Crossing Frontiers

Behind the ever more quick-fire and impulsive news cycle two standouts are staring us in the face. The Prime Minister’s moves towards reversing Brexit and the US President siding with Russia against Ukraine. As our Political Correspondent Peter Spencer reports, these are more closely related than they might appear.

Put simply, the world map is being redrawn in real time. Of course the pack could get shuffled again, perhaps even as soon as next month, but for now the picture is surprisingly clear cut.

Once the leader of the Free World, the United States is now siding with a despotic tyrant bent on eliminating his democratically elected neighbour, and casting an aggressive eye over the rest of Europe.

True to say the Americans took their time coming to the allies’ rescue in the Second World War, as well as the First btw, but they didn’t go round saying Hitler was a dude and Churchill a schmuck.

Donald Trump, by contrast, is doing the contemporary equivalent of just that. Publicly insulting the Ukrainian President and doing his best to rip the ground militarily from under his feet.

Of course, the deal he’s struck with the Kremlin to get his hands on Russian fuel is a probably doomed attempt to reduce prices at the pumps in time for the mid-term elections that could scupper his presidency.

Potentially far more serious is his tactic of hobbling satellite intelligence vital to Ukraine’s efforts to withstand Russian bombardment.

But though it’s looking likely Yankee voters will hand control of one if not both arms of US government to Trump’s opponents on November 3rd that won’t necessarily force him to change course.

The more he’ll be fighting off sleaze probes into his and his circle’s financial affairs the more viciously he’s likely to continue lashing out in every direction. Trampling in the process over all constitutional norms.

And while Andy Burnham has been at pains to stress he wants to govern as a home-based Prime Minister, unlike Keir Starmer, all this is dragging him into the international arena. Foisting choices on him.

Which is where the European Union, and our relationship with it, comes into disturbingly sharp focus.

Ever since the referendum that pulled us out we’ve been on frosty terms with our neighbours, and it’s cost us dear.

Everything from getting in and out of the place for hols, through how hard it is for the youngsters to study there and the sudden short supply of au pairs. Niggle after niggle.

Though they have remained our largest trading partner, if you ask anyone trying to do business across The Channel how it’s been you’ll wish you hadn’t. The grumbles about bureaucracy and costs go on and on.

The near-consensus among economists, that leaving the EU has sliced off getting on for a tenth of our national wealth, bears out their point.

What with one thing and another then, it’s no great surprise that a YouGov poll last year found that only one in ten of us reckon Brexit was more of a success than a failure.

That, coupled with a survey last week that showed half of us want UK back in the bloc, goes a long way to explain why Burham’s being so daring in mooting much closer links. Maybe even going all the way.

The very idea so terrified Starmer that he was extremely tentative. But while whatever tiny steps he took got right wing papers frothing at the mouth it’s to be noted there was little if any blowback from the country.

Still, Burnham is going about it in a strictly step by step way, all the time testing the ground. But getting that little bit more assertive with each move.

Could be he has in mind, come the next election, not to say he’ll rejoin but would like voters to think about it.

Half a century ago the Conservative manifesto was just as ambiguous about joining the then Common Market. And yet within three years we were in.

Back then, clearly, the economic argument held sway. The same may apply this time round. Only it could be mightily buttressed right now by the Trump-inspired global uncertainty.

Timorous though he was, Starmer did forge links with European allies in the fight against Russian aggression. But that was before we started looking like we’d run out of friends across the Atlantic.

Given the mounting tide of evidence that that’s exactly what’s happened, the arguments in favour of snuggling up closer to our neighbours could well strike voters as ever more compelling.

The Polonius character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet may have been a pompous git, but he had a point when he told his son: ‘Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.’

Another maybe pointer to shifting attitudes is to be found in polls suggesting that Reform Leader Nigel Farage, who did more than any other to get us out of Europe, is no longer the superhero he once was.

Not one but two surveys out last week put his party in third place, for the first time in a long time. Bit of a worry for them, that, as only a year ago they were miles ahead of everyone.

Has to be said, mind, their fortunes aren’t exactly favoured by the second sting operation in a row, this one forcing three Reform councillors to resign after being filmed using sexist and racist language.

Possibly one of them calling black children animals and claiming King Charles is a Muslim wouldn’t trouble diehard party supporters. But unlikely to do much for Tories wavering in their direction.

Likewise the response of Farage’s erstwhile best buddy Donald Trump to the death of the young man who climbed into the tiger enclosure at Yorkshire Wildlife Park, with fatal consequences.

Ghastly and tragic, hardly a subject for levity. And yet The Donald’s idea of a tribute to the victim, maybe, was to post an AI-generated video of himself playing with said tiger.

So much for the most powerful man on the globe. Half makes you wonder whether the world would be better off run by dogs.

As it happens, new research suggests they’d make a better fist of it than we humans imagine.

Researchers at Vienna Uni were glad that several border collies were chilled about being popped into MRI scanners and having their brain activity checked out while they looked at images of people.

No surprise that they could tell the difference between joy and blank stares, and between happy and angry faces.

But what astonished the boffins was the way they were also differentiating between feelings that are far harder to tell apart, such as fear and anger or fear and sadness.

‘As far as we know, it’s the first time there is proof that dogs can distinguish between faces expressing two similar emotions,’ said Laura V. Cuaya, one of the study’s co-authors.

That said, the vast majority of responses from people who read all about it in the Washington Post was that of course dogs are highly empathetic, often better at understanding our feelings than we are.

Which is surely a polite way of saying durrr.