Weekend Box: Boris returns, Meta defeat & more
Editor's Note
Welcome to The Weekend Box, Audley’s weekly round-up of interesting or obscure political, business, and cultural news from around the world.
At the end of every busy week in Westminster, ministerial private offices ask their departments to submit papers to the ‘weekend box’ for Ministers and Secretaries of State to catch up with over the weekend. Similarly, we would like to send you into the weekend with a few stories to catch up with at your leisure.
So, let’s delve inside the Weekend Box.
Déjà Blue...
It took Queen Elizabeth II three years to meet her second UK prime minister. Her successor King Charles III will achieve that feat in just three weeks.
Liz Truss’s resignation brings to an end the shortest-lived premiership in UK history. It is a very human tragedy for a politician who had long craved the top job: but a series of politically naïve decisions, the disastrous ‘mini’ budget and the lack of a mandate for the big reforms she wanted to make made her political demise inevitable.
All eyes now turn to the future, with speculation this weekend focused on a figure from the past.
The prospect of Boris Johnson returning to Number 10 may seem fanciful to some but there are many in the party who long for just such an outcome. He’s seen as a winner: a uniquely popular politician who can reach parts of the country no other Tory can get to. Someone who single-handedly delivered the Tory election victory in 2019 and will do so again if given the chance.
The trouble is, little of this is true. Johnson’s popularity has long been over-stated. His election victory in 2019 was achieved with much the same number of votes Theresa May received two years earlier. His large majority owed more to the collapse of the Labour vote, Nigel Farage’s decision to stand down his candidates and the public’s anger over the ongoing Brexit debates than to any great ‘Boris wave’. In fact, as psephologists such as Professor Robert Ford – author of the official book on the British General Election of 2019 – have pointed out, polling shows that Johnson was less popular at every point of the election campaign than his predecessor during her own campaign in 2017.
Further by the end of his chaotic time in office, he was uniquely unpopular among the British people. In research conducted by the polling firm J.L. Partners, ‘liar’ was – and is – the word most often used to describe him. He still has a House of Commons Standards inquiry hanging over him. It’s hardly a recipe for stability, which is what the country and the markets crave after the turmoil of the Truss regime.
But the fact that people believe otherwise points to his one great strength – the capacity to tell a good, compelling story. Politics, like so much in life, is fundamentally about storytelling. Ultimately it was Liz Truss’s inability to weave a narrative to justify her reforms that led to her downfall. Given that deficit, you can see why the return of one of British politics greatest storytellers might prove to be attractive. It would certainly be unwise to rule it out.
Yet you have to wonder if those who think Boris is the answer are really asking the right question. The challenge for the next prime minister is two-fold: to restore competence, stability and credibility to government; and to tackle the serious economic challenges facing the country. It’s unclear which of these is met by Boris Johnson’s return.
In fact, it is another candidate – his great rival Rishi Sunak – who has a strong financial background and a record of competent stewardship of the economy during his time at the helm of the Treasury. That he failed in his bid for the top job last time was down in large part to the role he was seen to have played in bringing Johnson’s premiership down. Now, the two are once more locked in a battle for the soul of the Conservative Party. The outcome may not only determine the party’s fortunes at the next election, but also its fate for many years to come.
Competence versus chaos used to be the way the Conservatives framed the choice between themselves and the opposition. Today, it feels like it’s the choice facing the party internally. With nominations closing at 1400 on Monday, Tory MPs have mere hours to decide which route they wish to take.
Great Walls of Fire
The bewildering chaos of Westminster could not contrast more starkly with the quiet order of China’s 20th Communist Party Congress. While the UK’s head of government lost power in record time, her Chinese counterpart gained yet more personal control of the country’s political system.
Xi Jinping is now reckoned to be China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. He is already China’s president, General Secretary of the Communist Party and commander-in-chief of the country’s armed forces. Now, having done away with the constitutional instrument that keeps presidents restricted to serving two five-year terms, Mr Xi is set to secure his place at the top until 2027.
Security – that of China, not just of Mr Xi’s position – was a core theme of the president’s speech to the Congress. On the “Taiwan question”, the clear objective is to bring Taiwan under Beijing’s total control. It is a certain outcome in the mind of China’s elite – “the wheels of history are rolling on toward China’s reunification”, said Mr Xi.
But it was not just security in the sense of defence and armed conflict that Mr Xi spoke about. As the FT pointed out, Xi’s idea of “comprehensive national security” covers politics, the economy, culture, technology, space, and overseas interests.
Commentators see Xi’s manoeuvring as a clear break from the approach of China’s leaders since Deng Xiaoping attempted to end the personality cult of leaders in the 1980s. Slowing economic growth, the impact of a zero Covid policy, and military expansion, will put China’s political system to the test. “Emperor Xi” has to prove his centralisation of power will work.
What’s the META?!
A UK watchdog blocked big tech for the first time this week, as influence from Silicon Valley in Europe continues to be scrutinised.
In a bid to limit the monopoly of Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, the Competition Markets Authority (CMA) ruled the tech giant should be forced to sell Giphy, a gif-creation site. Meta purchased Giphy in May 2020 with a wish for easier access to GIFs across its platforms, yet it has found itself in an ongoing battle with regulators since November 2021.
The CMA argued Meta would be able to increase its market power and limit other social platforms’ access to GIFs, therefore making other sites less attractive to social media users.The authority also detailed how Meta controls almost half of the £7 billion display advertising market in the UK. Relinquishing Giphy, the CMA argues, would therefore promote fairness in the advertising space and innovation across the market more generally.
Meta-owned platforms including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp account for 73% of user time spent on social media in the UK. With this in mind, the CMA are looking to build on this decisive action against the monopolisation of big tech companies, with the formation of the Digital Markets Unit (DMU). The DMU will, according to the Government, ‘promote greater competition and innovation in these markets and protect consumers and businesses from unfair practices.’
Meanwhile across the channel the EU are drawing up their own piece of legislation – the Digital Markets Act, which will locate ‘gatekeeper’ social platforms online and force them to adhere to regulation which the say gives room for innovation and new social media services.
Both pieces of legislation essentially want the same end goal: cooperation between big tech and government to lay out a fair playing field for others. Despite both acts getting off to a slow start, and with the recent Meta ruling, the UK Government and EU are closing in on big tech under the promise of increased innovation and investment in digital markets.
Wagatha Goes West
Four chancellors, three home secretaries, two prime ministers, but only one Wagatha Christie.
Coleen vs Vardy was the libel case that rocked the nation this year and after a trial and verdict which lasted longer than Truss’s tenure, it is now hitting the West End. Quite like the raft of lawyers involved in the case, the media is lining its pockets in the fall-out between two stalwarts of the WAG community.
News of a West End performance follows a multimillion-pound deal Coleen Rooney cut with Disney for the rights of a tell-all documentary based on the saga and Channel 4 announcing ‘Vardy v Rooney: A Courtroom Drama’, which will star Michael Sheen as celebrity barrister, David Sherborne later this year.
Forget Frieze Art fair, from Wagatha Christie to Depp vs Heard, to the recent court cases that have dominated the Real Housewives franchises (which regularly pull in a million viewers an episode), the court-case soap opera is the modern form of cultural entertainment. With social media primed to weaponise feud and scandal and more celebrity bickers to come, this phenomenon is no doubt here to stay.
The Daily Mail sidebar of shame is our Shakespeare and, in a time where most people can’t pay their bills, maybe chuckling at those with more money than sense isn’t such a bad thing?
Ye or Nay?
Known for major deals and collaborations in the music and fashion worlds, pop culture icon Ye (FKA Kanye West) this week entered into another business venture that is making headlines for all the wrong reasons, as it was announced that on Monday he had “entered into an agreement in principle” to acquire the controversial social media platform Parler.
The app, positioned as a pro-free speech alternative to the likes of Twitter, has long held a reputation for allowing posts promoting far-right extremism and violence. Owners Parlement Technologies took to Twitter to share the ‘Breaking News’ of Ye’s purchase. CEO George Farmer is quoted in a follow-up tweet claiming that “[t]his deal will change the world, and change the way the world thinks about free speech. Ye is making a groundbreaking move into the free speech media space[.]”
It has hardly been smooth sailing for apps in the “free speech media space” in recent years, as anyone involved with Parler could have told you. Prior to Ye’s purchase, the app had been removed from both the Apple and Google Play stores after users showed themselves participating in the Capitol riots of January 6th. On its return, it drew fewer than 4% of the user numbers it saw before removal, naturally provoking questions about whether the undisclosed sum Ye has paid will end up being worth it.
The rapper may be following the example of his role model and fellow controversialist of the American right Donald Trump, with his beleaguered free speech platform Truth Social. In a moment of tragic irony, as things had begun to look up for Trump’s app in recent weeks, Ye’s invitation for Trump to join Parler caused shares in the SPAC trying to merge with Truth Social to fall by 8%.
This degree of influence could improve Parler’s fortunes. However, as recent behaviour suggests Ye is moving into extremes of the political right – including the Parler purchase, as well as public antisemitism and wearing clothes emblazoned with the phrase ‘White Lives Matter’ (categorised by the Anti-Defamation League as a white supremacist slogan) – it is also a grave cause for concern.
And that’s it for this week. I hope you found something of interest that you might want to delve into further. If so, please get in touch at cwilkins@audley.uk.com.
For now, that’s the weekend box officially closed.