To understand modern America a good starting point is the post war American Musical. Pre war they were entertaining fluff (“Showboat” the honourable exception). Post War many of them, particularly Rodgers and Hammerstein and Stephen Sondheim, used the medium (sometimes covertly) to make moral even political points. “Carefully taught” is Oscar Hammerstein’s moving plea for racial tolerance in “South Pacific”. But even more relevant to the madness of Trump is “The American Dream” in “Miss Saigon”. It’s worth quoting from it:

“Busboys can buy the hotel

the American dream.

Wall Street is ready to sell

the American dream.

Come make a life from thin air

the American dream.

Come and get more than your share

the American dream”

Trump wasn’t a busboy but he certainly subscribed to the view that he “could get more than his share” – even, astonishingly, all the way to the White House. The aspirational opportunities in the Land of the Free are integral to the “American Dream”. Peanut farmer to President – done that. Trump was never poor – he inherited a large fortune (and turned it into a small one, some would say!) But if he slipped in business, which he certainly did, he bounced back.

Making “life from thin air” is Trump’s way . Whilst intellectual leadership was present in most Presidents (and where it wasn’t, for example in Ronald Reagan, likeability and a willingness to delegate compensated). Trump is devoid of intellect, doesn’t delegate and is thoroughly dislikeable. He makes life from thin air though!

Britain naively gave away too much in the negotiations with China that led to the “Joint Declaration” on Hong Kong. The PRC waited until the West was totally dependent on its economy before cracking down on the territory. The people of Hong Kong were abandoned as those of us who had lived there in the 1980s knew they would be. The locals knew as well of course and those who could afford to secured Australian or Canadian passports well before 1997.

The Chinese take a long term view and know their strengths. Manufacturing is one of them and their goods dominate western economies. Apple, for example, is effectively a Chinese brand. Modern China is one of the wonders of the world. Whilst western democracies continue their drift to ungovernability those in charge in Peking smile inscrutably and count the dollars.

The choice between being democratic and poor, on the one hand, and totalitarian and increasingly rich on the other has long since been won. As, incidentally, it will be in Russia. Both nations are used to Emperors and whilst Russia’s current one has overreached himself his successor is likely to be impressed by the Chinese model, and follow it.

The era of Western hegemony is passing. India, increasingly a dictatorship under Modi, is the third potential pillar of pragmatic big power domination along with China and Russia. We need to wake up to these new realities.

The majority of the public neither wants nor even remotely understands “Economic Growth”. What they do like are the consequences of a healthy economy for which growth is a prerequisite.

Growth is the market value of goods and services produced. But the benefits of growth do not accrue to the population at large evenly. Which is where Government comes in. The only source of government revenues (other than borrowings) is market value. So if that value increase the potential for redistribution is increased. The Welfare State depends on Growth.

The government’s role in stimulating Growth is often exaggerated. In a mixed economy infrastructure projects, funded by taxation, can be a stimulus. Roosevelt’s New Deal, based as it was on Keynesian economic theory, helped America’s recovery after the Crash. So, a little later, did the Arms expenditure of WW2.

Deficit financing of infrastructure projects, like for example large transport capital investments, can be justified if proper Cost/Benefit analysis is used. The third runway at Heathrow is definitely in this category as was Crossrail. And probably the much derided HS2.

The management of the interaction between what the public and private sectors do is the main challenge. Ideology never helps ! The strident voices for nationalisation or privatisation are grossly simplistic. Take the NHS. Yes it is publicly owned but it is substantially serviced by the private sector. Similarly all private sector businesses also rely on public services.

It is not enough for an Economy to grow there must be a clear policy on how the products of growth are handled. In a complex economy like ours this is not easy. Politicians should never talk about expenditure without also talking about tax. They should also never decouple a call for growth from a presentation of how the fruits of growth will be handled.

“Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.”

So said Thomas Paine in his seminal work “The Age of Reason” published between 1794 and 1807. Whilst the work was extensive in its scope and argument it was especially an attack on hypocrisy, particularly in religion. Paine saw in the Church, and in society generally, much hypocritical and phoney professions of belief which were often a facade hiding scepticism or denial.

There are few more repellent examples of bible bashing hypocrisy than Donald Trump and his close associates. Bishop Budde, no hypocrite she, was measured in the way she drew attention to this in the “Inaugural Prayer Service” in Washington. “ I was trying to say: The country has been entrusted to you…And one of the qualities of a leader is mercy.”

The Bishop covertly criticised Trump for his actions and planned actions against “gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families, across the country who fear for their lives”. The bishop also spoke up for immigrant workers, including those who may not “have the proper documentation,” saying the vast majority of them are “not criminals” but rather “good neighbors.”

Many in the established churches and in the evangelical movements had supported Trump. Billy Graham’s son Franklin said “This is a big win for Christians, for evangelicals, We believe the president will defend religious freedom where the Democrats would not.”

The Paine charge that some profess to “believe what he does not believe” can legitimately be aimed at Trump. Many would regard most of his life, characterised by infidelity and sexual impropriety, as being indisputably unchristian. “ A man is known by the company he keeps” has been a truism for a couple of millennia, or more.

Bishop Budde cut through the hypocrisy asking Trump to have mercy or perhaps, as Shakespeare put it, to see that “The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven on the place beneath. It is twice blest. It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”

In The Merchant of Venice the Bard was only tangentially referring to religion. Indeed his “monarch’s sceptre” “shows the force of temporal power”. Temporal power Trump now has in abundance and before he acts against Muslims he would do well to remember that the US Constitution says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Donald Trump is an extreme example of political dishonesty and hypocrisy but let’s not kid ourselves that he’s an exception. This new “Age of Unreason” has been with us for sometime underpinned, as it is, by mendacity. Politicians have always , as Alan Clark put it, been “economical with the actualité.” In 2016 we saw this in Trump’s bigoted Presidential campaign which lied continuously, not least about his opponent. In the same Annus horribilis here in Britain the “Leave” campaign lied to us in the Referendum campaign. It’s not an exaggeration to say that nothing they said in that campaign was truthful.

The extreme “Age of Unreason” would not have been possible without Social Media . Clever operators both in the Republican Party and in the “Leave” campaign knew that Twitter and Facebook (etc.) gave them the opportunity to send personalised (as they seemed to be) messages directly to voters. This was largely uncontrolled and scarily effective and by 2024 it was down to a fine, if malignant, art.

The first US Presidential campaign which I remember was in 1960 and neither side was saintly in its conduct! That first truly modern contest was perhaps the first in which dark campaigning arts were present. In the run-up to the 1960 presidential election, John F. Kennedy claimed that the Soviet Union had more nuclear missiles than the U.S.. It wasn’t true. Similarly Richard Nixon could not tell the truth about Cuba during the campaign. There were plenty of other examples of deceit. But they were Amateurs in the art of dissembling! Their duplicities were on a tiny scale compared with the lies of Trump and, in the UK, the Conservatives in the 2024 elections. (The Democrats and Labour were way behind in the dark arts by comparison!)

In his excellent well-researched 2021 book “The Assault on Truth” the author Peter Oborne covered in detail the lies of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump, described by one reviewer as “two populist demagogues on the Right.” Well Johnson got his comeuppance being forced out in 2022 in no small part because he was a congenital liar. And Trump? We know what’s happened to him!

A major characteristic of the “Age of Unreason” is the lack of effective checks and balances on power. We can profess to believe what we do not believe almost without challenge. And even if untruths are revealed as such rebuttals will be believed by the faithful even if they are patently untrue.

As a journalist says in John Ford’s classic movie “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Both Johnson and Trump had many around them who would print or tweet the legend. And too many of we schmucks believed it !

“With social media now on a path towards unmediated chaos, the hunger for publications with actual editorial standards — such as this one — really ought to grow.” Hugo Rifkind in The Times.

Regular readers of “The Times” might smile at the “such as this one” boast. Yes the newspaper is still infinitely better than the chaos of Musk or Zuckerberg. But in recent times especially it has shifted noticeably to the Right in its Comment content, in the prominence it gives to stories critical of the liberal establishment and in who it employs to write features in its pages.

We have seen with the once reasonably respectable Daily Telegraph what happens when a grotesquely slanted proprietor driven political imperative takes over and dominates. The Times is in danger of doing the same. Once fairly balanced contributors have in some cases shifted rightward (I exclude Hugo, from this charge !). And the editorial imperative is increasingly National conservative (if not Conservative).

Proprietors have always influenced their publications’ political positioning – look at Northcliffe or Beaverbrook in days of yore. Zuckerberg is a modern day Beaver or, one could argue, adopting the position of the Barclays or of Murdoch. To find genuinely independent journalism with editorial standards that include balance is increasingly difficult.

Mr Cowley’s piece neatly summarises the mess Western democracies are in but instead of seeking a way to counter the growing hegemony of the Right it endorses even welcomes it. Perhaps the author is ignorant of how once civilised nations fell into years of darkness in the 1930s as regimes took power in Germany, Italy, Spain and elsewhere and committed indescribable horrors against their people.

But however vile the fascistic dictators were, and however powerful, I doubt that any informed observer thought that it could happen in the cosy democratic Anglo-Saxon world of Britain and America. Flaky democracies we may be with murky imperialist and institutionally discriminatory pasts but we’ve just about avoided descent into totalitarianism of Left or Right. Up to now that is.

Trump, like many of his predecessors of the authoritarian Right, is not an authentic politician at all. Nor are any of the leaders of Reform UK. They are polemical disrupters and in mainland Europe there are similar dark forces at work. Yes their seeking of power is via the ballot box, but then so was that of Hitler and Mussolini – initially. 

The argument that we should seek to work with Trump has clear echoes of the Appeasement strategy of Chamberlain and his gang. This article normalises extremism – the past tells us that this is a very dangerous thing to do. We should have principles – and unlike Groucho Marx we should stick to them rather than “pragmatically” grab opportunistic alternatives. Now is not a time for Appeasement of the Right – we must fight it.

When in 2016 we went to vote in the EU Referendum there wasn’t a Centrist box to tick. It was a binary choice – In or Out. And that set the tone for what has happened since. Everything has become binary. You are for us or against us. Nuancing and subtlety has vanished.

Jeremy Corbyn has threatened to form a political Party that is the Left’s equivalent of Reform. Hard Left to their Hard Right. The Conservative Party which John Major (just) succeeded from shifting to the Nationalist Right has in the last twenty years done just that. So far Keir Starmer has managed to keep Labour Centre Left and won an election on such a platform. And the LibDems election success showed that votes can be secured for an avowedly Centrist position – and seats to match if you know what you’re doing. Which, unlike Reform, they did.

Hard Right or Hard Left have a raw appeal that is simple to grasp. So in the minds of the Left the NHS is being privatised (it isn’t). And in the minds of the Right immigration is out of control (it isn’t). There are few media spaces for centrists. Moderation is for wimps.

The “third way” of Blair and Clinton is little promoted though it’s very much still around in Britain , if not in America. If Starmer can find a way to unravel Brexit despite having promised not to the Centre has a chance to regain its hold again. A chance. 

“At the general election, [Nigel Farage’s] latest startup, Reform, won five seats from 4,117,610 votes — nearly half a million more votes than the Liberal Democrats, who ended up with 71 seats. Such are the vagaries of Britain’s first-past-the-post system.” Iain Martin in “The Times”

Yes FPTP stinks but it wasn’t its “vagaries” which gave the LibDems their triumph , it was brilliant election planning. The Party studied the constituency make ups and identified those where that make up gave them a chance of winning. They focused their efforts entirely on these constituencies – primarily in areas where the social construct would not be likely to turn to Labour but could be persuaded to vote LibDem, and they did.

The LibDems vote share national roughly matched their seat share. An unprecedented result in British politics. Effectively an outcome that a fairer voting system than FPTP would have given them. It helped that Ed Davey turned himself from a bit of a nonentity into a likeable figure.

Reform, an insubstantial political brand but a refuge for (mostly) disaffected Tory voters, had no local structure to bring out the votes and win more than a handful of seats. Yes they should have had more MPs (as should the Greens) but the local organisation wasn’t there. Will Mr Musk’s millions help Reform create that structure? It’s perfectly possible. Combine that with Farage’s charisma and familiarity and they become a genuine threat.

1970 in Britain is a foreign country where they did things differently – I know, I was there! It was the year I graduated and started work and the year after I got married. No escaping the reality of adulthood. The “Swinging Sixties” might technically have ended, but the carry over went on a long time.

Murray Head’s character is my exact contemporary, Glenda Jackson’s the (slightly) older woman we all lusted over and Peter Finch’s the symbol of the sexual revolution that decriminalising homosexuality had legitimised. Actually the Ménage à trois is also a mirror of change. It’s presented by Director John Schlesinger openly but in no way intrusively. Jackson would prefer to have Head for herself, as would Finch but they both reluctantly settle for sharing him.

If sex is at the heart of the film other emotions are very visible. Loneliness. Ambition. Fear. Sadness. This is a tour de force. These are three bright intelligent people living in an imperfect world. When Jackson has a one night stand with a troubled client it’s not just kindness that drives her – there’s a rather sad urgency to her decision. It’s actually rather caring and almost matter of fact.

The family portrayed is truly ghastly – modern parenting of those times leading to noisy, spoiled brats. You sense that the three principals are very relieved that they avoided that !

The direction and performances are impeccable as is the cinematography. The print I saw recently on television was perfect. So fifty years on has the movie relevance for us today – and not just for aging juveniles like me? I think so. It is an accurate portrait of morality and priorities in a time of change. For the movie buff it’s a reminder of how good in particular Jackson and Finch were. A truly fine film.

In the past there were three main brands taking place here:

Fairly clear you might think. There was the “Royal Opera”. There was the “Royal Ballet”. And there was the venue itself – the “Royal Opera House”. In the unlikely event that you’re struggling to get it one is an Opera company, the next is a Ballet company and the third is where most of their productions take place. So why have they recently created this, a fourth brand, and what does it mean?

The answer, I fear, is that it means nothing. And a brand that means nothing, and that you can’t relate to is, frankly, a waste of time. Of course we know that there is some overlap between the Opera company and the Ballet company – they share an orchestra, for example and they perform in the same venue. But the Ballet offer and the Opera offer are entirely separate. We buy one, or the other, or both if there is a production or productions we want to see. But we don’t buy “Royal Ballet & Opera”.

The new brand is actually a corporate descriptor rather than a proposition for prospective customers to relate to. Yes there is a measure of integration – the ticket office sells both ballet and opera tickets for example. But that is just efficient admin. We go to the “Royal Opera House (brand!) to see the Royal Ballet (brand!) or the Royal Opera (brand!). We don’t go to see “Royal Ballet & Opera”. You can’t buy it actually.

The Royal Opera House has a distinctive brand offer as an extension of its identity as a performance venue. You can eat and drink and shop there without needing to attend a performance. That’s part of the Royal Opera House’s brand proposition.

The explanation given for the change you can read here . In my view as a Brand practitioner it makes little sense. As I say they have complicated unnecessarily the three strong brands that have served them well for decades. They should think again.