it all."

But who wants to read about normal, boring sex, asks Ben Lawrence in The Daily Telegraph. "I think that out-and-out filth works better." What's more, sex scenes should be funny if possible. It's why Jilly Cooper works so well – she knows how to use sex as entertainment, "which, of course, is one of fiction's main purposes". When it comes to sex in literature, writers should take journalist Harold Ross's famous advice: "Be funny, and if you can't be funny be interesting."

Rooney's sex scenes are certainly interesting, but maybe for the wrong reasons, says Janice Turner in The Times. Men are constantly asking if they are allowed to do things. ("Can I put you lying on your back?") It's called "active consent", the idea that both parties must have permission before they engage in any sexual act. It's laudable, maybe even erotic in practice, but totally clinical on paper. "Like a doctor preparing a patient for a colonoscopy."