| It's election day in the US. Early results from most of the swing states are due between 1am and 3am, but it could be days before the winner is announced. The race remains a complete toss-up: when polling guru Nate Silver ran 80,000 simulations of his fabled election model last night, Kamala Harris won 40,012 of them, or 50.015%. Labour has backed away from plans to ban smoking in pub gardens, amid concerns it could affect the hospitality industry. The updated Tobacco and Vapes Bill – which will make it illegal for anyone currently aged 15 or under ever to buy cigarettes in the UK – will instead consider outlawing smoking in children's playgrounds and outside hospitals and schools. Liam and Noel Gallagher won't be paid "a penny" in advance of their Oasis reunion in case they fall out, says The Sun. A source claims withholding the £6m joint fee for each performance will hopefully "make sure they can tolerate each other for the length of the shows". | | |  | Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the 2021 Met Gala. Jamie McCarthy/MG21/Getty |
| Bernie, AOC and the decline of America's progressives | Whatever happens in the US election today, says Andrew Prokop in Vox, it's clear that the Left's moment in the sun is over. For a few years, progressives were in the ascendancy. The social justice movement "transformed" how a lot of the country thought and spoke about racial and gender issues. There were viral protest movements such as Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, and mainstream Democrats took their cues from hardcore lefties like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Pretty much everyone in the party's 2020 primary, including Kamala Harris, "scrambled to the left". When Joe Biden won that race, he didn't pivot to the centre for the general election – he "embraced much of the progressive agenda". | Things are very different now. Failed progressive policies like defunding the police and Medicare-for-all are entirely absent from the discourse. The Left's liberal approach to immigration, largely adopted by the Biden administration, has triggered a sharp backlash. Some members of the so-called "Squad" of progressive lawmakers have been ousted in primaries, while others – most notably Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – have "moved toward the Democratic mainstream". During this election campaign, Harris herself has abandoned many of the positions she held in 2020. (She has even bragged about owning a gun and being willing to shoot intruders.) This isn't to say the progressive years yielded nothing of value – they brought us the legalisation of gay marriage, for example. And perhaps, if Donald Trump wins, progressive energy will surge again. But for now the "leftward drift" of the Democratic party – and of the country's culture more broadly – has definitely come to an end. | | | | Interior designer Nicky Haslam has released his annual list of "Things Nicky Haslam Finds Common", says Laura Pullman in The Sunday Times. Printed on a tea towel, as ever, this year's crop includes: rescue dogs ("they've become like a Birkin bag", he says); the Welsh Guards ("frightfully common"); and St Paul's School ("everyone went to St Paul's, you don't have to tell us"). Also featured are leather jackets on children; Antiques Roadshow; Antony Gormley's sculptures ("I didn't like him as a man, but I loathe his sculptures"); WhatsApp; the Telegraph crossword; and the phrase "what does that come with?" ("You choose what it comes with. You don't ask!"). Order the £50 tea towel here. |
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| | | People may not realise just how much the rise in employers' National Insurance will affect businesses, says Claer Barrett in the FT. According to the accountancy firm Blick Rothenberg, the NI bill for employing someone on £36,000 a year will increase by 25%, and for a worker on £100,000 it will rise by 13.6%. "If you were planning to ask your employer for a pay rise, I wish you luck." | | | | | | Deliveroo has revealed its most ordered items around the country, says The Independent, and they very much conform to stereotype. The well-heeled residents of Royal Tunbridge Wells buy more champagne and Gail's Bakery products than anywhere else, while proudly alternative Brighton tops the list for oat milk and other dairy alternatives. Northerners have curry sauce and gravy with their chips more than everyone else. And Londoners order more Perelló olives and Torres truffle crisps than the rest of the UK put together. | | | | Enjoying The Knowledge?
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| Sally Rooney should listen to Ozzy Osbourne | Once, only political demagogues and religious extremists tried to "silence authors and demand public obeisance", says Hadley Freeman in The Sunday Times, because they knew their positions were so weak they could only be maintained by "silence and suppression". Today, absurdly, it is authors themselves who are the most vocal opponents of literary freedoms. Last week, Sally Rooney and a thousand of her fellow writers announced in an "open letter" (🙄) that they were boycotting Israeli publishers and publications that did not specifically speak out against Israel's war against Hamas and Hezbollah – which, of course, they couldn't resist calling "genocide". Incredibly, the letter doesn't mention Hamas once, even though the organisation's terrorists, while slaughtering and kidnapping Israelis on October 7, recorded themselves saying they wanted to kill Jews. "Which seems a bit, I don't know, genocide-y." | Rooney has made no secret of her loathing for Israel. She withheld Hebrew translation rights for her previous book from Israeli publishers, despite having no problem with her work being translated by Chinese state publishers. "Some oppressed peoples are more equal than others, I guess." The open letter has since received its own letter in response, signed by David Mamet, Lee Child, Ozzy Osbourne and others, which rightly describes cultural boycotts as being "directly in opposition to the liberal values most writers hold sacred". It's the same thing Radiohead have been saying for years when criticised – as they were again last week – for performing in Israel. Only a very simplistic person cannot see that with Israelis and Palestinians "the trauma is on both sides". If Ozzy Osbourne can grasp that, why can't Sally Rooney? | ⚖️🤷 Even if you happen to agree with Rooney on this particular issue, says Lionel Shriver in The Free Press, it is not in the broader interest of any writer for publishers, agents and festivals to "conform to a specific political perspective", especially one that harshly penalises dissidents. If you really are an independent thinker, "which we might imagine would be a criterion for your job", you are bound to fall out with the orthodoxy at such institutions at some point down the line. | | |  | Tom Cruise as Maverick (L) and Margot Robbie as Barbie. Getty |
| YouGov, presumably bored of getting the same 50/50 result in their election polling, has asked 1,167 Americans how they think various fictional characters would vote, says Walt Hickey on Substack. Presumed Donald Trump voters included Don Draper from Mad Men, Maverick from Top Gun and Homer Simpson (Marge went the other way). Among the likely Kamala Harris supporters were Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City, Ken and Barbie, and Phoebe, Monica and Joey from Friends (no word on the other three). And there were a few for whom the vote was roughly evenly split, including Forrest Gump, Indiana Jones, and Michael Scott from The Office. See the full list here. | | | The Red Sea is now so dangerous – with Iran-backed Houthis attacking vessels in supposed "solidarity" with Gaza – that "even Nato warships are avoiding it", says the maritime news website gCaptain. When the German frigate Baden-Württemberg and its support vessel Frankfurt am Main were returning home recently from a deployment in the Indo-Pacific, they were ordered to go the long way back – all the way around the Cape of Good Hope. | | | | | | | | It's a lock of George Washington's greying hair, says the New York Post, which is going up for auction alongside a slew of other rare presidential memorabilia later this month. The oval-shaped pendant containing the storied strands was originally a present to a family friend of the first US president and has been passed down the generations. The latest owners will see their hairy heirloom go under the hammer with bids starting at $15,000. Other items in the lot include the star-spangled banner that covered Abraham Lincoln's coffin after his assassination (expected to fetch more than $1m), never-before-seen presidential portraits and a 49-star flag from 1959 before Hawaii was declared a state. Put in a cheeky bid here. | | | "Good things are easily destroyed but not easily created."
Roger Scruton |
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