At the risk of blowing smoke in the direction of your posterior, dear reader, I would like to suggest that you are among the more knowledgeable members of the newspaper-reading British public. I’m confident that the bulk of you are easily as well informed as an average Financial Times or Economist reader, or even of our founder Matt Kelly’s beloved London Review of Books.
So do not be offended if the first of two quiz questions this week is insultingly easy. Here goes: What political positions do the following six people currently hold? JD Vance. Elon Musk. Marco Rubio. Scott Bessent. Pete Hegseth. Tulsi Gabbard. Well done, six out of six, I am guessing, for most of you.
Now try this one. Li Qiang, Zhao Leji, Wang Huning, Cai Qi, Ding Xuexiang, Li Xi. To make it a little easier, I can add that Xi Jinping is the seventh member of the group to which they belong.
There you go, you’ve got it… they are Xi’s six colleagues on the politburo standing committee of the Chinese Communist Party. Xi is very much President-for-life top dog, but in the CCP’s command and control system, these men – yes, all men – wield power over every aspect of China’s government.
And before you accuse me of showing off, I had to look them up. If you had asked me to name them before doing so, I would probably have said Xi Jinping, Wang Yi, and then, er, er, er, whatsisname, the premier, yes, that’s it, Li Qiang…. And I’d have been wrong. Because though Li Qiang is on the standing committee, Wang Yi is not.
Wang Yi, in case you didn’t know, is China’s foreign minister, who gave a fascinating press conference at the end of last week’s annual session of the National People’s Congress. News to you? Hardly surprising, because you really would have to be a high-end news junkie if you’re a Brit following British media, frankly even to know that the event took place.
Yet every spit and fart of the Trump Administration – and I suspect there’s plenty of both in White House circles these days – is deemed breaking news, and endlessly analysed until the next fart is farted, and we all wander off to sniff around that one. “Flood the zone with shit” indeed (copyright Steve Bannon).
I am indebted to America’s National Public Radio – you know, the one that Trump and Musk want to get rid of because NPR are into boring things like facts, covering more than one side of a story, and understanding there is a world beyond MAGALAND – for a long account of what Wang Yi said… about US relations (not good, getting worse), about tariffs (really bad idea, and China will fight back hard), about fentanyl (their problem not ours, an excuse for tariffs), about Trump’s America First approach (“the law of the jungle”), scrapping USAID (“unacceptable self-interest at the expense of others”), relations with Russia (“steadfast, a constant in an uncertain world, not a variable in geopolitical competition”), Ukraine (we want peace but it won’t be resolved overnight), Gaza (Trump’s approach will make things worse not better).
These are merely the main take-aways by NPR, though their headline was Wang Yi branding America’s approach to China as “two-faced.” My point, though, is that if it is the case that Trump is upending the world order – which he is – and given it is universally accepted that the US and China are the two most powerful countries in the world, is it too much to ask that our media takes a greater interest in the people and policies governing China? This is especially important given China may soon, thanks to Trump’s wanton damage to his own country’s economy, military, soft power and standing in the world, become the most powerful country on earth?
Had I been writing headlines, I might have been tempted by Wang Yi’s claim that China is “an anchor of stability in an uncertain world.” Words you could have imagined coming from the lips of Republican presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower or Ronald Reagan, whereas Trump, right now, far from being an anchor of stability, is the cause of the instability and uncertainty China intends to exploit.
It was lovely to bump into a reminder of America when its politics weren’t batshit crazy, in the form of Matthew Barzun, who was President Obama’s ambassador to the UK. He was a terrific ambassador, and at his farewell party as Obama’s second term came to an end eight years ago, and the first Trump term began, I was honoured to play him out on the bagpipes, a film of which he still has on his phone.
Pipers – especially those living in England – have to put up with a lot of borderline racist jokes about bagpipes, but when you need a sharp burst of emotion to empower an already emotional occasion, there’s nothing better (I can’t believe King Charles didn’t have the pipes in his otherwise excellent choice of music. Kylie and Bob Marley? Me too, Charles).
One man who felt the full emotional force of the pipes is the former FBI chief in New York, James Dennehy, who was forced out of his job for refusing to bow down to all the Trump-Musk-Gabbard-Pam Bondi-Kash Patel nonsense. I have no idea how many people work for the FBI in New York, but go online and check out the love and respect there was for Dennehy as he was piped out, struggling to get through crowds thronging to thank and salute him. It really was quite moving.
The pipes are an instrument of war, and as those crowds of FBI personnel returned to their desks, I couldn’t help thinking – and hoping – that new FBI boss Kash Patel might realise he is in one, and not the one he thought he was.
I remain obsessed with the idea that Britain has the capacity to position itself as, and be, a cultural superpower. With the US surely set to plummet down the global soft power league table – the US and the UK are almost always in the top two or three when the annual Soft Power index is published – culture is central to us aiming for the undisputed top spot, despite the enormous damage we’ve done to ourselves with Brexit.
So don’t be surprised if I occasionally channel Matthew d’Ancona and give you my cultural recommendations as OCS (Operation Cultural Superpower) advances… Young Vic theatre, Punch, the genius that is James Graham’s latest play, about how a single punch led to a death, and how restorative justice led to a bond between the killer and the parents of the man he killed. Take a hankie.
Meanwhile, I fear this is one of those weeks where JD Vance, or JD Vile as we call him chez nous, will be proven wrong yet again. One of his more ludicrous claims is that the left want to “ban comedy;” all part of the gaslighting drivel on which their claims to be defenders of free speech are founded.
On Monday, I will happily be having the piss taken out of me by Matt Forde in a London theatre, and on Friday, heaven knows what will happen to me on Channel 4’s The Last Leg. Comedy is alive and well, and though Trump and Vance are a disaster for humanity, they are a boon for comedians all over the world. Every cloud…
