Thirteen months since the referendum and the Conservatives still can’t decide even the broadest outline of the terms on which we hope to leave. The difference between a soft and a hard exit is greater than the difference between staying in and a soft exit, yet the prime minister is still insisting that government policy is for a hard exit, while the chancellor (in her absence) says the opposite.
Nobody really knows what the foreign secretary thinks and I doubt he knows himself. The Brexit secretary, meanwhile, seems to be trying to play it by ear, but with no guidance as to the melody at all. And the trade secretary seems recently to have reconciled himself to three (or, if the chancellor is to be believed, as many as four) further years without any job at all. Some ministers say we’ll be taking back control of immigration when we leave in 2019, others that we will not.
And almost everybody has started to talk of a “transitional” period after leaving, without any hint of a consensus on what we would be transitioning to.
Every Conservative MP bar Kenneth Clarke voted in February for the triggering of Article 50. It now appears they and their leader started the countdown to Britain’s expulsion without even the vaguest plan for what we’d be aiming to achieve, let alone realistically likely to achieve. Worse, they pulled the trigger knowing very well that “Brexit” still meant different things to different members of the party and its government, and there was no reason to hope that divergent aims were ever likely to converge.
I call this criminal: irresponsible to the point of culpable recklessness towards their country’s future. The Conservative Party just thought they’d give it a whirl and all but one of them voted for the adventure.
Even in bad times, even when we Tories messed up, I used to feel a pride in the party to which I owe so much. Often too slow, sometimes too rash, sometimes wrong, sometimes mildly corrupt, often missing the public mood, occasionally cowardly, it was still possible to trace through the party’s long history a line of worldly common sense, a distrust of extremism, and a deep sense of duty to the nation. There was a certain steadiness there. Has this deserted us? Do we yet understand, has it yet been born in on us, that it is we and we alone who have led the whole country into the predicament it now finds itself in?
How shall I look in the eye those householders through whose doors I’ve been dropping Tory leaflets all these years: years that will be seen as a permanent stain on the Conservative Party’s reputation?
The prime minister has gone away. “Ladybird, ladybird,” we might cry, “fly away home! Your house is on fire, your children are gone!” Except that we’re better off without her flapping around, spouting implausibilities. Perhaps reality in the shape of Philip Hammond may gradually bear down upon fantasy; perhaps forlorn hopes may steal silently away and various fools, while not repenting of their folly, allow it to slip their recollection.
I hope so. I left Spain feeling ashamed to be British. I return to England ashamed to be a Conservative.
JUSTIN GATLIN REMINDS US THAT SPORT IS NOT A FAIRYTALE
Matt Dickinson
AUGUST 7 2017
FIRST CAME THE gun and what, by any measure, was mesmerising sporting drama. Then a confused, pin-drop silence. Next the boos cascading around the London Stadium as nasty reality bit that the blue riband event of global athletics, the 100m sprint, had been won by Voldemort in spikes.
And now? For weeks, months and for the rest of eternity, the confounding headache of how we deal with sport’s cheats. That will take infinitely longer than the 9.92sec that it took for Justin Gatlin to give track and field its most unwelcome result since Ben Johnson ran juiced into infamy.
So, how to tackle it? By booing if you must. Boo if it makes you feel better. Boo if you think it increases the deterrence to drug-taking. Boo if you think anyone who dopes should be a pariah, banished from their sport for life (though try to be consistent).
Booing was certainly a loud message to Lord Coe that Gatlin’s presence should not have been tolerated. He agrees, but while the president of the IAAF has a record of supporting life bans — unlike his predecessor, Lamine Diack, who is being investigated for taking bribes in one of sport’s worst scandals — Coe’s remarks on BBC radio yesterday were notable for an admission of impotence.
Life bans exist for the worst repeat offenders but very rarely stick because, as Coe said with words to kill the sporting soul: “These things are suffused in legality.” And this was the real horror of Gatlin’s triumph beyond the shock of those who could not believe that Usain Bolt had lost his farewell race, Harry Potter slain in the final scene.
Coe did not want Gatlin on the start line, the crowd did not want Gatlin (except to jeer him), the sport can do without him but throwing him out is “suffused in legality”, so he can run away with the glittering prize.
For a first offence, even the most brazen case of cheating, few in anti-doping think that life bans are enforceable. Many question whether they are even fair when, say, a truly repentant young athlete bullied by a coach could be banished. Testing is rarely a world of black and white, especially once the lawyers get to work.
Gatlin reminded us of all this at the worst possible moment, when the world’s eyes were meant to be transfixed by Bolt strutting his way into posterity. But then so much of the Gatlin story is horribly inconvenient, like the usual damning description of him as a “two-time doper”. Not so fast.
A double-cheat? For his first ban in 2001, he was a 19-year-old student coming off exams when he tested positive for medication that had long been prescribed him for attention deficit disorder. The original panel called the failed test “inadvertent” and said it was “very concerned that Mr Gatlin’s reputation not be unnecessarily tarnished as a result of this decision”. But then, shamelessly, he surrendered any benefit of the doubt. Gatlin does still have the horrible stain of a 2006 positive for testosterone (complete with dubious claims that he was fitted up) but that case is also awkward and does little to foster public confidence.
His ban was reduced from eight years to four, partly because he helped the United States Anti-Doping Agency to wire-tap his notorious coach, Trevor Graham. This is the type of bartering that is necessary when anti-doping agencies are so compromised, allowing Gatlin to win another world title 12 years after his first.
It left us with a media conference late on Saturday that was about as much fun as being woken by a starting pistol. Gatlin, whose shows of contrition have been so poorly signposted that he was almost starting from scratch, sought to be humble. He expressed bemusement at how he had not been booed before — “not here in 2012 but now?” — and a sliver of contrition.
“I have done my time,” he said. “I did community service. I have talked to kids. I have actually inspired kids to walk the right path. That’s all I can do. Society does that with people who have made mistakes. I hope track and field can understand that too.”
He had bowed at Bolt’s feet and added: “It’s still Usain’s night.” But of course it was not, with Bolt’s usual playfulness having no place in this room as he was required to explain how he finished behind Gatlin and Christian Coleman, the young American, and his feelings towards the tainted winner.
Bolt has called for life bans for cheats yet said of Gatlin: “He has done his time. If he’s here, it means it’s OK. For me he deserves to be here.” It was an inconsistency that pretty much summed up the whole horrible mess. But then how indignant is Bolt going to be on doping when his Jamaican team-mates Yohan Blake and Asafa Powell have served bans?
There are plenty of convicted dopers competing in London who do so without jeers, and plenty of performances that should leave us conflicted. Almaz Ayana smashing the field in the women’s 10,000m came against a backdrop of scandalously poor anti-doping in Ethiopia. Mo Farah’s association with Alberto Salazar means that even Team GB’s star cannot duck tough questions.
But Gatlin, a convicted cheat and Bolt’s rival, makes the convenient villain and, while he can run through the jeers
, he is not immune to them. “It just seems like the media want to sensationalise and make me the bad boy because Usain is a hero and that’s fine,” he said.
“I know you have got to have a black hat and a white hat but come on, man. I keep it classy. I never talk bad. What do I do that makes me the bad boy? I just try to stay in my lane, literally.”
It was a self-serving defence but he is right to remind us that sport is not a Manichean battle of good versus evil, that over-simplistic narrative famously peddled by Steve Cram at the 2015 world championships when he screamed that, in beating Gatlin, Bolt “may have even saved his sport”. Because Gatlin won, track and field is not now dead, or even dying.
This was certainly not the result anyone wanted, and Bolt’s third place made this the most anticlimactic sporting farewell since Sir Donald Bradman was out for a duck in his final innings.
But this is sport, not fairytales, and while magic is often part of it — Bolt has provided some of the most electrifying moments ever witnessed — conflict and cheating will always be part of the package. Stronger deterrents can help but Gatlin has reminded us what a wretchedly fraught process that is when he could be here, triumphant.
Coe said only days ago that doping was not his sport’s biggest problem. It cannot possibly have felt that way as he heard that cacophony of boos on Saturday or, with a heavy heart, hung a gold medal around Gatlin’s neck last night.
STARTING NUCLEAR WAR IS PRESIDENT’S DECISION ALONE
Rhys Blakely
AUGUST 12 2017
MANY OF THE details are secret but if a US president were ever to order a nuclear strike, we know this: the order would be transmitted to the crew who would fire the missiles in a message 150 characters long, about the same as a tweet.
After this week’s sabre-rattling over North Korea the launch procedures are the object of fresh scrutiny. A new generation is learning that America’s nuclear arsenal is on a hairtrigger.
The decision to launch is the president’s alone and there is no failsafe against an unstable commander-in-chief. This was what made Richard Nixon’s “madman theory” — he pushed the idea that he might just destroy Moscow — credible.
In the early years the fear was of gung-ho generals; the system regards them as a far greater threat than an irrational president. This point was made by Alex Wellerstein, a historian of nuclear weapons at the Stevens Institute of Technology.
In 1946 the Atomic Energy Act put the power in the hands of the president. The law was thrashed out in the months after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. The Manhattan Project scientists who developed those weapons regarded the military officials they worked under as warmongers.
President Eisenhower later gave the military standing permission to use tactical nuclear weapons in certain circumstances: if, say, Russian tanks rolled west over the Rhine. Under President Kennedy, miscommunication almost led both the Soviet Union and the US to launch. It was time for more safeguards.
Before his inauguration President Trump would have been told how to launch a nuclear strike. Accounts of what would happen vary. This one is based on work by Bruce Blair, a former Minuteman missile-launch officer and research scholar at Princeton University.
A call is placed to the Pentagon war room, which must authenticate that the person giving the order is the president. Either Mr Trump or a military aide will be carrying a laminated card known as the biscuit. An aide will also be carrying the “nuclear football”, a briefcase of strike options.
The war room will offer a challenge code: two letters, spelt out in the military’s phonetic alphabet. Mr Trump will read the correct response from the biscuit — maybe “echo, Charlie”.
The war room will then send a launch order to the submarine, air and ground crews chosen to carry out the mission; 150 characters including a war plan number denoting the targets.
Codes contained in the launch order must match codes locked in safes. On a submarine the launch order also contains the combination for another safe containing the keys needed to fire the missile.
For ground-based missiles the order goes to five crews, each with two officers. The crews are miles apart. Two crews have to turn their keys to launch the missiles. Even if three refuse, the missiles go. After the order is given land-based missiles can be on their way within five minutes; for submarines it is about 15 minutes. They cannot be called back.
The US has resisted automating the system. Indeed, after the decision is made by the president, each stage requires two people to act: on a submarine both the captain and executive officer must agree to launch. At the same time, however, the system is designed to neutralise mutiny. In the 1970s a Vietnam War air force veteran, Harold Hering, was in line to become a nuclear missile squadron commander. He asked how he could be sure that a launch order was lawful. He had been taught that it was his duty to resist unlawful orders. He was discharged for “a defective mental attitude towards his duties”.
Members of Mr Nixon’s cabinet were deeply uneasy with the system. James Schlesinger, the defence secretary, said years later that he had ordered military commanders to double-check with him before launching. Schlesinger was concerned that the president was unstable. His order had no standing in law, however. There is no saying what would have happened if Mr Nixon had ordered to launch.
In the 1980s the idea took root that there was a taboo against using nuclear missiles, and that this was a control on presidents. Don’t be too sure: a Stanford University study published this week showed that a majority of Americans would back killing two million Iranian civilians to prevent an invasion of Iran that might kill 20,000 American troops.
There are no checks, no balances. As Mr Wellerstein puts it: the only way to keep any president from launching a nuclear attack would have been to elect someone else.
‘WE’LL NEVER BE ABLE TO STOP THE HUNGER FOR REVENGE HERE’
Anthony Loyd
AUGUST 12 2017
THE SOLDIER SHOWS me two photographs on his mobile phone. In the first an old man, heavily bearded, stares back at me from beneath a set of thick black eyebrows, his head held upright by the hand of an unseen captor who clutches a fistful of his grey hair. The old man’s eyes are in shadow but discernible. They look straight into the lens because that is what it appears he has been instructed to do. His captors want to show the old man’s face to the others, to whom they send this photo. They want the others to check that they have got the right person; they want them to see the old man subjugated and captive; and they want to give him a sense of what is coming his way once he has been examined.
These are the courses in vengeance’s feast, the stepped timeline by which a hunted man learns that he is about to become a victim. Killing is the final and least satisfying part of the process. There is only emptiness after that.
There are a few other details worth noting. In that first photograph the old man’s hands are tied behind his back. He is sitting cross-legged beside the insignia of a military unit painted on a vehicle door. The skin on his captor’s arm is that of a young man who is wearing Merrell trainers and black combat trousers, the favoured dress of Iraqi special forces units.
A short amount of time has passed between the first and second photographs being taken: maybe minutes, probably hours, but more time than merely the second needed to bang a bullet into the old man’s head and send him backwards into the grit and dust of a concrete floor where he lies centre frame, his brains rolling out of his left temple.
The dead man’s name is Abdullah Aboud, the soldier tells me, and he was 60 years old, a Sunni from the Jubour tribe. Aboud was, so I am told, a prime architect in the slaughter of the soldier’s own family; a killing recorded in one of the most atrocious Islamic State videos ever released. “I was owed my revenge,” the soldier says. His expression is as washed and featureless as slate when he says all of this.
We stop talking for a while and break for lunch, sitting down on the cool stone of the floor to eat chicken and rice while the summe
r heat burns the midday sky white outside. Three other men come to join us. Cousins of the soldier, they are gracious and scrupulously polite in the way of tribal custom.
The atmosphere in the room is calm and codified, and when we stop eating and continue our conversation the soldier neither crows in the telling of his story, nor shies from it. His name is Saif and he is 27 years old. There is little emotion in his voice as he describes what happened, charting the links of cause and effect, the killing and counter-killing, so that he could be describing the stages of a regulated transaction rather than the circling steps of vengeance’s waltz in the roil, the heat and hate of Iraq’s war.
Saif is self-possessed but there is a tautness behind his eyes and around his mouth, suggesting restrained rage. His cousins’ faces carry the same expression.
Perhaps I should be revolted by the violent killing of this bound and elderly captive in the pictures. Yet it is difficult to feel sympathy for this man. I have been told about Abdullah Aboud by Saif before being shown either of the two photographs. So, rather than see age and vulnerability in the captive, I suspect wickedness in his face. He looks like a bad guy, a cruel man, in that first picture, I think. And when I see the second photo, I think how quick Abdullah Aboud’s death was compared with that of those I am told he has had killed.
Much later, I see the photographs of Aboud again, this time on Iraqi soldiers’ Facebook pages. “Go to hell, you dirty dog,” someone has commented beside a photo of his body. “Good job, heroes,” a soldier has written. These bitter, angry words carry resonance and a sense of completion. Maybe I feel slightly satisfied with their conclusion too, though I never knew Aboud, and can judge him only according to what I have been told. Maybe I am wrong. But the hunger for vengeance is catching; and in Iraq mercy sometimes seems like an option available only for the privileged innocent.
I can’t make any claim that this story is about justice. I didn’t see much justice to write about. It is about intimacy and passion instead: the intimacy and passion of killing and revenge.
The Times Companion to 2017 Page 32