Weekend Box: Middling Midterms, Brewdog & more
Welcome to the Weekend Box, Audley’s weekly round-up of interesting or obscure political, business and cultural news from around the world.
Image credit/'Election Day' by Shannon McGee on Flickr/License
GOP'S MIDDLING MIDTERMS
At the time of writing, votes are still being counted in a midterm election that’s on a knife edge. While the Republicans are inching closer to a House of Representatives majority, all eyes will be on Arizona and Nevada today – two uncalled states that will determine whether the runoff Senate election in Georgia on December 6th will be a proxy battle for the chamber. As many have noted, the giant red wave that pollsters predicted was more of a ripple and on Wednesday, President Biden hailed this as a ‘good day’ for democracy and the nation.
While the House is still looking decidedly Republican, which will no doubt make the next two years difficult for President Biden and a legislative gridlock likely, the Democrats may have had the best midterm results a president’s party has experienced in 20 years. The average loss of seats in the House for incumbent presidents is historically 27, but the fact the Republicans needed to take five seats to win a House majority and they haven’t yet is hugely significant. Democratic turnout in this mid-term smashed all records in 2018, particularly among young people, with social issues like abortion being pointed to as a key motivator.
Only in America could a loss be considered a victory for the Democrats and the Republican blame game has already begun after surprise losses in states like Pennsylvania. While there were big wins in states such as Florida, with Ron DeSantis stealing the limelight from Trump in a landslide victory, in areas where a local Republican candidate was backed by the former president, interestingly the party's vote share fell by 3.6 percentage points. With support in the Republican camp tumbling for Trump and his 2024 announcement temporarily on ice, Ron DeSantis is the name on everyone’s lips. While Trumpism is not dead with many labelling the Florida Governor ‘Trump 2.0’, there has been a momentous shift in the party and we could be in for a messy Republican primary come 2024.
BREWDOG BREW UP TROUBLE
In ten days’ time, the England men’s football team will kick off their World Cup campaign against a nation that is currently suppressing a series of nationwide protests through extreme violence, in a country where human rights abuses are widespread and homosexuality is illegal. This also comes just four years after being knocked out of a tournament hosted by a brutal regime that’s now waging a genocidal war in Europe.
It’s perhaps little wonder then that the beermaker Brewdog was this week moved to throw its weight behind a new advertising campaign that altered the moniker ‘beautiful game’ to ‘beautiful shame’.
But in doing so, the brand only served to highlight the perils of corporates wading into political arguments without fully thinking them through. Within a day of the adverts starting to appear, the company was forced to admit that its products would continue to be sold in Qatar and World Cup games would still be shown in its bars. Brewdog’s objection to what it terms the ‘World F*cup’ clearly only goes so far.
To be fair to them, Brewdog did pledge to donate all profits made from its ‘Lost Lager’ during the tournament to human rights charities, but for many the double standard was clear. A number of celebrities have been accused of similar hypocrisy. The footballers-turned-pundits Gary Neville and Lineker paused just long enough to condemn the tournament’s presence in Qatar before boarding their flights to fulfil their money-spinning broadcast deals in the Gulf State.
In response to the furore, Brewdog’s CEO claimed that “Apple sells iPhones in Qatar and China – that doesn’t mean it endorses the human rights records of those governments”. But then, Apple didn’t just launch a mass advertising campaign styling itself as the ‘anti-sponsor’ of the Qatar World Cup. It’s not the sales policy consumers object to but the perceived hypocrisy.
The World Cup may not kick off for another week, but the first own goal of the tournament it seems has already been scored.
Image credit/'Moscow 05-2012 Kremlin 22' by A.Savin/License
WAGNER GROUP: BAD COMPANY
Given the recent rebranding of the Wagner Group, the Kremlin appear to be adopting another tool in its arsenal for marketing violence: a corporate makeover for its mercenary men.
The Telegraph reported this week that the private military company (PMC), which was founded in 2014 to back Ukrainian separatists, is ditching its grinning skull and sniper rifle cross hairs with a “new 23-storey glass and steel building with a ‘W’ emblazoned on the revolving glass door”.
This is perhaps unsurprising given that legitimizing violence is not a new tactic for authoritarian states. However, it does pose the question of what the objective is for this recent rebrand and why now?
Strategically speaking the use of Russia’s PMCs, as the Center for Strategic and International Studies articulates, has always been to claim plausible deniability for political/military activity.
However, more recently, the association between the activity of the Wagner Group and the Kremlin has become more overt with claims that Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner’s boss and financier, is now part of Putin’s “inner circle” and nicknamed “Putin’s chef”.
As the Telegraph report, Wagner has offered office space in its new building to “companies involved in strengthening the Russian defence sector,” suggesting the commercialisation is part of a campaign to consolidate Russian power. Yet, this campaign has perhaps arisen from anxiety within Russia that this power is diminishing, with reports that all Russian troops are withdrawing from Kherson in Ukraine, the only regional capital captured by the Russians since the February invasion.
Prigozhin’s recent admittance that Russia had “interfered [in the US midterms]…are interfering and…will continue to interfere,” a stark U-turn from Moscow’s fervent stance that Russia has never interfered in any US elections, may also be a sign that the state is trying – desperately – to maintain its might on an international stage. How successful this will be, and what ends it will go to, remains to be seen.
THAT SINKING FEELING
A week after walking into Twitter HQ carrying a sink, new CEO Elon Musk has fired half of the company’s global workforce. Fellow tech leader Mark Zuckerberg fired thousands of Meta employees a few days later, but how each CEO communicated their reasoning for their respective layoffs could not have been more different.
In a message published by Meta’s Newsroom on Wednesday, Zuckerberg announced the company would fire “more than 11,000…talented employees” after experiencing lower revenues than expected, which he admitted were in part due to increased investments in e-commerce that did not pay off. While “access to most Meta systems” had been removed for former employees, email addresses would remain active for the day for the purpose of farewells.
Compare this with Twitter’s mass layoffs six days earlier, where some employees only learned they had been fired when they were abruptly locked out of their devices and the company’s systems. Elon Musk’s statement took the form of a single tweet defending the firings as a necessity “when the company is losing over $4M/day.”
It could be argued that, like Zuckerberg, Musk is owning up to his mistakes while making the tough calls necessary to keep his company afloat. However, one could also argue that the Twitter CEO is more concerned with maintaining a façade online as he struggles with the platform.
The few words Musk has shared on his personal Twitter, before returning to the usual stream of updates on the platform as well as groan-worthy jokes, suggest he is most concerned with playing to his followers and showing them he’s in control. Reports that he has told remaining Twitter employees that “bankruptcy isn’t out of the question” tell a different story.
Perhaps he should take a leaf from Zuckerberg’s book and do more to show accountability to his employees is a top priority; appeasing Twitter followers won’t save a company, after all.
Image credit/'Royal Opera House' by David Woo on Flickr/License
FROM NESSUN DORMA TO NESSUN DORMANT
This week, the English National Opera (ENO), which is across the street from Audley’s offices, has launched a campaign against damning cuts from Arts Council England, after it saw millions of pounds worth of funding taken away.
A few days earlier it was revealed that London’s cultural institutions will have their income slashed by 16% to £152m. Meanwhile, other regions in England were given a boost of £294m – an increase of 21%.
There was even worse news for opera fans, as three of the five largest reductions in funding were imposed on opera companies. The ENO itself was braced for a cut of around 15%, but in their announcement last week, the Arts Council slashed their grant from a total of £12.8m to zero after 1 April 2023.
Opera singer Sir Bryn Terfel Jones is appealing to Secretary of State for Culture, Michelle Donelan, to ‘radically rethink’ the removal of funds. Meanwhile, those signing the petition are stressing how crucial the ENO is to London’s arts scene, including its 92-year heritage, its ability to draw in new audiences and free tickets for Under 21s.
There is a chance the ENO can carry on and if it relocates, would be eligible for £17m funding over three years. One of the only contenders for its new home is Manchester, although the Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham has told The Guardian: “We have not seen any audience need for opera.” As such, the mood lies in favour of those who want the ENO to stay in London.
Opera is not alone, as the consequences of funding cuts in the capital have hit our most famous institutions, such as the Southbank Centre, which had its funding cut by £1.9m, while the National Theatre has seen £850,000 taken from its pot. The Musician’s Union said the cuts were a ‘sad indictment’ of the government’s ‘apparent disinterest’ in supporting the arts.
Are policies like this truly levelling up if you’re gutting the capital to serve other regions, rather than promote culture and the arts across the whole nation? We’re not so sure.
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.