In 1986, Burning Man was just a bonfire of a wooden man, started by friends in San Francisco. Now, for a week in late August every year, the sculptures and the arts festival around them draws more than 40,000 people to Nevada’s Black Rock desert
Race to replace Mervyn?
Mervyn King’s tenure as governor of the Bank of England ends in June 2013, yet already the question of who might succeed him stirs. Paul Tucker, his deputy, is a front-runner, but both the treasury and King appear to have different instincts from him on inflation. Andy Haldane, the Bank’s executive director for financial stability, is also in contention, but while extremely bright is widely thought of as too wonkish.
Might the net be cast wider? It was noted that the greatest banking crash in 80 years coincided with the tenure of a governor who was not a banker: King is an academic economist. Perhaps someone from the Financial Services Authority? The experience in banking regulation of Adair Turner, FSA chair, or Hector Sants, chief executive, may add weight to their possible candidature.
Whoever succeeds will take over a discredited role. An expert who spoke to Prospect described the Bank’s inflation targeting mechanism as “a joke” which had undermined its credibility. He added that the monetary policy committee, which sets interest rates, “may not survive another year.” If the committee broke up, Mervyn King might be forced into an early departure—and the race to succeed him would heat up very quickly.
Rebirth of Boris
Boris Johnson is preparing his campaign to be re-elected as mayor of London next May. Team Boris is setting up an office in Mayfair, behind Claridges. Two key figures will be his ally Anthony Browne, currently on gardening leave from City Hall, and Lynton Crosby, the Tory strategist.
The Labour leadership is worried about the symbolic midterm contest. Ken Livingstone became Labour’s candidate before Ed Miliband was leader and there is nothing the party can now do to stop him. Polling shows that many of today’s Labour voters will not vote for Red Ken. At the recent launch of the Centre for London, the new think tank supported by Demos, one senior Labour figure was anxious. “If Ed loses London, having lost Scotland, we’re buggered.”
Come back Kennedy
If Ed Miliband does manage to pull off a victory against the coalition at the next election, Charles Kennedy may return to frontline politics. A senior Miliband aide tells Prospect that if Labour forms a coalition with the Lib Dems, Kennedy will be the first to get a call. “We’ll take Vince, and Huhne if he’s not in prison [the energy secretary has very firmly denied allegations of dodging points for a traffic offence]. But Charles is key. At the very least he would be Scottish secretary, and possibly Europe minister,” says the aide. “The rest of them—Clegg, Alexander and Laws—have blown it.”
Major takes a swipe
John Major raised eyebrows at the Ditchley Foundation annual lecture in early July by attacking the narrow makeup of parliament. The son of a trapeze artist, who grew up in Brixton, called for a “widening of the pool of talent prepared to enter politics,” adding: “It is one of the oddities of democracy that fundamental policy choices are made by men and women who, apart from the legitimacy of election and a native intellect, have no qualifications at all to make them.”
This hits home right at the top of each party. Major left grammar school at 15 and was unemployed before training to be a banker. In contrast, David Cameron sailed from Eton to Oxford to the Conservative Research Department before becoming a special adviser to Norman Lamont. Ed Miliband was a long-time adviser to Gordon Brown before entering parliament in 2005, and Nick Clegg was a special adviser to EU Commissioner Leon Brittan before becoming an MEP then MP. “Of course we can hire special advisers,” Major said in his Ditchley speech, “but that can never be as effective as influential, knowledgeable voices speaking with expertise in the chamber.”
Le Pen: I’m not Right
Marine Le Pen has sparked a dramatic improvement in the fortunes of France’s Front National. She has given the party an ideological makeover—not only dropping the overt racism and Islamophobia of her father, but also adopting some hard-left economics. “Left and right don’t mean anything anymore—both left and right are for the EU, the euro, free trade and immigration,” she said in a recent debate with Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform (www.cer.org.uk). “For 30 years left and right have been the same; the real fracture is between those who support globalisation and those who support nationalism.” This may be a convenient fudge, but it strikes a chord. Polls suggest she could easily get to the second round of the presidential election in May 2012. Across Europe parties of similar stripes—the True Finns, the Danish People’s Party, Austria’s Freedom Party and Geert Wilders’s Dutch Party for Freedom—are on the rise.
Obama’s people problem
The Obama administration’s vacancy crisis (“Checked, not balanced,” Prospect, July) threatens to worsen following rumours that Tim Geithner, Obama’s treasury secretary, plans to quit after the US debt ceiling crisis is resolved, and that Hillary Clinton, secretary of state, will step down next year to become head of the World Bank. Both have been quick to deny this, but insiders give the rumours credence. Clinton at the World Bank would satisfy the American desire to keep a US national in this influential role, but the departure of two more key personnel would be a blow for Obama. Geithner is the only senior member of the president’s original economics team still in place: no help in the tense negotiations with Republicans on raising US debt.
Sickened city
Boris Johnson may soon get a lecture in political style from his outspoken counterpart in Tokyo, Governor Shintaro Ishihara, who will visit London to glean intelligence for plans for a 2020 Olympics bid. Ishihara, 78, affects none of Boris’s charm, claiming that abrasiveness is part of his appeal: “I don’t like Tokyo that much,” he told Prospect. “From the air, it looks like vomit.” Asked why people should vote for him in the next election, he said: “Tokyo citizens place absolute confidence in me.” He shares with Boris, at least, an absence of self-doubt.
One to watch
In a year of retrospectives and reassessments of 9/11 and its aftermath, the writer Teju Cole’s voice will stand out for its awkward novelty. His debut novel, Open City, published in Britain on 4th August, has already been a surprise hit in America. A weak-kneed James Wood called the book “beautiful, subtle, and, finally, original,” while Colm Tóibín championed it as “a novel to savour and treasure.” It has been hailed as a landmark in post-9/11 fiction.
Open City’s protagonist bears close resemblance to Cole himself: a graduate student living in New York, having grown up in Nigeria with European heritage. Julius is a psychiatrist, curious about the lives of others, but aware of the limits of his sympathy. He wanders around the city contemplating identity, race, and self-consciousness, regularly coming into contact with the frustrated and repressed.
Cole’s work will please those who claim the traditional novel fails to convey the reality of 21st-century life. His novel deals in “layers of ideas”—spanning photography, art, colonial history, music and critical theory—rather than a conventional plot. While the fallout from the World Trade Centre attacks is at the heart of the novel, Cole’s approach is oblique, placing America’s latest identity crisis in a social and historical context. As he says, “My view… is that you can best write about [9/11] by writing about other things. And by understanding that catastrophic trauma is not new in this city.”
Race to replace Mervyn?
Mervyn King’s tenure as governor of the Bank of England ends in June 2013, yet already the question of who might succeed him stirs. Paul Tucker, his deputy, is a front-runner, but both the treasury and King appear to have different instincts from him on inflation. Andy Haldane, the Bank’s executive director for financial stability, is also in contention, but while extremely bright is widely thought of as too wonkish.
Might the net be cast wider? It was noted that the greatest banking crash in 80 years coincided with the tenure of a governor who was not a banker: King is an academic economist. Perhaps someone from the Financial Services Authority? The experience in banking regulation of Adair Turner, FSA chair, or Hector Sants, chief executive, may add weight to their possible candidature.
Whoever succeeds will take over a discredited role. An expert who spoke to Prospect described the Bank’s inflation targeting mechanism as “a joke” which had undermined its credibility. He added that the monetary policy committee, which sets interest rates, “may not survive another year.” If the committee broke up, Mervyn King might be forced into an early departure—and the race to succeed him would heat up very quickly.
Rebirth of Boris
Boris Johnson is preparing his campaign to be re-elected as mayor of London next May. Team Boris is setting up an office in Mayfair, behind Claridges. Two key figures will be his ally Anthony Browne, currently on gardening leave from City Hall, and Lynton Crosby, the Tory strategist.
The Labour leadership is worried about the symbolic midterm contest. Ken Livingstone became Labour’s candidate before Ed Miliband was leader and there is nothing the party can now do to stop him. Polling shows that many of today’s Labour voters will not vote for Red Ken. At the recent launch of the Centre for London, the new think tank supported by Demos, one senior Labour figure was anxious. “If Ed loses London, having lost Scotland, we’re buggered.”
Come back Kennedy
If Ed Miliband does manage to pull off a victory against the coalition at the next election, Charles Kennedy may return to frontline politics. A senior Miliband aide tells Prospect that if Labour forms a coalition with the Lib Dems, Kennedy will be the first to get a call. “We’ll take Vince, and Huhne if he’s not in prison [the energy secretary has very firmly denied allegations of dodging points for a traffic offence]. But Charles is key. At the very least he would be Scottish secretary, and possibly Europe minister,” says the aide. “The rest of them—Clegg, Alexander and Laws—have blown it.”
Major takes a swipe
John Major raised eyebrows at the Ditchley Foundation annual lecture in early July by attacking the narrow makeup of parliament. The son of a trapeze artist, who grew up in Brixton, called for a “widening of the pool of talent prepared to enter politics,” adding: “It is one of the oddities of democracy that fundamental policy choices are made by men and women who, apart from the legitimacy of election and a native intellect, have no qualifications at all to make them.”
This hits home right at the top of each party. Major left grammar school at 15 and was unemployed before training to be a banker. In contrast, David Cameron sailed from Eton to Oxford to the Conservative Research Department before becoming a special adviser to Norman Lamont. Ed Miliband was a long-time adviser to Gordon Brown before entering parliament in 2005, and Nick Clegg was a special adviser to EU Commissioner Leon Brittan before becoming an MEP then MP. “Of course we can hire special advisers,” Major said in his Ditchley speech, “but that can never be as effective as influential, knowledgeable voices speaking with expertise in the chamber.”
Le Pen: I’m not Right
Marine Le Pen has sparked a dramatic improvement in the fortunes of France’s Front National. She has given the party an ideological makeover—not only dropping the overt racism and Islamophobia of her father, but also adopting some hard-left economics. “Left and right don’t mean anything anymore—both left and right are for the EU, the euro, free trade and immigration,” she said in a recent debate with Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform (www.cer.org.uk). “For 30 years left and right have been the same; the real fracture is between those who support globalisation and those who support nationalism.” This may be a convenient fudge, but it strikes a chord. Polls suggest she could easily get to the second round of the presidential election in May 2012. Across Europe parties of similar stripes—the True Finns, the Danish People’s Party, Austria’s Freedom Party and Geert Wilders’s Dutch Party for Freedom—are on the rise.
Obama’s people problem
The Obama administration’s vacancy crisis (“Checked, not balanced,” Prospect, July) threatens to worsen following rumours that Tim Geithner, Obama’s treasury secretary, plans to quit after the US debt ceiling crisis is resolved, and that Hillary Clinton, secretary of state, will step down next year to become head of the World Bank. Both have been quick to deny this, but insiders give the rumours credence. Clinton at the World Bank would satisfy the American desire to keep a US national in this influential role, but the departure of two more key personnel would be a blow for Obama. Geithner is the only senior member of the president’s original economics team still in place: no help in the tense negotiations with Republicans on raising US debt.
Sickened city
Boris Johnson may soon get a lecture in political style from his outspoken counterpart in Tokyo, Governor Shintaro Ishihara, who will visit London to glean intelligence for plans for a 2020 Olympics bid. Ishihara, 78, affects none of Boris’s charm, claiming that abrasiveness is part of his appeal: “I don’t like Tokyo that much,” he told Prospect. “From the air, it looks like vomit.” Asked why people should vote for him in the next election, he said: “Tokyo citizens place absolute confidence in me.” He shares with Boris, at least, an absence of self-doubt.
One to watch
In a year of retrospectives and reassessments of 9/11 and its aftermath, the writer Teju Cole’s voice will stand out for its awkward novelty. His debut novel, Open City, published in Britain on 4th August, has already been a surprise hit in America. A weak-kneed James Wood called the book “beautiful, subtle, and, finally, original,” while Colm Tóibín championed it as “a novel to savour and treasure.” It has been hailed as a landmark in post-9/11 fiction.
Open City’s protagonist bears close resemblance to Cole himself: a graduate student living in New York, having grown up in Nigeria with European heritage. Julius is a psychiatrist, curious about the lives of others, but aware of the limits of his sympathy. He wanders around the city contemplating identity, race, and self-consciousness, regularly coming into contact with the frustrated and repressed.
Cole’s work will please those who claim the traditional novel fails to convey the reality of 21st-century life. His novel deals in “layers of ideas”—spanning photography, art, colonial history, music and critical theory—rather than a conventional plot. While the fallout from the World Trade Centre attacks is at the heart of the novel, Cole’s approach is oblique, placing America’s latest identity crisis in a social and historical context. As he says, “My view… is that you can best write about [9/11] by writing about other things. And by understanding that catastrophic trauma is not new in this city.”
