Attend a policy discussion or think-tank seminar in a European capital these days and, sooner rather than later, you will hear the concern expressed that the continent is falling farther and farther behind the US. That is true of measures of prosperity: in 2008, the year the Great Recession struck, GDP per capita in the EU was 76 per cent that of the US; in 2021 it was just 54 per cent. It is true of hard power: over the past year the Americans, not the Europeans, have provided by far the most military support to Ukraine and led the overall Western response. And it is true industrially: of the world’s 100 biggest companies by market capitalisation, 15 are European and ...

For those of us who, at a personal level, have always rather liked Liz Truss, there was a concern that her experience as prime minister might have been so traumatic as to destroy her self-confidence. The publication of her 4,000-word essay on her premiership means that we can be reassured that this has not happened. It is the only thing that is reassuring about it. Truss’s defence of her record consists of arguing that a left-wing economic establishment disapproved of her policies and all but conspired to bring her down, and that she was not warned of the risks to financial stability caused by liability-driven investments (LDIs) by defined-benefit pension funds. To take the latter issue first, if one’s knowledge of the ...

Nadine Dorries began her new prime time show on Talk TV last night with a promise of transparency. Her debut guest, Boris Johnson, was about to give his "most candid" interview since leaving office last July. Ah, yes, candour. Openness, honesty, frankness - the very qualities the Chatterer has always associated with Johnson. Dorries has no broadcasting experience, other than trying to shut down Channel 4 when she was Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Her qualifications for hosting a talk show are, one imagines, that she is cheap, available, loud, and has seen an autocue before.  “Friday Night with Nadine” was never going to be an evening of rigorous journalism. An interview between Johnson and his most slavish ...

Editor's note: The US military shot down the surveillance balloon over the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday (4 February) on the orders of President Biden. The first reports broke on Thursday (2 February). The United States military had detected what it believed to be a Chinese surveillance balloon in American airspace. Fighter jets had been scrambled to track it. The president had been informed. The Pentagon had advised him, for now, against shooting it down due to the risk of debris to people on the ground. More details emerged over the hours that followed. It turned out that the balloon had first been spotted by a civilian airliner on Wednesday (1 February). Defence officials had traced its route from Alaska’s Aleutian Islands to ...

In the depths of the Second World War the Japanese empire tried to start a plague of forest fires in the United States with squadrons of incendiary balloons. It failed, although six civilians were killed in a single successful balloon bombing in Oregon in May 1945. In February 1942 there was what people at the time thought was an aerial battle above Los Angeles. Later the authorities said everyone had been shooting at nothing. Although some theorists said it was aliens, this episode was eventually attributed to the release of one or more weather balloons by army meteorologists. Spotters mistook them for Japanese airships, causing anti-air guns across the region to open fire for an entire evening and night. A supposed alien crash site ...

By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way rambles. In deepest darkest Suffolk a cold wind blows and black dogs are on the prowl. It’s always faintly amusing when one’s home makes the headlines, but this week mine has done so for some faintly malevolent reasons. The sleepy (hollow) town of Bungay has been revealed as the site of Britain’s largest concentration – or congregation – of Satanists, according to the latest census. Apparently 70 people here, out of 8,500, live to spread the glory of Lucifer – roughly a hundred times the national average. On first inspection, this might surprise outsiders, given the imposing towers and facades of the four churches in the centre of the town. But perhaps there’s ...

Going through the website of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, a UK pressure group pushing for a low-tax society, I find 17 press releases between December 2010 and 31 January 2023 using the term “tax burden”. Among its published research papers, there are 18 uses of the phrase, between February 2006 and 16 January 2023. Last month, Keir Starmer mentioned the “taxation burden” in an interview with the Guardian. This week, a BBC review of the impartiality of its economics coverage pinpointed language like “tax burden” rankling with some audiences. Three months before the BBC published its review, I reported that terms like “tax burden” were in contention. At the time, a source close to the process described it to me as a “loaded ...

Spare a thought for the poor souls at the Guardian. It’s now more than a month since they were allowed into their swanky offices near King’s Cross. And there’s no sign of an imminent return. ICYMI: the Guardian confirmed last month that it had suffered a ransomware attack and that the personal data of some staff members had been accessed. The “highly sophisticated cyberattack” was detected on 20 December and staff have been working from home since. Staff complain of having been “kept in the dark” by management in recent weeks. Possibly cognisant of this, the Guardian’s executive team hosted a call with staff on Tuesday 31 January to update them. The Chatterer’s pals still don’t seem to have a clear idea, ...