Convenience Big Store: Why David Amess was always late

18 October, 2021

In the headlines

Britain risks a new wave of terrorist attacks by "bedroom radicals" indoctrinated online over lockdown, a security official tells The Daily Telegraph. Ali Harbi Ali, the 25-year-old accused of murdering David Amess, turned to extremism after watching hate preacher Anjem Choudary on YouTube, a former friend tells The Sun. Covid deaths in the UK are three times higher than in western Europe, says the FT's John Burn-Murdoch on Twitter. Britain's "early lead on vaccine rollout" means protection is waning. "Nailing booster rollout" is critical. In August, China secretly test-launched a hypersonic missile that circled the globe. It took the US government entirely by surprise. "Sicily has banned children from having godfathers in a bid to tackle the mafia," says the Daily Star. It's now an offer you can refuse.

Comment of the day

A graffiti mural of David Amess in Leigh-on-Sea. Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Why David Amess was always late

On Saturday the supermarket 100 yards from where the MP David Amess was stabbed to death was cleared out of flowers, says The Sunday Times. "Every tulip, rose and pansy had been scooped up and deposited at the tribute for the man alternately known as 'Sir David' or simply 'Dave'."

Every Southend resident seems to have a story about their MP: he would visit a nurse on the cancer ward for a cup of tea; on Christmas Day he'd drop in on the grandmother of a seafood salesman in her care home. One 73-year-old retiree says that after a year of fruitlessly trying to get a refund for a Covid-cancelled flight to America, she turned to Amess for help and got her money back in two days. The "ebullient" 69-year-old, born and raised in working-class east London, would never miss the charity carol concert put on by a local Bach choir each December. "He was always five minutes late, though," says Jennifer Stonestreet, 70, "because he'd stopped to talk to someone on the way."

Amess is one of six serving MPs who've been murdered in my lifetime, says Matthew Syed in the same newspaper. We far too rarely acknowledge the "quiet courage" with which our politicians operate. Amess had firm views, but was infallibly courteous: as former Speaker John Bercow says, "he was scrupulous about playing the ball rather than the man or woman". Courtesy might seem quaint in a world of slowly declining civility – a world where the deputy leader of the Labour party can call her Tory opponents "scum". But courtesy "is the mortar of civilisation". Western society was formed not by military prowess, but by the sharing and synthesis of opinions between opposing factions. "Amess, I think, understood this in his bones."

Is "extreme wealth" a barbarising force?

I can't wait to get stuck into the new series of Succession, which begins today, says Matthew d'Ancona in Tortoise. The hit HBO show – about a "seemingly indestructible" media baron and his children, who are vying to take over – is widely thought to be inspired by the Murdoch dynasty. There's even a rumour that Rupert Murdoch's younger daughters, from his marriage to Wendi Deng, were "mildly disappointed" not to have had fictional counterparts. But the power of the show "has much deeper roots and mythic foundations". Succession mines the ancient themes of "power, family and mortality" that have lodged in our collective unconscious over the millennia. Like Zeus, the family patriarch, Logan Roy, is never quite sure whether to "empower his children or to consume them". In his entitled daughter, Shiv, the King Lear-like Logan has "a Goneril whom he would like, just occasionally, to be more like Cordelia".

Equally brilliant is the show's approach to money. Succession "proposes that extreme wealth, like extreme poverty, is a barbarising force", reducing those who have it to the most "basic and brutal" urges. But it also makes clear that while people may hate the rich more than ever, it doesn't stop them wanting to be rich themselves. Nobody understands that hypocrisy better than Logan Roy. As he puts it: "Love... fear... whatever."

Do the Murdoch clan watch Succession?
Brian Cox, who plays Logan Roy, believes some of them do. He says a man once approached him, saying he and his wife were enjoying the show, but that she "finds it a little difficult at times". When Cox asked why, he said: "My wife is Elisabeth Murdoch."

Inside politics

Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak's rivalry typically takes the form of wrangles over spending, says Tim Shipman in The Sunday Times. But "mischievous rumours persist" that the PM appointed the 6ft 5in Simon Clarke as Sunak's deputy at the Treasury "because it amuses him to surround his 5ft 6in Chancellor with ministers who tower over him in public".

Tomorrow's world

About 200 nude people wearing white body paint have been photographed near the Dead Sea by American artist Spencer Tunick. Having staged dozens of nude shoots around the world, he's highlighting the climate catastrophe facing the Dead Sea, which recedes a metre every year. Tunick, 54, covered his models in white paint to evoke the Bible story about Lot's wife, who was turned into a pillar of salt.

Noted

Apple is far too ready to cave in to the whims of Beijing when it comes to censorship, free speech activist Benjamin Ismail tells BBC News. The latest disgraceful example is its removal of an app about the Koran from China's App Store – the app is accused of hosting "illegal religious texts". Apple has already agreed to remove apps that discuss Tiananmen Square, the Dalai Lama and independence for Tibet and Taiwan.

Snapshot

Life

The new Saudi ambassador to the UK, Prince Khalid, went to Eton, Oxford and Sandhurst, and is married to the Duke of Northumberland's niece, Lucy Cuthbert, says Alice Thomson in The Times. The 44-year-old is also the cousin of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom the CIA blames for murdering Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Khalid is "absolutely sure he had nothing to do with it". Did he ask his cousin directly? "It was unnecessary."

Snapshot answer

A Co-op in Hertfordshire has stocked its fridges with nothing but HP Sauce and Heinz salad cream. Supermarkets across the country are trying to disguise shortages with the goods they have to hand – an Asda in Gloucester filled an aisle with Lynx Africa deodorant and a Tesco Extra in Cardiff constructed a vast display of sunflower oil.

Quoted

"Bond cannot now have sex with anyone for fear of coming across as gropey or too masculine. So what we are presented with isn't an undulating shagscape of inviting Bond girls with whom anything is possible, but a band of slightly weary career women who pass him pityingly between them, like carers."
Camilla Long on No Time to Die in The Sunday Times