Convenience Big Store: It’s folly to freeze embryos for decades

9 September, 2021

In the headlines

The government may have crushed a potential rebellion over tax increases in the Commons, but it hasn't pacified his critics. "Shame on Boris Johnson, and shame on the Conservative party," says Allister Heath in The Daily Telegraph. "They have disgraced themselves, lied to their voters, repudiated their principles and treated millions of their supporters with utter contempt. And for what? To momentarily wrong-foot Sir Keir Starmer?" It's not un-Tory, says former Conservative chancellor Norman Lamont in the Daily Mail. Extraordinary times call for difficult decisions, and even "radical" Margaret Thatcher would have supported this step. Teenage British tennis star Emma Raducanu will tonight play in the semi-finals of the US Open, having beaten the No 12 seed, Belinda Bencic, in straight sets. "Radu Can Do," says The Sun.

Comment of the day

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It's folly to freeze embryos for decades

The news that anyone who wants to start a family will soon be able to freeze their eggs, sperm or embryos for up to 55 years has been met with "universal rejoicing". My first reaction was disbelief, says Bel Mooney in the Daily Mail. We're heading towards accepting the inalienable right to become parents "once all the other accessories have been amassed". IVF is a wonderful technology that my daughter benefited from, but even its pioneer, Lord Winston, has accused the fertility industry of corruption. And who'll be able to assess the mental health of a 75-year-old woman who "decides it's her right to finally have a child"?

The health minister responsible, Lord Bethell, says the decision will free women from the ticking biological clock. But denying the realities of time, ageing and death is hubristic nonsense: "The clock ticks for a reason." You need the energy of youth to raise a child. The proposed 55-year figure also raises the prospect of women in their fifties and sixties unfreezing decades-old eggs to have babies by surrogate – does that baby deserve to have old parents "who will probably die when they're still a teenager"? These are "fiendishly difficult issues" for any government to legislate on. But perhaps women "need to rethink their attitudes to motherhood". Because fertility is "a privilege, not a right".

We should never have left the single market

"It was the big Brexit lie," says Simon Jenkins in The Guardian: temporary trade tiffs with Europe were "the unavoidable price" of leaving. "That was rubbish." Brexit need never have so devastated the British economy. The damage has come from one decision – to quit the single market. And abandoning it was an "almost casual gesture" designed to win Boris Johnson the Tory leadership race. His "xenophobic belief" that EU trade standards were somehow "not British" appealed to "macho" hardline Brexiteers.

But negotiating the creation of the single market in 1987 was Margaret Thatcher's proudest free-trade achievement. "It seems bizarre to have to explain to a Tory that prosperity lies in open markets, not closed ones." And it's absurd to imagine the current shambles will pass. HMRC reckons extra cargo inspections cost £7.5bn a year. As for migration, the overall shortage of seasonal farm labour is 20% and often more, according to Radio 4's Farming Today. "Fruit will rot in fields, pigs cannot get to abattoirs." And delivery firms are short of 100,000 drivers. The sensible path would be for Johnson to seek readmission to the market, using the Northern Ireland protocol as a template. This would not mean rejoining the EU, just rejoining Ireland – "the most delicious of historical ironies".

Inside politics

Denis MacShane, a Labour minister two decades ago, recalls in his new book Must Labour Always Lose? that he once told Tory MP Gyles Brandreth the Queen "looked very good for her age, with excellent legs". Brandreth promptly leaked this appraisal to the press. Horrified, MacShane rang the Palace to apologise. "Don't say anything, Denis," advised the Queen's private secretary. "Her Majesty says this is the nicest thing ever said about her by one of her ministers."

Fashion

Christian Siriano kicked off New York Fashion Week on Tuesday night with a "flurry of neon", says The Washington Post. The 35-year-old American designer, who won the TV show Project Runway in 2008, has dressed Cardi B, Jennifer Lopez and Ariana Grande. Luxury fashion sales in 2021 so far amount to $106bn, according to Statista, and this is the first in-person fashion week since the pandemic.

Life

Jeremy Clarkson will try to placate furious locals in his sleepy Oxfordshire village of Chadlington tonight. His Amazon series Clarkson's Farm is such a hit that visitors are flocking to his Diddly Squat farm shop, causing traffic chaos. The 61-year-old faces a grilling at Chadlington Memorial Hall over his plans to develop the site – "Cheese and wine provided," say the posters.

Snapshot

Noted

During Italy's record-breaking summer heatwave, Pope Francis sent ice cream to 15,000 parched prisoners in Rome, says The Guardian. The Eternal City saw temperatures soar above 40C thanks to a fiendish anticyclone nicknamed Lucifer.

Snapshot answer

It's a couple posing as sunbathers on ice blocks in February at the Kapchagay reservoir, Kazakhstan, where the temperature was -10C. Tourists swim and jet-ski in the 85-mile-long reservoir in summer, but rarely venture there in winter. This picture was a runner-up in the Drone Photo Awards 2021, announced this week.