Weekend Box: Aggro-Culture, UK and What Army? & more
Welcome to The Weekend Box, Audley’s weekly round-up of interesting or obscure political, business and cultural news from around the world.
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AGGRO-CULTURE GROWS IN EUROPE
This week, farmers in Belgium, France, Germany, Poland, Romania, and Italy have staged various protests against their respective governments. Farmers have turned their tractors into blockades in Paris, Zeebrugge, and Hamburg. In Brussels, some 2,700 tractors rolled in, “filling the streets with a cacophony of honks” as Politico put it.
The protests, while not co-ordinated, have taken inspiration from one another. Farmers’ grievances vary from country to country, but they do share a few common themes.
The EU’s decision to waive quotas and duties on imports of farm products from Ukraine at the start of the war, resulting in cheap goods flooding into Europe, has been roundly criticised. There is widespread concern about the EU’s “farm to fork” strategy that aims to reduce pesticide use and impose new rules to take climate change into account in farming practices. In Germany and France specifically, the reduction of diesel subsidies and burdensome rules and regulations have caused anger.
Politics aside, market pressures are taking their toll. Many farmers are struggling with debt, price pressures from powerful retailers and agrochemical companies, and the impacts of extreme weather conditions. The war in Ukraine exacerbated these issues by disrupting trade flows and causing a supply glut that affected prices for crops like wheat.
Anyone who has watched Clarkson’s Farm will know that agriculture is not the most profitable of businesses. More than anything, these protests feel like a cry for help and attention from a group that feels increasingly marginalised and ignored by policymakers.
The French government has made a number of concessions to farmers this week, pressured by apparent widespread support for the protests.
Politicians would be wise to remember when setting agricultural policy that farmers are a powerful lobby who will often get a sympathetic hearing from voters.
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WILL MUSK GET A CHIP ON HIS SHOULDER?
What at first looked like a week where he would leave the world in awe has turned awfully frustrating for Elon Musk. His announcement of an apparently successful human brain chip implant by his company Neuralink has been overshadowed by a pay package controversy, being overtaken as the richest man in the world, and – once again – being voted the most overrated CEO in America.
Talk about a hat trick. To start from the beginning: In a rather understated X/Twitter post on Monday, considering the potential implications, Musk shared that the “first human” had received an implant from his company Neuralink.
Neuralink launched in 2016 with the goal of creating brain computer interfaces that would connect wirelessly with the cloud and other devices, including other brain chips.
Supporting people with impaired functions was an expressed aim of the tech at the time, and it remains key for Musk, particularly with regards to communication. In another X post, he wrote: “Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist or auctioneer. That is the goal.” Figuring out how to become ‘symbiotic’ with AI, lest humans be left behind by advancements in the technology, was another less aspirational reason Musk gave for launching the Neuralink venture.
Yet, his news was quickly overshadowed by Delaware judge Kathaleen McCormick’s decision to throw out his $56bn Tesla pay package. The judge stated in her opinion that the “unfathomable sum,” which she believed was calculated to help Musk bring about his own vision of a “good future for humanity,” was negotiated by directors who were too close to the CEO to make their decision on his compensation truly independent.
The Fortune survey declaring him America’s most overrated CEO for the second year running and being overtaken as world’s richest man by luxury goods tycoon Bernard Arnault are just the icing on the cake.
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UK AND WHAT ARMY?
A conscription debate was triggered last week when the outgoing head of the army, Gen Sir Patrick Sanders, said that Britain should train a "citizen army" ready to fight a war on land in the future.
TikTok was quickly awash with content poking fun at Gen Z’s ability to cope with the prospect of war. As Giles Coren mused in The Times, an impending Russian army might face a brigade of ‘Just Stop Oil Hussars,’ mixologists, podcasters, and influencers.
The UK Government was quick to walk back Sanders’ comments, bemoaning the unhelpful “hypothetical scenarios” he was putting forward. However, conscription or none, it’s as good a time as any to seriously consider the size of our army (which sits at just 70,000) and our defence spending, when NATO is holding its biggest exercise since the Cold War, Baltic states bolster border security, and our Defence Secretary describes us being in a ‘pre-war world.’
Around 85 countries worldwide have some form of obligatory military training, including Austria, Greece, and most Nordic countries like Finland, which has even more reason given its tested border with Russia. It is not however without its tribulations, and is often unpopular. In Ukraine, the issue has become a hot potato, with President Zelenskyy reluctant to take full responsibility for the conscription of 400,000-500,000 people in December, stating it was at the request of army chiefs. In year three of the war, early enthusiasm has been replaced by exhaustion and the Mobilisation Bill, which intends to meet this quota by cutting the draft age from 27 to 25, has received significant pushback in parliament.
With just 10% of 18-24-year-olds supporting compulsory military service and the cost of living detracting from the eye-watering cost of deterrence, the problem of how we defend our nation is not going away anytime soon.
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REEVES BANKS ON NO BONUS CAP
This week the Labour Party stepped up its pre-election engagement of UK business and the financial sector with some deliberately clear signals. Most notably, Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves confirmed that she has “no intention” of reintroducing the cap on bankers’ bonuses. This was first introduced by the EU in 2014 to temper excessive risk-taking after the 2008 crash, then scrapped by short-term Downing St residents Liz Truss and chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng in October 2022.
The removal of the limit, which capped bonuses at twice base salary, was kept by successor Jeremy Hunt and only three months ago Reeves was still criticising the decision. But this week, in which Labour hosted a business conference in London, Reeves changed tack, arguing that while it was brought in for good reason post-financial crisis, the context had changed and “as chancellor of the exchequer, I would want to be a champion of a successful and thriving financial services industry in the UK.”
Elaborating further at the conference, she noted that stronger rules regarding risk now existed, while arguing that businesses do not need “more chopping and changing”, rather stability. By the same token she announced she would not increase corporation tax from 25% during the first term of a Labour government, noting “26 changes to corporation tax arrangements in this parliament alone.”
Reeves and Starmer will know that Labour faces residual distrust in City circles since the days of former leader Jeremy Corbyn, who said that bankers like Morgan Stanley were “right to regard (him) as a threat.” A former Bank of England economist, Reeves is cut from a different cloth and likely to be familiar with how unpopular the cap was in the financial sector given the unintended consequences of base pay having to increase to offer competitive packages and being less easily adjustable to conditions or performance.
MIND THE GAP
New data suggests that there is an ideological gap emerging between men and women of the younger generation, Gen Z. When measuring public opinion, a concept as old as time is that generations tend to move as one. Typically, experiences of that generation cause them to be in lockstep on certain issues, regardless of gender. However, a new phenomenon in Gen Z has turned this on its head. No longer voting as one, but on opposite ends of the spectrum: hyper-progressive in the one instance and conservative in the next.
And it seems that women are leading the more progressive stance, whilst young men are typically taking a conservative viewpoint. Partly driven by the #MeToo movement, partly driven by the rise of conservative and frequently misogynist male “role models,” the gap shows no signs of abating. The chasm can be seen across the globe, but is nowhere more dramatic than in Korea where, in the 2022 election, in nearly equal numbers young men backed the right-wing People Power party whilst young women were in favour the liberal Democratic party.
The consequences of this gap extend beyond political views and public opinion; some have linked it to plummeting marriage and birth rates in countries such as Korea, a divide that is causing more ‘I don’t’s than ‘I do’s. Older generations for now remain united, boomers agreeing on the key topics of the day, but as the gap grows bigger in Gen Z, only time will tell how this divide will play out in Gen Alpha.
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@audleyadvisors.com.
For now, that’s The Weekend Box officially closed.