Convenience Big Store: The battle for the soul of the Tory party

14 December, 2023

In the headlines

The US House of Representatives has voted to formally open an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, over Republican allegations that he improperly benefited from his son Hunter's business dealings. Three of the four previous times the House took this step resulted in impeachment, says BBC News – and the exception was Richard Nixon, who resigned before a vote could be held. Scientists say they have found the main cause of severe morning sickness, raising hopes of a cure. The ailment appears to be triggered by a single hormone, which could potentially be blocked with medication or neutralised through exposure before pregnancy. Tesla is updating the software in more than two million cars in the US, after its "Autopilot" assisted-driving setting was judged too risky by regulators. The firm has also updated more than a million cars in China over fears that the braking system may cause drivers to accelerate instead. 🚙💨

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Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing/Getty

The battle for the soul of the Tory party

In the end, the right-wing revolt over Rishi Sunak's Rwanda bill "fizzled out", says Robert Shrimsley in the FT. These "preening rebels" will have another chance to sink the legislation in the new year, "but this felt like the moment of maximum danger". Yet the potential revolt was never really about Rwanda. In reality, "this is a battle for control of the post-election Conservative party". Specifically, it's a tussle over whether the Tories follow the example of centre-right groups elsewhere – places like Italy, the US and Hungary – in becoming defined "primarily as an anti-immigration party".

The Tory rebels see immigration as a win-win – either they'll force Sunak to move on to their territory, or they'll get to blame his "moderation" for defeat at the next election. The fight will also bolster their narrative that the PM is a "tax-raising globalist afraid to stand up to the liberal elite". And once Sunak has left No 10, they'll presumably seek to force leadership contenders into committing to withdraw from the European Convention of Human Rights. The fact that doing so would undermine the Good Friday Agreement demonstrates that this is also a battle over whether the Conservatives wish to be a "serious party of power". To his credit, Sunak has proven willing to confront the hardliners. But the revolts will increase as the election approaches. The PM must find a way not just to "defy his wreckers", but to make sure they take their fair share of the blame for any defeat.

🗳😢 Tory MPs don't seem too worried about heading into opposition, says William Hague in The Times, but I've done it, "and I wouldn't wish it on anybody". For those in government, this may be the last time they ever experience power – when I returned to the cabinet in 2010 after 13 years in opposition, I was one of just three survivors from 1997. And forget any romantic notion of being free to think. "You are expected to show decisiveness when your decisions count for little, and set a clear direction when you're not going anywhere soon."

Food and drink

The foodie website Delish has compiled a list of 54 festive cocktails. There's the Santa's Hat, "an ode to a dirty Shirley" with added peppermint and a dusting of coconut; the fluorescent Jack Frostie, which gets its colour from bright blue Curaçao; the Scrooge Sour, a mulled wine-inspired tipple laced with cognac; and the Caramel Snickerdoodle Martini, which promises to taste like a cookie in a glass. See the rest here.

Noted

Myanmar has overtaken Afghanistan to become the world's largest opium producer, says The Guardian. The southeast Asian nation increased its yield by almost 40% this year, to 1,080 metric tonnes, in large part because civil war has boosted the country's illegal economy. Production in Afghanistan has dwindled since the Taliban vowed to end illegal drug production – after a ban on poppy cultivation was introduced last April, the country's opium output plummeted by 95% to just 330 tonnes.

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Staying young

Being a popstar used to be about holding a tune and learning the odd dance routine, says The Guardian. But that doesn't cut it at the top of the industry today. Taylor Swift's Eras tour involves almost three hours of vigorous dancing, costume changes and sprints across the stage – all while she belts out songs. Last week, the musical maestro revealed how she got in shape for it all. "Every day I would run on the treadmill, singing the entire set list out loud," she told Time magazine. "Fast for fast songs, and a jog or a fast walk for slow songs. Then I had three months of dance training, because I wanted to get it in my bones."

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Tolkien and Meloni. Bettmann/Getty

Why Italy's far-right love Tolkien

Giorgia Meloni "loves Lord of the Rings like you wouldn't believe", says Charlie Connelly in The New European, and frequently quotes JRR Tolkien's fantasy series in her speeches. The Italian PM borrowed lines from "Faramir, son of Denethor" for a pro-Ukraine speech in London in April; when she became Italy's youngest-ever cabinet minister in 2008, aged 31, she vowed at her swearing-in not to be corrupted by the "ring of power". This is more than a "charming quirk": Italy's far-right has long embraced Tolkien's oeuvre. With "traditional fascist symbolism" too risky to use, the books' "nostalgically bucolic world of the Shire" and simple, "good-versus-evil narrative" provide a handy alternative framework. In 1977, the far-right youth group Azione Giovani started holding yearly Tolkien-themed "Hobbit Camps", where attendees dress up as their favourite characters. Meloni attended them in the 1990s.

Yet Tolkien's storytelling was also "co-opted by the left in the 1960s", for what they interpreted as "warnings of the dangers of imperialism and the consequences of environmental destruction". And the author himself, though "a man of the right", never had any truck with fascism, describing Hitler in a 1941 letter as a "ruddy little ignoramus". When, in 1938, a German publisher asked Tolkien if he was Aryan enough to be printed under Nazi law, he replied: "If I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors from that gifted people."

Love etc

A TikTok trend in which users pretend to be giants appears to have boosted the popularity of the "giantess" fetish, says Vice. On one popular kink website, "giantess" has been its most-searched fetish in 2023. The content can take on many forms, often playing up not only the idea of a woman being extremely tall, but also of a man being teeny-tiny. So tiny, in fact, that a giantess could "pick him up in her fingers and swallow him whole or step on him like a bug".

Tomorrow's world

Boffins trying to find a sustainable replacement for supple, see-through plastic are putting their hopes in an unlikely material, says The Atlantic: wood. Thirty years ago, a little-known German botanist discovered that he could see the inner workings of trees without dissecting them by bleaching away the pigments in their cells. Researchers in Sweden later stumbled across the 1992 research paper detailing these efforts, and were inspired to try for themselves. It worked. After years of experiments, transparent wood could soon be used in "super-strong screens for smartphones", in "soft, glowing light fixtures", and even in "colour-changing windows".

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Snapshot answer

It's Doritos-flavoured booze, made in partnership with Copenhagen distillery Empirical Spirits. As you'd expect, says Bloomberg, the 42% tipple tastes "uncannily" like a bag of nacho cheese tortilla chips. "From the first whiff, there's an instant hit of corn, then the follow-up of nacho cheese powder." Brave US drinkers can pre-order the limited edition liquor for $65 here.