Convenience Big Store: How long can Boris’s luck last?

4 October, 2021

In the headlines

Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin are among the tax-avoiding world leaders whose dubious financial arrangements were revealed in the Pandora Papers, a trove of leaked financial documents. Notably absent are American billionaires such as Jeff Bezos, says the Daily Mail, "because the ultra-rich pay so little tax they don't need havens". Boris Johnson is seeking to spin the fuel crisis into "an opportunity that could see him win power for a decade", says Politico's Alex Wickham. His aides think they can exploit Labour leader Keir Starmer's commitment to solving the HGV crisis with 100,000 visas: "Vote Tory to get a pay rise, vote Labour to see mass immigration drive your wages down." A five-day, 21C Indian summer is set to reach Britain on Thursday. But first: rain.

Comment of the day

Boris Johnson with Priti Patel (centre) at a youth centre in Manchester yesterday. Stefan Rousseau/WPA Pool/Getty Images

How long can Boris's luck last?

As the Tory faithful gather in Manchester, says Andrew Neil in the Daily Mail, "you would expect them to be in a cheerful mood". They arrive at conference with the worst of the pandemic over and the economy growing strongly. Despite long queues for petrol, rising food and fuel prices and empty supermarket shelves, the Conservatives are ahead of Labour in the polls. This would be "extraordinary" for any government halfway through a term, when the opposition usually leads. For one beset by as many gaffes and "mistakes of its own making" as this one, it is "unprecedented".

But wiser Tories harbour a "deep sense of foreboding" over rising prices and wages: the Bank of England "guesstimates" that inflation will reach 4% by the end of the year, twice its target. As in the 1960s and 1970s, the cost of living is everything. A cold winter with unaffordable fuel prices – thanks to the government's "virtue-signalling" carbon tax and the national insurance hike – could see Boris Johnson's luck run out. The political culture has adapted to look more kindly on big government post-pandemic, just as it did after the war. But "big government requires big competence", which Johnson and his "lacklustre Cabinet" clearly lack. Any hit to living standards and the Tories' remarkable honeymoon with the British people will come to a sticky end.

Biden's border policy could bring back Trump

It's hard to confront the "ugly reality" of America's broken border policy, says Andrew Sullivan in The Weekly Dish. But if President Biden doesn't do something about it, Donald Trump will "romp" home in 2024. The influx is at a 21-year high, about four times the rate under Obama and Trump. It's not all Biden's fault. His predecessor didn't secure the border. But Biden did end Trump's "remain in Mexico" policy, which keeps asylum seekers out of the country while cases are adjudicated. Of 15,000 recent Haitian asylum seekers, 12,500 were allowed in. And every year "only around 2% of illegal immigrants are deported".

As with the movement to defund the police, Biden moved too swiftly to make a clear break from the past. He had the perfect excuse to delay things: Covid. He was already banning Europeans. "He couldn't invoke the same reason to keep the southern land border effectively closed?" Obama deported more illegal immigrants than any president in history "and won the popular vote twice". But Biden has fallen victim to "all borders are racist" baloney, and Democrats seem "utterly blind" to the danger. Racial anxiety has already propelled one unhinged authoritarian to power. Be warned. Mass migration empowered the European far right and took the UK out of the EU. Want to take the wind out of racists' sails? "Get serious about border control" – or face the consequences.

Inside politics

Eric Zemmour, a far-right television pundit and provocateur who has twice been found guilty of inciting hate, is rising in the polls for the French presidential election next April. The 63-year-old, who rages against identity politics and immigration, could displace Marine Le Pen as Macron's main opponent, says Andrew Hussey in the New Statesman. Zemmour has picked up a cult following among young right-wingers, who style themselves as "Génération Z".

Tomorrow's world

The electric Citroën Ami is "not legally a car" but a "quadricycle", so 14-year-olds in France can drive one without a licence, says Helen Rumbelow in The Times. The vehicle resembles "a very sweet Portaloo" and has a maximum speed of 28mph. It costs €6,990, but Parisians can lease one for €20 a month as part of a "Boris bike-style" service. It's set to arrive in the UK next spring.

Noted

Russia has hosted its first royal wedding for 127 years. Grand Duke George Mikhailovich Romanov, the 40-year-old descendant of a cousin of Tsar Nicholas II, who abdicated in 1917, married his Italian bride, Rebecca Virginia Bettarini, in St Petersburg. Absent from the 1,500-strong guest list was Vladimir Putin. "This marriage does not belong on our agenda in any way," said his spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Snapshot

Film

Meeting Tom Hiddleston doesn't come cheap. Superfans of the 40-year-old British actor, who played the villainous Loki in the Thor movies, must pay £225 for a photo at the MCM Comic Con in London this month, and a further £225 if they want an autograph. He'll be doing 50 of each and will be walled off behind Plexiglas. That's £45,000 from the mortals to bolster the Norse trickster's coffers.

Snapshot answer

It's an aerial view of the In America: Remember installation on the National Mall in Washington DC, which commemorates the 700,000 Americans who have lost their lives to Covid. Each white flag carries a message from a loved one and the installation covers 20 acres. "Give people the dignity they deserve," says its creator, Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg, in The Washington Post. "Please don't make me, or the next artist, do this again. I don't want to plant any more flags."