|  | Donald Trump and Elon Musk watching a SpaceX launch in November. Brandon Bell/Getty |
| Trump's unlikely coalition is already fracturing | Donald Trump isn't even in office yet, says Rana Foroohar in the FT, and already his "strange political coalition of anti-immigrant MAGA supporters and globalist billionaires" has started to fracture. The biggest spat is over H-1B visas, which are reserved for the most highly skilled foreigners. Silicon Valley depends on these visas, but the traditional MAGA crowd hates them because they encourage immigration and depress US tech wages. MAGA activist Laura Loomer, a self-proclaimed "proud Islamophobe", wrote on X that she wanted an end to the visas because "our country was built by white Europeans… not third-world invaders from India". Musk's vulgar, bullying response – "take a big step back and F*** YOURSELF in the face" – also pointed out that he and many of the top folk at SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other firms that "made America strong" were only in the country because of the H1-B. | Loomer's posts are obviously xenophobic, but she also raises an important issue: how to make sure blue-collar Americans are properly supported in the face of global competition. The fact that the state has so badly failed to protect manufacturing workers from globalisation since the late 1980s is one of the main reasons America got Trump in the first place. Musk, meanwhile, is right that the US needs far more skilled engineers than it currently produces. What's more, the success of the South African – and that of so many in Silicon Valley and the US C-suite – reflects America's greatest strength: its openness to immigrants. This fight matters because it exposes a fundamental rift in the Trump coalition that will only grow. The one thing they agreed on was turfing out Joe Biden. Now they've done that, they're unlikely to come together on much else. |
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| | | | THE CHATEAU This elegant 15th-century chateau in north-east France sits in over 16 acres of grounds with a double moat, a working drawbridge and striking turreted towers. The ground floor has a grand entrance hall, two kitchens, a library and a spacious Napoleon III-style drawing and dining room. The chapel is accessible from this level. East and west staircases lead to the upper floors where there are five bedrooms and five bathrooms, and the property comes with two gîtes, offering further accommodation. Calais Eurotunnel is just over an hour's drive. €2.198m. |
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| | | | | | Villain
The rapper 2 Low, who accidentally fired his gun through his jeans pocket during an appearance on the One on One with Mike D podcast. The firearm went off – thankfully causing no injuries – as 2 Low and the host, fellow rapper Mike D, were discussing the importance of making the right life choices. You don't get that on The Rest is Politics. | Heroes
Cats, according to the London Fire Brigade, which spent more than £500,000 on feline-related call-outs between January and October last year. It's a heck of a lot, says Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail, but in fairness these are domestic pets and their owners presumably pay taxes. Less forgivable is the £2,483 that was spent sending fire crews to rescue a fox that got stranded on a pier near Greenwich. "What's wrong with a sniper?" |  | Matthew Horwood/Getty |
| Villain
Keir Starmer, at least according to Liz Truss, who has sent the prime minister a cease and desist letter demanding that he stop saying she "crashed the economy". Lawyers for the former PM say the negative market reaction to her mini-Budget in 2022 – which was so acute she had to resign just 49 days into her premiership, infamously failing to outlast a Daily Star lettuce – did not constitute an economic crash because there was no fall in economic output or rise in unemployment. Starmer's statements, the letter ends, are "defamatory" and "causing continuing damage to our client's reputation". | Hero
A judge at an employment tribunal who has dismissed a Brighton bar worker's claim that an unsolicited air kiss from her manager constituted sexual harassment. It's a sensible ruling, says The Times, but it "should not be treated as an endorsement of this most absurd affectation". It is to Britain's "great credit" that, several decades after the continental-style greeting first arrived on these shores, the air kiss is still generally regarded as "pointless, pretentious and daft". | | | | Enjoying The Knowledge?
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| | |  | Francesca Rowan-Plowden: rowing experience. BBC |
| The Traitors: comfortably classy | I've realised something about the "truly brilliant" BBC show The Traitors, says Michael Hogan in The Guardian: it's totally middle class. This year's contestants – who are essentially playing a drawn-out version of the party game Mafia – include a professor, a retired opera singer, a priest, an ex-diplomat and an interior designer called Francesca Rowan-Plowden, who took charge of one of the group's recent tasks because she had "the most rowing experience". Ardross Castle, where the series is set, is the epitome of "countrycore chic" – think Downton or Saltburn – offering participants a breakfast buffet with fresh-baked pastries, premium granola and fruit compote. When the show's trademark black Land Rovers crunch along its sweeping driveway, "you half-expect two muddy labradors called Hooray and Henry to come barrelling out of the boot". | The contestants spend much of their time plotting and scheming in "Cluedo-style" billiard rooms and on lovely outdoor terraces. The group tasks, in which they try to add money to the prize pot, are equally "Radio 4-friendly": archery, boating, bellringing. (It's surely only a matter of time before there's a dressage round or a ski trip.) And it's hosted by Claudia Winkleman, the "designer lady-of-the-manor" resplendent in "tweed, tartan, chunky knits and Hunter wellies". The whole thing is like a "jolly rural romp" written by Jilly Cooper and directed by Richard Curtis – "cosy and classy" enough to attract viewers who'd usually be sniffy about reality TV shows, and broadcast from the safety of the "dear old BBC, rather than one of those ghastly commercial channels". | | |  | Twiggy in 1967. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty |
| When models ate grouse and drank ginger beer | Sarah Doukas, the agent who discovered Kate Moss, recently claimed that models used to be "anonymous and characterless", says Craig Brown in the Daily Mail. She should read the 1971 book Not Just A Pretty Face, in which 50 top models list their favourite authors, composers, magazines and so on. Joanna Lumley chose Margaret Drabble, Beethoven and Private Eye. Twiggy plumped for Daphne du Maurier, the Beano and ginger beer. Many were unapologetically posh in their selections: the Chanel model Grania Villiers-Stuart said she read Nancy Mitford and dined at La Petite Auberge in Paris. Another declared her favourite "shop" was Sotheby's. | Perhaps most pleasing were their favourite dishes. Whereas today's models graze on salad – "if they can muster the appetite" – back then it was all "lemon meringue pie, grapefruit and prawn cocktail, cheesecake, toffee apples, melon with Parma ham and salmon Swiss roll". As many as five models submitted recipes for apple crumble, "pencil-thin" Twiggy chose pease pudding and boiled bacon, and Villiers-Stuart went for Grouse Bourre aux Fines Herbes: three grouse cooked in brandy and red wine. Not a single mention of salad. | | | | | | "I think you will find that the sun is always shining in my books – a state of affairs which minutely lifts the spirit of the English reader."
Ian Fleming |
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