Digested

Plus, John Travolta’s beret, Rachel Reeves reclaims basic civility and Judy Garland comes to east London Much discussion in my household this week about the possibility of hantavirus or Ebola becoming Covid-like in their spread. As darkening news from central Africa throws the withdrawal of US international aid into terrible relief, so we revisit memories of those early months of 2020 when reports of a strange virus in China slowly crept from final item on the news list to blaring emergency. Continue reading...

While Charles and Camilla were on a three-line whip, MPs watched the excruciating discomfort of civil servants We don’t often get to see senior civil servants out and about in the wild. They are kept away from the public gaze, sat behind a desk trying to persuade their ministers not to do something too catastrophic to their government department. Quite why they have been been made a knight or a dame just for doing their jobs is one of life’s mysteries. The rest of us have to make do with the occasional email from the boss. But in the last week, two top civil servants have been reluctantly made to give evidence on Keir Starmer’s decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as US ambassador before the foreign affairs select committee and very instructive it has been, too. Not least to see how much they dislike any extra attention from the public. Their obvious discomfort at being held to account was excruciating to watch. Continue reading...

Diplomats poke fun at Donald Trump while Madonna loses her corset off the back of a golf buggyThe one upside to a rolling international crisis is that it can give backroom people a rare chance to shine. Witness, this week, the breakout stars of the Iranian diplomatic corps, who from two different diplomatic missoverions managed to poke fun at Donald Trump while maintaining the base-level decorum that so eludes the American president. Continue reading...