Convenience Big Store: The West’s “new moral order” is falling apart

29 September, 2023

In the headlines

Britain's economy has performed better than that of France or Germany since the pandemic, according to revised official figures. UK GDP is now thought to be 1.8% higher than it was at the end of 2019, compared to 1.7% for France and just 0.2% for Germany. The head of GB News, Angelos Frangopoulos, has said comments made on air by Laurence Fox about a female journalist were "way past the limits of acceptance". Fox, who questioned what "self-respecting man" would "climb into bed" with Ava Evans, has been suspended from the right-wing channel, along with host Dan Wootton. The 300-year-old tree at Northumberland's Sycamore Gap, which was felled by a suspected vandal yesterday morning, could potentially grow back. Andrew Poad, the National Trust's general manager, told BBC Breakfast that the stump of the arboreal icon, made famous after featuring in the 1991 film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, looks "healthy" enough for new shoots to emerge.

Sycamore Gap, before this week's sabotage. English Heritage/Getty

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St Paul's Cathedral: an emblem of the old Judeo-Christian world. Julian Elliott/Getty

The West's "new moral order" is falling apart

Secularist elites built a "new moral order" after the Cold War, says Gerard Baker in The Wall Street Journal. Now it is "collapsing around them". This postmodern secular creed – which, for the past 30 years, has steadily been replacing the Judeo-Christian beliefs that inspired and sustained Western civilisation for centuries – is defined by three pillars. First is the idea that global obligations to humanity as a whole trump local self-interest; second is a "quasi-biblical belief in climate catastrophism"; and third is the "wholesale cultural self-cancellation" of the West. But lately, on three continents, each of these pillars has started crumbling.

As migration surges in the Mediterranean, at the Texas border, and elsewhere along the frontier dividing the global north and south, the idea that our "obligations to indigent foreigners are as great as those to our own citizens" is being tested to destruction. The moral imperative of "self-abasing action to combat climate change" is falling too, notably in the UK, where the Conservatives recently took a "small but symbolically important step in climate apostasy", by tweaking their decarbonisation plans. And finally, the trend for cultural self-annihilation is "wobbling". In Australia, a left-wing government "eager to impress the world" has launched a campaign to offer Aboriginal people a say in certain matters of state. But a referendum on the matter has met "fierce opposition" from a large majority. It seems most Australians, like so many of us in the West, "have had enough". It's time for a restoration of the traditional liberal values that, ironically, gave us the economic and cultural enrichment which permitted this "orgy of self-immolation" in the first place.

Photography

Winners of the 2023 International Photography Awards include a drone shot of a polar bear lying in a field of purple flowers; Canadian Olympic freestyle skier Mikaël Kingsbury leaping through red smoke; a staged tableau of 1950s pleasure-seekers bathing on the banks of the Thames; a giraffe bonding with her baby; and a fisherman returning to shore in Mexico, surrounded by egrets. See more here.

Inside politics

It was strange to see Keir Starmer suggest last week that the UK is "drifting off the international stage", says Dominic Lawson in the Daily Mail. Has he forgotten about the AUKUS deal, signed earlier this year, uniting the UK, US and Australia in a pact to use nuclear-powered submarines as a counterweight to China in the Indo-Pacific? Or the new UK-Japan Hiroshima Accord, which includes plans to collaborate on a next-generation fighter jet? Or indeed that Britain has become the first European member of the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade agreement? The Labour leader has always been "intensely Eurocentric", so he's probably thinking about the EU. But even the Europeans acknowledge that, as the German magazine Internationale Politik Quarterly puts it, "Britain is Back". Why can't Starmer see it too?

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Gone viral

These pictures of a Chinese "rock banquet" – consisting entirely of stones that resemble food – have racked up more than 200,000 views on X (formerly Twitter). A user noted that one of Taiwan's best-known pieces of art is a 200-year-old sculpture, less than 6cm tall, that looks just like braised pork belly. Have a look for yourself here.

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A Nigerien soldier at a French-owned uranium mine in Arlit. Issouf Sanogo/Getty

France's nuclear headache

Emmanuel Macron's announcement that France will withdraw its 1,500 or so troops from coup-hit Niger "raises an important question", says Will Brown in Tortoise: where will the French now source their uranium? The heavy metal is crucial for France's nuclear sector, which accounts for about two-thirds of the country's energy supply. And about 20% of French uranium imports currently come from Niger, the world's seventh-largest producer. Go to Niamey, the capital, and you will find "once glamorous but now rather forlorn and dusty hotels" built during a uranium rush decades ago. It's not just France that's reliant on Niger, either. In 2021, two mines near the northern town of Arlit accounted for a quarter of the EU's uranium imports.

Paris used to deploy its military to protect these crucial supplies: in 2013, French special forces were sent in to defend the two Arlit sites from potential jihadist attacks. Will that still be the case after the withdrawal? Will French energy giant Orano, which has dominated Niger's uranium industry for five decades, "stay around for long"? There will be wider geopolitical consequences, too. France is already seeking to improve ties with its other major uranium suppliers, such as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan: Emmanuel Macron held a "rare summit" at the Elysée Palace for the leaders of both countries last year. Back in Niger, the door will now be open for another country to dominate the uranium supply. And perhaps inevitably, the top candidates are Russia and China.

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Life

Dave Benett/Getty

Michael Gambon, who died on Wednesday aged 82, was once invited as a guest of honour alongside Princess Margaret for dinner at "some fancy toff's house", says Popbitch. The meal was a "gargantuan" affair, with 13 courses and a different wine pairing for each one. At the end of all this, Gambon realised he was going to be sick, and, figuring he wouldn't make it to the loo, "staggered towards the fireplace". His host, desperate to avoid any mess on his "very valuable antique hearth rug", dashed over to intercept, and "effectively rugby-tackled" the actor – who proceeded to throw up right there, "resulting in the pair of them landing on the floor in a heap of vomit and tuxedo". Princess Margaret "didn't bat an eyelid".

Snapshot

Snapshot answer

It's a "mesmerising" electric blue tarantula, says CNN, a new species that has just been discovered in Thailand. Bug boffins found the colourful critter while trekking through a mangrove forest, and managed to capture two specimens to bring back and study. The secretive spiders are not actually blue – they just appear so because of special hairs on their legs and carapace that "absorb very small amounts of energy while reflecting high-energy blue light".