The independent 25 december 2016

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review of 2016

Looking back over a tumultuous year

WWW.INDEPENDENT.CO.UK

Rupert Cornwell Trump may define Obama’s legacy

John Rentoul

I long for the golden age of politics

Jack Pitt-Brooke

Ten talents to look out for next year

Christmas returns to the edge of Mosul

Iraqi Christians at the first Christmas Eve mass in Bartella since the town’s liberation from Isis in October

UK leads calls to prevent African food crisis in 2017 EXCLUSIVE IAN JOHNSTON

The Government is urging the international community to tackle hunger in Africa next year amid fears of a repeat of the food crisis of 2010 and 2011, during which an estimated 260,000 people

starved to death. The Department for International Development has already committed £362m in aid over this year and next, and is understood to be considering increasing its contribution further. The Government’s calls come as right-wing politicians, and some sections of the media, call for David

Cameron’s flagship pledge to spend 0.7 per cent of gross national income on aid to be scrapped. The International Development Secretary Priti Patel told The Independent: “Tackling the global challenges of our time such as disease and drought, which fuel migration, is the right thing to do and is in Britain’s interest.”

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

News / Letter from the Editor

In a year as historic as this, why not introduce a new Christmas tradition?

CHRISTIAN BROUGHTON It is a Fleet Street tradition, especially popular among journalists, that no newspapers are published on Christmas Day. Readers wouldn’t go out to buy them, newsagents wouldn’t be open, and nothing happens at this time of year anyway does it? Or at least, that’s usually the case.

But this year is different. We don’t need to bother drivers in the early hours of Christmas morning to distribute this edition of The Independent, and you don’t need to leave your family at home while you go out to get it. And besides, following a year of such world-changing events, it could hardly be said that the news agenda is quiet at the moment.

So we hope you enjoy this Christmas Day edition. You’ll find a brief news section, plus comment and sport, followed by the first part of our review of the year, which continues tomorrow, in which our writers reflect on the big themes from a year of shocking news, cultural highs and sporting dramas. We’ve also included those first drafts of history – the news reports, as they first appeared.

Finally, but most importantly, we owe you our thanks for your support in a year when The Independent was a news story of its own, becoming the first major newspaper to make the switch to fully digital publishing.

I’m pleased to say that, against the flow of so much of the other news in 2016, this story is working out very well. So well, in fact, that we’re making some substantial additions across the editorial team to bring you greater depth of coverage from the UK, US, Europe and Asia. We will also be making improvements to your Daily Edition app, responding to your feedback.

We’ll let you know more about these new features in 2017. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this edition, thanks again for your support, and have a very happy Christmas.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

News

Editorials

As Brexit looms, the UK looks an increasingly diminished force When Vladimir Putin gave his annual marathon solo press conference in front of a thousand journalists, it is fair to say Russia’s relationship with Britain was not on the top of anybody’s list of topics to explore.

Since the end of the Second World War at any rate, Russia has always, not entirely foolishly, regarded the United Kingdom as a sidekick of America in defence and intelligence matters, and subsumed by the power of Germany and the structures of the European Union in trade and economics. For what it’s worth – and it matters more to Britain than Russia – all of those dynamics will soon change.

The most radical shift will obviously be wrought by Brexit. As Britain’s trade negotiators are about to discover, friendly fast-growing dynamic economies willing to trade with the UK are not difficult to find, but the UK’s relatively smaller heft in relation to them, compared to the collective strength available as a member of the EU means deals advantageous to Britain will be difficult to swing.

Russia is an uncertainly reliable bet as a future trade and economic partner for post-Brexit Britain. This is because Russia’s economy remains so heavily dependent on natural resources and the energy sector.

Unlike India, China or Brazil, say, the other components of the famous Brics acronym, Russia has not developed its manufacturing or services sectors, it is more hostile to foreign investment and international sanctions have pushed Russia away from the world economy in any case.

Closer relations with Russia are possible, but it comes with a certain diplomatic price: Britain will have to follow the (presumed) path of the Trump administration in appeasing Russia’s expansionism and its support for President Assad’s murderous policies in Syria, in particular. Boris Johnson will find his brave and entirely justified claims about Russian war crimes much more difficult if the UK, for the first time in its history, becomes significantly reliant on economic relations with Russia for its wellbeing. We will, in effect, have to give up on Ukraine, let alone Crimea, and accept more Russian influence in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. That position would take years to come, but, as with China, it points out how much easier it is for the UK to enjoy close economic arrangements with similarly minded liberal democracies in the EU than the more remote, ideologically and geographically, rulers in Moscow and Beijing.

For the next few months, though, Theresa May and Mr Johnson will find themselves as bit-part players being blown about and trying to make the best sense they can out of the simultaneously contradictory signals emerging from the Trump and Putin presidencies. Both men want a thaw in relations, both want to wage a joint war on Isis and both have reasons to be distrustful of China. And yet with a casual tweet or two, both can also plunge their nations into a renewed nuclear arms race that will be ruinously expensive as well as existentially dangerous for them and the rest of the world.

Does the UK want to join in that scramble for even more mutually assured destruction? Mr Trump may or may not want to maintain the primacy of Nato – but who knows? Like a pair of new lovers, neither Trump nor Putin seems clear about what they want from their relationship. Once upon a time the British fancied themselves as a “bridge” between Washington and Moscow. Whatever truth there may have been in that in the Kennedy-Macmillan-Khrushchev era, or when Margaret Thatcher reassured Ronald Reagan that Mikhail Gorbachev was a man the West could do business with, the UK, out of the EU, is less of a power in the world than it was.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

News

Thousands face starvation in Africa in the growing crisis no one talks about ‘As we enter 2017, over 37 million people across Africa are without food,’ warns International Development Secretary Priti Patel, as the Government calls for a global response

A farmer in Zimbabwe examines a field where crops once grew (AP)

IAN JOHNSTON During the drought that devastated the Horn of Africa in 2010 and 2011, women bound their waists with

rope to deaden the pangs of hunger as they gave what little food they had to their children.

In stark contrast to such selfless acts, the international community stood back and watched until it was too late for the 260,000 people who starved to death.

Now aid workers are increasingly concerned that 2017 could see a tragedy on a similar scale with droughts – and floods – meaning some parts of southern and east Africa have not had a significant harvest for three years.

The Government is leading calls for the world to take effective action this time – just as right-wing politicians and newspapers call for David Cameron’s flagship pledge to spend 0.7 per cent of gross national income on aid to be scrapped.

The Department for International Development (DfID) has already committed £362m in aid over this year and next, and is understood to be considering increasing its contribution further.

“As we enter 2017, over 37 million people across Africa are without food,” International Development Secretary, Priti Patel, said in a statement sent to the Independent. “Families face losing their homes and livelihoods as the effects of widespread drought worsen.

“That is why ‘Global Britain’ is leading the response to the escalating crisis by providing life-saving food, water and shelter.”

Warning the crisis could force many people in the region to become refugees, Ms Patel appealed to other countries to “step up to prevent people from going hungry”.

“Tackling the global challenges of our time such as drought and disease which fuel migration, insecurity and instability is the right thing to do and is firmly in Britain’s interest,” she said.

A source in the international aid community told The Independent that there was a danger of a repeat of “the desperate conditions and extreme hunger that killed hundreds of thousands in 2010”.

“Certain population groups are now in the third year of having very limited household input,” the source said.

“They will have already sold off household assets, livestock will have died or are likely to be unhealthy and not productive.

“That’s when you start to see changes in mortality that we shouldn’t be seeing in populations.”

The source said during the previous drought “there was an issue around a slow response by the system” and efforts had been made since then to try to pick up on the warning signs sooner.

But, with the world focused on events in the Middle East, the current refugee crisis, Brexit and the US presidency, there are fears an unfolding disaster could go unnoticed once again.

The problem has been caused by a particularly severe El Niño weather system, a natural recurring effect that has been exacerbated by climate change. While the El Niño has ended, there are suggestions that the next harvest could be in trouble.

Rebecca Sutton, Oxfam’s global El Niño campaign manager, said: “The vegetation cover index in parts of the Horn of Africa area is lower now than it was at this stage in the 2010/11 drought. That indicator is looking worse now than it was then.

“With drought, it’s a slow-onset crisis. It doesn’t attract media coverage and very unpleasant pictures of people and animals in a very bad way come only once it’s way too late.

“By the time you get headline media coverage, things are extremely bad and way too many people have

suffered more than they needed to.”

She praised the UK Government, saying it had “responded quite well to this crisis”, but warned that “something of this scale is more than a handful of donors can deal with”.

As part of its aid package, DfID has now given £16.9m to Unicef to help countries in southern Africa, which are approaching the “peak of the lean system”, the United Nations aid agency said in a statement.

It said this year had seen the “worst El-Niño induced drought in decades”, and the money would be used for “life-saving interventions to prevent the escalation of malnutrition and child illness or death in Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe”.

Increasing numbers of children have been dropping out of school due to a lack of water or more pressing problems at home, Unicef said, while all four countries were seeing outbreaks of diseases such as cholera, typhoid and diarrhoea.

The money will allow 456,000 children to be checked for severe, acute malnutrition and more than 65,000 to be treated for several common diseases. A further 194,000 people will get access to safe drinking water.

Leila Gharagozloo-Pakkala, Unicef’s regional director for eastern and southern Africa, said: “As already vulnerable children and their families enter another lean season, these funds are critical for helping them to cope with the ongoing impacts of this chronic emergency.

“We greatly appreciate – and applaud – DfID for leading the way in ensuring that communities are significantly supported to become further resilient to the recurrent climatic crises we are seeing across much of the region.”

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

News

Paul Nuttall’s Christmas message: get on with Brexit

The Ukip leader is hoping to intensify the debate on overseas budget costs (Getty)

TOM PECK “Woe betide” those who seek to stand in the way of Brexit, Paul Nuttall has warned. The Ukip leader said in a Christmas message that in 2017, “MPs who seek to thwart Brexit will find their prospects for reelection greatly diminished”, and his party would intensify the debate over the overseas aid budget.

In his first Christmas message since taking over the Ukip leadership, he said: “This year the British people decided to change the course their country was set on. They chose a new path. By a narrow but decisive majority, they opted to take back control of key decision-making. They decided that European political integration and indeed the whole era of globalisation had gone too far, hollowing-out their democracy and leaving most of them worse off both financially and in terms of the cohesion of their communities.

“As the leader of Ukip, my top priority will be to make sure that in the New Year much faster progress is made towards implementing that big democratic decision. And woe betide any politician who seeks to stand in the way of a decision that was explicitly handed to the British people by both Houses of Parliament when they approved the EU Referendum Bill.”

Mr Nuttall said Brexit alone would not be sufficient for the “revival” of the UK to help those forgotten by the “political elite”. He said: “Whether one is talking about supporting our magnificent armed services, prioritising housing and welfare resources or ensuring that the NHS is not wide open to abuse by new arrivals who have never paid into the pot, it is time to reorder the priorities of our governing class.

“I expect 2017 to see a further intensification of the debate around our annual £12bn foreign aid bill at a time when social care for the elderly is in crisis and dependency on food banks is spreading through our most deprived communities. It will also see the British people expecting to finally see their oft-expressed wish for immigration to be brought back under control begin to take effect.”

He added: “In recent years we have been forced to confront the unpalatable truth that the British values that we came to take for granted – such as fair play, gender equality, freedom of expression, a commitment to democratic politics and equality before the law – are now far from universally acknowledged or applied in all our communities.

“I see the Brexit vote as in part a public response to these worries too. A warning from the people that the strategy of the political class of turning a blind eye to abuses of core British values in the name of multiculturalism has reached the end of the line.”

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

News

‘Our values are in the wrong place,’ warns Welby

The Archbishop of Canterbury says economic progress hasn’t resulted in economic justice (Reuters)

DOMINIC HARRIES The Archbishop of Canterbury will speak of the power of God to chase away "the fear of terror" and the "economies of despair" as he delivers his Christmas sermon today.

Justin Welby, leader of the Church of England and the global communion of 85 million Anglican Christians, will also speak of the importance of God against a backdrop of a year that has left the world "less predictable and certain ... more awash with fear and division".

The Archbishop will deliver his sermon during a Eucharist service at Canterbury Cathedral at 11am today.

He is expected to say: "The end of 2016 finds us all in a different kind of world, one less predictable and

certain, which feels more awash with fear and division. Uncertainty in the midst of much, but far from universal, prosperity is a sign of our trust being in the wrong things.

"It tells us that our values are in the wrong place. Economic progress, technological progress, communication progress hasn't resulted in economic justice. It hasn't delivered glory for us. It is amongst those on the edge, those ignored, and amongst persecuted believers that I have most clearly seen the glory of God this year, a glory that chases away the fear of terror, the power of death, and the economies of despair. Let me tell you about a bomb-injured woman in Pakistan, bereft of her youngest child in the blast, who said, 'One thing we know, Jesus really is the Good Shepherd.'

"And a lonely elderly woman in London, and a trafficked teenager in Watford, both of whom spoke recently at a carol service – they have seen the glory of God in Jesus and he has brought transformation to their lives. How then do we find glory? The only place and person who can bring glory to us is the child of Bethlehem who became the victim on the cross."

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

News

Rail passengers hit by disruption, as London station shuts for Christmas

Paddington station was closed yesterday for engineering works (EPA)

SIMON CALDER TRAVEL CORRESPONDENT

The traditional Christmas shutdown of the nation’s railways began early for tens of thousands of rail passengers, with a main London terminus closed for six days. Paddington is closed from 24 to 29 December, as Network Rail undertakes its biggest-ever programme of Christmas engineering work.

A trickle of baffled passengers arrived at Paddington station, most of them foreign visitors planning to take

the train to Heathrow. They were told to take the Tube instead. Passengers from London to South Wales, Bristol and the South West were redirected to Ealing Broadway, a suburban station in west London. About half the normal number of inter-city services were running.

There are also big projects taking place between now and the New Year in the Manchester area, in South Wales and on the line from Norwich to London. A Great Western Railway spokesman said: “One of the reasons Network Rail carries out key engineering projects during the Christmas period is that it coincides with a significant drop in demand for rail services, so the work inconveniences the fewest customers possible.” But he held open the possibility that future Christmas timetables could include services on both 25 and 26 December. “We are open to doing so in the future, should the current level of predicted demand increase to sustainable levels.” For most of the 20th century, trains ran on both Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Mark Carne, chief executive of Network Rail, said that for the vast majority of the railways, trains could run if the operators choose to do so. “90 per cent of the network is open. But no trains run on Christmas Day – and that’s a decision taken by the train operating companies,” he said.

A spokesman for the Rail Delivery Group said: “Operating a normal train service on Christmas and Boxing Day would cost the taxpayer money as only a fraction of the normal number of passengers would be travelling. It would also make it harder and more expensive to carry out vital engineering work as part of our Railway Upgrade Plan of over £50bn.”

However, both Megabus and National Express were planning their biggest-ever Christmas Day schedules of inter-city and airport coaches. The only domestic flights today are two round-trips between Heathrow and Manchester, but many international services are continuing as normal – with a number of UK airports also expecting their busiest Christmas Day ever.

A strike planned by some British Airways cabin crew at Heathrow for today and tomorrow has been called off. But pilots working for Virgin Atlantic have started a work-to-rule in a dispute over union recognition.

They say they will work “strictly to contract”, which could involve refusing to be flexible in the event of disruption. Virgin Atlantic said it expects flights to be unaffected.

Airlines are warning about strikes at Portuguese airports at the tail-end of the year. Security personnel are expected to strike from 27 to 29 December, with an additional stoppage by ground handlers on 29 and 30 December. British Airways expects Lisbon to be badly affected; easyJet is asking passengers to arrive at the airport three hours ahead “as long queues are expected”.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

News

Storm Conor set to cause more travel chaos

A huge wave crashes against Castlerock pier in Coleraine, Northern Ireland, on Thursday (Getty)

CATRIONA WEBSTER AND LUCINDA CAMERON Storm Conor is due to hit parts of the UK today with winds of up to 90mph that are likely to disrupt power supplies and travel on the roads. The Met Office has warned of the potential for bridge closures, ferry delays, downed power supplies and large waves affecting coastal areas.

It follows a second day of disruption as a result of Storm Barbara, which particularly affected northern parts of the British Isles, with gusts of 117mph recorded over Cairngorm in the Highlands.

Dean Hall, a Met Office forecaster, said: "For Christmas Eve there was is a north-south split with gusty, squally conditions across much of Scotland and the north of England and Northern Ireland. Storm Conor

is going to bring more persistent rain in Northern Ireland, Western Scotland and North West England."

He said the main impact of Storm Conor would not be realised until Boxing Day. An amber warning is in place for tomorrow, with heavy persistent rain and strong winds expected in some parts of the UK. Yesterday power had to be restored to more than 25,000 homes in the north west of Scotland and the Western Isles. Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks said high winds and lightning strikes across the north west of Scotland, Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles cut power to thousands of homes on Friday and yesterday but all customers have now been restored in time for Christmas.

Despite the storms, some parts of the country, particularly the south east of England, could see temperatures of 14C today. The highest temperature ever for Christmas Day is 15.6C and forecasters say there is a possibility the record could be broken.

People can call 105, a free new national phone line, if the weather damages their local power network and affects electricity supply. The number is available to people in England, Scotland and Wales, regardless of who they buy electricity from.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

News

Tunisian police arrest nephew of Christmas market attacker

Walid Amri poses with a portrait of his brother Anis outside the family house in the town of Oueslatia, Tunisia (AFP)

PETER WALKER Tunisian police have arrested the nephew of the suspected Berlin Christmas market attacker and two other men thought to be connected to Anis Amri.

A statement says the three suspects were members of a "terrorist cell" that was "connected to the terrorist Anis Amri who carried out the terrorist attack in Berlin".

This trio, according to Tunisia's Interior Ministry, includes 18-year-old nephew "Fredi" who Amri allegedly sent money to so he could join him in Germany.

Italian police and forensics experts surround Anis Amri's body in Milan in the early hours of Friday morning Daniele Bennati/AFP/Getty

"One of the members of the cell is the son of the sister of the terrorist and during the investigation he admitted that he was in contact with his uncle through telegram," read the statement.

Amri allegedly urged his nephew to adopt jihadist 'takfiri' ideology and "asked him to pledge allegiance to Daesh".

The nephew also reportedly said that his uncle was the "prince" of a jihadist group based in Germany known as the "Abu al-Walaa" brigade.

The 24-year-old was shot dead by police in Milan in northern Italy after Amri opened fire when he was challenged during a routine patrol at around 3am local time.

The Tunisian, whose father said he was a drug-taking troublemaker who became a radical after moving to Europe, was traced across the continent after being linked to the bus crash that killed 12 people and injured 48.

Amri, who reportedly shouted 'Alluahu Akbar' in the Milan shootout, was hunted after his fingerprints and wallet were allegedly found in the truck.

Mustapha and Nour-Houda Amri, the parents of 24-year-old Anis Amri Fethi Belaid/AFP/Gettty

Police in Spain are also investigating whether Amri was in contact with an extremist in Spain following a tip-off from German authorities, according to the Associated Press.

Spain's Interior Minister, Juan Ignacio Zoido, told Spanish radio station Cope: "We are studying all possible connections [between Amri] and our country, above all with one specific person."

Amri's nephew was reportedly arrested in his hometown of Oueslatia while the other two were arrested in Tunis - reports the Associated Press.

Mother Nour Al-Houda Hassani has said poverty drove him into crime and to Europe by boat during the 2011 Arab Spring.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

News

‘Nanny state’: Brighton Council criticised for ban on traditional festive swim

Members of the Brighton Swimming Club prepare to brave the cold water yesterday (Rex)

HARRIET AGERHOLM A council is trying to stop swimmers taking a traditional Christmas Day dip by closing off beaches.

Brighton and Hove council said it was prompted to take action after unusually mild weather had drawn more people to the beaches, with "many getting close to the crashing waves".

The local authority fears more Christmas swimmers will be tempted into the sea and get hypothermia.

But the restrictions has been criticised for being counter-productive to people's health and enforcing a "nanny-state".

The council has warned: "Sea temperatures so far this winter are around 11 degrees centigrade but can drop to around 5 degrees or even colder. Even on an apparently clear sunny day, the sea temperature can lover body temperature quickly and fatally.

"It only takes a few minutes for the body’s core temperature to drop by two degrees and for the onset of hypothermia to begin."

Several people have drowned swimming off Brighton's beaches in recent years. In July a 44-year-old man from south-west London drowned after getting into difficulties east of Brighton's Palace Pier.

In 2014, the council also closed Brighton's beaches after a swimmer got into trouble, interrupting the 150year-long Christmas Day tradition.

But health campaigner John Kapp told local newspaper The Argus: "I would say the ban is a stupid idea, I would say that is counterproductive to health.

“I don’t think anybody will take any notice, you cannot fence off the beach, you cannot stop people going in.

“This is the nanny state, they should have better things to do.”

Seafront Operations Manager Chris Ingall said in a statement: “The continuing mild weather has meant that, as with last year, the seafront has been much busier than in previous winters.

"It’s been great to see so many people enjoying a stroll on the promenade and its good news for seafront businesses, but we would ask people to stay on the path or high up on the beach, especially when the sea conditions are rough.

"Do not allow children to play ‘chicken’ with the surf washing up the beach – we see this regularly on big winter surf days and this is precisely how people become washed out to sea.

“Sea swimming takes skill, stamina and knowledge of the physical dangers and should only be for the very experienced, using suitable wetsuits, in very calm conditions and with a friend.

“Even on a calm day sea currents, undertow or a sudden change in weather can create life threatening hazards without warning. Even experienced swimmers can get caught out.”

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

News

‘We are truly devastated’ – Status Quo guitarist dies

Rick Parfitt was planning to launch a solo career next year (Getty)

OLIVIA BLAIR Status Quo guitarist Rick Parfitt has died in Spain aged 68, his manager has said. The rock musician died yesterday in a Marbella hospital after developing a "severe" infection. He had been admitted on Thursday with a shoulder injury.

A statement from his manager said: "We are truly devastated to have to announce that Status Quo guitarist Rick Parfitt has passed away at lunchtime today. This tragic news comes at a time when Rick was hugely looking forward to launching a solo career with an album and autobiography planned for 2017 following his departure from Status Quo's touring activities on medical advice.

"He will be sorely missed by his family, friends, fellow band members, management, crew and his dedicated legion of fans from throughout the world, gained through 50 years of monumental success with Status Quo." Born in Surrey in 1948, Parfitt began playing guitar aged 11. He formed Status Quo, along with Francis Rossi, Alan Lancaster, John Coghlan and Roy Lines in 1967. The group found huge success with singles such as "Rockin' All Over The World" and "Whatever You Want" and in 2015, it was announced they had spent a total of 500 weeks in the UK album charts. In 1985, they opened Bob Geldof's historic Live Aid concert at Wembley.

In September, Parfitt pulled out of the band's autumn tour for health reasons. He suffered a heart attack in June where, according to the band's manager Simon Porter, he "died" for several minutes.

Prior to this, he underwent a quadruple heart bypass in 1997 and was told to slow down his rock-and-roll lifestyle by doctors. In 2014, he said he had not "smoked a joint for 27 years and I haven't done any cocaine for 10 years", the BBC reported. He has also vowed not to become a born-again Christian and said he still enjoyed the odd pint. Parfitt is survived by his third wife Lyndsay, their twins Tommy and Lily, and his adult children Rick Jnr and Harry.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

News

Photographer captures images of uncontacted ancient Amazon tribe

Tribesmen fired a barrage of arrows at the helicopter (Ricardo Stuckert)

PETER WALKER Bird’s-eye view photographs of an entirely isolated Amazonian tribe have revealed a rare insight into a lost Neolithic way of life.

Brazilian photographer Ricardo Stuckert captured these high-resolution images from a low-flying helicopter above members of the indigenous tribe in a jungle in Jordao, close to the Brazil-Peru border.

“I felt like I was a painter in the last century,” said father-of-four Mr Stuckert. “To think that in the 21st century, there are still people who have no contact with civilisation, living like their ancestors did 20,000 years ago – it’s a powerful emotion.”

Deforestation was estimated to have increased by 467 per cent year on year in 2014 Ricardo Stuckert

The World Wildlife Fund believes up to 48 football fields worth of forest is lost every minute Ricardo Stuckert

'I felt like I was a painter in the last century' said the photographer Ricardo Stuckert

Forestry covers around 31 per cent of the planet Ricardo Stuckert

Mr Meirelles guessed that there was up to 300 people in the tribe Ricardo Stuckert

'It was surprisingly powerful and emotional' Ricardo Stuckert

The same tribe gained global attention in 2008 after officers from Brazil’s indigenous affairs agency, Fundacao Nacional do Índio (FUNAI), released photographs of tribesmen in red body paint launching arrows at their low-flying plane.

On this ocassion, the tribespeople also fired a barrage of arrows at the helicopter.

FUNAI expert José Carlos Meirelles, who has worked with and studied Brazil’s indigenous tribes for more than 40 years, said the same tribe kept moving locations. “These groups change locations every four years or so,” said Mr Meirelles, speaking to National Geographic. “They move around. But it’s the same group.”

Earlier this year, extraordinary new photos emerged of a Yanomami indigenous tribe in the Brazilian Amazon close to the Venezuelan border. Mr Meirelles said the tribe, which includes around 300 people, appeared healthy. He said the plots of corn, manioc and bananas he saw could feed up to 100 people.

“It was surprisingly powerful and emotional,” said Mr Stuckert. “The experience touched me deeply as a unique event.

“We live in an age when men have been to the moon. Yet here in Brazil there are people who continue to live as humankind has for tens of thousands of years.”

The state of Acre, home to this tribe, imposes strict anti-logging laws. The jungle across the border in Peru, however, is reportedly rife with illegal logging, gold prospectors and drug traffickers.

Deforestation in the Brazilian rainforest increased massively in 2014 when it rose by 467 per cent.

Forest covers approximately 31 per cent of the planet, according to the World Wildlife Fund, and up to 58,000 sq miles of forest is lost each year. The WWF says this is equivalent to around 48 football fields

every minute.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

News

Home news in brief

Carrie Fisher at a Star Wars premier in Leicester Square, London, 2015 (Reuters)

Stars Wars actress remains in intensive care The Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher, 60, remained in intensive in a Los Angeles hospital last night after suffering a major heart attack on Friday afternoon. Fisher, who played Princess Leia in the original 1977 film, had the heart attack during a flight from London to Los Angeles. Her brother Todd Fisher said yesterday: "We have to wait and be patient. We have so little information ourselves."

Tributes and well-wishes poured in - Harrison Ford, who played Han Solo opposite Fisher, in a statement said: "I'm shocked and saddened to hear the news about my dear friend. Our thoughts are with Carrie, her family and friends." The actress' former co-star Peter Mayhew, who played "Star Wars" character Chewbacca, called her "everyone's favorite princess right now."

Record number of urgent operations cancelled last month The number of urgent operations cancelled by the NHS hit record numbers in November. Figures from

NHS England show 446 urgent operations were cancelled during the month, almost double the level from the same period last year. The November figures also represented a jump from the previous month where 357 urgent operations were called off.

Former health minister Norman Lamb blamed the Government for the cancellations and said it demonstrates the lack of funding being provided for the NHS and social care. “Now patients are paying the price for the government’s short-sightedness, with record levels of cancelled operations and hospitals being stretched to breaking point,” Mr Lamb told the Guardian.

Zara and Mike Tindall lose their baby Zara and Mike Tindall have lost their baby, a spokesperson for the couple has said. Zara, who is the Queen’s granddaughter and the daughter of Princess Anne and Mark Phillips, announced she and her husband, the former England rugby player Mike, were expecting their second child at the end of November.

In a statement released today, a spokesperson for the couple said: “Very sadly, Zara and Mike Tindall have lost their baby. At this difficult time, we ask that everyone respects their privacy.”

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

World

Israel takes tough stance against UN resolution on West Bank settlements The Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has recalled Israel’s ambassadors to New Zealand and Senegal, while also suspending aid to the West African country

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a statement earlier this year in front of a new Jewish settlement in an area of the West Bank (Reuters)

BETHAN MCKERNAN IN BEIRUT

Israel has taken diplomatic action against the countries that co-sponsored a UN resolution condemning settlement building in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

The 15-member Security Council voted 14 - 0 on the proposed measure on Friday, with US ambassador Samantha Power raising her hand as the lone abstention – a symbolic break with US policy in the past, which has been to veto similar resolutions.

The resolution was put forward by New Zealand, Senegal, Malaysia and Venezuela, taking place just a day after Egypt withdrew it following significant pressure from both Israel and President-elect Donald Trump.

It was met by applause in the chamber, but furious reaction from Israel. An official speaking on condition of anonymity told the Associated Press that President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry had effectively "abandoned" the country by allowing the resolution to pass.

The UN Security Council votes on a resolution on Friday demanding that Israel halt its settlement activities in Palestinian territory (AFP)

The Obama administration's decision not to shield Israel from the UN's vote calling Israeli expansion a "flagrant violation of international law" has been widely interpreted as a rebuke to Israel's government, despite the fact the US continues to send more than $3bn (ÂŁ2.4bn) in military aid to the country each year. Mr Obama's parting shot of an abstention was the result of "an absence of a meaningful peace process", the White House said.

Relations between the US and Israel under Mr Obama's tenure have become somewhat strained, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made no secret of the fact that he is glad his counterpart is leaving office.

Incoming US President Donald Trump is more likely to be friendlier towards the country, tweeting after the vote, "As to the UN, things will be different after Jan 20th" – when Mr Trump takes office.

The new resolution demands that Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem”, pointing out that the international community views any Israeli construction over the agreed 1967 Green Line as illegal.

While it will not have any practical impact, the resolution is a “significant step” in reconfirming the UN’s hopes for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, outgoing Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Friday.

The vote was welcomed by Palestinian representatives. A spokesperson from Palestinan Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' office called it a "big blow to Israeli policy, a unanimous international condemnation of settlements, and a strong support for the two-state solution".

Settlement building – which has accelerated year-on-year under current right-wing Prime Minister Netanyahu – is viewed as one of the major stumbling blocks to a lasting peace deal.

Israel’s envoy to the UN, Danny Damon, called the vote “shameful” and a “victory for terror". Israel has said it will not abide by the measures set out in the document.

In Jerusalem, Mr Netanyahu immediately recalled Israel’s ambassadors to New Zealand and Senegal, who were ordered to return for consultations. All current aid to Senegal was to be suspended, the prime minister’s office said, and an upcoming visit from Senegal’s Foreign Minister Mankeur Ndiaye cancelled.

Israel does not have diplomatic relations with either Malaysia or Venezuela.

Defending New Zealand’s vote, the country’s Foreign Minister Murray McCully yesterday said: “We have been very open about our view that the [UN Security Council] should be doing more to support the Middle East peace process and the position we adopted today is totally in line with our long established policy on the Palestinian question.

“The vote… should not come as a surprise to anyone and we look forward to continuing to engage constructively with all parties on this issue.”

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

World

Rebel shelling kills three in Aleppo as air strikes on Idlib province resume

Unidentified armed men in the Al-Sukari and Ansari district in Aleppo on Thursday (EPA)

BETHAN MCKERNAN IN BEIRUT

An explosion which rocked an east Aleppo neighbourhood early on Saturday killed at least three people, state media said. A correspondent for Lebanon's Hezbollah-run television station Al-Manar was reporting live from the area when the blast sounded in the background, sending a huge cloud of dust into the air. The channel later reported the explosion was caused by a device left inside a school by rebels.

The Syrian army is still sweeping the area for bombs and booby traps, a spokesperson said. Rebel artillery fire on al-Hamdaniya neighbourhood on Friday also killed at least three people. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the figure at six, including two children.

The Syrian government has been broadcasting footage of tourists visiting the city’s ancient citadel and celebrating Christmas, keen to show that Aleppo is safe and united again despite the threat of continued rebel shelling.

Some residents who left homes in the eastern half of the city when fighting broke out four years ago have managed to return, state media said.

Meanwhile, activists loyal to the opposition said this week that at least six civilians have been executed by Shia militias, as happened during the regime’s final push to retake the city, although no such incident has been verified by other sources.

The last rebels and civilians who wanted to leave Aleppo were taken to neighbouring rebel-held Idlib province on Thursday after a tense eight-day long process UN spokesperson Farqan Haq described as “traumatic”.

Numbers are difficult to verify, but it is thought that no more than a few hundred people chose to remain in east Aleppo before the government’s forces moved in. It is not clear how many are fighters and how many are civilians.

Idlib, where more than 35,000 people have been moved, has also seen renewed violence, as air strikes on the area resumed yesterday. Casualties have not yet been reported.

The rural, mostly rebel-held province has been hit nearly as brutally as Aleppo by both Syrian and Russian air strikes in recent months. The UN’s Special Envoy to Syria, Staffan di Mistura, warned this week that it could become “the next Aleppo”, with most observers expecting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to refocus his attention on the area now Aleppo has fallen.

The rebel pullout from the city, which was completed on Thursday, marks President Assad's greatest victory since the conflict began in 2011.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

World

Christians in Mosul-area town liberated from Isis celebrate Christmas

The church in Bartella was defaced by Isis militants, but worshippers have been able to return (REUTERS/Ammar Awad)

MATT BROOMFIELD Christians in a recently-liberated town near the Isis stronghold of Mosul have celebrated Christmas for the first time since 2013. Hundreds of Iraqi worshippers still living in exile travelled to the main church in Bartella, an Assyrian Christian town just 13 miles east of Mosul, yesterday.

"It is a mix of sadness and happiness," Bishop Mussa Shemani told Reuters. "We are sad to see what has been done to our holiest places by our own countrymen, but at the same time we are happy to celebrate the first mass after two years."

A new cross has been raised up over the Mar Shimoni church, which was desecrated by Isis militants during the occupation of the town. Religious symbols and statues of saints were defaced or destroyed.

The congregants bore candles as they entered the church, where they sung hymns, prayed and heard a sermon from Bishop Shemani.

Housewife Shurook Taqfiq said: "This is the best day of my life. Sometimes I thought it would never come."

Iraqi soldiers guarded the convoy of worshippers, as the church is still in a warzone (Reuters) But it will be some time before Ms Taqfiq can return to her home.

The town was over-run by Isis as they surged northward over the Syrian border in 2016. Non-Sunni Muslims in Isis territory are told they must convert, pay a heavy fine or face execution, and so the population of the Christian town fled to the autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq.

Though the town was seized by the Western-backed coalition of Iraqi government forces, militias and Kurdish peshmerga forces in the first days of the ongoing operation to retake Mosul, it remains deserted.

Bartella is still in a war-zone, and armed guards surrounded the church. Most of the surrounding houses have been destroyed, and the worshippers arrived in a convoy of buses under heavy guard. Many more were unable to make the trip.

In his sermon, Bishop Shemani said: "This is a dark cloud over Iraq. But we will stay here no matter what happens. God is with us."

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

World

Boko Haram ‘crushed’ by Nigerian army in final forest stronghold

A soldier walks past a checkpoint in the Boko Haram stronghold of Borno State, Nigeria (Reuters/Afolabi Sotunde )

MATT BROOMFIELD Boko Haram militants have been driven from their final stronghold in the forests of northern Nigeria, as the Isis-linked Islamist group were "crushed" by the country's army.

The insurgency once controlled an area of north-eastern Nigeria the size of Belgium, but had been driven into their “Camp Zero” stronghold in the depths of the vast Sambisa forest.

Nigerian soldiers have made significant gains in the former colonial game reserve across recent weeks, and Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari said in a statement they had been forced out entirely on Friday.

"I am delighted at and most proud of the gallant troops of the Nigerian Army," he said.

"I want to use this opportunity to commend the determination, courage and resilience of the troops of Operation Lafiya Dole at finally entering and crushing the remnants of the Boko Haram insurgents at Camp Zero."

Though severely weakened, the Islamist group continues to launch suicide attacks across the state of Borno and in neighbouring Niger and Chad. They have killed 15,000 people and driven more than two million from their homes across seven years of armed struggle.

Since 2015, they have styled themselves as the "Islamic State West Africa Province", while their unofficial name of Boko Haram is translated as "Western education is sacrilegious".

Their stated aim is to rid Africa's largest country of Western influence and establish a state run on principles of Sharia law, and they also oppose the concentration of wealth in the hands of Nigeria's political elite.

But the Nigerian military has previously made similar announcements, claiming in 2015 that all their camps had been wiped out. Military commanders warned that members of the group were likely to have fled into the surrounding forest.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

World

‘Major baby-smuggling ring’ uncovered in India

A student holds a doll aloft during a protest in Kolkata this month after 18 people were arrested for child smuggling (Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP/Getty)

PETER WALKER Police in India claim to have cracked a major baby smuggling ring after arresting six people linked to the kidnapping racket.

Five women and a man in Bombay have been detained on suspicion of abducting babies and selling them on to childless couples.

The country’s National Crime Records Bureau registered 82,999 cases of kidnapping and abductions last year and 3,490 cases of child trafficking.

“We have formed three teams to find more suspects who are involved in the network and are trying our best to rescue other babies who were sold by them,” said Bombay Zone 6 Deputy Police Commissioner Shahaji Umap.

Police reportedly cottoned on to the six alleged gang members after a boy was reported kidnapped from his Bombay home. The child was tracked down earlier this month and found with a gang member in Goa. She reportedly confessed that the gang kidnapped babies and presented them as their own to sell to customers for up to 300,000 rupees (£3,600).Senior police inspector Naresh Kasale said they sold five babies over the past year using this method.

Detectives also claimed to have arrested 18 people after rescuing 10 babies from an old age home, that had sold at least 50 infants, in relation to a human trafficking racket in Kolkata earlier this year.

India has a notoriously bad track record over human trafficking. The number of kidnappings and abductions last year was a 263.5 per cent increase on 2005 levels.

The Independent has previously told how an Indian girl was rescued from kidnap thanks to a tweet and how child victims of the Nepal earthquake were being sold to factories.

The alleged Bombay baby-selling ring allegedly conned people in the street, convincing them to part with their children in exchange for big money.

“The illegal adoptions in different states is helping this racket enjoy the money after selling the babies,” said DCP Umap, speaking to Indian publication Mid-Day.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

World

World news in brief

A large plume of ash rises from the crater of the Colima volcano yesterday (AP)

Mexico’s volcano Colima erupts The Colima volcano in Mexico erupted again yesterday, spewing a massive plume of ash and vapor 2,500 metres (8,000 feet) into the air. Colima, located 75 miles to the southern part of Guadalajara, is one of Mexico's most active volcanoes and has been spitting ash since another huge eruption in September. In October hundreds of people living at the foot of the mointain in La Yerbabuena and La Becerrera were evacuated.

Bus plunges off cliff killing 14 in Malaysia An interstate bus in Malaysia carrying passengers from Singapore and Myanmar careered off a highway early Saturday, killing 14 people and injuring 16 others, officials said. The bus, heading from southern Johor state to the capital Kuala Lumpur, went off the road in the wet before rolling over and ending up in a deep ditch, said Mohammad Yusof Mohammad Gunnos, deputy director of the fire and rescue department.

The incident happened in the early hours in Johor state. Details of those killed were not immediately known, he said, adding that the injured were being treated in the Muar district public hospital. "This preChristmas tragedy is so far the most horrific accident in Johor state for 2016," he told AFP.

French-Swiss aid worker kidnapped in Mali town of Gao A female French-Swiss aid worker was kidnapped in the city of Gao in northern Mali yesterday afternoon, a spokesman for the Ministry of Security said. It was not clear who was responsible for the act, or why the aid worker was taken, said Commandant Baba Cissa. The desert nation has been beset by attacks from resurgent Islamist groups like al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) this year, especially in the north.

A French diplomatic source told Reuters that Paris was aware of reports of a kidnapping on Saturday and was trying to verify the information. A local radio station in Gao said the aid worker was affiliated with Aide Gao, a small nonprofit that helps children suffering from malnutrition. She was taken by a group of men who drove off in a Toyota pickup truck, the radio station said. Aide Gao was not available for comment on Saturday evening. Reuters

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Voices

Obama’s flaws have played their part in Trump’s rise

Despite Obamacare and getting the US economy back on track, the President’s tenure has been a disaster for his party’s powerbase (Reuters)

RUPERT CORNWELL Barack Obama is enjoying his last Christmas holiday in Hawaii – his last warm weather as President (Washington around Inauguration Day is usually frigid), not to mention the last of 330-odd rounds of golf since he entered the Oval Office. And amid the slower pace, perhaps, a chance to ponder his place in history. One thing may be safely said. That place won’t be the one some dreamed of during Obama’s magical emergence onto the national stage. Today, it’s hard to remember the impact of an unknown state

senator from Illinois when he delivered an electrifying speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

Four years later he was elected the most powerful man in the world. Millions packed the National Mall in Washington when he was sworn in, and millions more shared a belief that the US had miraculously moved to a post-racial era, that the world was suddenly a far better place. Nor was that wider world immune to the euphoria, as a group of normally sober-minded Scandinavians awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize after barely nine months on the job, on the basis of a couple of eloquent and idealistic speeches. But then again, cast your mind back when he took power, in January 2009.

The global economy was in tatters, battered by the worst recession and banking crisis since the 1930s. In that respect at least it’s been job well done. Thanks in part to the record $800bn stimulus package passed

by Congress early in his administration, the US economy has staged the best recovery of any advanced industrial economy.

By past standards, growth has been nothing to write home about. But unemployment is low, stock prices have soared, and at last real earnings are starting to rise for less well-off Americans. On matters of Wall Street reform and banking overhaul, Obama may have had to accept half a loaf, but the US banking system is far stronger now than when he found it. On Obama and the economy, history will look kindly. So, probably, will it on his broader domestic legacy as well.

The 44th president’s misfortune has been to confront the most partisan dysfunctional climate in Washington in memory; Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, declared that his goal was to make sure Obama failed, and that approach continued until the end, with the Senate’s refusal to even consider Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, in defiance of every constitutional norm.

That’s why polls show that Obamacare, the largest expansion of US health care since Medicare yet passed through Congress without a single Republican vote, is seen by Americans as both his greatest success and his greatest failure. But history will not lightly dismiss an initiative that gave 30 million Americans coverage for the first time.

Nor may it be the instant victim of the Trump era that its Republican foes promise. Yes, they can repeal it quickly. But you don’t take away a prized welfare benefit without some form of replacement. The Republicans don’t have one, and it may be years before they do. Obamacare may have a long afterlife.

Nor will Obama’s conduct in office be quickly forgotten. He was a class act. Not a single scandal of note has besmirched his eight years in the White House. He has worn the presidency with unceasing grace and good manners. He never publicly lost his cool, and privately expressed displeasure less through volcanic displays of temper than icy disdain. With Obama everything was to be approached rationally – too rationally, his critics would say, but at least with thoughtfulness and a sense of proportion. That too will weigh in history’s judgement.

Where the rational approach may have let him down was foreign and national security policy. Though he has failed to shut down Guantanamo Bay, that enduring blot on America’s name, he has banished torture and kept a reasonable balance between the requirements of domestic security and a citizen’s right to privacy.

But on the international stage, many of his policies are big gambles that may not pay off. History, it is true, is unlikely to argue with the long overdue opening to Cuba, nor with his commitment of the US to fight climate change – although whether that strategy survives the expected Trump onslaught is another matter.

But the Iran nuclear deal, his biggest claim to foreign policy triumph, is a gamble. For the moment, it is halting Tehran’s progress towards nuclear weapons, but for how long? An even bigger gamble is keeping

the US out of the Middle East’s eternal wars. That is what the public wants – but now at the price of Aleppo, a calamity that has laid bare America’s inability to stop a slaughter, and laid bare that Russia, not the US, is now the dominant external power in the Middle East. Syria will haunt Obama until he dies.

The counterweight has been the so-called pivot to Asia, a region most noteworthy right now for Beijing’s military build-up in the South China Sea. The twin strategies of withdrawal from the Middle East and increased focus on Asia may work. If not, they will only reinforce the impression of Obama as a soft touch, whose passivity helped enable Putin’s Russia, sapped the trust of allies and emboldened foes.

But have eight years validated something that can be called Obama-ism? Certainly not one that Democrats at home will kindly remember. For his own party this president has been a disaster. Over his two terms, it has surrendered control of the Senate and House in Washington, and more than a dozen governor’s mansions and state legislatures across the land, over 1,000 seats in all. Worst of all, as Trump’s victory proved, it has lost the support of working white people, its bulwark since the days of FDR and the New Deal. For this, Obama must bear part of the blame.

So where will he stand in the presidential pantheon? Rankings shift and history’s verdict tends to improve with time. Obama on balance was a medium to good president. The first black president was not the great racial healer some expected at the outset. But he was a wonderful advertisement for his country nonetheless. He was no kneejerk believer in American exceptionalism. Rather he believed in rationalism and common sense. His greatest mistake perhaps was to assume that others did as well. As failings go, there are many greater.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Voices

Becoming a political great takes a little bit of time – don’t write May off yet

Royal subjects: the Queen with a collection of her PMs in 2002

JOHN RENTOUL Where are the greats of yesteryear? It is a familiar complaint. It was heard last week at the Peter Mandelson Memorial Dim Sum Supper, when my fellow diners surveyed the front ranks of all the main parties and found them wanting in credible leadership candidates as an alternative to the leader they have.

If Theresa May should announce that she is off to be head of development and community relations for a nuclear processing plant, as Jamie Reed, the Labour MP, did on Wednesday, who would take her place?

Philip Hammond, probably, if there were an immediate vacancy. The Cabinet would nominate him as

prime minister while a leadership election took place.

That election would probably be between him and a Brexiteer, either Boris Johnson or David Davis. Since the last leadership election, which didn’t even get to the final run-off stage, Johnson’s share price has drifted, while Davis’s has risen. Hard to say who would make the run-off, in which all party members vote, and who would win.

But the point being made by the dim sum prognosticators was that this was a thin field, and that the dearth of talent beyond the top three was a national embarrassment. As we scanned the other 19 members of the Cabinet, it was hard to identify possible prime ministers among them. Amber Rudd, maybe.

Even if we expanded what headhunters call our executive search to the ranks of non-cabinet ministers, and without wanting to name names that might stoke envy and division, there are few that seem to be cut out for the highest office.

The Labour side is no better. One of the causes of Jeremy Corbyn was the weakness of the field arrayed against him. Again, one does not want to cause trouble by imagining what would happen if Corbyn decided to become head of development and community relations for a wind farm, but it is not obvious that there is anyone with the charisma to bridge the gap between the idealism of the new members and the pragmatism of the ones who understand politics. As for the Scottish National Party, you do not have to support independence to recognise that Nicola Sturgeon is an exceptional leader, and let us leave Ukip and the Lib Dems to one side for the moment.

The question, though, is whether it was ever thus, or whether there has been a real decline in the quality of people going into politics since the golden age, whenever that was. It is a question prompted in part by Kenneth Clarke, who laments in his memoir, Kind of Blue, and in his talks to promote it, the passing of a politics run by people with hinterlands who understood cabinet government.

The trouble with hinterlands, which are generally measured in units of Denis Healey, Labour Chancellor and then deputy leader in the 1970s and 1980s, is that they tend to be attached to people who never quite made it to the top. Healey, who had been a captain on the beaches of Anzio in the Second World War, knew his literature and could write, but he was abrasive in politics and his son says, disloyally, that he would have made a terrible prime minister.

Another more recent example: William Waldegrave. He was a clever and diffident cabinet minister under Thatcher and Major, who last year published a brilliant memoir, highly learned and beautifully written, about his demented ambition to be prime minister and how it was frustrated by the widely forgotten inquiry into the sale of arms to Iraq in 1996.

Today’s conspicuously hinterlanded politician is the Foreign Secretary. The other day, when he was asked if he would take up Tony Blair’s offer to help with Brexit talks, he said: “Non tali auxilio, nec defensoribus istis.” Latin for “You must be joking”.

Perhaps that means he, too, will never make it to the top job. But you cannot tell. He would probably be prime minister now if his friend Michael Gove had not suffered from a bout of demented ambition himself.

One of the advantages of Tim Shipman’s excellent account of the referendum campaign and the Tory leadership turmoil that followed, All Out War, is that we have an instant history of great events and the parts played in them by people who are, whatever we think of them, of historic stature.

So I don’t hold with golden-ageism. Just as I take with a pinch of salt Kenneth Clarke’s portrayal of Thatcher as the model of collegiate cabinet government. I remember thinking when Tony Blair started out, Bambi-like, in his campaign for the Labour leadership, how fragile he and the operation around him seemed. It looked as if it could all collapse at any moment and Michael Heseltine would be prime minister for ages.

That is why I am sceptical about a lot of the gossip about Theresa May: how unsuited to prime ministerial office she and her close advisers are. A lot of it is a proxy for disagreement. Remainers don’t agree with leaving the EU and so they think anyone who wants to leave the EU (especially if they didn’t, on balance, before) is hopelessly disorganised and hasn’t got a plan.

And that is why we shouldn’t despair about the quality of recent intakes of MPs. Maybe what has changed is that politics is faster now, so it may seem harder to identify talent, partly because that process has to happen more quickly too. It may look as if political talent is thin on the ground. But perhaps it is just that we haven’t had time to identify the greatness yet.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Voices

The gulf between the haves and the have-nots is now greater than ever before

The much-vaunted stability and wealth of the country matters little to Brexit voters (Getty)

ROSIE MILLARD

This Christmas Eve, I was on Oxford Street joining in as the nation spent an estimated billion pounds in the closing hours of the festive dash which, to the delight of shopkeepers, took place on a Saturday this year. £1bn. In one day. I have to say, everyone looked pretty pleased about it in John Lewis. No evidence of a recession here; the place was packed.

And yet 2016 will be the year of the great divide. Two divides, actually. First, there was divide between the living and the dead, whose roll call, certainly of the famous and celebrated was monumental to say the least. Right to the bitter end, with even the seemingly eternal Rick Parfitt joining the great Top of the Pops line-up in the sky. But it was also the year when the chasm between the haves and the have-nots was made crystal clear, via polling booths across the Western world. A barrister I met at a party this Christmas put it in plain language to me. “Half the country is existing on an extreme low-wage economy. To have this in Britain, in 2016 is something nobody forecast, wanted or expected. It is unsustainable.”

His two eldest children, he told me, were both City lawyers; unlike him, their career choices had been made with a clear-eyed forecast on their financial futures. Neither of them particularly wanted such careers. They were simply being realistic. “My children – they look around them and they want what I have,” he told me. “They want their own houses. In London. They want to send their children to private school. They want to go on nice holidays in the summer, and ski holidays every Christmas. And they have worked out how much they will have to earn in order to afford all of that, and what sort of job delivers it. I never thought about salary when I chose my career.” He shrugged. 2016 marked the death of Bowie, Victoria Wood and Prince, but it also marked the death of ambition, at least old-style ambition, by which I mean a vision of a future untrammelled by pecuniary concerns.

Another night, another party. Another person trying to summarise this complicated and confusing year to me over a glass of prosecco. “Imagine you live in the basement of a house. And the basement is damp, and leaks, and not only that, but it leaks sewage onto you, and there is rubbish everywhere. You are obliged to live there, and so you do. Until the chance comes when you can burn it down. So you do. You burn down your house. That’s Brexit. That’s what happened this summer.”

It wasn’t specifically about Europe or the single market, or even immigration. 2016 happened largely because people in one half of the country are fed up with earning a pittance and looking the other way while the other half of the country prance around in ski suits and get giant bonuses. The much-vaunted stability and wealth of the country doesn’t matter to them because their lives are unstable and they are skint. The same thing has happened in the States.

What has to happen? End the low-wage economy, for starters. The tax loopholes and hideouts for the wealthy; the zero hours contracts; the weasel words of employers such as Michel Roux, who keep their staff on illegally low wages. Wishing for a fairer world isn’t just a line from Miss World. It’s what has to happen in order to stop one’s house being burned down.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Voices / Letters

The collapse of the European Union is not unthinkable The European tour of the Berlin truck attack suspect shows how Europe has lost its reason. While Europe's leaders, civil rights activists and liberals all worry about protecting our civil liberties and being politically correct, Europe faces a permanent threat. In this case the suspect arrived from Tunisia, not a country at war, allowed to stay in Italy, went to Germany, and then despite being on security services and police radar instead of being deported immediately was allowed to carry out an attack in Berlin and then travel freely through France and back to Italy. Madness!

In the meantime thousands are dying in the Mediterranean due to misguided immigration policies which are encouraging hundreds of thousands of people from other continents as well as the Balkan states to enter Western Europe without papers or legal rights expecting a better life and granted nationality and passports. We even collect them and bring them ashore. No other nations of the world do this. And we wonder why right-wing parties are gaining ground. 2017 could see the collapse of the EU. Peter Fieldman Paris

Donald Trump is causing chaos already: what will happen after he has been sworn in?

When Donald Trump was first elected many thought that due to his bellicose attitude, complete lack of political experience and total ignorance of diplomatic nuances there was, amongst many other previously unthinkable possibilities, a very real prospect of him causing World War III during his term of office. It now appears that he might very well succeed in that even before he is actually in the White House.

Harvey Sanders Paddington, Australia

The Queen’s travel plans were low risk I cannot decide whether the letter from John Eoin Douglas of Edinburgh ("The Queen is right, stay at home if you have a cold") is an attempt at satire, or not. The likelihood of her infecting fellow travellers to Kings Lynn seems remote unless, of course, she and her husband were travelling in a normal train with other travellers. I think that was unlikely and that either a section of the Royal Train or a secure carriage would have formed part of the original travel plans. Having a heavy cold, she was sensible to take a day to recover. However, it would appear that there were no trains to Kings Lynn on Thursday, so they had to travel to Sandringham by helicopter instead! And what did that cost? I assume that Mr Douglas regards it as "money well spent". I don’t.

Richard Fagence Windsor

Don’t forget those on state pensions I don't know how old Andrew Grice is but would be interested to know how he thinks he would survive on my state pension of £140 a week; this is my reward for working and paying taxes for 43 years. The UK state pension is already among the lowest in Europe as Andrew Grice undoubtedly knows and to propose reducing it is inhuman. The social care crisis could be easily and painlessly averted by redirecting some of the billions of pounds sent to countries that do not want it and where it currently languishes unused in their bank accounts. When are people like Andrew Grice going to get over their guilt about the UK's colonial past and start putting the British taxpayers first?

L Bignell Surrey

A suitable voice for Farage Regarding the voicing of Nigel Farage when on TV, I would suggest either Kermit the Frog or even Miss Piggy would be appropriate.

David Neale Birmingham

Thank you, Mark Steel, for your article regarding the disgusting behaviour of Nigel Farage and his supporters.

Helen Maclenan Address supplied

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Sport / Football

Allardyce: Losing dream job with England was one of my ‘darkest moments’

Sam Allardyce has now returned to football, taking charge of Crystal Palace (Getty)

SPORTS STAFF Sam Allardyce has admitted losing the England job was one of the “darkest moments” of his career.

Allardyce was sacked just 67 days into the role after making ill-advised comments while in conversation with undercover reporters in a newspaper sting.

The 62-year-old is now back in management three months later after taking over at Crystal Palace,

agreeing a two-and-a-half-year deal on Friday night.

Allardyce had always described the England manager role as his dream job and, in an interview with Sky Sports, he has described how low he felt in the aftermath of his dismissal.

“The first four weeks was something that was one of the darkest moments in my career, certainly the early reaction which was a bit hysterical to say the least, looking back on it,” he said.

“I'm talking about me and my wife and my family, we all had to deal with that problem - my children, my grandchildren at school.

“But eventually time passes by, you overcome those adversities and you move on. Moving on for me is taking this job.”

The first four weeks was something that was one of the darkest moments in my career, certainly the early reaction which was a bit hysterical to say the least, looking back on it.

Allardyce has replaced Alan Pardew at Selhurst Park and been handed the task of keeping Palace in the Premier League.

The former Bolton, Blackburn, Newcastle and West Ham chief took his first training session on Saturday morning, ahead of his first match at Watford on Boxing Day. The Eagles are currently one point above the relegation having won just once in their last 11 matches.

The situation is nothing new to Allardyce, however. When he took over at Sunderland last October they were 19th with just three points from their first eight games of the season.

“You've got to do it, it's part of the quick process to try to turn around a difficult situation at the moment,” he added. “It's not as difficult as the position Sunderland were in, I don't think.”

Allardyce masterminded a survival escape at Sunderland last season (Getty)

Allardyce has never been relegated while at the helm of a Premier League club, and his achievement of keeping Sunderland up last term was followed by his appointment as England boss in July.

Allardyce signed an initial two-year contract to replace Roy Hodgson, who departed in the wake of the disastrous Euro 2016 campaign.

He said at the time: "I am extremely honoured to be appointed England manager especially as it is no secret that this is the role I have always wanted."

But Allardyce presided over just one match, in Slovakia on September 4, as an Adam Lallana goal deep into injury-time secured a 1-0 victory in the opening World Cup qualifier.

After he was caught up in an investigation by the Daily Telegraph, Allardyce was summoned to Wembley to meet with Football Association chiefs and left the role on September 27.

Gareth Southgate took over as interim England manager for four matches and was then appointed as Allardyce's successor on November 30 when he signed a four-year contract.

PA

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Sport / Premier League

Mourinho confident Ibrahimovic will not be lured

by China

Mourinho believes Ibrahimovic will see out his career at Old Trafford (Getty)

SPORTS STAFF Jose Mourinho has indicated the in-form Zlatan Ibrahimovic will see out his career with Manchester United rather than embark on a swansong in America or China.

The 35-year-old Swede is United's top scorer having netted 16 times in 25 games, including 10 in his past nine, and in November Mourinho stated he intended to exercise the second-year option on the contract Ibrahimovic penned in the summer.

His immediate future may well be at Old Trafford and, beyond that, Mourinho does not expect the welltravelled striker to bow out with a lucrative stint in Major League Soccer or the Chinese Super League.

“I'm really happy for him,” Mourinho said of Ibrahimovic. “Maybe some people could think (he was) a top scorer but not any more at 35 years old, not any more because the Premier League is not Ligue 1. But for him, 35 is the same as 25, Ligue 1 is the same as the Premier League.

“He scores goals, he plays well and I'm really happy for him because he will end his career on a high, which is amazing. He's not ending his career in America or in China, he's ending his career at the top of the top.

“I'm really pleased with him. His record is good and he can improve. With no penalties, which is amazing too because normally the other guys that are top scorers around the world, they score a lot of penalties. He has had one penalty in 17 Premier League matches so I couldn't be happier.”

While Ibrahimovic quickly settled in his new surroundings, the process for fellow summer arrival Mourinho has not seemed to be as serene.

For him, 35 is the same as 25, Ligue 1 is the same as the Premier League.

United's indifferent form, a succession of Football Association charges and living in a Manchester hotel had all presented challenges for the Portuguese in his new job.

One of the issues had not been directly replacing Sir Alex Ferguson, though, a burden that seemed to weigh heavily on David Moyes, who returns to Old Trafford on Boxing Day with current club Sunderland.

While Moyes never seemed to become accustomed to life as a United boss, Mourinho, who has guided United on a 10-game unbeaten run, insists he has been comfortable embracing the task of taking charge of one of the world's biggest football teams.

“For me, it was easy - it's a difficult job but easy to feel at home, easy to feel good in the club, easy to feel that the club wants to progress, the people want to be happy again,” he added.

“I felt good immediately so five, six months here, but really feeling at home; for me it was quite easy.

“Obviously expectations are high, results...up and down and we are in a position that is not the position where we want to be. But in terms of passion for my work, passion for my new club, I'm feeling really happy here, yes.”

PA

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Sport / Football

Nine questions that will be answered next year

Chelsea have been in irresistible form since September (Getty)

JACK PITT-BROOKE

Can anyone catch Chelsea?

Chelsea are already running away with the Premier League title and it will take a dramatic collapse to stop them. They do not have any draining two-legged Champions League ties to distract them, and the attendant help of extra time to stay fresh and focused.

Leicester showed last year, and Liverpool nearly did in 2014, how important that is over a title-chase. Only an injury crisis, costing them Diego Costa and Eden Hazard, could stop them now.

Who will finish stronger: Mourinho or Guardiola?

Both Mourinho and Guardiola have been caught off guard by Antonio Conte’s Chelsea this season, but both will be desperate to put up a fight and find some momentum for next year’s title push.

Mourinho needs new defenders and hopes that he can drill his team until they are as efficient as he needs them to be.

Guardiola has a bigger job, learning about the Premier League, while teaching his players about his complex concepts. But his City team have a higher potential level, one likelier to reach Chelsea’s in 2017.

If only Guardiola can get them there.

Will Ancelotti lose another league title?

Carlo Ancelotti is a great cup manager but not a great league manager. That is why he has only won three titles in 20 years of the top of the game. His PSG team lost a title to Montepellier, his Real Madrid side to Atletico Madrid, his sides are good but rarely relentless. So could this be the year for a giant-killing in the Bundesliga?

If his Bayern Munich side cannot summon the intensity they had under Pep Guardiola, RB Leipzig could pick them off in the second half of the season, especially if they are distracted by the Champions League.

Will Wayne Rooney stay at Manchester United?

Rooney has been in and out of Mourinho's side this season (Getty)

Rooney still has another 18 months on his current Manchester United deal, but as he slips in and out of Jose Mourinho’s side, it feels less plausible that he will be offered the extension he wants.

There are open offers for him from China and from Major League Soccer, but it would still be a very brave

United manager and chief executive who said goodbye to the man who will surely by then be their topgoalscorer as well as captain and most recognised name. Even if it is a case of managing his decline and departure, that is not an easy thing to do.

Will better players to go play in China?

When the transfer window re-opens Oscar and Carlos Tevez will go to the Chinese Super League, a better calibre of player than any who has gone before. The genius of the CSL has been to realise that even top players start to think about money alone far sooner than Major League Soccer thought they did.

That is why players like Alexis Sanchez, still in his 20s, is such an important target now. If he goes then the rug could be pulled from underneath the European game quicker than anyone expected.

Will Arsène Wenger stay at Arsenal?

There is a two-year contract extension on the table for Arsène Wenger, but only he knows if he will sign it or when he will decide. He would dearly love to go out in victory, as Sir Alex Ferguson did in 2013, but in reality that is looking decreasingly likely as his team stumbles. But what sort of a second half of the season would force him not to sign?

Anything that looks like progress will surely be pounced on as a reason to sign until 2019. But what if Arsenal come fourth, or fifth, and Wenger has to struggle with the sad fact that this team is not improving but simply treading water? It would be the hardest decision of his career.

Will an English team reach the Champions League final?

Despite a difficult knock-out stage draw, Arsenal have a chance to go far in Europe this year (Getty)

No English team has reached the Champions League final since Chelsea’s smash-and-grab job in Munich

in 2012. This year the final is in Cardiff, and none of Europe’s big three are exactly looking formidable. So Arsenal and Manchester City, if not Leicester, should feel that if they can get past their tricky last-16 ties, they could be there at the Millennium Stadium in June.

But how much will they want to be? The predictability of the Champions League has made it a far less appealing competition than the Premier League, and if English sides continue to struggle, it could drift further out of our consciousness.

Will Russia host the Confederations Cup smoothly?

As the security fears over the 2018 World Cup grow by the day, attention will turn to the Confederations Cup played in four Russian cities, including Moscow and St Petersburg, in June.

The readiness of the stadiums and the professionalism of the security will be the two biggest questions, even if no preparation can adequately prepare the country for the scale of a 32-team World Cup that they will host the following summer. But if anything goes wrong then there will be a year of stories about whether teams can go with anything like enough guarantees on security.

Will there be a Leicester or Chelsea next season?

This season, like last one, looks to have been seized by a team who can focus only on the Premier League, with no European distraction. Next season, though, Chelsea will be back in the Champions League and will lose that advantage.

The question, then, is which teams will have no European football at all next year, and whether they can take advantage of that to push for the 2017-18 title. Could it be Tottenham? Manchester United? Arsenal?

Liverpool? Not everyone can qualify for Europe, and there could be a blessing there for the best side who does not.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Sport / Premier League

10 young talents to look out for in 2017

Marcus Edwards made his Tottenham first-team debut in September (Getty)

JACK PITT-BROOKE

Olufela Olomola, Southampton, 19 Olomola grew up at the Arsenal academy but did not see a pathway into the first team there and decided in 2014 to leave. He had trials at Newcastle United and West Ham, but chose to move to Southampton because of their success at bringing through youngsters.

Soon enough he was captaining the Under-18s and this year he has nine goals in 13 games for the Under-23s. A powerful, hard-working forward who can play up front or on the right, he has impressed Claude Puel and made his first-team debut in October. Likely to get more chances in the second half of the

season.

Liam Cullen, Swansea City, 17 Cullen has been at Swansea from the age of eight and is thought to be their best young talent since Joe Allen. The left-footed forward from Kilgetty, just outside Tenby, has already starred with Swansea’s Under-18s and is now impressing with the Under-23s too.

He is a quick, clever player with a good left foot who Swansea signed to a two-year professional deal as soon as he turned 17 back in April. Has performed well for Wales at Under-16 and Under-19 level already.

Ben Woodburn, Liverpool, 17 A team-mate of Cullen’s for Wales Under-19s, Woodburn has already made his first-team debut and became Liverpool’s youngest ever goal-scorer in the EFL Cup earlier this year. It was a remarkable start to senior football for a young player who has been carefully protected by the club and around whom Jurgen Klopp is keen to minimise the hype as far as possible.

Now he is in the public eye already, along with Trent Alexander-Arnold, and the whole club will have to manage their integration into the first-team as carefully as possible.

Joseph Colley, Chelsea, 17 Signed from Swedish club Brommapojkarna in 2015, Colley has already impressed in his 18 months at the Chelsea academy. A tall, powerful centre-back, Colley plays international football for Sweden Under-19s although is also eligible for Gambia, the country of his birth.

He has played for Chelsea Under-23s in the Checkatrade Trophy this season and has been pencilled in for a loan to play first team football next year, if his development continues.

Phil Foden, Manchester City, 16

Phil Foden was named on the bench for City's recent Champions League tie with Celtic (Getty)

The crown jewel of Manchester City’s academy, Stockport-born Foden has starred for Lee Carsley’s Under-18 side this year, so much so that he made Pep Guardiola’s bench for the Champions League game against Celtic in early December.

Foden is a supremely gifted left-footed midfielder who can pass incisively, drive forward with the ball and has nine goals for the Under-18s already this season. Guardiola is a huge admirer of his and a first-team debut in 2017 is very likely.

Eberechi Eze, QPR, 18 Another youngster who started off at Arsenal, Eberechi Eze struggled to settle in his early teens because he was simply too small. He had unsuccessful spells at Fulham and Reading before moving on to Millwall, where despite his obvious promise as a number 10 he was still eventually released by Neil Harris.

Chris Ramsey was willing to take the chance, and Eze has started to show how dangerous he can be for the Under-21s this season. Now grown to 5 foot 10, he is a dangerous attacking midfielder who will certainly get his first-team break later this season.

Ezri Konsa, Charlton, 18

Konsa is the latest young player to emerge from Charlton's academy (Getty)

Whatever else happens at Charlton Athletic, they still have one of the best academies in the south, and could make an eight-figure sum in January from the sale of Ademola Lookman to Everton. Their next man to watch is Ezri Konsa, 18-year-old centre-back who will go on to play at the very top.

Konsa has started 17 games this season already for Charlton and is unlikely to be in League One for much longer the way he is going. He started off at famous east London side Senrab, as did John Terry and Ledley King in their day. The comparisons have already begun.

Marcus Edwards, Tottenham, 18 The Spurs academy is geared towards producing creative, inventive players who can beat opponents with ease. No-one sums this up better than Marcus Edwards, the brilliant little left-footer who made his first team debut in the EFL Cup in September.

He is the most talented youngster of his generation at Spurs, and even though he was difficult to tie down to a professional deal, Mauricio Pochettino is a huge admirer of his. He even compared him to a young Lionel Messi recently, however helpful that was.

DJ Buffonge, Manchester United, 18 The creative midfielder from north London is probably the likeliest to break into Jose Mourinho’s team in 2017, although that has not proven to be an easy task for talented teenagers in the past.

Signed from Fulham in 2015, Buffonge has already shown that he has the technical and physical skills to run games for United’s Under-18s sides. United’s Under-23s is not currently especially strong, and Buffonge is already impressing, more than players older than him, when he has been training with the first

team.

Ryan Sessegnon, Fulham, 16

Ryan Sessegnon is already being monitored by leading Premier League clubs (Getty)

Sessegnon only turned 16 in May but he is already featuring for Slavisa Jokanovic’s Fulham team in the Championship, not exactly an easy place for a young left-back learning the game.

But Sessegnon’s skill and power stand out already, which is why so many of the big Premier League teams want to sign him, with Arsenal especially keen. But Fulham are confident that Sessegnon will not leave as young as Patrick Roberts did, and will continue to develop there for a few more years.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Sport/ Rugby Union

Wade hat-trick sees Wasps end year unbeaten at home Wasps

40

Bath

26

Tries: Wade (3), Young; Cons: Gopperth (4); Pens: Gopperth (4) Tries: Batty, Attwood, Ellis, Tapuai; Cons: Ford (3)

Wade crossed twice in a five-try first-half (Getty)

ADAM HATHAWAY AT THE RICOH ARENA

Christian Wade might not get a look in with an England coach who likes his wingers big but he is big in

Coventry which he has helped Wasps turn into a fortress.

The 25-year old stands just 5ft 8in but he was too much for Bath handle as he scored a hat-trick to keep Wasps in touch with Saracens at the top of the Premiership.

This was Wasps 18th win in a row at the Ricoh Arena and they look like they could be coming of age as title contenders.

Their last defeat here was to, you guessed it, Saracens, in December last year and they killed off this match in the 20 minutes after half-time.

Apart from Wade’s finishing Ashley Johnson, who can play hooker or flanker, had a storming 53 minutes in the back row and was involved in the move for Wade’s third try five times.

Kurtley Beale was lively at full-back and when you have got a goal kicker like Jimmy Gopperth you have always got a chance and the New Zealander passed 1,000 Premiership points in this win when he bagged another 20.

Beale, front, was a lively presence at full-back throughout (Focus Images)

Bath were best when they used their big forwards to punch holes in the Wasps defence but the hosts had enough to keep them quiet most of the time.

In the end they got a bonus point for scoring four tries – Ben Tapuai landed the fourth – with George Ford showing his usual wit in attack as Bath rallied at the end.

Some of the defending on show might not have appealed to Eddie Jones as he relaxes in Australia but Wade’s finishing – especially for his show-stopping second score – is worth another look.

An engrossing first half finished with Wasps leading 24-14 but started with yet another sickening head

blow to the home wing Frank Halai after just three minutes.

The big New Zealander got his head the wrong side when he was trying to bring down Semesa Rokoduguni and ended up flat out on the floor and out of the match.

These head injuries are occurring in almost every match and it is the tacklers who seem to be coming off worse some of the time – maybe they need to look at their technique.

As if what happened to Halai had put some of the players off tackling holes started appearing all over the place as Wasps raced into a 14-0 lead.

Bath rallied at the end, Tapaui's try earning a bonus point (Getty)

Thomas Young, who had a rampaging match at flanker, pounced on a loose ball when Aled Brew dropped Joe Simpson’s up-and-under and set off for the line. He had 30 metres to go and did not have the legs but his clever inside pass gave Wade his first score.

On 13 minutes Wade had his second only this time he did not need any help. He spotted a gap on halfway raced through it and danced around the flailing challenges of the Bath defence who hardly laid a hand on him. If it is not a candidate for the try of the season there will have been some pretty good ones scored.

Bath came back when hooker Ross Batty – fast becoming a disgrace to the Front Row Union – ran in from 30 metres and Dave Attwood ran through Elliot Daly from short range.

Young put some distance between the teams when he did have the legs to go 50 metres before the break and Wasps put the afterburners on in the third quarter.

Daly, playing for the first time since being sent off on England duty against Argentina, cut open the defence with his step on 47 minutes and Beale’s looping pass found Wade under the posts for his hat-trick

which settled the game if not the score as Bath came back to at least leave with something.

Teams Wasps: K Beale (rep K Eastmond 68th min); C Wade, E Daly, J Gopperth, F Halai (R Miller 3); D Cipriani, J Simpson (D Robson 58); M Mullan (T Bristow 72), T Taylor, M Moore (P Swainston 72), J Launchbury (capt), J Gaskell (K Myall 58), A Johnson (A Rieder 54), T Young, N Hughes (G Thompson 69) Bath: T Homer; S Rokoduguni, J Joseph, B Tapuai, A Brew; G Ford (co-capt), K Fotuali’i (D Allinson 78); N Catt (N Auterac 67), R Batty (T Dunn 44), M Lahiff (K Palma Newport 56), L Charteris (E Stooke 56), D Attwood, M Garvey (co-capt), F Louw, T Faletau (T Ellis 52) Referee: Luke Pearce (RFU) Attendance: 26,292

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Sport / Rugby Union

Ashton seals Saracens win on return from biting ban

Ashton went over to secure the win on his return (Getty)

SPORTS STAFF Chris Ashton made a try-scoring return from his 13-week suspension to help Saracens down Newcastle 21-6 and remain top of the Aviva Premiership standings.

The 29-year-old wing came on as a second-half replacement after completing his latest ban, for biting the arm of Northampton prop Alex Waller in September, and made the immediate impact he would have hoped for at Allianz Park.

Ashton, who is joining Toulon at the end of the season, was all smiles as he finished off a flowing move to touch down in the right-hand corner five minutes from time for Saracens' second try of the match.

Centre Marcelo Bosch grabbed Sarries' other try in the first half as they remained in top spot, albeit now level on 42 points with Wasps following their four-try success over Bath.

It was some joy for Saracens who had learned before the game that England prop Mako Vunipola had sustained knee ligament damage during the European win over Sale last weekend and could miss the Six Nations. He joins brother Billy on the long-term injury list.

Bosch scored Saracens' opening try against the run of play (Getty)

The hosts struggled to spark into life in the opening half of this contest, where Falcons' pack dominated for large spells but failed to pile up the points. And the visitors paid for it in the end as they slumped to a sixth league defeat of the season.

Newcastle went into the clash buoyed by fine form in both the Premiership and Europe, winning three out of the last four games, and they attacked Saracens with real confidence and intention in the opening 20 minutes, camping themselves near the try line but failing to find a way across it.

Farrell's kicking helped extend Saracens' lead (Getty)

Desperate Saracens defending by legal and illegal means at times foiled and frustrated Falcons and they visitors must have felt aggrieved that referee Matthew Carley seemed in generous mood towards the hosts, keeping his yellow card tucked firmly away in his pocket.

Falcons managed just two penalties from Joel Hodgson in the opening half, with Saracens responding through Owen Farrell's three-pointer before Bosch charged over the line for the opening try in the 21st minute. Farrell converted and it gave the hosts a 13-6 half-time lead they hardly deserved.

Falcons' pack continued to have the better of their rivals in the set-piece but the service the backs got could not be turned into points.

And Farrell kicked Saracens further ahead with a penalty before the home side finished strongly.

Ashton was introduced in the 49th minute and he was given a resounding reception by the Allianz Park crowd.

And the man discarded by England coach Eddie Jones showed he had lost no sense of awareness during his enforced lay-off as he popped up on the far side to catch Farrell's pass and stroll over for the final say.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year

The crossroads of history: 2016 and all that For some, the year just gone was devoid of hope, for others it was the year of Hope Not Hate. Whatever your position, says Ted Jeory, norms and conventions were overturned

Brexit means Brexit: in one of the most momentous events of a momentous year, Farage celebrates victory as it becomes clear that the Leave vote has won (AFP/Getty)

TED JEORY On Radio 4’s Today programme in the week before Christmas, four acclaimed historians were each briefed to place the tumultuous events of 2016 in context by selecting a year they considered so significant it stood out as a game-changer in history.

Bizarrely, one professor chose 1420, the year of the Treaty of Troyes, when the kingdoms of England and France were designed to become one (the plan collapsed two years later when Henry V died earlier than envisaged). Another expert chose 1066, when a relatively insignificant feudal kingdom called England was invaded by a Norman duke from across the sea.

Perhaps more conventionally, the others chose 1914, which triggered so many decades of death and fear; and 1989, when the fall of the Berlin Wall ended a Cold War and ushered in not only philosophical predictions of the “end of history”, but also a period when the tectonic plates of geopolitics genuinely shifted.

David Bowie died on 11 January this year (Reuters)

The year 1989 was also one that, after so long, filled people with hope. For many, 2016 was a year in which the reservoirs of hope began to dry.

Some of the extraordinary events were on the cards. The Independent’s editorial column on New Year’s Day this year highlighted some of the possibilities. We wrote that while it was wise not to be confident in predicting the future, “some events are easier to be definite about, and the importance of them – Britain’s place in Europe, and the unity of the United Kingdom itself, may well be decided in 2016”.

We said David Cameron’s “flippant remark that he cared ‘1,000 times more’ about the union of England and Scotland than the EU will be seen for what it is: a reflection of a careless, shallow politician willing to put the future prosperity of this country at risk to satisfy the emotional spasms of his backbenchers”.

It is perhaps a tragic measure of his place in history that Mr Cameron, 50, is so regarded as an irrelevant

yesterday’s man who spectacularly failed to see the coming anti-establishment backlash

“Never has so much been gambled for so little,” we warned.

And on 23 June, largely due to a disconnect between London and the rest of England and Wales, he lost his gamble. Six months on – and after a disgraceful abuse of the honours system on his way out of Downing Street – it is perhaps a tragic measure of his place in history that Mr Cameron, 50, is so regarded as an irrelevant yesterday’s man who spectacularly failed to see the coming anti-establishment backlash. His is likely to be a long road towards statesman status.

For Barack Obama, however, he might well look back at 2016 as the year in which his stature grew and his reputation was cemented, not necessarily by what he did, but by how half his nation took its own gamble.

Eight years after entering the White House on an evangelical message of hope, the Chicago showman is preparing to leave Washington to a man he despises in Donald Trump – and to deafening calls in some quarters for him not to go. To misquote Shakespeare: nothing in his presidency became him like the leaving of it.

Who would have thought it? Not us. On 1 January, we wrote this about US politics for the year ahead: “Not much more heartening is the race for the White House in the US. The appalling Donald Trump is still in the running for the Republican nomination – though his offensive, childish remarks about Mexicans seem guaranteed to deny him the presidency.”

But we added: “Whoever wins that contest will face some familiar challenges: trying to turn back Isis terror; making peace in Syria; repairing relations with Russia while protecting Ukraine; rebalancing the global economy; and – all too easily neglected – helping lead efforts to slow global climate change.”

And if they are the criteria for success, it could explain why President-elect Trump is – as offensive as it seems – the symbol of hope for millions.

While 2016 is unlikely to be seen as a year in which Islamist extremism had its greatest impact – 9/11 in 2001, 7/7 in 2005 and the Paris attacks of 2015 were more significant – atrocities in Belgium, France and Germany have arguably taken a more frightening turn.

Fidel Castro: a revolutionary and an icon In March, 22 innocents were murdered by explosions in Brussels. Four months later, jihadis slit the throat of a priest in Normandy, and ploughed a lorry into the packed promenade in Nice, killing 86. The same month, there were further attacks in Germany, where this week another truck was driven at speed into a Christmas market in Berlin: 12 lives were taken.

With every attack, the divisive determination of far right “populists” across Europe and the US deepened.

Some believe it helped fuel Brexit and drive Trump to power.

Many mocked the Putin/Trump mutual admiration society this year, but given how Russian military intervention in Syria saw Bashar al-Assad reap its returns in 2016, others feel it could be decisive in dealing with Isis.

How they deal with climate change is more questionable. After the highs of 2015, this year proved disappointing in that fight. In September, the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere moved above the landmark figure of 400 parts per million for the foreseeable future.

While the Paris Agreement on climate change at the end of last year had raised hopes, the follow-up Marrakech summit was dubbed an “extreme disappointment” by campaigners. Mr Trump is a climatechange denier and has pledged to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement.

But 2016 also saw many triumphs and justice prevail.

The campaigning families for the 96 killed in the 1989 Hillsborough disaster were finally given the verdict they demanded in April: their loved ones were unlawfully killed. The subsequent emotional reaction in Parliament was described as the “Commons at its best”.

In football, there was another happy ending as Leicester City, managed by the lovable “Tinkerman”, Claudio Ranieri, secured the Premier League title against all the odds. At the Rio Olympics, Team GB had another record Games, while Andy Murray cemented his reputation as the country’s greatest active sportsman by winning Wimbledon again and ending the year as world number one.

Will 2016 be seen as the year of the grassroots backlash? Or when the far right began to extend its stride?

And, of course, it is customary in media reviews of the year to note the passing of notables as neat and somewhat nostalgic chronological bookends. David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Terry Wogan, Harper Lee, Ronnie Corbett, David Gest, Prince, Victoria Wood, Muhammad Ali, Caroline Aherne, Gene Wilder, Andrew Sachs, Fidel Castro, Leonard Cohen, AA Gill: all of them – even Cold War warrior Castro – were curious throwbacks to more straightforward times.

And then there was MP Jo Cox, murdered at the hands of neo-Nazi Thomas Mair as she attended her constituency surgery on 16 June. In any other year, her death – and the photograph of her standing on her east London houseboat by Tower Bridge – would be the enduring image.

Thomas Mair shouted 'Britain first' after shooting and repeatedly stabbing Labour MP Jo Cox (Rex)

That that instead falls to a grinning Nigel Farage standing next to Donald Trump in a gold-plated Manhattan lift would no doubt have appalled her.

Two men became history makers. A week after her death, Mr Farage saw his cherished ambition fulfilled with the vote to leave the European Union. He changed the course of British history. The frenzy of the

next several weeks were unprecedented: the resignation of David Cameron; the feud between Michael Gove and Boris Johnson; the implosion of Andrea Leadsom; the arrival of Theresa May at No 10; and the failed coups in Turkey and against Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader.

Will 2016 be seen as the year of the grassroots backlash? Or when the far right began to extend its stride?

Jo Cox’s widower, Brendan Cox, has continued her campaigning with Hope Not Hate. Most people will surely dream that those three words become the legacy of 2016.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / Arts

Stars that shone as too many blinked our for ever It was a year blighted by the passing of a host of great innovators and cultural figures, writes David Lister, but the careers of several veteran artists continued to flourish

The world of architecture was shocked by the sudden death of the visionary Zaha Hadid (Getty)

Death stalked the arts in 2016 to a chilling degree. A year that saw the loss of David Bowie, Leonard Cohen and Prince left music without three of its truest innovators and artists. But while the loss of great musicians tends to dominate the memory and the headlines, it should not be forgotten that in Victoria Wood and Caroline Aherne we also lost two of the most brilliant and imaginative comedians this country has ever produced. A creative visionary was lost too in architecture with the sudden and totally unexpected death of Zaha Hadid.

In music, many of the usual suspects showed astonishing staying power and earning power. There were £7m pay packets for the likes of Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, The Who and Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters at a festival in California designed for the most of affluent of baby-boomers. And those same boomers were able to say “I told you so” when after decades of preaching the cause, they saw Bob Dylan awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The only boomer seemingly unimpressed was Dylan himself, who took an age to respond to the Nobel committee and then decided he was too busy to turn up to receive the prize.

The boomers liked that little, nostalgic show of rebellion too. If one is to pick one of the most notable, if perhaps under-reported advances of the year, it was the radical shift in gender equality on stage. It had been happening slowly for some time, but this year was the year when the sight of women playing traditionally male roles in the classics really took off. It started in the spring with Michelle Terry as a female king in Henry V at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. And then we had Harriet Walter leading a company of women in a trilogy of Julius Caesar, Henry the Fourth and The Tempest for the Donmar. And it culminated with an acclaimed return to the stage of octogenarian Glenda Jackson as King Lear.

Hopefully, we have already largely achieved colour blindness in casting. But after this year, directors are more likely to be gender-blind in casting the great roles. The possibilities are fascinating. More conventionally in theatre, Harry Potter, or a version of him, took to the stage and became the hottest ticket in Britain. Andrew Lloyd Webber showed, after quite an absence, that he still has what it takes with the well-reviewed musical School of Rock about young wannabe pop stars. And former young wannabe pop star Billie Piper showed she was now one of our most exciting actresses with a shattering performance at the Young Vic of a disintegrating woman desperate for a baby in Yerma.

Tom Hiddleston stars in 'The Night Manager' (BBC)

For some of the greatest drama this year, though, one didn’t have to leave the sofa. From The Night Manager and The Missing to the lighter but still compelling fare of Victoria and The Crown, appointment television was well and truly back. If conversations around the water-cooler still happen, then these programmes would have been part of those conversations. And let’s not forget The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses, which for my money might just have been the best Shakespeare on TV ever, with Benedict Cumberbatch a memorably chilling Richard the Third.

At Shakespeare’s Globe there was drama behind the scenes with the announcement that newish artistic director Emma Rice was leaving after the board decided that her whizz-bang (and very popular) productions with modern lighting and effects was not in the spirit of a venue intended to replicate theatre as it was in the Bard’s day. She had actually made her intentions completely clear at her interview for the job and in various newspaper interviews. So perhaps the board should have jumped ship with Ms Rice.

There were resignations, too, at the English National Opera, which makes it a comfortingly normal year.

But on stage, paradoxically, the standards were as high as ever, as they were in opera houses around the country from Glyndebourne and Longborough to the venues that housed Opera North and its acclaimed version of Wagner’s Ring.

One interesting crisis, though, was showing signs of developing around the much vaunted plans for Sir Simon Rattle’s new concert home in London when he takes over at the helm of the London Symphony Orchestra. Funding problems have been emerging and it’s by no means a certainty that the new hall will ever appear. The Tate Modern extension did open, which was yet another feather in the cap of Tate chief Sir Nicholas Serota. Art this year has seen a number of notable exhibitions, not least the mind-bending survey of abstract expressionism show at the Royal Academy.

But perhaps the most significant movement in art this year was the move of Serota from the Tate. After more than 25 years of running the organisation, setting up Tate Modern and administering the Turner Prize, he announced he was leaving to become chairman of the Arts Council. He has dominated the visual arts landscape, and it’s to be hoped he will bring some of the same vision and imagination to a quango that has long lacked a clear policy and compelling advocacy for the arts.

An eternal advocate, polemicist and proud member of the awkward squad is Ken Loach, and his Palme D’or winner I, Daniel Blake, with its blistering critique of the welfare system, became one of the most talked-about films of the year, while the much anticipated dramatisation of best-seller The Girl on the Train failed to excite.

Sir Nicholas Serota at Tate Modern earlier this year (EPA)

On radio the most drama that gripped the nation came from an unexpected source, The Archers. A simmering storyline of domestic abuse erupted with a court case, massive news coverage and the nation indulging in the perennial confusion over whether soap opera characters were actually real.

In arts politics, Ed Vaizey created a record, becoming Britain’s longest-serving arts minister, overtaking the great Sixties politician Jennie Lee. Vaizey’s impressive record failed to impress Theresa May, who sacked him on becoming Prime Minister. Mind you, free of office and the need to liaise on a daily basis with the arts world, Vaizey was free also to make an unusually undiplomatic speech, which he did in a lecture to the Royal Society of Arts, saying: “Let’s not beat about the bush: the arts are relentlessly left wing.”

Many in the arts world must have felt it was the greatest compliment they had received all year.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / Money

From bitcoin to bolivars – how ‘money’ took on a whole new meaning The cashless society came closer in 2016, but money is as risky a business as it ever was, says Sean O’Grady

Britain's new fivers caused a storm among vegetarians and vegans when it was revealed that they contain minute amounts of tallow (PA)

What has been the best-performing currency of 2016? Not the pound, obviously, which vies with the crisis-hit Argentine peso and Russian rouble at the foot of the league table; nor even a conventional kind of money. The most rewarding place to stash your cash in 2016 was the “crypto-currency”, Bitcoin – up about 80 per cent thus far against the rickety old dollar. Quite a show. One Bitcoin is now worth about $778

(£632), going on for double its worth in 2015. Then again, it has also halved in value in previous years, gyrating wildly, and could, like any other money, become worthless. It is extremely volatile, that we know.

Even so, this year, as the Argentine currency collapsed once again, unable to sustain its worth against the US dollar, the Bitcoin found a new status, at least there, as a relatively hard currency. It may be the first of a new generation of cybermonies that will do to traditional currencies what Uber did to the taxi trade.

Of course, it bears repeating at the outset that past performance, as they say, is no necessary guide to the future, and that the Bitcoin is a strange sort of electronic creature, being an “orphan” of any particular nation or central bank, and not having anything “real”, such as land, gold or silver to back it up (though very few other currencies possess such a quality nowadays). Indeed, the authorities generally don’t really like or trust Bitcoin and its pretenders very much, and have issued all sorts of warnings about trading in it, speculating in it, or using it for savings.

It is an interesting case study, in a world where money has, for a decade now, produced far more confusion and angst than reassurance and stability. For in any society at any time all that is required for money to function is that it is, first, accepted as a means of exchange. Famously, everything from cowrie shells (China) to cigarettes (post-war Germany) to sweets (in modern Zimbabwe) have been used by people without ready access to a conventional currency, and salt (hence “salary”) was the earliest of them all.

There is no reason why an electronic currency should not be accepted by two sides to a transaction, as it is already.

Nor, in principle, should an electronic currency not be used as a “store of value” – a place to mark and measure savings and wealth. After all, most of the “money” in Britain is electronic – numbers on spreadsheets on bank computers, rather than bits of paper, polymer or metal with the Queen’s head on. By the way, one of the things that most shocked the public in the banking crisis was the revelation that the banks “created” money by lending it out to each other (and then creating ever more exotic “synthetic” securities on the back of it). As the classic economic saying goes, “money is what money does”. When it doesn’t, as with the mortgage-backed securities that failed, then money collapses, no matter who has created it.

It can only be matter of time before a truly awesome cyberbank theft is committed that is so large it threatens the very stability of a systematically important institution, and the financial system

The electronic nature of money, and its astonishing vulnerability in that form to theft, was amply demonstrated by one of the biggest bank heists in British history in 2016. There were no coshes, no diamond geezers driving Jags or blokes in stockings packing gelignite into safes and ending up in a shed up at Heathrow. The raid on Tesco Bank was undertaken via keyboards and the internet, and yielded a haul of about £2.5m (the Great Train Robbers of 1963 managed about the same in cash terms, but theirs was worth about £50m in today’s prices). Apparently much of the 40,000 Tesco Bank customers’ cash was transferred to Spain or Brazil in minutes.

When so much money is held and transferred electronically, when quasi-bank organisations such as PayPal are becoming so huge, and when no computer system can be safely declared 100 per cent safe, it can only be matter of time before a truly awesome cyberbank theft is committed that is so large it threatens the very stability of a systematically important institution, and the financial system. I’m sure the Bank of England and HM Treasury understand this, and fret about it – but what can they do about it?

For the time being they have more immediate problems. In its 1,000-year-plus history the pound sterling

has been through some ups and downs, but 2016 was certainly one of the more dramatic ones. At the start of the year, the currency’s future within the European Union but determinedly and safely outside the eurozone seemed secure, and there were relatively few problems with the acceptability of the currency in the shops. By the end of the summer it, along with the rest of Britain’s economic arrangements, was heading for an uncertain future, its value against foreign currencies slashed on the morning of the European referendum result by about a fifth.

The new £5 note, redolent with its classic Karsh portrait of Winston Churchill’s patriotic defiance, was discovered to contain small amounts of animal fat in its polymer mix, and was shunned by those with religious and moral objections to bits of cow in their cash. (In fact the amount of tallow, i.e. animal fat, in the average fiver is some 0.00007 grammes, or about 700 times less than the weight of a drop of water.) All round, not a good year for the pound.

This year probably also saw the number of transactions conducted in cash by consumers fall below those by other means, including contactless and bank transfers. The statistics are not yet available but the trends have been clear for some time, and in 2015 the overall total number of cashless transactions in the economy (i.e. including business-to-business and wholesale sales) has already exceed the number in cash.

Now shoppers have probably followed suit, paying for their beers, petrol and groceries with “contactless” cards. Even so, banknotes and coins have not declined anything like as sharply as the cheque, down to 1 per cent of payments activity now, and soon to disappear for good.

The only element of fun to be had in pondering one’s small change may be the remote chance that the fiver in your pocket has been engraved with a tiny image of Jane Austen, a collector’s item worth £50,000 or more

With the depreciation in the value of the British currency will come higher inflation and a squeeze on living standards in the next few years. If you keep your cash at home – and there was an interesting spike in demand for the £50 note at the height of the banking crisis – you will find it slowly eroded by inexorably rising prices. The only element of fun to be had in pondering one’s small change may be the remote chance that the fiver in your pocket has been engraved with a tiny image of Jane Austen, a collector’s item created by an eccentric artists/engraver said to be worth £50,000 or more. Two of four or five have been found. Clue: one was passed to a pie shop in Leicestershire. Stories about the new £5 notes with “AK” serial numbers selling for similar amounts on eBay to show-off gangster types have been more difficult to corroborate.

Still, Britain’s paper currency, free of the inconvenience of being directly backed by any precious metal since 1931, has still not faced the ignominies of its equivalents in Venezuela or India, where official attempts to replace banknotes have caused chaos. India’s “high denomination” 500 and 1,000 rupee notes were supposed to be withdrawn with immediate effect in November, the idea being that these were the main repositories of untaxed and unregulated commerce, and thus to be returned to the authorities immediately, with apposite questions to be asked about where all that money came from (though bear in mind the notes are worth about £6 and £12 respectively). Cue some mild riots. Indians with a few rupees not-yet-in-the-bank now have until the end of the year to deposit them or lose their savings.

Similarly, in Venezuela the government has moved to abolish the “high denomination” 100 bolivar notes – worth about 2p and dwindling by the day as inflation of 500 per cent per annum shreds their value. Unlike the Indian scheme – which at least had some economic rationale – the Venezuelan one was aimed, as with so many botched government policies, to restrain “profiteering”. Many Venezuelans may wonder why so

little profit is being made by anyone in this oil-rich nation.

So; paper or Bitcoin, Tesco Bank account or mattress, pounds or rupees – money is as risky as ever, and possibly very much more so in the internet age. Last year was notable for the absence of too many serious eurozone crises, but the stability of the euro cannot yet be taken for granted. The dollar is enjoying a Trump bounce; but his policies on trade and the Federal Reserve’s independence could see it suffer a Trump Slump. China’s reluctant world currency, the yuan or renminbi (“people’s money”) suffers from its own vulnerability to the fortunes of the American economy, the stability of its banks and the whims of its rulers. Aside for the ever-reliable Swiss franc, it is difficult to see many islands of calm in the sea of money out there. It only remains to add one last eternal verity, in case you’d forgotten it: you can’t take it with you.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / The Middle East

The West’s dismal failure – and the power of illusion Russia now is the principal powerbroker in the Middle East and Assad is secure. The Syrian tragedy all but ensures that there will be no more Arab revolutions, says Robert Fisk

Rescue workers sift through the rubble of Aleppo in September, towards the end of a siege that lasted four years (Getty)

Just as the catastrophic Anglo-American invasion of Iraq brought an end to epic Western military adventures in the Middle East, so the tragedy of Syria ensures that there will be no more Arab revolutions.

And it’s taken just 13 bloodsoaked years – from 2003 to 2016 – to realign political power. Russia and Iran and the Shia Muslims of the region are now deciding its future; Bashar al-Assad cannot claim victory – but he is winning.

“Aleppo must be taken quickly – before Mosul falls,” a Syrian brigadier announced to me with a wan smile in the country’s army headquarters in Damascus. And it did, scarcely a month later. There were – and still are – little Aleppos all over Syria in which the government and its armed “jihadi” opponents are playing “good guy” and “bad guy”, depending on who is besieging whom. When the Sunni militias end their siege of little Shia towns like Faour, the civilians flock to government lines. It’s reported as a slightly incomprehensible local dispute.

But when the regime’s forces storm into eastern Aleppo, it’s deplored around the world as a war crime.

I’ve grown tired of repeating that, yes, war crimes are committed on both sides, and Bashar’s forces are no squeaky clean military cadets – although these days, we have to remember that 42 Royal Marine Commandos were not that squeaky clean in Afghanistan. But the story of Aleppo is still being rethreaded into old loops, the brave but largely “jihadi” defenders disguised as nondescript “rebels”, their opponents compared to Milosevic’s Serb killers or Saddam’s gas-bomb pilots.

Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin: the Western media was encouraged to focus on the beastly Russians (Getty) All this will soon end. Russia realised that Obama and the weeping liberals of Europe were bluffing about the overthrow of Bashar– who, unlike Putin’s Ukrainian ally in Kiev, did not run away – and backed his army. The Economist made fun of Syrian soldiers because they supposedly couldn’t march in step when Moscow staged a military parade at its Syrian air base. But you don’t have to march like the Wehrmacht to win battles. The Syrian Arab Army – its real name, which is increasingly used, I notice, by the usual mountebanks who pose as “experts” on the satellite channels – boasts that it has fought simultaneously on 80 fronts against Isis, Nusrah and a clutch of other “jihadi” armies (and Free Syrian Army men who

changed sides). Which, given the infractions and bulges in front lines, is probably true, but perhaps not a military record to be proud of. It’s one thing to recapture Palmyra from Isis, quite another to lose it to Isis again in the middle of the battle for eastern Aleppo.

Some made fun of Syrian soldiers because they supposedly couldn’t march in step. But you don’t have to march like the Wehrmacht to win battles

Syrian soldiers have a lot of time for their Hezbollah militia allies – who used to turn up on the battlefield better armed than the Syrians themselves – but are less enamoured of the Iranian “advisers” who supposedly know so much about open warfare. I have been present when an Iranian officer called a Syrian general “stupid” – in this case, the Iranian was probably right – but Syrian officers are far more battletrained and experienced than the Revolutionary Guard from Tehran who have sustained – along with their Afghan and Iraqi Shia allies – far more casualties than they believed possible.

So after almost five years of battle, the Syrian army is still in action. The Nusrah and Isis forces surrounding the government sector of the eastern Syrian city of Deir ez-Zour will almost certainly be its next target – after the retaking of Palmyra, but long before the Isis capital of Raqqa, which will probably be retaken by Washington’s Kurdish allies. And it is the Syrian army which will most likely have to rebuild the new Syria when the war eventually ends. It will certainly decide the future of the country.

Oddly, Western leaders remain stupefyingly unaware of the nature of the real struggle in Syria, and even which warlords they should support

That doesn’t mean the overthrow of Bashar. Neither among his official opponents nor his mortal jihadi enemies nor the corrupt and corrupted political opposition in Turkey is there anyone who can challenge him on the ground. Even if they were successful, you can be sure that the same prisons and dungeons in Syria would be in operation within 24 hours to lock up and torture the “new” opposition to a “new” regime. Besides, Vladimir Putin has suffered enough humiliation after Isis’s second success in Palmyra – after the Russians staged a victory concert of peace in the Roman city only a few months ago. He is not going to permit the defenestration of Bashar al-Assad.

Oddly, Western leaders remain stupefyingly unaware of the nature of the real struggle in Syria, and even which warlords they should support. Take the impotent François Hollande, who chose to tell the United Nations in September that Russia and Iran must compel Assad to make peace, because they would otherwise, along with the regime, “bear the responsibility for the division and chaos in Syria”. All well and good. Yet only two months earlier, the same Hollande was demanding “effective action” against the Islamist Nusrah front – among the defenders of Aleppo, although most of us decided not to tell our readers this – on the grounds that Isis was in retreat and Nusrah stood to take advantage of this. “That is beyond dispute,” Hollande pompously remarked of Isis’s “retreat”. That was before the retaking of Palmyra by the same Isis brigands.

Buses evacuate rebel fighters and their families from Aleppo earlier this month (Getty)

But perhaps Hollande and his European allies – and Washington – are so besotted with their own weak and flawed policies towards Syria (always supposing they can decide what these are), that they do not realise how power moves across battlefields. Instead of whinnying on about Russian brutality and mixing this in with Iranian cruelty and Hezbollah mendacity, they should be taking a close look at the mostly Sunni Muslim Syrian army which has been fighting, from the very start, against its mostly Sunni Muslim “jihadi” enemies. They have always regarded Nusrah – our “allies” in eastern Aleppo, since they are paid by our Gulf chums and armed by us – to be more dangerous than Isis. The Syrian army are right. Here, at least, Hollande must surely agree with their conclusion.

Yet the power of illusion matters more to us. If the West can’t retake Mosul from Isis, they could hardly have stopped the Syrians retaking eastern Aleppo. But they could easily encourage the Western media to concentrate on the beastly Russians in Aleppo rather than the fearful casualties inflicted on America’s allies in Mosul. The reporting on Aleppo these past weeks has sounded much like the accounts of British war correspondents in the First World War. And the Russians could encourage their own tame media to concentrate on the victory at Aleppo rather than defeat at Palmyra. As for Mosul, it’s mysteriously vanished from our news. I wonder why?

And how many died in Palmyra? And, for that matter, how many were really captive in eastern Aleppo?

Was it really 250,000? Or was it 100,000? I came across a news report a few weeks ago which gave two overall statistics for fatalities in the entire Syrian war: 400,000; then, a few paragraphs later, 500,000 Well, which is it? I’m always reminded of the Nazi bombing of Rotterdam in 1940 when the Allies announced that 30,000 civilians had been killed. For years, this was the authentic figure. Then after the war, it turned out that the real figure – though terrible enough — was only around 900, 33 times less than the official version. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, what Syria’s statistics really are?

And if we can’t get those right, what are we doing interfering in the Syrian war? Not that it matters. Russia is back in the Middle East. Iran is securing its political semi-circle of Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus-Beirut.

And if the Gulf Arabs – or the Americans – want to reinvolve themselves, they can chat to Putin. Or to Assad.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / Travel

No more safe havens?

For several of the world’s great cities, 2016 was a year of terror, says Simon Calder. Tourists will naturally seek out risk-free destinations in 2017 – if there are such things

A makeshift memorial in Nice to the victims of the terrorist attack in July (Getty)

Berlin, Nice, Istanbul, Brussels …

In previous years, that would look like a wish-list of great cities, with deep culture, great cuisine and a warm welcome waiting.

In 2016, it is a short list for terror, an aide-memoire of the targets for murderers whose ambition was to cut short other people’s lives as part of a futile campaign against tolerance.

On 19 December, 12 people celebrating at a Christmas Market in Berlin were mown down by an articulated lorry driven by a thug devoid of humanity. It was a horrifying repeat of the 14 July massacre on

the Promenade des Anglais in Nice that killed 86.

The summer was also scarred by an attack at Istanbul airport on 28 June, with 45 victims, when three men went on a shooting spree and detonated suicide vests.

Then, on the morning of 22 March, three members of a terrorist cell in Brussels took a taxi to the city’s airport with bombs hidden in suitcases. Two of the three detonated their explosives in the departures hall, while back in the city an accomplice blew himself up on a Metro train. Thirty-two innocent victims died.

It is no surprise that part of this wave of hate was aimed at transport and tourism. Atrocities that kill multiple victims of different nationalities attract international attention. Airports, the ultimate symbol of our 21st-century freedom to travel, are soft targets with plenty of potential victims — and also far easier to access than aircraft, the terrorists’ previous favourite.

Evidence is growing that Egyptair flight 804, flying from Paris to Cairo on 19 May, was bombed. If it is eventually confirmed, that will add 66 more deaths to the grisly tally of travellers hit by terrorism during the year.

The refrain from many quarters, not least The Independent travel desk, was that travellers should not change their plans and thereby hand victory to the terrorists — possibly encouraging future attacks.

Many ignored this advice, deciding that the risks posed by truck massacres, shooting rampages and suicide bombings were too high.

Egypt and Turkey were worst affected by the subsequent slump in bookings. The main Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheikh spent the entire year on a no-fly list — the only airport which the Foreign Office says is too dangerous for British airlines to use, because of fears about security in the wake of a presumed aircraft bombing in October 2015.

For Tunisia, too, 2016 was an empty year, at least in terms of British tourists. The rampaging gunman on the beach in Sousse in June 2015 single-handedly destroyed UK tourism to his country. In the last couple of month, a marketing campaign began to try to put Tunisia back on the map once the Foreign Office ban is lifted. But the news that the chief suspect in the Berlin massacre is a Tunisian national may prolong the economic agony for the hundreds of thousands of people who depend on tourism to feed their families.

Despite the constant horrors, the British travel industry has actually had its most successful year ever, moving more people and making more money than ever before. But tourism looks set to remain skewed away from the eastern Mediterranean to Croatia, Portugal and Spain — which, tourism officials privately concede, probably had too many visitors, at least in the key resorts. Turkey might have been poised to take advantage of the fact than many families spent a fortune for a less-than-perfect Spanish holiday, and were prepared to swing back to Bodrum, Marmaris and Alanya. But the bad news keeps coming, most recently with the murder of the Russian ambassador in Ankara.

As I wrote just before Christmas, hate seems to have a stronger voice than ever. And many travellers are listening.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / Politics

The year we decided we’d had enough of experts The past 12 months have seen old certainties overturned as people turned their backs on the elites, says Andrew Grice

Brexiteers Michael Gove, left, and Boris Johnson during a factory visit – before they spectacularly fell out over the Tory leadership (Getty)

“Oh, and by the way, the Prime Minister has resigned.” That wasn’t quite what the BBC said on 24 June, but almost. Remarkably, David Cameron’s decision to stand down was relegated to the third item of the BBC News bulletin – behind the vote for Brexit and the ensuing turmoil on global financial markets.

It was a momentous day in a momentous year that also brought us Donald Trump’s election as US President; a failed coup against Jeremy Corbyn and the murder of a much-loved Labour MP on the streets of her constituency.

Arguably, Cameron’s fate was sealed in February, when he returned from Brussels with a threadbare new deal after renegotiating the UK’s EU membership terms. Although he won some curbs on benefits claimed

by EU migrants, his fellow EU leaders would not let him restrict the number of migrants. So when the referendum came, the Remain camp had very little to say on what became the most salient issue – immigration.

Nigel Farage was frozen out of the official Vote Leave campaign but, after saying it would not join him in playing on public anxiety about immigration, it did precisely that. Farage’s crude populism, which divided voters, was given a respectable veneer by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, the figureheads of Vote Leave.

It was a powerful combination, and proved lethal for Cameron. He avoided the immigration issue, calculating that a relentless message on the economic risks of leaving the EU would triumph. It was a catastrophic misjudgement: by 52 to 48 per cent, the British people voted to leave the EU. Perhaps we should not have been so surprised. A three-month referendum campaign was never going to turn a 30-year tide of hostile press coverage of the EU. Even Europhiles like Tony Blair missed their moment to “sell” the EU to the public.

Many voters seized the moment to make an anti-establishment protest after years of wage stagnation and being “left behind” by globalisation. Some 2.8 million people who voted in the June referendum had not bothered to vote in the 2015 general election. They were “missed” by the opinion pollsters, who therefore got the referendum wrong.

The result sparked a Shakespearian drama in the Conservative Party. When Cameron bowed to the inevitable and resigned, the front-runner to succeed him was Johnson. Yet there were doubts about his suitability for the top job. Genuinely shaken by his part in Cameron’s downfall, Johnson failed to focus on the Tory leadership election. Gove, his fellow co-leader of Vote Leave, knifed Boris just before his campaign launch and ran himself. The act of betrayal left Gove without enough support from Tory MPs. Soon Theresa May was the only candidate left standing after her only rival, Andrea Leadsom, selfdestructed. After expecting a two-month contest against Leadsom, the then Home Secretary had just two days to move into Downing Street. She made Johnson her Foreign Secretary, another of the year’s great surprises and its quickest comeback. As May purged the Government of Cameron allies, the Eurosceptics David Davis and Liam Fox were also given key jobs implementing Brexit. May, a reluctant Remainer who kept her head down during the referendum battle, tried to win her party’s trust by making control of migration her “red line” in the EU negotiations.

The complexity of Brexit made it a difficult baptism for May. She ended the year without the “plan for Brexit” demanded by MPs and with the Cabinet’s crucial decisions put off until the New Year. But May provided stability and reassurance when the country desperately needed it. She and her party were rewarded with a commanding lead in the opinion polls.

The seismic shock of Brexit helped to prepare the ground for another earthquake. Trump, the Republican outsider in the US presidential race against the Washington insider Hillary Clinton, urged Americans to copy Britain’s “independence day” and, after his remarkable victory in November, was able to celebrate “Brexit plus, plus, plus”.

US voters staged their own anti-establishment protest. Although the parallels can be overdone, struggling white working-class voters again felt neglected by the political class: “Washington,” like “Westminster”, became a dirty word. Trump’s “America first” policy echoed the nationalist, anti-immigration message of the Leave campaign. He was lucky to have Clinton as his opponent; the Democrats lacked a clear message and failed to connect with working-class people who, like many who voted for Brexit, felt they had nothing to lose by backing Trump.

Both results were a defeat for the liberal elite which had dominated politics on both sides of the Atlantic.

Nationalism triumphed over globalism in a bad year for international bodies. Warnings by the IMF and OECD against Brexit were ignored as voters seemed to agree with Gove that we “have had enough of experts”. The EU was shaken by the decision by its second largest economy to leave. The future of Nato and international trade deals were called into question by Trump’s victory.

In the short term, the arrival of President Trump will have a bigger impact on an uncertain world but he may last for only four years. Whatever form Brexit takes, it will transform the UK’s relationship with the EU forever; there will be no going back.

One man who could celebrate both events was Farage – along with May, the one to benefit most in a tumultuous year. Love him or hate him, Farage secured the referendum and then achieved what he went into politics for, a rare triumph. He also advised Trump and the lasting image of 2016 is the grinning faces of the former Ukip leader and President-elect in the golden lift of Trump Tower in New York. The antiestablishment forces were suddenly the new establishment. Farage left the UK Government looking flatfooted after it banked on a Clinton victory – a salutary lesson that nothing could be taken for granted in the new world.

The shockwaves from the referendum also destabilised Jeremy Corbyn, who fought a half-hearted campaign even though Labour was committed to staying in the EU. The backlash from Labour MPs led to a vote of no confidence in Corbyn and a leadership challenge by Owen Smith. But it was a chaotic, premature coup and Smith, running as a more competent version of Corbyn, failed to woo enough of Labour’s fast-growing 600,000-strong membership. In September, Corbyn won a bigger mandate than a year earlier, beating his challenger by 62 to 38 per cent.

Labour’s three-month leadership contest summed up its wasted, inward-looking year and was in sharp contrast to the three weeks it took to install May as Cameron’s successor. Although Sadiq Khan won the London Mayoralty for Labour in May, he kept his distance from Corbyn. The Labour leader sharpened his act at Prime Minister’s Questions but his party made little headway; it often looked irrelevant and invisible, and anything but a government-in-waiting.

For those on the centre left, it was an annus horribilis. But there was eventually something to cheer when Liberal Democrats showed they are back in business by winning the Richmond Park by-election in December against the Tory-turned-independent Zac Goldsmith.

Overall, however, it was the year of the populist and politics had a dark side. The attacks and bullying on social media by right and left got nastier. America saw “fake news” stories such as the claim that the Pope backed Trump. Britain, too, became a less tolerant country; hate crimes rose after the referendum.

The nadir was not Brexit or Trump but the murder in June of Jo Cox, a pro-EU rising Labour star and mother of two young children, outside her constituency surgery in Batley and Spen, Yorkshire. Her political epitaph – we have “far more in common with each other than things that divide us” – was tested to destruction in 2016. But it provided a ray of light for those hoping that the year was a one-off rather than the start of a dangerous new era.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year

Looking back on a historic year In the next section of our review of the year, we look back at the most significant moments of 2016, republishing our most definitive articles as they appeared at the time.

Today, we look at events from January to June, when we lost both David Bowie and Alan Rickman within weeks, terror came to Europe yet again and Britain rejected both the establishment and the pollsters in voting to leave the EU. It wasn’t all doom and gloom, however, with the underdog story of the century seeing Leicester claiming the Premier League and decades of hostility between the US and Cuba appeased when Barack Obama made the first visit of a US president to the island in 88 years.

Tomorrow’s second part leads us through July to December, from the UK welcoming a new Prime Minister and Team GB triumphing in Rio, to a political earthquake on the other side of the Atlantic with Donald Trump’s election win, and a turning point in Syria’s civil war with the fall of Aleppo to regime forces.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / January

Hundreds gather to mark the life of a superstar

David Bowie spent decades enchanting and wrong-footing us all with his ability to push musical and creative boundaries (EPA)

CAHAL MILMO CHIEF REPORTER

Hundreds of people have gathered in London to pay tribute to the life of David Bowie following his death after he had suffered from cancer for 18 months.

Fans of the musician congregated in Brixton, where Bowie was born, singing many of his best-known songs and laying tributes in front of the colourful mural of the singer dressed as Aladdin Sane by artist Jimmy C. People took to Twitter to describe the “wonderful atmosphere” outside Brixton’s Ritzy cinema, which at

some points was lit up with fireworks and filled with loud chants of “Bowie”.

A boy leaves flowers beneath the Brixton mural of Bowie

After five decades spent enchanting and wrong-footing the planet with his ability to push musical and creative boundaries, Bowie died days after releasing the curtain-call album that quietly signalled his final farewell.

As praise and tributes were offered from space to Downing Street, those close to the singer, who had just turned 69, said the release four days ago of his new album – Blackstar – had been a “parting gift” created as he spent his final 18 months being treated for cancer.

Hundreds of people congregated in Brixton, where Bowie was born, to pay tribute (Getty)

The hugely influential rock star, whose work reshaped ideas and perceptions in spheres from music and fashion to sexuality, had given no public hint of his illness before his family released a breakfast-time statement announcing his death. He had lived for many years in New York.

A statement on his Facebook page said: “David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded by his family after a courageous 18-month battle with cancer. While many of you will share in this loss, we ask that you respect the family’s privacy during their time of grief.”

Such was the unexpectedness of the announcement that the singer’s publicist was forced to issue a further statement clarifying that it was not a hoax. Bowie’s son from his first marriage, 44-year-old film director Duncan Jones, said on Twitter: “Very sorry and sad to say it’s true.”

The final grounding of the man whose many alter egos began in 1972 with his creation of Ziggy Stardust was met with expressions of admiration and grief from across the globe.

Sir Paul McCartney described Bowie as a “great star” who had shaped British music, while his friend and collaborator Iggy Pop said: “I never met such a brilliant person. He was the best there is.”

The Prime Minister, David Cameron, said he had grown up listening to the singer, adding: “He was a master of reinvention, who kept getting it right. A huge loss.” Such was the cultural reach of the charity worker’s son from Brixton that tributes were also paid by the Vatican, which tweeted lyrics to his song “Space Oddity”, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.

While he had kept his illness secret from even close friends, it was apparent that Bowie, who had deliberately faded from public view after suffering a heart attack while performing in Germany in 2004, had spent his final months writing an album which he knew would be his last work.

Critics last week hailed Blackstar as welcome evidence of the revitalisation of the master of reinvention.

But with black-tinged hindsight, fans have highlighted the hints at a goodbye in Blackstar, which had been well received by critics and was expected to top the album charts even before news of his death.

The video for “Lazarus”, one of the tracks on the new album, shows a gaunt Bowie with his eyes bandaged as he thrashes on a hospital bed, singing: “Look up here, I’m in heaven / I’ve got scars that can’t be seen.”

In the video for the album’s title track, the opening shots show a lifeless spaceman – a probable homage to the famously extraterrestrial preoccupations of the man who gave the world the Spiders from Mars.

Blackstar, which has just seven songs, was also the first album by the artist not to feature his own face on the cover.

Tony Visconti, who produced many of Bowie’s albums, said the polymathic artist had prepared carefully for his passing. Writing on Facebook, Visconti said: “He always did what he wanted to do. And he wanted to do it his way and he wanted to do it the best way. His death was no different from his life – a work of art.

“He made Blackstar for us, his parting gift. I knew for a year this was the way it would be. I wasn’t, however, prepared for it.”

British astronaut Tim Peake paid one of the day’s most appropriate homages when he tweeted from the International Space Station that Bowie had been an inspiration.

Sir Paul McCartney said: “His music played a very strong part in British musical history and I’m proud to think of the huge influence he has had on people all around the world… His star will shine in the sky forever.”

Additional reporting by Independent staff

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / January

Poetic sprinkling of Bowie’s Stardust changed my life

For a young, unconfident and confused teenager, there was something quite fantastic about someone from 1972 being able to quite perfectly pinpoint what was whirling around in your head

KIRAN MOODLEY Last Friday, I bought a copy of David Bowie’s Blackstar LP. I splashed the cash because, well, it’s David: the Thin White Duke, Ziggy, Major Tom, plastic soul and all that. He’s always worth it.

Upon buying the latest Bowie album, I sent a text to an old schoolfriend. It was he who inadvertently started my Bowie obsession. When we were in a record shop in Camden in my early teens, he suggested I buy The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. So I did. I texted him these words last Friday: “Many years ago, you recommended I buy Ziggy Stardust. I am now off to buy his new album. I love Bowie so much and love you dearly for introducing me to him.”

If you want to understand Bowie’s brilliance, the cross-generational appeal that has become the mainstay of many an article or tribute over the last few days, then you need to simply talk to any fan and let them unpack why just one song of his meant so much. For me, a song I will always cherish is “Lady Stardust”.

An ode to Marc Bolan, “Lady Stardust” has many similar qualities to other songs on the album: the simple, soft intro of “It Ain’t Easy” and the crescendo chorus of “Rock’n’Roll Suicide”. Yet, when immersing myself in that legendary album, “Lady Stardust” was the most approachable. Maybe because it seems in some ways the most honest and emotional of a collection of songs that allude to a birthplace far up in space. Or maybe it’s just because it struck a chord.

For a young, unconfident and confused teenager, there was something quite fantastic about someone from 1972 being able to quite perfectly pinpoint what was whirling around in your head. It’s easy to get trapped in one’s thoughts and go crazy; it’s harder to be able to talk about those feelings in public; and it’s nigh-on impossible to make those feelings become an artwork that speaks to millions both then and now.

What a wonderfully poignant expression “Lady Stardust” is of being young and different: the crowd staring at the “make-up on his face” and laughing at “his animal grace”. That urge, as a young boy, to stick out from the crowd, to wear the brightest of clothes and make some sort of statement whilst eternally being worried about what the response would be, from family, friends, classmates and beyond. “The boy in the bright blue jeans jumped up on the stage, and Lady Stardust sang his songs of darkness and disgrace.”

How difficult it is to grasp one’s own sexuality and the consequences of “coming out” at such a young age and in any decade or in any society; to make yourself understand that there is nothing wrong in who you are attracted to. But how perfect that period of questioning and confusion is captured in the line: “I smiled sadly for a love I could not obey.” Sadness through smiles, and yet Bowie told me to not fear, for Lady Stardust “was all right” in the end.

That is Bowie summarised. Whatever your thoughts, whatever your troubles, whatever your failure to articulate or grasp what you want to say or express, you can rest safe in the knowledge that David has already vocalised every possible feeling of despair and pain – and done so in the most poetic and magical way possible.

Even attempting to explain my utter appreciation for Bowie and everything he brought to the world has already been beautifully summed up by the Bowie bard himself: in “Word On A Wing” on Station To Station, a song written during the depths of his drug addiction, wearing a crucifix in his moment of despair, Bowie hauntingly sang: “In this age of grand illusion, you walked into my life out of my dreams”.

For so many of us, at times when we felt, as he put it, “isolation, abandonment, fear and anxiety”, Bowie entered the stage and made it all right.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / January

Dave Brown on David Bowie

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / January

Alan Rickman, the master of clammy nastiness on stage and screen, dies at 69

Alan Rickman at the premiere of his film ‘A Little Chaos’ at the BFI London Film Festival in 2014

GEOFFREY MACNAB Alan Rickman was the most mellifluous of actors, with a voice that had a wonderful mellowness of sneer about it. That was why he was such a prime candidate to play villains in Hollywood. As critic Roger Ebert said after seeing Rickman as German terrorist Hans Gruber opposite Bruce Willis’s hero in Die Hard (1988): “He is really the most interesting character in the movie, kind of an intellectual guy with delusions of superiority.”

Nobody could do superciliousness or clammy nastiness quite like Rickman. He was natural casting as the Sheriff of Nottingham in the Kevin Costner vehicle, Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves (1991). It was his role as the scheming seducer Valmont in the 1985 RSC production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses (which transferred to Broadway two years later) that brought him to the attention of Hollywood agents.

“Having a film career at all was a bit of a surprise,” Rickman acknowledged in a Bafta interview last year. If it hadn’t been for Liaisons, he might have stayed a British stage actor. As it was, his career veered off in a very different direction. You can see hints of Valmont in all Rickman’s screen villains: a calculating quality, an elegance and a capacity for cruelty. That, though, was only part of what he offered. He is easily bestknown to a mass audience for playing potions guru Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films – and that was a role of surprising complexity.

His lank-haired Severus was anguished, emotional and with an unlikely dark romantic quality. Given the chance, Rickman was a skilled (very dry) comic actor. He was very funny as Alexander Dane, the selfimportant Shakespearian actor who has been slumming it as a Dr Spock-like alien in sci-fi comedy Galaxy Quest (1999). “It’s a bit too close for comfort,” he later joked of a role that seemed to have been written with him in mind.

TRIBUTES: ‘KIND, FUNNY, CHARMING’ ‘Alan was my friend and so this is hard to write because I have just kissed him goodbye. What I remember most in this moment of painful leavetaking is his humour, intelligence, wisdom and kindness. His capacity to fell you with a look or lift you with a word. That intransigence which made him the great artist – his cynical wit, the clarity with which he saw most things, including me, and that he never spared me the view. He was a rare and unique human being and we shall not see his like again.’

Emma Thompson ‘Alan was extremely kind, generous, self-deprecating and funny. He was one of the first of the adults on Potter to treat me like a peer rather than a child.

Working with him was incredibly important and I will carry the lessons he taught for the rest of my life.’

Daniel Radcliffe ’A man of such talent,

Rickman also had the presence to play major historical figures. He was a memorably scheming Eamon de Valera opposite Liam Neeson’s Michael Collins in Neil Jordan’s biopic Michael Collins (1996). A little incongruously, he played US President Ronald Reagan in Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013). Belying his reputation as a British classical actor, he was cast recently as legendary New York music impresario and club owner Hilly Kristal in CBGB (2013) The film may not have been especially well-received but it showed how bold and offbeat Rickman often was in his choices of roles.

On TV, this seemingly most self-contained of actors had a notable success (and won a Golden Globe) as the gimlet-eyed Russian monk in Uli Edel’s Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny (1996). One of his bestloved films was as the “ghost” in Anthony Minghella’s debut feature Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990), a recently deceased cellist carrying on his relationship with his bereaved girlfriend Nina (Juliet Stevenson). Some British critics moaned about the sentimentality, but others adored it.

What Truly, Madly Deeply underlined was both Rickman’s natural charisma and his ability to play a romantic lead. “He’s an extremely interesting man who has a very strong, quite formidable personality which everybody gets enthralled by in some way,” Minghella said of him.

Look through Rickman’s credits and you realise just what a restless, unpredictable figure he was. At the same time he was appearing in Harry Potter movies, he was continuing to work on stage. He performed in Shakespeare, Noël Coward and Samuel Beckett. There was a political side to his work, evident in My Name Is Rachel Corrie, the play he edited and directed, based on the diaries and emails of the American activist who was killed in Gaza in 2003.

Rickman also directed feature films. His debut feature was The Winter Guest (1997), an ensemble piece based on Sharman Macdonald’s play

wicked charm and stunning screen and stage presence.’

Stephen Fry ‘There are no words to express how shocked and devastated I am. He was a magnificent actor and a wonderful man.’

J K Rowling ‘Alan was a towering person, physically, mentally and as an artist. A great friend.’

Helen Mirren

and starring Phyllida Law and Emma Thompson. Last year he directed and appeared in A Little Chaos, starring Kate Winslet and with Rickman himself as the “Sun King”, Louis XIV. Again, reviews were mixed but it was a testament to Rickman’s sheer spirit of adventure that he managed to pull off a full-scale costume epic based around, of all subjects, gardening.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / January

Tsai becomes Taiwan’s first female president

Tsai Ing-wen addresses the people following her election victory (Reuters)

SIMON DENYER IN TAIPEI

Taiwan’s ruling party has conceded defeat in the island's presidential elections, meaning that opposition leader Tsai Ing-wen will become the island’s first woman president. By 7 pm local time (11am GMT), Ms Tsai, head of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), had recorded more than 4,655,000 votes, far ahead of Eric Chu of the ruling Nationalists or Kuomintang (KMT) with some 2,614,000 votes.

The KMT’s eight years in power have seen warming ties with China but a slowing economy, and the result raises the prospect of a new era of uncertainty in ties with China. Chu announced his resignation as KMT

chairman.

Even before polls closed, China reaffirmed its opposition to independence for the island that it still regards as a renegade province. Ms Tsai’s name was blocked on the country’s Sina Weibo microblogging site. “We won’t interfere in Taiwan’s elections. What we are concerned about is the cross-strait relationship,” a spokesman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said, according to Chinese state media.

On the surface, this is an election all about current President Ma Ying-Jeou’s failure to breathe life back into one of Asia’s former economic tigers. But dig a little deeper, and this is a vote that sees Taiwan finding its feet after two decades as a democracy and re-imagining itself as a nation quite separate from its communist big brother across the Taiwan Strait.

For eight years, Mr Ma and the KMT had promised that improved ties with China would help to rescue Taiwan’s ailing economy but has failed to deliver on that promise: closer integration has indeed helped trade and tourism to boom, but Mr Ma’s “open door” policy has benefited business tycoons more than ordinary people. The economy as a whole is thought to have expanded by just 1 per cent last year.

“Wealth inequality increased while the KMT was in office,” 38-year-old engineer Wang Wei-min said after voting, his eight-month-old daughter sleeping in a baby carrier on his chest and his wife at his side. “I want my daughter to grow up in a society of freedom and opportunity, where resources are not cornered by the wealthy.”

With Mr Ma constitutionally barred from standing again, the KMT was fielding its 54-year-old USeducated chairman Eric Chu, but was sticking to a broadly similar script. Ms Tsai, by contrast, focused her campaign resolutely on domestic concerns, employment and housing, modernising the economy and forming a government that is closer to the people.

“This election is not about beating anyone, it is about beating the difficulties this country is facing,” Ms Tsai told thousands of cheering, flag-waving supporters at her final campaign rally on Friday night. “We are only one step away from a new era.” If I’m elected president, I’ll make the people’s voice the foundation of policymaking,” she added. “Democracy is not just an election, it is our daily life.”

Yet even if Ms Tsai did not mention China in her closing speech, Taiwan’s powerful neighbour still looms like a shadow over this election. Beijing still views Taiwan as part of its territory and threatens to use force if it ever declares independence. It has found a degree of accommodation with the KMT after both sides agreed in 1992 on the idea that there was “one China”, even though they disagree on who the nation’s rightful rulers are. That is known as the 1992 consensus. Today, the Chinese official said the 1992 consensus and opposition to independence formed the basis for peaceful development. “That foundation should be safeguarded and valued,” he said.

Ms Tsai insists she wants good relations with China, and stresses the need for communication. However, she wants to maintain the status quo of de facto independence, and has refused to endorse the “one China” principle – because that would mean renouncing any possibility of eventual, formal independence. How Beijing will react to a Tsai presidency is one of the big unanswered questions, and it is a question the KMT has tried to ruthlessly exploit, warning of “chaos” and “catastrophe”, of economic fallout and security risks in the event of a Tsai victory.

The KMT’s Mr Chu had made a final appeal for voters to make a “wise” decision. “I believe that both sides of the Taiwan Strait, the United States and the whole world are looking for a peaceful relationship between Taiwan and China. My election can give everyone confidence.” Voting at a polling booth set up beside of a Catholic Church on Saturday, 48-year-old baker James Chu agreed. “Tsai hasn’t explained how she’ll deal with the question of Taiwan’s independence,” he said. “If Taiwan wants development, it must cooperate with China, but that conflicts with her party’s principles.”

Yet most other voters don’t seem swayed by that argument. That’s partly because many had grown uncomfortable with Taiwan’s growing dependence on China under Ma, partly because they trust Tsai to handle cross-strait relations sensibly, but also because her victory would reflect a fundamental shift in the way Taiwanese people think of themselves. “I care more about domestic affairs than I do about cross-strait relations,” said engineer Wang. “I believe Tsai can do a better job for Taiwan’s domestic affairs.”

More and more, the people of this island think of themselves not as Chinese people, nor even so much as both Taiwanese and Chinese, but as exclusively Taiwanese, polls show. It is a process that really got underway after Taiwan became a democracy, and that has accelerated as ties with China have blossomed under Mr Ma’s presidency. “The more contact people have had with China, the more they feel: ‘China’s great, but it’s just not us’,” said Nathan Batto, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica in Taipei.

At the root of this shift lies the two nations’ very different histories in the 20th century, their different cultures and fundamentally different political systems, Batto said. “Democracy is a core part of Taiwan’s political identity now,” he said.

At Ms Tsai’s rally, some openly declared their desire for an independent homeland, like 40-year-old whitecollar worker Celine Chen. “I want the whole world to know that we are Taiwan, we are not China,” she said. Yet others prefer the middle ground that Ms Tsai has so far chalked out. “Tsai is an intelligent woman,” said Gine Shuen, a 37-year-old teacher. “Although she is the leader of the DPP, she doesn’t insist on separating Taiwan from China, nor on making Taiwan too close to China. She keeps an open mind, wants communication and has a tolerant attitude, which is the best way to deal with the cross-strait relationship.”

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / January

Brian Adcock on Iranian sanctions

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / January

Sir Terry, the friend who knew just how to ease the nation into its working day

Terry Wogan on air at the BBC in 1976; 'Wake Up To Wogan' had 8m listeners at its peak (Rex)

CAHAL MILMO CHIEF REPORTER

Terry Wogan, whose mellifluous tones stirred millions of Britons from their slumbers over nearly 30 years and laconically illuminated for the nation the mixed blessings of the Eurovision Song Contest, has died aged 77.

The Limerick-born former bank teller turned broadcaster, who became a mainstay of BBC radio and

television before being knighted in 2005, died from cancer.

Tony Hall, the Director-General of the BBC, led tributes to a man whose career took him from chat-show host to game-show compere to acerbic Eurovision Song Contest commentator but who will be best remembered for his banter-laden Radio 2 breakfast show. Lord Hall said: “Terry truly was a national treasure. Today we’ve lost a wonderful friend.”

While he would have doubtless accepted such praise with his trademark good grace, Wogan may have also flinched at the description with his equally customary self-deprecation.

Wogan's motto was 'Be Kind' In 2014, he told The Independent: “Treasure is the kind of thing you dig up, or bury. And when people say, ‘Oh, he’s an icon,’ well an icon is a very old painting hanging in a Russian church. If you want to say something, say something nice about me. Don’t call me a national treasure.”

Despite hanging up his headphones and leaving his daily show in 2009, the broadcaster had continued to be a regular on-screen presence until shortly before his death. Sir Terry announced last November that he would not be fronting the BBC’s annual Children in Need appeal, of which he had been a founding supporter. He cited a back complaint, which may have been a means of obscuring the more serious illness that claimed his life.

In a statement, his family said: “Sir Terry Wogan died today after a short but brave battle with cancer. He passed away surrounded by his family.” He leaves behind his wife of 50 years, Helen, and their three children.

The couple lost a daughter, Vanessa, to a heart condition when she was a newborn – a moment, which he

later confessed, had made him regret he no longer had his Catholic faith.

The host with the ‘wand’ that was part of the ‘Blankety Blank’ furniture

For a man whose personal motto was “be kind”, there was no shortage of warm words for the broadcaster – from Downing Street to fans of his radio show, to whom he famously referred as TOGs or Terry’s Old Geezers and Gals. The audience of Radio 2’s Wake Up To Wogan reached 8m listeners, making it the most listened-to radio programme in Europe.

Fellow radio host Simon Mayo said: “There was no one better at being a friend behind the microphone than Sir Terry. He was never intimidating, he was always very welcoming – he treated you as an equal.

Warm, generous, always with the right quip and the right tone – he loved talking to people.”

Among the many musicians who offered praise was the British singer-songwriter Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam), who described him as “a genuine and joyous man”.

Born in 1938 in Limerick city to the manager of a grocery store, Wogan had a strongly Catholic upbringing and was educated by Jesuits. His family moved to Dublin when he was a teenager and he joined the Irish national broadcaster, RTE, as a newsreader after a brief spell as a bank worker.

Sir Terry on the pop panel show 'Never Mind the Buzzcocks'

He began working for BBC Radio 1 in the late 1960s but it was on Radio 2 that he discovered his true calling, perfecting a soothing balm of deadpan humour with which to ease the nation through its waking hours.

For a decade or so from the early 1980s he also became a fixture on television screens, hosting the Saturday evening game show Blankety Blank with his famously spindly microphone (“Wogan’s Wand”) and a succession of chat shows, most notable Wogan.

Wogan led to a number of memorable television moments, including an interview with an inebriated George Best and an on-air proclamation from David Icke that he was the “son of God”. Sir Terry told the football pundit turned messiah: “They’re not laughing with you, they’re laughing at you.”

The broadcaster was also credited with inventing a whole new genre in British television – the acerbic, head-in-hands host of Eurovision. Referring one year to a suspiciously high score given by Ukraine to Russia, Wogan effortlessly mixed geo-politics with musical appreciation, observing: “And Ukraine just wanted to be absolutely sure that the oil and the electricity rolls through.”

Sir Terry and co-host Tess Daly during the BBC's ‘Children in Need’ in 2013

The extent to which he became beloved by – and part of – the British Establishment was proven by his apparently regular invitations to Windsor Castle to have tea with the Queen, who was said to feature among his listeners.

Wogan was fond of pointing out to visitors the Queen’s home from his own substantial Buckinghamshire manor beside the Thames. He was also among a handful from the entertainment world to receive a personal invitation from the family of Baroness Thatcher to the former Prime Minister’s funeral.

Despite his substantial properties and handsome pay packet (£800,000 a year, which he described as a “bargain” for the BBC given his huge audience numbers), Sir Terry made it clear he felt he had never lost the common touch.

In an interview last year, he criticised fellow celebrities who complained about being asked to pose for selfies with fans. He said: “Somebody wants to have their picture taken with you? So what? It’s no big deal.

If you are on TV, you are not a Hollywood star, you’re not some glamorous, distant god. You are part of their lives and people feel they can approach you.”

Wit and Wisdom: Wogan’s words On swine flu: “If you receive an email warning of the dangers of eating pork meat, don’t worry. It’s only spam.”

On his audience figures: “Gratuitously hurtful folk declare that I am very popular in hospitals because the listeners there are too weak to reach out and switch me off.”

On Eurovision: “Who knows what hellish future lies ahead? Actually, I do. I’ve seen the rehearsals” – opening comments for Finland’s 2007 contest

“A defined, well-set, lump of a woman” – description of Malta’s 2005 entry “That was France. Gosh, wasn’t that awful?” – description of the 2007 French entry “Doctor Death and the Tooth Fairy” – Wogan’s description of the Danish hosts of the 2001 contest.

On broadcasting: “Get on your toes, keep your wits about you, say goodnight politely when it’s over, go home and enjoy your dinner.”

Edina Cloud, Lucy Quipment, Helen Bach, Sly Stunnion, Tess Tickles – spoof names used by his Radio 2 listeners.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / February

Zika virus declared global health emergency by WHO

The Zika virus is thought to cause microcephaly in newborn babies (Reuters)

PAUL GALLAGHER The Zika virus outbreak should be considered a “public health emergency of international concern”, the World Health Organisation has said. The global health body made its decision after an emergency meeting in Geneva to discuss the “explosive” nature of the virus. The rare move signals the seriousness of the outbreak and usually triggers increased money and efforts to stop the outbreak, as well as prompting research into possible treatments and vaccines.

The last time a global emergency was declared was following the Ebola outbreak in December 2013, which is thought to have led to more than 11,000 deaths. Health experts have said the Zika outbreak could be far

worse and WHO officials have predicted that as many as four million people could be infected with the virus this year.

The outbreak of Zika, which is transmitted by mosquitoes, began in Brazil last May and has moved into more than 20 countries in Latin America. The main concern is Zika’s possible link to microcephaly, a condition that causes babies to be born with brain damage and unusually small heads. Reported cases of microcephaly are rising sharply in Brazil though researchers have yet to establish a direct link. Colombia has also seen a rise in the number of patients diagnosed with a rare neurological disorder which can cause paralysis.

Following a meeting of an International Health Regulations Emergency Committee, WHO Director General Dr Margaret Chan said the causal relationship between infection during pregnancy and microcephaly in babies is “strongly suspected” but not scientifically proven. The committee advised that the association between the virus and constitutes an “extraordinary event”.

Dr Chan said that a coordinated international response was needed to investigate and understand the relationship between the virus and the condition. Patterns of spread of the virus, the lack of vaccines and reliable diagnostic tests are also cause for concern, she added. “Members of the committee agree that the situation meets the conditions for a public health emergency of international concern,” Dr Chan said. “I have accepted this advice. I am now declaring that the recent cluster of microcephaly and other neurological abnormalities reported in Latin America, following a similar cluster in French Polynesia in 2014, constitutes a public health emergency of international concern.”

Dr Chan said the committee found no public health justification for restrictions on travel or trade to prevent the threat of Zika virus. “At present the most important protective measures are the control of mosquito populations and the prevention of mosquito bites in at-risk individuals – especially pregnant women,” she said.

Since the start of the outbreak last year, five UK travellers have been diagnosed with the Zika virus. While many do not even know they are infected, some can suffer symptoms including fever, joint pain, itching, rash, conjunctivitis or red eyes, headache, muscle pain and eye pain. The UK National Travel Health Network and Centre recommends that people who are pregnant or trying to becoming pregnant should reconsider travel to affected countries. It has also urged health professionals to consider Zika as a possible diagnosis in any patients with fever returning from South and Central America, the Caribbean, Africa, South and South-east Asia and the Pacific region.

Public Health England (PHE) has said men in the UK should wear condoms for a month after returning from any of the countries affected by Zika. In guidance to health professionals, PHE said the risk of transmission of the virus through sex was very low but condoms should be used as a precaution.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / February

Race against time as at least 153 confirmed missing in Taiwan earthquake

A crane lifts rescuers up to a collapsed building in Taiwan (EPA)

SERINA SANDHU A massive rescue operation is continuing to try to find people trapped after a powerful earthquake struck southern Taiwan, killing at least 14 people. Taiwanese authorities said more than 153 were still missing after the 6.4 magnitude quake struck early on 6 February.

Efforts centred on the 17-storey Golden Dragon building in Tainan city which collapsed, killing 11 people, including a 10-day-old baby. Rescuers were searching for up to 30 people still thought to be under the

rubble. It was one of nine high-rise blocks in the city that were severely damaged.

The Taiwanese army and fire fighters used ladders and cranes to reach the building. Specialist search dogs were also used. Rescuer Jian Zhengshun said the work was difficult because part of the building was believed to be buried underground, with the quake loosening the earth. He said rescuers had to clear rubble to create passages to reach people who were trapped.

The quake came two days before the start of Lunar New Year celebrations that mark the most important family holiday in the Chinese calendar. The collapsed building had 256 registered residents, but far more people could have been inside because families typically host guests for the holiday. Local media said the building included a care centre for mothers and babies.

Relatives wait for news of survivors (Reuters)

Taiwan’s emergency management information centre said more than 470 people were injured; around 380 had been discharged from hospitals by late on 6 February. By nightfall they said more than 330 people had been rescued from buildings in Tainan.

President Ma Ying-jeou visited a hospital and the emergency response centre in Tainan before rushing back to the capital, Taipei, to attend a briefing on the situation.

Lisa Hsu, of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in Tainan, said: “It’s a tall building and it totally collapsed. It’s lying on the ground in front of us. The weather is cold but the rescue work is still going on.” She said the IFRC had been providing hot meals and blankets throughout the day. The Taiwanese government set up seven temporary shelters for people left homeless.

“I hope that the death toll will not go higher. I think there is still hope, the rescue teams have identified some sites where they think there is still life,” she added.

Ms Hsu said traffic and train lines had been affected – many people had been travelling across the island for the start of the holiday. Electricity to more than 120,000 households had been disrupted and five other buildings were leaning dangerously.

The quake ran only six miles into the ground, according to the US Geological Survey, which said its shallowness intensified the destruction. The fate of the buildings has raised alarms over construction standards, and interior minister Chen Wei-zen said the Golden Dragon building, built in 1989, would be investigated. The task is likely to be overseen by Taiwan’s first female president, Tsai Ing-wen, after her May inauguration.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / February

Pyongyang faces UN sanctions over its planned new missile defence system

North Korea claimed that it had merely launched an observation satellite, but its adversaries believe the true purpose was to test a ballistic missile (EPA)

DON KIRK AND DAVID MCNEILL IN SEOUL

The launch of a long-range rocket by North Korea has heightened tensions in north-east Asia and pushed South Korea and the US into talks on the deployment of a controversial high-altitude missile defence system that China and Russia both bitterly oppose.

The announcement of talks over the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) came just hours after North Korea announced that it had successfully put a new Earth observation satellite into orbit. North Korea’s adversaries believe the real purpose of the launch was to test a ballistic missile, just one month after its fourth nuclear test.

Following an emergency meeting on Sunday night, the United Nations Security Council condemned the rocket launch and said it would soon adopt a new sanctions resolution in response. A statement said that launches using ballistic missile technology, “even if characterised as a satellite launch or space launch vehicle”, contribute to North Korea’s development of systems to deliver nuclear weapons. It added that using ballistic missile technology was a violation of four Security Council resolutions dating back to 2006.

The launch was widely condemned, including by the British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, who said North Korea’s actions “continue to present a threat to regional and international security”. But China and Russia both stressed the importance of finding a diplomatic solution.

If deployed, THAAD would usher in a new era of Star Wars in north-east Asia. South Koreans have long been lukewarm about US insistence on the need to deploy multibillion-dollar missile launchers capable of shooting down enemy missiles hurtling more than 100 miles overhead.

One of South Korea’s objections has been concern about offending Beijing, which has repeatedly expressed alarm about THAAD and its potential for use against China.

But China’s tepid response to North Korea’s fourth underground nuclear test on 6 January as well as this weekend’s missile launch has convinced South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye of the need for strong measures, and South Korea and the US said they would seek to deploy the system “at the earliest possible date”.

China expressed “regret” over the launch, saying North Korea had “ignored universal opposition of the

international community”. While North Korea “should have the right to the peaceful use of space,” an official Chinese response said, “this right is limited by the United Nations Security Council resolutions.”

Analysts saw that statement as a pro forma reaction that indicated China would not support calls in the United Nations for strengthening current sanctions – or, indeed, for enforcing the sanctions already in place after the previous missile launch in 2012 and after North Korean nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013. “Nothing’s going to happen,” said Tom Coyner, a Seoul-based business consultant. “The debate in the UN will go nowhere. Nobody will do anything.”

Ms Park reflected South Korean outrage as well as frustration, declaring that North Korea had “committed an unacceptable provocation of launching a long-range missile after conducting a fourth nuclear test” and demanding that the UN Security Council “quickly come up with strong sanctions.” South Korea’s Foreign Minister, Yun Byung-se, said he might go to New York to try to drum up support at the UN. He also planned to talk on the phone to the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, and Japan’s Foreign Minister, Fumio Kishida.

North Koreans watch news of the launch on a big screen in Pyongyang

In North Korea, the launch was met with praise, with the National Aerospace Development Administration describing “the fascinating vapour of Juche satellite trailing in the clear and blue sky”. It said the launch was timed to coincide with the 16 February birthday of its former “Dear Leader” Kim Jongil.

Japan threatened fresh retaliation against North Korea over the rocket, which flew over Okinawa in Japan’s far south-west, triggering a military alert. “We absolutely cannot allow this,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said. “We will take action to protect the safety and well-being of our people.” Mr Abe said he had instructed his staff to prepare options for unilateral sanctions, a tacit admission that his government’s

policy of cautious engagement with the regime of Kim Jong-un has failed. Mr Abe’s government deployed destroyers and missile interceptors around Tokyo and on remote islands around Okinawa, in a largely symbolic show of strength against the launch.

In 2014 Japan relaxed what were probably the world’s toughest sanctions against the North, after Pyongyang promised to reinvestigate the abductions of Japanese citizens. Tokyo also broke diplomatic ranks with Washington and Seoul by secretly sending an advisor, Isao Iijima, to Pyongyang in 2013.

Andrei Lankov, a veteran Pyongyang watcher, said Tokyo’s uncompromising stance on the abduction issue had essentially locked Mr Abe’s government out of debate over what happened to the reclusive pariah state.

Japan’s Defence Minister, Gen Nakatani, said the North was using the improvement in its technology for long-range ballistic missiles as a way of highlighting the achievements of Kim Jong-un. “It’s too early to tell if the North succeeded in putting a satellite into orbit,” he said.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / February

Dave Brown on uneducated America

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / February

Einstein was right all along: scientists detect ripples of gravity in spacetime

A simulation of a cloud of gas being swallowed by a black hole

STEVE CONNOR Gravitational ripples in the fabric of spacetime, first predicted by Albert Einstein 100 years ago, have now been detected by scientists who believe the discovery opens new vistas into the “dark� side of the universe. Physicists around the world confirmed they had detected unambiguous signals of gravitational waves emanating from the collision of two massive black holes 1.3 billion light years away in deep space.

As the two black holes spiralled together in a violent collision that was over in 20 thousandths of a second,

immense amounts of matter – equivalent to the mass of three suns – were instantly converted into energy. This sent shock waves travelling through space for 1.3 billion years until they were picked up by gravitational-wave instruments on Earth on 14 September last year.

The detection of gravitational waves not only confirms Einstein’s general theory of relativity, it amounts to the first direct detection of a pair of colliding black holes, the mysterious structures in space that are so dense they exert a gravitational force from which nothing, not even light, can escape.

“We’re opening a window on the universe, the window of gravitational wave astronomy. It’s the first time the universe has spoken to us in gravitational waves. This was a scientific moonshot and we did it. We landed on the Moon,” said David Reitze, executive director of the US’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (Ligo), who announced the discovery at a press conference in Washington.

Two sets of super-sensitive instruments at two locations in the US both detected the same sub-atomic movements in the space-time continuum – the mathematical model that weaves space and time into a single entity – caused by the gravitational waves as they stretched and compressed the Earth. The first gravitational-wave signal was picked up at the Ligo’s Hanford observatory in Washington State and then, seven thousands of a second later, an identical signal was picked up at Ligo’s Livingston site in Louisiana some 2,000 miles away.

This twin detection of the same signal was critical for statistical confirmation of the discovery. “You can only believe they are real if you observe them at the same time in two different places,” said Professor Gabriela Gonzalez of Louisiana State University, the spokesperson for Ligo. “We can hear gravitational waves. We can hear the universe…that’s the chirp we’ve been looking for. That’s the signal we have measured. It’s monumental – like Galileo using a telescope for the first time,” Professor Gonzalez said.

The direct detection of gravitational waves will now enable astronomers to see the universe in a different light, giving them an unprecedented opportunity to observe the “dark” side of the cosmos, almost back to the beginning of time itself. It will enable scientists to build a network of gravitational-wave observatories both on Earth and in space that will see through the darkest voids of the cosmos.

It will give astronomers the ability to witness collisions between black holes and the interactions of massive stellar objects, even providing them with a time machine to look back almost to the earliest moments after the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago, when the super-heated universe began to cool down to form the first atoms.

“This detection marks not only a confirmation of Einstein’s theories but most exciting is that it is marks the birth of gravitational astronomy,” said Professor Sheila Rowan, director of the University of Glasgow’s Institute for Gravitational Research. “This expands hugely the way we can observe the cosmos, and the kinds of physics and astrophysics we can do.”

Einstein first predicted the existence of gravitational waves in 1916 as a result of his general theory of relativity, the most commonly accepted description of gravity, published a year earlier. However, despite decades of searching, gravitational waves proved too elusive for the most sensitive of gravity-detecting instruments – until now.

Scientists from Ligo confirmed in Washington what had been rumour for several weeks. They had witnessed changes in their laser measurements at Ligo’s two observatories that could only be due to gravitational waves stretching and contracting spacetime as they passed by the Earth. The observation of the gravitational waves produced by the collision of the two back holes is officially known as GW150914.

Scientists said it marked a new era in the scientific exploration of the universe and the laws of physics that control it.

“The observation of GW150914 marks three milestones for physics: the direct detection of gravitational

waves, the first observation of a binary black hole, and the most convincing evidence to-date that nature's black holes are the objects predicted by Einstein's theory,” said Professor Alberto Vecchio of the University of Birmingham’s School of Physics and Astronomy.

Ed Daw, a physicist at the University of Sheffield, said: “A measure of its significance is that even the source of the wave, two black holes in close orbit, each tens of times heavier than the sun which then collide violently, has never been observed before, and could not have been observed by any other method.

This is just the beginning.”

If the spacetime continuum is like a taut trampoline, then massive objects are like heavy bowling bowls distorting the trampoline’s fabric. When massive objects interact – such as colliding black holes – they send ripples known as gravitational waves travelling at the speed of light through spacetime. These ripples were too weak and difficult to detect by the previous generation of laser instruments used by Ligo, but an upgrade completed last year made the Advanced Ligo several times more sensitive, enabling it to detect distortions or movements of just one thousandth of the diameter of a sub-atomic proton over a distance of a kilometre.

Britain and Germany both contributed key elements to the upgrade, and Russian scientists provided critical input. Britain’s Science and Technology Facilities Council built the sensitive technology of suspending the instrument’s delicate mirrors while Germany provided state-of-the-art laser equipment.

Ligo’s 4km-long laser beams have now detected the minute stretching and contraction caused by a passing gravitational wave. It was the definitive proof that the scientists had long been waiting for. They had directly witnessed gravitational waves for the first time, 100 years after Einstein’s general theory had predicted them. Both of Ligo’s observatories in Washington and Louisiana detected the same gravitational waves almost simultaneously, meaning the find has a statistically significant level of “sigma 5” – virtually ruling out a chance effect.

The discovery also confirms the general theory of relativity by direct observation for the first time since it was published in 1915. Although astronomers had indirectly inferred the existence of gravitational waves in 1974 when they had observed the movements of two stars orbiting one another in a binary pulsar, the new announcement seals their existence – and the veracity of the general theory of relativity – with direct proof.

“Until you can actually measure something, you don’t really know it’s there,” said Professor Jim Hough, associate director of the Institute of Gravitational Waves at Glasgow University, who has spent the past 45 years searching for ripples in spacetime. “I think this is much more significant than the discovery of the Higgs boson. This is the biggest scientific breakthrough of this century.”

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / February

Harper Lee: enigmatic to the last, an author who inspired millions

Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ has sold more than 30 million copies (AP)

BOYD TONKIN In 1862, as civil war raged between the Union and Confederacy, President Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe. According to legend, he greeted the author of the anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin with the words: “So this is the little lady who started this great war.”

A century later, the civil rights movement in the US fought its battles with marches and bills rather than shells and bullets. But to millions of its supporters, not the busy activists but the well-meaning bystanders

and helpers, another female novelist played much the same role. Nelle Harper Lee, who has died aged 89, wrote a decisive chapter not only in the history of American literature but also the history of America itself.

To Kill a Mockingbird, her first and, until July 2015, only novel, helped to inscribe a belief in racial justice and horror at discrimination into the country’s self-image. By the late 1980s, 75 per cent of US public schools taught the book. It has sold more than 30 million copies. In a 2006 poll of librarians, it beat the Bible in a list of books that everyone should read. Via Robert Mulligan’s film in 1962, with Gregory Peck in the Oscar-winning role of the upright widowed lawyer Atticus Finch, Lee’s novel became an evergreen Hollywood classic.

To Kill a Mockingbird – an old-fashioned, conservative-minded and deeply nostalgic story set in the early 1930s – unleashed no revolutions. That was not its author’s character or aim. Rather, it played a key part in nudging the American mainstream into a different course, in which equality of respect, of treatment and of dignity became common sense and second nature.

Over the past two years, a spate of racist murders and police injustices have proved that the Atticus who defends a black man wrongly accused of rape would still have plenty of work to do. In fact, the circumscribed idea of equality that Lee gives her hero – qualified even further last year by the controversial publication of Mockingbird’s supposed “first draft”, Go Set a Watchman – foreshadows America’s unfinished business with race. None the less, the Middle America that elected and re-elected Barack Obama is scarcely imaginable without Mockingbird on its shelves and its screens. The little lady won a big war.

Few world-changing works have had quite such an inauspicious start. The daughter of a Monroeville lawyer and newspaper editor, Amasa Coleman Lee, who would lend the fictional Atticus much of his style and outlook, Nelle Harper Lee grew up a curious tomboy – again, much like the novel’s Scout – appalled by the prospect of becoming a strait-laced Southern lady. She studied law in Alabama, but in 1949 moved to New York. She worked as an airline booking agent and pursued her ambitions to write along with her childhood friend Truman Capote, the model for Dill in Mockingbird.

For his part, Capote portrayed Lee as “Idabel Thompkins” in Other Voices, Other Rooms. The duo formed an odd but creative partnership. Later, Lee would conduct many of the interviews for Capote’s true-crime classic In Cold Blood. Her interventions darkened the vision of the book. After the success of Lee’s debut, rumours swirled for years that Capote had in fact written it. The truth is that she contributed more to his career than he did to hers.

In 1957, Lee submitted the manuscript of a novel, then entitled Go Set a Watchman, to the firm of Lippincott. The editor Tay Hohoff found in it the “spark of the true writer” but not yet a polished work. So for more than two years they refined Lee’s interconnected stories down into the sharply focused single episode that anchors Mockingbird.

On publication, mixed reviews gave little hint of its future renown. But Lee had not just a spellbinding, almost folkloric narrative gift on her side but historical luck. Mockingbird perched in the American mind at exactly the right time. The fast-rising cause of civil rights needed an icon, a talisman, that could win over even the stubbornest conservative. Lee’s book fitted the brief perfectly, with its period setting, homespun charm and unimpeachable moralism It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961, just as J F Kennedy’s new dawn broke. As with Kennedy’s speeches, feelgood rhetoric can mask a sharper urge for change. Atticus tells Scout that “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb into his skin and walk around in it”. Bland, corny? Yes, except that the skin in this case was black.

With the novel a sensation and a touchstone on a scale that frightened her, Lee retreated to Monroeville.

She began the long decades of silence and near-invisibility – protected by her elder sister Alice – that most fans believed would endure until her death. Then, after a stroke in 2007 had limited her mobility and impaired both sight and hearing, came news of a “second” novel. Bitter disputes, which reached the Alabama courts, surrounded Go Set a Watchman. Had Lee authorised its publication? Could she understand what was happening? Apparently she could, the authorities decided. So the manuscript of Go Set a Watchman emerged from the shadows into global bestsellerdom last year.

Mysteries still persist. Is the book simply the first draft of Mockingbird, with the adult Scout returning home to Maycomb to discover a more cantankerous, conservative and even borderline-racist Atticus? It hardly reads as a first draft – more likely, an apprentice effort that Lee laboriously reworked.

Although Mockingbird-lovers felt bereft to see the sainted Atticus portrayed as a grouchy semi-bigot, it could be argued that this prequel-sequel bravely teases out the implications of Lee’s debut. As critic Adam Gopnik wrote in The New Yorker, “There is no contradiction between Atticus defending an innocent black man accused of rape in Mockingbird and Atticus mistrusting civil rights 20 years later. Both are part of a paternal effort to help a minority that, in this view, cannot yet entirely help itself.”

Some fans have regretted that this shaded and troubling coda should complicate memories of their fictional hero, Atticus, and their flesh-and-blood heroine, Harper Lee herself. Yet just as her debut had caught the breeze of change, so its contentious follow-up coincided with deep-seated doubts about the uncompleted work that Atticus and his like had left behind.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / March

The Independent becomes the first national newspaper to embrace a digital future

The Independent will cease as a print publication at the end of March

The Independent is to become the first national newspaper title to move to a digital-only future, owners ESI Media have announced.

The move will capitalise on The Independent’s position as the fastest growing UK quality newspaper website, and will ensure a sustainable and profitable future.

Rapid digital growth in the past three years has made independent.co.uk the UK’s fastest-growing quality newspaper site. Its monthly audience has grown 33.3 per cent in the last 12 months to nearly 70 million

global unique users. The site is profitable and is expected to see revenue growth of 50 per cent this year.

Evgeny Lebedev, owner of The Independent, said: “The newspaper industry is changing, and that change is being driven by readers. They’re showing us that the future is digital. This decision preserves the Independent brand and allows us to continue to invest in the high-quality editorial content that is attracting more and more readers to our online platforms.

“My family bought and invested heavily in The Independent because we believe in world-class quality journalism, and this move secures the future of these vitally important editorial values.”

Steve Auckland, Group CEO, ESI Media, said: “The unique editorial proposition of The Independent is perfectly suited to the global digital landscape. Following this decisive move to digital, we will be as focused and uncompromised as any start-up, but with all the authority and trust of an established newsbrand – a truly unique proposition. We now have a clear and secure future path for our businesses.

It’s also a further opportunity for our advertisers to capitalise on our growing, smart, affluent and digitally savvy audience.”

The i100.co.uk site, the hugely successful quality news source for millennials, will become indy100.com as part of ESI Media’s drive to champion truly independent and innovative journalism worldwide.

ESI Media has also confirmed that it will sell the i newspaper to Johnston Press.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / March

Manhunt for third bomber begins after bombings shake Belgian capital

Airport CCTV shows the three suspects; Faycal Cheffou is on the right (Belgian Federal Police )

CAHAL MILMO AND LEO CENDROWICZ A manhunt is under way for the third member of a team of bombers who brought carnage to Brussels airport, after at least 34 people died in jihadist terror attacks on the Belgian capital.

Days after the Belgian authorities ended their four-month hunt for the Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam, a new pursuit began as police issued a CCTV image of three men pushing heavily laden luggage trolleys into Brussels’ Zaventem Airport shortly before its departure hall was devastated by two explosions at 8am (7am GMT). At least 14 people were killed at the airport and 81 wounded. At least 20 others died in a bomb attack on a metro train and more than 100 were wounded.

Investigators were urgently seeking one of the three men – clad in a thick, light-coloured jacket with a black hat and thick glasses – after announcing that his two apparent accomplices were believed to have died in the suicide attack. The two men who are believed to have died were captured on grainy CCTV footage wearing what looked like single black gloves on their left hands – giving rise to speculation that they may have been used to conceal detonators for the devices.

“They came in a taxi with their suitcases, their bombs were in their bags,” Zaventem’s mayor, Francis Vermeiren, told the Agence France Presse news agency. “They put their suitcases on trolleys, the first two bombs exploded.” He added that a third “put his on a trolley but he must have panicked, it didn’t explode.”

An unexploded suicide vest was later found at the airport, which led to speculation that the wanted man may have pulled out of the assault at the last moment. An hour after the attack, a third device detonated on a train at the central Maelbeek metro station.

Isis claimed responsibility for the atrocities. Brussels had been living in fear of such an event since it emerged that the city had been the planning and logistical base for the attacks on Paris last November.

There was speculation that the attackers may have been prompted to strike swiftly because they feared police may be closing in on them, after the revelation by Abdeslam’s lawyer that his client was “collaborating” and “communicating” with police. Pieter Van Ostaeyen, an expert on Islamic radicalism in Belgium, told The Independent: “These guys acted because of last week, the arrest of Salah Abdeslam. They needed to kill immediately before they would be identified. It is not in retaliation over the capture. It is rather that their cover might have been blown.”

The Belgian Prime Minister acknowledged that fears of further attacks on home soil had come true. A sombre Charles Michel said: “What we feared has happened. In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity.”

Federal prosecutors confirmed that raids in the Schaerbeek area of Brussels had led to the discovery of an explosive device containing nails, chemical products and an “Islamic State” flag.

A security checkpoint outside the Midi train station following the bomb attacks (Reuters)

At least one Kalashnikov was recovered from the attack on the airport. Doctors treating the injured said they had recovered nails from survivors, suggesting that the bomb or bombs had been packed with additional shrapnel.

Belgian federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said two of the three men in the CCTV photo had “very likely committed a suicide attack�, while confirming the manhunt for the third man dressed in white.

But as the hunt for the fugitive continued, questions were being asked about the timing of the attack and whether it was linked to publicity surrounding the arrest of Abdeslam in a shootout.

Ministers and officials were barely able to conceal their relief at the capture of the Belgian-born jihadist.

But revelations from prosecutors that they believed the jihadist may have been plotting further attacks, and confirmation from his lawyer that his client was co-operating with investigators, led to concern that the killings were the work of members of the same or linked jihadist cellw who believed security services were close to tracking them down.

Mr Van Ostaeyen said the bombings followed the same logic of previous attacks: kill as many people as possible, without discrimination. He added: “I’m afraid that the police are just a few steps behind. They were very convinced that they stopped something big last week. And Isis probably wanted to show they can hit the heart of Europe at any time.�

Witnesses described hearing shouts in Arabic and gunshots moments before a heavy detonation blew out windows at the airport, bringing down a rain of ceiling fittings and water from ruptured pipes on the bodies of passengers who had moments earlier been queuing at check-in desks.

The bombing at Maelbeek station took place some 100 metres from the headquarters of the European Commission. Dazed and injured commuters spilled out on to the streets in scenes reminiscent of the 7/7 attacks on London.

Within minutes of the assault, the Belgian capital was placed in a state of lockdown with all public transport suspended and workers ordered to remain in their offices and pupils in their schools. Security was also tightened at Belgium’s nuclear power plants.

Within hours of the attack, the hashtag #PrayforBelgium was trending on Twitter, while in Brussels residents offered to open their doors for workers stranded in the city centre. The association representing the city’s taxi drivers said its members were offering free rides to anyone seeking to return home.

Images shared on social media included Tintin, the cartoon reporter created by Belgian cartoonist Hergé, saying “Let’s be strong”, along with a drawing by French cartoonist Plantu showing a figure in the French tricolour putting an arm around a weeping Belgian flag.

The US President, Barack Obama, called the bombings “outrageous attacks on innocent people”.

As the country began three days of national mourning, Belgium’s King Philippe said: “For all of us, the 22nd of March will never again be a day like any other. Our country is in mourning. Our whole country bears the pain of lives that have been broken, of deep wounds that have been inflicted.”

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / March

US and Cuban presidents shake hands on ‘a new day between our countries’

Mr Castro greeted Mr Obama at the Palace of the Revolution (AP)

DAVID USBORNE IN NEW YORK

Standing alongside President Barack Obama on his historic visit to Havana, the Cuban leader, President Raul Castro, has called on the United States formally to lift the blockade imposed on his country more than fifty years ago and return the territory occupied by the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay. Speaking at a joint press conference after the two men held two hours of talks Mr Castro said he welcomed the steps taken by Mr Obama to thaw long-frozen relations between Cuba and the United States, but added that “much more could be done if the blockade were lifted”.

Mr Castro thus for a moment made common cause with Mr Obama on the issue of the embargo – an interesting twist of history in itself – which can only be lifted by an act of Congress. Mr Obama has repeatedly asked that that happen, but so far to no avail thanks to Republican resistance on Capitol Hill.

President Obama joked that he planned to talk for longer than his host For his part, Mr Obama said that his even being there, standing side by side with the leader of Cuba would have been “unimaginable” for so many years. “This is a new day between our countries,” he offered. “I am absolutely confident that if we stay on this course, we can deliver a better and brighter future for the Cuban people.”

Mr Castro did what no one seemed certain would actually happen – he opened the session briefly to questions, a significant break from his own preferred habit of never taking questions from reporters, presumably entertained only because the US had pressed for it.

In a remarkable, jarring sequence, Mr Castro responded indignantly to a question about Cuban political prisoners. “Give me a list of political prisoners,” he told a CNN reporter. ”I will release them immediately.

Give me a list… Give me a list… If we have those political prisoners they will be released before the evening ends.” Mr Castro later asked that further questions be directed to Mr Obama only.

The two-hour meeting between the two leaders marked the first high-level talks between their nations in over fifty years. Mr Obama’s visit was the first by a US president in 88 years Both men acknowledged their deep divisions. For the US that above all is friction over Cuba’s human rights record and treatment of political prisoners. “There are profound differences between our countries that will not go away,” Mr Castro noted. However, they announced a series of bilateral accords to deepen cooperation in areas like environmental protection and combating diseases like the Zika virus.

‘There are profound differences between our countries that will not go away’

As Mr Obama arrived at the Palace of the Revolution for his meeting with Mr Castro, he was greeted with by a full honour guard and military band. The pomp of the moment stood in contrast the low-key arrival of the American first family at Havana International Airport on Sunday where a welcoming delegation consisted only of mid-level party officials and notably did not include Mr Castro.

Similarly orchestrated for the TV cameras – American and Cuban – was a visit paid earlier by Mr Obama to the memorial to Jose Marti, the Cuban independence hero. He laid a wreath amidst the choreography of high-stepping ceremonial soldiers and strains from the attending Music Band of the General Staff of the Revolutionary Armed Forces.

The talks between Mr Obama and Mr Castro was their third face-to-face meeting since they announced, from their respective capitals, their intention to end the decades of enmity between the nations in late 2014 after months of secret talks. They shook hands at the April 2015 Western Hemisphere summit in Panama City and again in September last year on the fringes of the UN General Assembly in New York.

Mr Obama has been stubborn in his push for rapprochement against furious criticism from many Republicans, including candidates running to replace him, who argue he is giving away too much without scant sign of willingness from the Castro regime to enact meaningful social or political reforms. Those same critics pointed yesterday to the multiple arrests by state security of protestors belonging to the dissident Ladies in White group in Havana on Sunday as Mr Obama was en route to the island.

But polls show strong support in the US for his pivot towards the island and before carrying out his promise to pay it a visit, Mr Obama enacted a series of administrative changes to ease restrictions on Cuba, notably making it easier for US investors to do business and for Americans to travel there, opening up telecommunication links and paving the way for commercial air service to the island.

Motivating Mr Obama is a desire to leave a mark on US foreign policy before leaving office. His decision to moderate a five decade-old policy of isolating Cuba while it remains a one-party state has also helped remove a major irritant in relations between the US and the Latin America in general. Mr Obama is however at the limit of what changes he can make at the edges of the embargo without Congress acting to rescind it, something that is not likely to happen for as long as control of the House and the US Senate remains in Republican hands.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / March

Ronnie Corbett: a giant of comedy who was more than merely half of a double act

Ronnie Corbett in 1955, at the outset of his career (Getty)

ROBERT SELLERS The words “national treasure” are bandied around today almost as freely as the word “genius”, and nearly always attributed to people who scarcely deserve it. Ronnie Corbett is one of those rare cases where such an exulted title does not look misplaced; only a select number of entertainers have endeared themselves quite so much to the nation. No doubt his diminutive size helped: few episodes of The Two Ronnies escaped without Corbett joking about his falling into the 18th hole on a golf course, so too the trademark

glasses which combined to create a comedy persona without really trying.

As he perched on the end of an oversize chair, Corbett’s rambling comedy monologues on The Two Ronnies became an integral part of millions of people’s Saturday night entertainment during the 1970s and 1980s, the comedy equivalent of Ovaltine. Often unfairly seen as the foil for the more extraverted comedy of Ronnie Barker, Corbett was every inch his partner’s equal. In their most famous sketch, “Four Candles”, it is the exasperated reactions of Corbett’s shopkeeper perhaps more than Barker’s dimwitted requests that make the sketch work.

Ronnie Corbett was born on 4 December 1930 in Edinburgh. His father was a proud working-class man and accomplished baker who strove to better the life of his family. It was a religious household – Corbett’s mother was a volunteer worker for the local church’s youth club – and it was here that the teenage Ronnie’s desire to be a performer was born when he played the Dame in a Christmas panto.

Corbett in 2014 (Getty)

In 1951, after National Service with the RAF, where at 5ft 1in he was the shortest commissioned officer in the British forces, Corbett moved to London with £91 in his pocket from a Post Office savings account.

He rented rooms with Helena Pickard, the mother of a friend he had met in the RAF, the future stage and television actor Edward Hardwicke. Pickard was an actress herself and encouraged Corbett in his artistic ambitions.

She was also instrumental in landing him his first job. Her friend, the comedy actor Reginald Beckwith, had co-written the script for a film being made at Glasgow University called You’re Only Young Twice (1952). Corbett won the role of the president of the student’s union.

Over the next few years Corbett made the occasional television appearance, including regular slots as a

comic on the children’s show Crackerjack, but it was in reviews and seaside concert parties that he found the most employment and began making a name for himself. These shows were to lay much of the foundation for his later success, since he was required not merely to work as a comedian, but also to act, sing and dance.

With such a set of skills Corbett naturally gravitated towards work in theatre, appearing alongside Bob Monkhouse in the first West End production of the Rodgers and Hart musical The Boys from Syracuse in 1963. At the same time he was regularly playing in midnight cabaret at Danny La Rue’s Mayfair club alongside the likes of Barbara Windsor and Victor Spinetti. Here he met a young singer and dancer called Anne Hart. The couple married in 1965 and Anne unselfishly gave up the business to raise their two daughters, Emma and Sophie.

While appearing at Danny La Rue’s cabaret, Corbett was talent- spotted by David Frost and asked to join the cast of his satirical TV sketch show The Frost Report. Running from 1966 to 1967, it was a major turning point in Corbett’s life since another member of the cast was a certain Ronnie Barker. The pair were to star, alongside John Cleese, in one of the most famous sketches in British comedy history.

“The Class Sketch” saw Cleese and Barker looking down, literally and metaphorically, on Corbett’s working-class chump. The impact of the sketch was immediate and long-lasting. When Corbett and Barker were invited to be presenters at a Bafta award show, a technical breakdown resulted in them ad-libbing for several minutes. Bill Cotton, then head of light entertainment at the BBC, was sitting in the audience and, recognising their wonderful chemistry, snapped them up.

Running from 1971 to 1987, The Two Ronnies was one of the jewels in the BBC comedy crown, regularly achieving audiences of more than 15 million with its brilliant mix of warmly nostalgic music hall, sketches filled with memorable characters and sharp comedy writing, sometimes edgy but never malicious or offensive. Like so many of its type from that period, The Two Ronnies was a show the whole family could sit down and watch together, one of the reasons why it is still so fondly remembered and why, with the glorious exception of Morecambe and Wise, the pair became the country’s most popular double act.

But unlike Eric and Ernie, Corbett and Barker were no traditional double act: neither was the straight man nor the comedian, it was very much a partnership of equals. When Barker diversified with the hugely popular sitcoms Porridge and Open All Hours, Corbett too carved out a highly successful solo career. In 1973 he starred in the film version of the popular Whitehall farce No Sex Please, We’re British and appeared in Now Look Here (BBC 1971-1973), a domestic sitcom written by Monty Python’s Graham Chapman along with Barry Cryer, and its sequel, The Prince of Denmark (1974), set in a pub.

Undoubtedly Corbett’s biggest solo success arrived in 1981 when he played the role of the motherdominated Timothy Lumsden in Sorry! Sustained by fine scripts and Corbett’s brilliant performance, combining elements of pathos and perfect timing, the show ran for seven years and 42 episodes.

Ronnie Corbett with Ronnie Barker in 1969 (Getty)

Riding high with two hit shows, Corbett received the shock of his professional career in 1987 when Barker retired from show business. The rest of the nation was equally surprised; Barker was only 55, but high blood pressure meant he didn’t want to put himself under any further stress. A year later there was a further blow for Corbett when the BBC axed Sorry! “I smiled sweetly and took it – but I burnt with indignation inside,” he said.

Over the next few years, to all intents and purposes, it appeared to the public that Corbett had retired along with Barker, since he practically fell off the nation’s TV screens. Occasionally he would pop up as himself on variety and chat shows but nothing creatively stimulating; he was even reduced to the level of quiz show host with Small Talk (BBC 1993-96), in which adults attempted to guess how children would respond to certain questions. There was a small role as a zookeeper in Fierce Creatures (1997), John Cleese's follow-up to 1988’s A Fish called Wanda, and Ben Elton invited him on to his 1998 BBC series to revive his armchair monologue routines, but it was all a pale shadow of his glory days of prime time telly dominance.

In 2005 Corbett teamed up with Barker for a final swansong, The Two Ronnies Sketchbook, a collection of some of their finest moments interspersed with new material recorded in front of a live studio audience. It demonstrated, as if we needed reminding, just how popular the duo were, made even more poignant when Barker died soon after. It also coincided with Corbett’s resurrection into the mainstream as he was suddenly embraced by the current generation of comics. As he said, “I’ve just hung around long enough to come back into fashion.”

After appearing in an episode of Little Britain, Corbett memorably popped up in an episode of Ricky Gervais’s Extras, playing a parody version of himself caught sniffing cocaine off a toilet seat at the Baftas. It

was the most cutting edge thing he’d ever done and Corbett thought twice about doing it, later saying, “It did cause a stir, but I had the reasonable safety valve that Moira Stewart was my ‘supplier’. If I was in trouble she was in more trouble.”

Corbett had now passed over from entertainer to the status of “national treasure” and in 2010 made a oneoff return to prime-time television with The One Ronnie, a sketch show that saw him joined by a host of British comedy talent including Harry Enfield, Catherine Tate, Rob Brydon and Miranda Hart. In the same year he all but stole the acting laurels with a blisteringly funny cameo as the head of the Edinburgh militia in the John Landis comedy thriller Burke and Hare.

Fittingly, Corbett was appointed a CBE in the 2012 honours list, having already received an OBE in 1978.

He is survived by his wife, with whom he celebrated his golden wedding last year.

Ronnie Corbett, comedian and actor: born Edinburgh 4 December 1930; married 1965 Anne Hart (two daughters, and one son deceased); died 31 March 2016

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / March

The liberation of Palmyra marks an Isis retreat rather than a conclusive defeat

Heavily damaged buildings in a residential neighbourhood in Palmyra after Syrian troops had recaptured the city from Isis (AFP/Getty)

PATRICK COCKBURN The recapture of Palmyra by the Syrian army is an important defeat for Isis, but does not mean it is disintegrating as it is pressed back into the self-declared Caliphate. Although Isis is reported to have left the bodies of 400 of its fighters in and around the ancient city, it appears to have withdrawn most of its forces before they were destroyed. This is in keeping with its tactics over the last year whereby it does not fight to the last man defending fixed positions against prolonged airstrikes by Russian and US-led aircraft.

The successful advance of the Syrian army – though just how far it is in control of the Palmyra area is still unclear – marks an important victory for President Bashar al-Assad just as the loss of the city 10 months ago underlined the ebbing strength of his forces. The reversal of his military fortunes stem from the start of the Russian air campaign on 30 September last year and a less well-publicised increase in support from the Shia axis led by Iran and including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iraqi paramilitary units. Despite the official end of Russian military intervention, its aircraft evidently played a central role in retaking the city.

A striking feature of the Isis victory in May last year was that its fighters were able to advance without being bombarded by US aircraft because the Americans did not want to be accused of doing anything that would help the Assad government, whom it accused of never fighting Isis. The claim was in part propagandistic since the Syrian army had suffered a series of defeats at the hands of Isis in 2014, as was shown by Isis atrocity videos in which Syrian soldiers taken prisoner are shown being decapitated or shot.

Western governments and the Syrian opposition accused Russia of focusing solely on non-Isis targets during its air campaign in support of the Syrian army. In reality, the Russians launched air strikes on whatever elements of the armed opposition that were the greatest threat to Syrian army positions in all parts of the country. These included air attacks in northern Latakia province, around Aleppo and east of Homs and Hama. At the high point of its advance last year, Isis was able to threaten the main north-south M5 highway linking Damascus and Homs and, more recently, briefly cut the alternative route linking Homs to Aleppo.

Isis has lost a battle but it has not necessarily lost the war, and it will be difficult for the Syrian army to advance east of Palmyra as it presses into hardcore Syrian Arab areas and will become vulnerable to guerrilla attacks. The same is true of the heavily populated rural Sunni areas of Idlib province and east Aleppo, where the armed opposition is coming under pressure from Syrian army and the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG).

The political and military situation in Syria and Iraq remains unstable with local and foreign players all pursuing different strategies. The Iraqi and Syrian Kurds have provided ground forces that are closely allied to the US-led air campaign, but both are conscious that the international support they are currently enjoying will not continue after the defeat of Isis. They will also be vulnerable to re-empowered central governments in Damascus and Baghdad seeking to reassert control over their Kurdish provinces or areas in dispute.

Russia showed that it is happy to act in concert with the US in arranging a “cessation of hostilities” on 27 February between the Syrian army and the armed opposition, aside from Jabhat al-Nusra and Isis. It is seeking to give substance to peace negotiations in Geneva which envisage some form of power- sharing in Syria, either on a geographical or institutional basis. But this is not a policy favoured by Iran or the Shia axis, which in the long term remain the Assad’s government’s most committed allies. The civil war is far from over.

Patrick Cockburn’s Chaos and Caliphate: Jihadis and the West in the Struggle for the Middle East is published by OR Books

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / April

Biggest ever leak of secret papers links world leaders to hidden offshore deals

The Panama Papers detail schemes with links to the most powerful people in the world, including Syria’s President Assad (Getty)

RACHAEL REVESZ IN NEW YORK

Millions of confidential documents have been leaked from one of the world’s most secretive law firms, exposing how the rich and powerful have hidden their money. Dictators and other heads of state have been accused of laundering money, avoiding sanctions and evading tax, according to the unprecedented cache of papers that show the inner workings of the law firm Mossack Fonseca, which is based in Panama.

The documents, dubbed “The Panama Papers”, reveal links to 72 current or former heads of state and accuse some of them of having vested interests in their country’s own banks and looting their own countries. The data shows links to families and associates of some of the most powerful people in the world, including the former president of Egypt Hosni Mubarak, the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and the current president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad.

In the UK, several elected officials are involved with the law firm, including Baroness Pamela Sharples, the MP Michael Mates and the former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party Michael Ashcroft. All three provided responses to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and have either denied any financial benefit to the offshore companies or have completely denied the allegations of working with the law firm.

Two close allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin are linked to an alleged money-laundering ring thought to be worth $1bn and run by a bank based in St Petersburg, Bank Rossiya. One of those is the concert cellist Sergei Roldugin, who has known Mr Putin for many years, is godfather to Mr Putin’s daughter Maria, and introduced him to his now ex-wife Lyudmila. The bank in question has already faced sanctions from the European Union and the US after Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014.

The papers were initially leaked via the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung to the ICIJ. Gerard Ryle, director of the ICIJ, who has been analysing the documents along with 107 media outlets across more than 70 countries, told the BBC: “I think the leak will prove to be probably the biggest blow the offshore world has ever taken because of the extent of the documents.” The source of the leak remains unidentified.

Another accusation in the files is that the Prime Minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, had an undeclared interest in the bailed-out banks in the country, hiding millions of dollars in Iceland’s banks via an opaque offshore company. Iceland was one of the few countries following the 2008 financial crisis to jail several of its bankers, who were accused of taking excessive risk which led to the collapse of their economy.

Yet Mr Gunnlaugsson and his wife bought Wintris, an offshore company, in 2007 but did not declare an interest in the company when they entered parliament. The company was used to invest millions of inherited money. He then sold his 50 per cent stake in Wintris to his wife for 70p ($1) eight months later. Mr Gunnlaugsson has faced calls for his resignation but has reportedly said he has done nothing illegal and that his wife has not benefited financially from the arrangement.

Offshore companies are often located in countries such as Panama and are subject to their own tax rules, often functioning as tax loopholes or requiring much lower taxes than in an investor’s home country. The law firm documents additionally show how individuals could take out large amounts of cash without revealing who they are to the public. In one case, the firm acted on behalf of a man who pretended to be the owner of $1.8m so that the real owner could take out the money without revealing their identity.

The ICIJ has listed 140 politicians from more than 50 countries who are linked to offshore companies in 21 tax havens, including countries such as Argentina, Georgia, Iraq, Jordan, Qatar and Ukraine.

Mossack Fonseca said it has operated “beyond reproach” for 40 years and has never been accused or charged with criminal wrong-doing. “If we detect suspicious activity or misconduct, we are quick to report it to the authorities,” it said in a statement. “Similarly, when authorities approach us with evidence of possible misconduct, we always cooperate fully with them.”

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / April

Dave Brown on the Panama Papers

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / April

Star who was comic royalty but shunned the limelight

Brimming with silliness: Victoria Wood in a 1985 episode of ‘Wood and Walters’

FIONA STURGES Funny women were a rare species on television in the Seventies and Eighties, though rarer still were northern, working-class funny women. At the point at which Victoria Wood, who has died aged 62, rose to fame, the BBC was awash with moneyed, middle-class male comic actors, many of them alumni of the Cambridge Footlights. Yet, in operating apart from the male-dominated mainstream, Wood became the mainstream. She was also a star who was completely ordinary. Her appeal lay in the fact that she was one of us.

Throughout her 40-year career Wood was a stand-up, a TV comic, an actor, a singer-songwriter,

screenwriter and director. She opened the door for scores of working-class, female comic performers, among them Caroline Aherne, Jane Horrocks, Kathy Burke and Sheridan Smith.

It has long passed into cliché that Wood was a national treasure, yet she was just that. As one of the country’s best-loved television stars, she once beat the Queen Mother into second place in poll of People You’d Most Like To Live Next Door To, and in the mid-2000s was voted by Radio Times readers as the funniest woman of all time. Despite her status as comic royalty (Wood was awarded a CBE in 2008), she didn’t much care for the limelight and was rarely seen on the red carpet sporting a glittering gown. She once said she’d prefer a blue carpet where she could shuffle past the paparazzi in a pair of flat shoes.

Wood’s sketches brimmed with silliness yet were based on close, clever observation. “Life’s not fair is it?” she once noted “Some of us drink champagne in the fast lane, and some of us eat our sandwiches by the loose chippings on the A597.”

Wood in 1979 (Hulton Archive/Getty)

She was endlessly amused by life’s humdrum moments. Her sketches were, on the surface, innocent and gentle, though there was sedition under the surface, “Is It On The Trolley?”, a sketch in which she drives two city types to distraction as they try and fail to request a cup of coffee (in the process they are revealed to be over-privileged blowhards), to her most popular song “Let’s Do It” (“Beat me on the bottom with the Woman’s Weekly”), in which the stereotype of the sexually submissive wife is upturned by Freda, whose

appetites leave her husband, Barry, exhausted and unwilling.

Wood was one of the great feminist comedians. She wrote generously and sympathetically for and about women. She would talk blithely and unthreateningly about periods, weight gain, cystitis, disappointing sex and the trials of middle age. “I looked up the symptoms of pregnancy,” she said. “Moody, irritable, big bosoms ... I’ve obviously been pregnant for 36 years.”

There was also a strong seam of melancholy in her work. Her characters, who included aerobics instructors, waitresses and supermarket check-out girls, were women whose sunny demeanours often belied the drudgery of their existence. She once told The Independent, “I can’t imagine writing something that had loads of male parts. I don’t understand men at all – they’re a complete mystery to me.”

In her later life she would branch out from comedy into serious drama. Housewife, 49 (2006), which Wood wrote and starred in, was a tender and poignant drama in which she played a downtrodden wife and mother who struggled to find meaning in her life after her children had grown up.

The youngest of four children, Victoria Wood was brought up on the outskirts of Bury in Lancashire. Her parents were said to be distant; she and her older sisters were left to their own devices and would often eat meals by themselves. Wood suffered from low self-esteem and later talked about being shy, lonely and overweight as a child. In the Nineties she had therapy relating to her past, though the specifics were never revealed. She also talked openly about her struggles with an eating disorder.

Wood was made a CBE in 2008 (PA)

Having once been mesmerised by Joyce Grenfell on stage in Buxton, Wood found her passion in performing and studied drama at Birmingham University. She also became a skilled pianist after her father gave her a piano on her 15th birthday. Her career got off to an auspicious start when she won the TV talent

show New Faces in 1973. Following a stint as a novelty act on That’s Life!, she subsequently appeared in a Wild West Show in Leicester opposite the magician Geoffrey Durham, whom she later married and with whom she had two children (the pair split in 2002).

In the mid-Seventies Wood’s career began to dip and she spent several years on the dole. Durham encouraged her to keep writing, however, and Wood duly wrote a series of dramas including 1978’s Talent, which was televised by Granada. It was there that she met the actress Julie Walters with whom she costarred in 1982’s Wood and Walters. They remained lifelong friends and went on to appear together in Victoria Wood – As Seen On TV, Pat and Margaret, Dinnerladies and Acorn Antiques.

Throughout the Eighties Wood’s sketch show As Seen On TV was a prime-time staple. She was also a roaring success on the live circuit and once sold out the Royal Albert Hall for 15 consecutive nights. There were TV specials too, including 1989’s Bafta-winning An Audience With Victoria Wood.

Over the last decade she has written a musical, presented a documentary about the British Empire, one about landmines in Laos and another about tea. In 2011 she co-produced and appeared in Eric and Ernie, about the early career of the double-act Morecambe and Wise. Wood played Sadie, Eric’s mother.

As the years went by Wood became increasingly disenchanted with the BBC. She was irritated by the preponderance of loud-mouthed men on its panel shows (though she agreed to appear on QI), and was irked by the lack of trust in its more seasoned stars. Speaking of her fury at one executive telling her how to do her job, she said: “You think, well that’s fine, but what’s your qualification for telling me what’s funny? Please don’t tell me what’s funny, cos I know what’s funny... That’s why I’m on television and you’re not.”

Victoria Wood’s best one-liners “Sexual harassment at work… is it a problem for the self-employed?”

“My children won’t even eat chips because some know-all bastard at school told them a potato was a vegetable.”

“My boyfriend had a sex manual but he was dyslexic. I was lying there and he was looking for my vinegar.”

“Jogging is for people who aren’t intelligent enough to watch television.”

“People think I hate sex. I don’t. I just don’t like things that stop you seeing the television properly.”

“In my day we didn’t have sex education, we just picked up what we could off the television.”

“We’d like to apologise to viewers in the north. It must be awful for them.”

“I sometimes think that being widowed is God’s way of telling you to come off the Pill.”

“I once went to one of those parties where everyone throws their car keys into the middle of the room. I don’t know who got my moped but I’ve been driving that Peugeot for years.”

“Life’s not fair, is it? Some of us drink champagne in the fast lane, and some of us eat our sandwiches by the loose chippings on the A597.”

Victoria Wood, comic, writer and actress; born 19 May 1953, died 20 April 2016

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / April

After unlawful killing verdict, the Hillsborough families turn to cover-up

Mary Corrigan, mother of Hillsborough victim Keith McGrath, was among the family members elated at the announcement (Getty)

IAN HERBERT CHIEF SPORTS WRITER

Police officers and Hillsborough survivors whose testimonies were altered by police to create the impression that Liverpool fans caused the 1989 football stadium tragedy have called for criminal action against the perpetrators.

South Yorkshire Police was castigated by an inquest jury, which delivered 16 specific findings against the

force, including a conclusion that those who died were victims of unlawful killing. That verdict increases the likelihood of match commander David Duckenfield being prosecuted.

But although the unlawful-killing decision was the most keenly awaited by families, focus is now turning from the inquests’ search for a cause of death to alleged criminality, with many witnesses whose statements were found to have been altered insisting that Mr Duckenfield’s attempt to blame fans for fatally opening an exit gate was part of a far broader and more pernicious police cover-up.

Survivor Nick Braley, an Ipswich Town supporter who accepted an offer of a ticket for the Liverpool v Nottingham Forest FA Cup semi-final, said that he had claimed in his statement to the West Midlands force, which investigated South Yorkshire, that two fans had jumped over the turnstiles to access the ground, helped by officers. This had been amended to 50 when his statement was subsequently revealed to the 2012 Hillsborough Independent Panel, which re-examined all the evidence and paved the way to the inquest.

Severe overcrowding in the Leppings Lane end resulted in 96 Liverpool fans losing their lives

This was one of a number of amendments made. Another survivor of the Leppings Lane end told The Independent that his testimony had also been changed by the West Midlands force.

Martin McLoughlin, a junior officer on the day of the disaster, who retired on health grounds after Hillsborough, also found his statements altered by his superiors to make events look more positive for them and worse for Liverpool fans. “Justice has been done but I won’t rest until I see the investigation into my statement being altered,” he told The Independent. “Call me an old-fashioned bobby but that is criminal.”

An ongoing Independent Police Complaints Commission inquiry into possible police misconduct is

expected to report within a year and is pursuing 10,000 possible lines of inquiry. A second inquiry, Operation Resolve, is examining the circumstances surrounding the planning of the match and the day of the disaster. The Crown Prosecution Service has said it is in close contact with both inquiry teams.

The investigator who had done most to bring the Hillsborough campaign to yesterday’s conclusion, Professor Phil Scraton, author of Hillsborough: the Truth, also called for the Football Association – which escaped serious scrutiny at the inquests – to account for its own actions. The governing body rejected Liverpool’s pleas not to hold the 1989 game at Hillsborough – despite warnings from then-chief executive Peter Robinson that there had been problems at the stadium in which the same two sides had met in the previous year's FA Cup semi-finals.

A banner is illuminated above candles and floral tributes on the steps of Saint George’s Hall in Liverpool (Getty) Professor Scraton said: “There’s no question that the one significant omission in terms of those who are responsible is the Football Association. They had the lightest of touches. The time is right for the FA to come clean not only in terms of what happened on the day but [before that]. It was for them to check the safety of the stadium. We’ve heard that it was roundly criticised. I do feel that the FA should make a very clear statement as to why they not act appropriately at the time.” The FA has not responded to the inquest findings.

But despite the demands for further actions, fans did feel vindicated – above all by the jury’s conclusion that Liverpool supporters played no part whatsoever in the causes of the disaster. A survivor of the tragedy, who watched his 41-year-old uncle die in the crush while he fought to avoid being drawn down into the suffocating terrace, told The Independent that he had been made to feel culpable for his relative’s

death for 27 years.

“I can finally live with what happened now,” said Dave Golding, who was close to tears. “To have been at the inquests day in and day out, it is obvious that the 96 were unlawfully killed, but we could not be certain of the outcome. The events of the years since it has happened have told us always to expect the worst. It isn’t anger we feel. It’s a sense of righting wrongs. It’s relief more than anger after all these years.”

Relatives sing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ after the jury delivered its verdict (Reuters) In court, there were cheers of delight at that response and shots of “Thank you” and “Hallelujah” when the jury forewoman replied “Yes, by a majority” to the unlawful killing question.

The cheers were almost as loud for the conclusion that supporters had played no part in the disaster.

Families sobbed, and the pressure felt by the jury forewoman was also obvious, with her voice trembling as the general findings on the causes of the disaster were related. When the jury adjourned for the families to collect themselves, ahead of individual verdicts on the 96, the courtoom stood to applause the nine jury members, who had numbered 11 when initially constituted in 2014.

The jury also unanimously found, in response to the 12 further questions, that the disaster had been caused by catastrophic institutional failings. South Yorkshire Police errors caused a dangerous situation at the turnstiles; failures by commanding officers caused a crush on the terraces; and there were mistakes in the police control box over the order to open the Leppings Lane exit gates.

Sheffield Wednesday FC was also found to be culpable. Defects at Hillsborough contributed to the disaster and there was an error in the stadium’s safety certification. South Yorkshire Police and South Yorkshire

Ambulance Service delayed in declaring a major incident. The emergency response was therefore delayed.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / April

Prince found dead at his Paisley Park complex

Concerns had been raised about Prince's health the week before his death at 57 (Getty)

HEATHER SAUL AND TIM WALKER The enduring influence of Prince, the trailblazing singer and songwriter who has died aged 57, is perhaps best measured in the praise of his musical peers. Responding to the news of his passing, Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson wrote that Prince “could do it all: sing, play, arrange and produce.”

The veteran songwriter Diane Warren tweeted: “U wanna learn what a great song is? Go listen to every song on Purple Rain”, referring to Prince’s classic 1984 album.

The body of the celebrated musician – full name Prince Rogers Nelson – was found in a lift at his Paisley Park recording studio in Chanhassen, Minnesota. Entertainment website TMZ was the first to report his

death, which was confirmed to The Independent by a spokesman. “The news is devastatingly true,” they said.

The Carver County Sheriff’s Office said it was investigating the circumstances of the singer’s death.

Concerns about Prince’s health had been raised at least a week previously, when his jet made an emergency landing in Illinois on the way back to Minnesota from a concert in Atlanta.

Prince had reportedly complained that he was feeling “considerably worse” after being laid low for several weeks with a “bad bout of flu”. He was treated at a local hospital but released three hours later. The following night he appeared at a dance party close to his home, where he did not perform but told the audience: “Wait a few days before you waste any prayers.”

Born in Minneapolis in June 1958, Prince grew up in a musical family: his mother sang in a local jazz band, which was led by his father. He was playing the piano by age seven, guitar and drums at 14, all without lessons. His debut studio LP, 1978’s For You, was not a huge commercial success, but he followed it up with his first hit single, “I Wanna Be Your Lover”.

The eponymous 1979 album Prince went to No 4 in the Billboard Soul LP charts. Drawing on a spectrum of musical influences, from funk to rock and from disco to jazz, allied to his instrumental talent, flamboyant stage presence and unabashed originality, he was one of the most distinctive musicians of the past four decades.

A prolific songwriter, he composed a string of hits for other singers, and Sinead O’Connor’s searing version of “Nothing Compares 2 U” was a global chart-topper. But it was Purple Rain that secured his place in music history. The LP, which featured multiple hits including “When Doves Cry”, is a stalwart of greatest-ever album rankings and earned the singer his first Grammy awards.

As a cultural figure, Prince blurred the lines of gender, race and sexuality, both delighting and confounding fans with his sexually expressive lyrics and androgynous persona. Much of his third album, 1980’s Dirty Mind, was deemed too obscene to receive radio airplay. But rather than tone down his lyrics, Prince lasted long enough to see radio standards bend in his direction.

That refusal to conform became a defining characteristic: at one point, Prince changed his name to a symbol no one could pronounce. He rarely gave interviews and was known to refuse to allow journalists to record his voice. Given his private nature, it came as a pleasant surprise to fans when it was announced last month that he had signed a publishing deal for his memoirs. He had reportedly written around 50 pages before he died.

Though his public profile was lower than in previous decades, Prince remained prolific in the last few years of his life. His most recent album, 2015’s Hit n Run, was released in two parts. He was also believed to have a vault of unreleased recordings sufficient to fill an album a year for decades to come.

Even President Barack Obama was moved to pay tribute, saying: “As one of the most gifted and prolific musicians of our time, Prince did it all. Funk. R&B. Rock and roll. He was a virtuoso instrumentalist, a brilliant bandleader, and an electrifying performer. ‘A strong spirit transcends rules’, Prince once said – and nobody’s spirit was stronger, bolder, or more creative.”

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / May

Leicester City are worthy champions and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise

Wes Morgan, the linchpin of Leicester's defence, celebrates scoring the equaliser against Manchester United (Getty)

MARK OGDEN CHIEF FOOTBALL CORRESPONDENT

When Tiger Woods first disappeared off the golfing radar back in 2009, it was suggested that all those major championships won during his absence from the game should be accompanied by an asterisk. Tiger was so far ahead of the field that, clearly, anything won without him competing would not carry the same kudos until normal service was resumed and he was back to claim his rightful place at the summit of the

game, so the asterisk would be a handy reminder of the diminished value of the achievement.

It never happened, of course. Every tournament won with Tiger licking his wounds elsewhere was just as hard-earned as any before, during or after his period of dominance, and life went on. But the fact remained that, for a while at least, every major champion was forced to deal with the “What if Tiger had been around?” question.

Leicester City have been similarly patronised on their journey to the most remarkable league championship success in English football history, an achievement that was confirmed with Tottenham’s failure to claim victory against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. Claudio Ranieri’s team have profited from a perfect storm – a freak set of circumstances that has seen Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool, Manchester City and Arsenal all either endure their worst season in recent years or repeatedly fail to grasp the opportunity in front of them.

In any other season, one of the big beasts would have strolled to the title and Leicester would have been a footnote of history, like third-placed Norwich City in 1992-93 or Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle United’s three years later. That is the theory, anyway, one put forward by many within the game as well as those who have never kicked a ball professionally. Yet the reality is very different and there will be no need for an asterisk to accompany Leicester’s title triumph. Ranieri and his players have dominated the season, overcome every hurdle and challenge in their path and will now deservedly claim the Premier League trophy and their place among the top seeds in next season’s Champions League.

Let’s look at the facts. Leicester have suffered three league defeats all season – twice against Arsenal and against Liverpool at Anfield – and have beaten Chelsea, Tottenham, Liverpool and Manchester City. They have been in the top two since late November and have not been shifted from top spot since claiming a 1-0 victory against Spurs at White Hart Lane on 13 January. So much for the pressures and strains of leading from the front and the insomnia-inducing inclination to look over their shoulder at the chasing pack.

Leicester never looked back, just forwards, and they only saw the finish line.

Newcastle cracked in 1996, Liverpool stumbled and fell in 2014 and even Sir Alex Ferguson’s United, so accustomed to getting the job done, threw away an eight-point lead with six games to go in 2012 to hand the title to City. So Leicester’s mental strength should not be dismissed on the basis that they were never sufficiently challenged. The challenge was there, every week, but they dealt with it, ground out the results and kept the clean sheets – five in succession during March and April which hammered out the message that Ranieri’s men would not falter.

But within the team success, there have also been the individual achievements: the mercurial Riyad Mahrez being voted as PFA Player of the Year by his peers after 17 goals in 35 league games, and many more created, and Jamie Vardy crowned the Football Writers’ Footballer of the Year, erasing Ruud van Nistelrooy from the record books by scoring in 11 consecutive league games during the first half of the season. Ranieri’s flair players and match-winners have stepped up to the plate and delivered, but so have those who initially went under the radar and are now rightly receiving credit.

Kasper Schmeichel has been as important to Leicester City as his father Peter was to Manchester United (Getty)

In goal, Kasper Schmeichel has proven to be as important to Leicester as his father Peter was to United in the early 1990s. The central defensive axis of Wes Morgan and Robert Huth has given Leicester solidity and reliability, while Danny Drinkwater and N’Golo Kante have provided tenacity and more in front of them in midfield.

Marc Albrighton and Danny Simpson, cast aside by more glamorous clubs, have enjoyed the season of their lives, while Shinji Okazaki and Leonardo Ulloa have quietly delivered performances and goals at crucial moments.

Nobody has fallen short, and while Leicester may lack the style, grace and adventure of previous title winners such as Arsenal’s Invincibles or United’s Treble winners, they have ended the campaign as worthy champions.

Jamie Vardy scored in 11 consecutive league games to break Ruud van Nistelrooy's record (Getty)

Ranieri will relish his players being afforded a guard of honour at Stamford Bridge on the final day of the season – he may even receive an acknowledgement from Roman Abramovich, the man who sacked him as Chelsea manager in 2004 – but the Italian is too gracious to milk that particular moment.

As for the rest, the so-called superpowers who have been left trailing in Leicester’s wake, perhaps they are the ones who should end the 2015-16 with the asterisk alongside their name. It can offer a permanent reminder of how the title can be won: without money, but with smart recruitment, astute management and a group of players hungry enough to drag themselves over the line.

Too many of the established clubs have forgotten those basics, but Leicester ticked every box and they are as worthy as any champions before them.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / May

Dave Brown on Leicester and Corbyn

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / May

Tories turn on Goldsmith’s campaign after Khan’s emphatic mayoral victory

Sadiq Khan speaks at City Hall after being confirmed as the new London mayor, with Britain First’s Paul Golding turning his back (AP)

CHARLIE COOPER WHITEHALL CORRESPONDENT

London has elected its first Muslim mayor, with Sadiq Khan delivering a resounding victory for Labour and ending eight years of Conservative rule at City Hall. As the results were finally announced well after midnight, Mr Khan said: “This election has not been without controversy. I am so proud that London has chosen hope over fear and unity over division. I hope we will never be offered such a stark choice again.”

Mr Khan led his Conservative rival Zac Goldsmith by 315,529 votes when the second preference votes were counted and reallocated. He received 1,310,143 votes, higher than for any previous London Mayor.

This amounted to 57 per cent of the total final votes, to Mr Goldsmith's 43 per cent (994,614 votes).

Turnout was 45.6 per cent, up from 38 per cent in 2012. Mr Khan capped an assured campaign with a convincing triumph, while Goldsmith faced a growing backlash over a campaign which critics described as “divisive” and dependent on “dog-whistle” politics.

Mr Khan said that he was “deeply humbled” by the trust that voters had put in him. He also paid tribute to his mother and his late father, saying: “My dad would be so proud that the city he chose to call home has chosen one of his children to be mayor.” Referring to the often contentious campaign, Mr Khan said: “Fear does not make us safer – it only makes us weaker. And the politics of fear is simply not welcome in our city.”

Mr Goldsmith’s campaign faced criticism for focusing on attempts to link Mr Khan to Islamist extremists, with whom he had shared platforms, or represented during his work as a lawyer. The campaign was also criticised for sending letters to voters targeted according to their ethnic group.

At the announcement, Mr Goldsmith paid tribute to Mr Khan, and said: “I wish him well as he sets out to build on the successes that we've seen under Boris Johnson and to take it even further.”

As the outcome of the race became clear, senior Conservatives joined the backlash against the Goldsmith campaign. Sayeeda Warsi, the former party chairman and the first Muslim woman to attend Cabinet said the “appalling dog whistle campaign” had “lost us the election, our reputation and credibility on issues of race and religion”.

Lady Warsi, the former Conservative party chairman, described it as “appalling”, while recriminations even extended even to Mr Goldsmith’s own family, with sister Jemima, a journalist and campaigner, tweeting that she was “sad” her brother’s campaign “did not reflect who I know him to be – an ecofriendly, independent minded politician with integrity”.

Steven Norris, a former MP and mayoral candidate, insisted it was “no use having a dog whistle when everybody can hear it”.

And Andrew Boff, Conservative group leader on the Greater London assembly, said: “It was ridiculous… I do believe it’s going to affect Conservatives at the sharp end, especially in those parts of London where there is a high Muslim population. I mentioned that I thought this was a mistake for future integration in London. If you are a London politician this is just a bizarre thing to do.”

Former minister and Labour MP for Tottenham David Lammy said voters had reacted against a campaign that he called “divisive” and “laden with smear”.

“Right across London, black, white and brown have gone out and voted for unity,” he told The Independent. “This is the first time an ethnic minority politician has been given a mandate from millions of people,” he added. “It’s an extraordinary moment, one we can all delight in whatever our political party …

Right across the world they will be talking about this election result. It’s a global moment.”

New York’s mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted his congratulations to Mr Khan, calling him a “fellow affordable housing advocate”, and said he was looking forward to working with his new counterpart.

Zac Goldsmith was criticised for his ‘dog whistle’ politics

The win represents a major boost for Labour, which had suffered the humiliation of slipping to third place in Scotland, once a stronghold for the party. But Mr Khan, a former human rights lawyer, has distanced himself from Jeremy Corbyn throughout his campaign, particularly over the party leadership's handling of allegations of anti-semitism within Labour ranks.

In Wales, Labour lost control of the Welsh Assembly after the totemic seat of Rhondda fell to the Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood. But in English council elections, the party fared less badly than many pundits had expected, losing only 25 seats of the 1,200 it was defending.

The party also retained control of key councils such as Crawley, Southampton, Norwich and Hastings, where its vote had looked vulnerable. But critics of Mr Corbyn pointed out that such a result was still nowhere near good enough to win a general election, while the Labour leader himself admitted that they had “hung on”.

“I don’t think that the public see the UK Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn at the moment as being a credible party of future government in 2020,” Ian Murray, the shadow Scottish Secretary, admitted.

“That's something, after this week’s results, we should reflect on.”

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / May

Brian Adcock on the mayoral election

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / May

Missing Egyptian jet could rock faith in aviation if worst fears are confirmed

Wreckage from EgyptAir flight 804 found by the Egyptian army

SIMON CALDER TRAVEL CORRESPONDENT

What caused a well-made and maintained aircraft on a routine flight to plunge from 37,000 into the Mediterranean? Any number of events could explain the loss of the Airbus A320 on a scheduled flight from Paris Charles de Gaulle to Cairo.

Possible explanations for the loss of Egyptair flight MS804, and the 66 souls on board, cover a wide range.

They includes a catastrophic mechanical failure; pilot error or deliberate human intervention on the flight deck; or even being struck by a missile, as MH17 was over Ukraine. But aviation remains the target of choice for terrorists. And as with the Metrojet Airbus A321, which crashed in the Sinai Desert last October on a flight from Sharm El Sheikh to St Petersburg, the apparent absence of any distress signal means that the possibility of terrorism will loom large in investigators’ minds.

Within aviation, the key issue that keeps airport and airline bosses awake at night is security – and, in particular, the “insider threat”. At an airport such as Charles de Gaulle, tens of thousands of employees have access to the airside, beyond the security search area. While personal searches of staff are generally as rigorous as for passengers, an insider who understands the movement of goods to airside locations is regarded as potentially dangerous.

It is thought that the Metrojet crash, in which 224 people died, was caused by a bomb placed on board the plane while it was on the ground at Sharm El Sheikh. Shortly after the crash, the Foreign Office banned UK airlines from flying to the airport in Egypt’s premier resort because of concerns about the quality of security checks. That prohibition remains in place, and the absence of British holidaymakers through the winter has caused immense damage to the nation’s tourist economy.

The work to discover what cause the loss of MS804 will be painstaking, and is likely to involve literally piecing together the wreckage. If investigators conclude that an explosive device was placed – or carried – on board, the next question is where that act of terrorism took place. The aircraft had flown in from Cairo on Tuesday evening after visiting Tunis and the Eritrean capital, Asmara. Checks of the cabin and the holds are routinely made, but the possibility that something was placed on board in one of the other locations cannot be ruled out at this stage. If that were the case, confidence in the nation’s aviation security would be wrecked – and Egypt’s ailing economy would be implode still further.

Conversely, if it were thought that an insider at Paris CDG was responsible, airline passengers’ faith in global aviation would be shaken. The French capital’s main airport is the busiest in continental Europe, and an extremely important hub for travellers. While the search and recovery operation gets under way, airports and airlines will be looking intently at their operations – and who gets access to them.

After the Metrojet tragedy in October, the aviation security expert Philip Baum noted that many airport employees are “low-paid, transient workers,” and said: “Identifying ‘bad eggs’ is no easy task, especially in an environment which is driven by speed, customer service and on-time performance.”

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / May

Ban on legal highs ‘will increase drug deaths’

Protesters stage a mass inhalation of nitrous oxide near the Houses of Parliament (Getty)

ADAM LUSHER A blanket ban on legal highs due to come into force will lead to more deaths and only benefit drug dealers and politicians, critics warned.

The substances, which mimic the effects of already banned drugs, are being outlawed as part of the Psychoactive Substances Act due to concerns that their potency is fuelling health problems and anti-social behaviour. But critics have warned that the law will simply force users, who are often among the most vulnerable in society, to turn to street dealers and the criminal underworld, leading to more drug-related deaths.

Professor David Nutt, the former Government drugs tsar, told The Independent: “It is a completely nonsense piece of legislation. It is purely politics. The only people who will benefit will be the drug dealers. They’ll have a monopoly.”

POPULAR LEGAL HIGHS SPICE: among the most popular psychoactive substances available on the market are ones that replicate the doping effect of cannabis. “Spice” is one of the brands which has gained notoriety following reports of its widespread use in prisons. It comes as a smoking mix and has been known to cause paranoia and hallucinations when taken.

The popularity of legal highs has increased dramatically in recent years. In 2013, according to the United Nations’ World Drug Report, 670,000 British 15- to 24-year-olds had tried legal highs at least once.

The death toll rose from 10 legal high-related deaths in England and Northern Ireland in 2009 to 68 in 2012.

Often compared to cannabis, the potency and addictiveness of legal highs can vary significantly. In a special report for The Independent, some users in Newcastle spoke of the substance as having the “effect of heroin”.

In fact, heroin addicts who switched to legal highs as a cheaper alternative have been known to return to the Class A drug in the belief it is less damaging.

LAUGHING GAS: otherwise known as nitrous oxide and dubbed “hippy crack”, laughing gas comes in canisters and is used recreationally, often inhaled from balloons. It gives users a light-headed, euphoric feeling that lasts for several seconds, but because it deprives the body of oxygen, it can be fatal when taken in excess.

The Government has claimed that by imposing prison sentences of up to seven years on those making or supplying drugs capable of producing a psychoactive effect, the new law will clearly signal the dangers of legal highs, which have been sold in head shops and online.

SALVIA: unlike other synthetic legal highs, salvia comes from a plant.

It is still sold in many socalled headshops, but only on the proviso that it is not marketed for human consumption. When smoked or chewed, it can create a hallucinogenic experience. This carries the risk of triggering a psychotic episode in someone with existing or latent mental health issues.

He added: “Politically, they [legal highs] are low-hanging fruit. The easiest thing for any Government to do is to stop people buying these things from shops next to Mothercare, but don’t imagine that is going to solve the problem.”

ANNIHILATION: Another synthetic cannabinoid similar to Spice, it is made to act like the active chemical in cannabis. The drug has sparked an urgent police warning after several people collapsed in Rochdale after taking it.

Symptoms include profuse sweating, a racing heartbeat and delirious

Harry Shapiro, chief executive of the drugs information charity DrugWise, said the new law will make legal highs harder to obtain, but warned: “The problem will almost certainly be that legal highs will just become street drugs. The same people selling heroin and crack will simply add this to their repertoire.”

Professor Nutt said that while some head shops have exercised quality control and showed a degree of responsibility towards users, street dealers would be totally unscrupulous. He claimed that they would use the internet to source legal highs made in India and China, with no regard for quality, and would aim to get legal high users on to heroin and crack.

“It will be a scary market,” he said. “And there will be much less safety. Deaths will increase. There will be no quality control – people won’t stop using legal highs, they will just use more dangerous ones.

And street dealers want to get you on heroin and crack, because they are more addictive. More people will be dying from more dangerous drugs.”

The effects of the UK law, he added, would mirror those seen in Ireland, which banned legal highs in 2010.

“There was a transient reduction in use,” he said. “But now usage has

ranting.

gone back to where it was before, if not higher. Deaths have gone up.”

In December, Ireland’s National Drug-Related Deaths Index showed drug-poisoning deaths involving legal highs increased from six in 2010 to 28 in 2013.

The European Commission has said that between 2011 and 2014, Ireland experienced Europe’s secondlargest increase in legal high use among 15- to 24-year-olds. One Irish user told the BBC that after the ban closed head shops: “People started selling it on every street. It was even easier to get.”

Critics have also pointed out that drug-makers have proved adept at producing slightly different new substances so quickly that it has been hard for scientists and the law to keep up.

A spokesman for the Irish Justice Department insisted the legislation was enforceable, and that one study had shown a drop in legal high use immediately after the ban was introduced, but acknowledged: “The emergence of new psychoactive substances happens at a pace that presents a challenge in the context of law enforcement [and] for the scientific and health authorities.”

Karen Bradley, the UK Home Office Minister for Preventing Abuse, Exploitation and Crime, said: “We owe it to all those who have lost loved ones to do everything we can to eradicate this abhorrent trade.

“This Act will end the open sale on our high streets and deliver new powers for law enforcement to tackle this issue at every level in communities, at our borders, on UK websites and in prisons.

“Allowing these substances to remain legal would not prevent crime committed by the illicit trade; nor would it address the harms associated with drug dependence.

“But we know legislation is not the silver bullet, and we continue to take action across education, prevention, treatment and recovery in order to reduce harmful drug use.”

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / June

Silent at last: ‘The Greatest’ loses his final fight

Ali in 1980: enchanting, maddening, mesmerising (Getty)

JAMES LAWTON However long and severe the dimming of his light, the world was always going to be a darker place with the departure of Muhammad Ali. Now that he has gone, after finally submitting to the ravages of disease and the punishment he took in the ring to which he brought so much courage and beauty, we can only begin to measure the depth of that old certainty. It is, indeed, the passing of a man for whom the finding of an adequate replacement has maybe never looked so remote.

No doubt we will always have phenomenal sportsmen; and, who knows, we might even unearth again a

charismatic politician or two. But are they likely to enchant and madden and mesmerise in quite the fashion of the man who declared himself The Greatest?

Are they likely to stop the traffic in New York or London or Cairo if they happen to take a morning stroll?

How willingly would they step into the ring with a Sonny Liston or Joe Frazier or George Foreman – or the most powerful government in the world, as Ali did when defying enlistment for Vietnam on the grounds that he had no quarrel with the Viet Cong?

He added, “I’m not going to Vietnam to help bomb brown people when black people back home in Louisville are being treated like dogs.”

That stand cost Ali three and a half years of the prime of his fighting life, and when he came back to meet the tough white American, Jerry Quarry, the Ku Klux Klan was mobilised and there were rednecks firing guns in the pine woods surrounding his Georgian training camp They would not, however, have significantly enhanced their puny intimidation had they hauled up heavy artillery.

It is now largely forgotten how low in regard the former Cassius Clay was once held by white America: how he was banished from a fast food restaurant in his home town of Louisville soon after winning gold in the Rome Olympics, and how severely he was chastised for his boastful, traitorous ways by the US media.

Ali wasn’t always an American hero, but soon enough he was the property of a bedazzled world. “I am the greatest,” he reflected, “and I said that before I knew I was.” It was, at the very least, the most extraordinary wish fulfilment, and when the fighting was over he also said: “I hated every minute of training but I said: ‘Don’t quit – suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion’.”

If he made one miscalculation through those tumultuous years when he engaged the rawest edge of American life – making his alliance with the Black Muslims and running the daily risk of assassination, while regularly confounding the laws of probability in the ring – it was the extent of the price he would pay for lingering too long in such an unforgiving workplace.

The cost was years of incapacitating illness and a relentless dwindling of the force of a remarkable and so often luminous personality. He died after a short stay in hospital, admitted for respiratory issues, following a 32-year battle with Parkinson's disease.

Yet if the reality of Ali’s life eventually became an ordeal, and if the last of his four wives, Lonnie, was required to fulfil the role of the most attentive manager and nurse, all that the man had come to mean could never be obscured.

It was, in those formative years of unsurpassable drama, a miracle of reinvention and nerve. There were two Alis in the ring. There was the one who rode the astonishing athleticism and skill and bravura of his youth beyond obstacles which included the fearsome Liston and such formidable opponents as Zora Folley and Cleveland Williams. And there was the one who came after the long hiatus imposed by the American authorities.

The second Ali was less quick, less sublime; yet it was this one that stepped so far beyond the boundaries of his sport and who made his name synonymous with some of the most compelling reaches of the bravest nature.

His Frazier trilogy, ending with the victory in Manila which he claimed had brought both men close to death, explored the very edges of each man’s desire to fight and survive; and when, early in 2011, Ali fell perilously ill after travelling from his home in Arizona to the Philadelphia funeral of his great adversary, there was an almost unbearable poignancy in the fate of one warrior and the plight of the man with whom

he would be so unbreakably linked in both life and death.

But it was the defeat of George Foreman in 1974, in a stadium built in a jungle clearing in Africa, that defined the second Ali, the man of ultimate resilience.

Later, in his training camp beside a wide-flowing river, Ali reflected that he had not only beaten Foreman against all odds, he had also invaded the imagination of the world. By then, though, that was merely confirmation of a long-established colonisation.

Gene Kilroy was a young lawyer serving in the US army when he first met Ali at the Rome Olympics. It was a collision that shaped his life. With the brilliant trainer Angelo Dundee, Kilroy was one of just two white men who remained within the entourage at the height of Ali’s distrust of white America. He saw all of it first hand: the rise, and the slow descent into the shadowlands of the last 30 years of Ali’s life.

Near the end, Kilroy recalled a winter morning in 1973 when he walked through the streets of Manhattan after Ali’s victory in the second Frazier fight.

“He had everything back then, the timing, the touch, the skill, and the people in the street went crazy.

They blasted their horns, they came up to hug him. He was more than the champion – and of course he was always that – he was the king of the world. It is the way I will always remember him.”

That wasn’t so easy six years later at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, when Ali, slimmed down, even beautified by the extensive use of diuretics, was brutally pounded by his former sparring partner Larry Holmes. It went on for 10 rounds and there were tears in the eyes of strong men.

They included trainer Angelo Dundee, who threw in the towel. The damage had been done some time earlier, and Ali had gone beyond the years when mere courage would do.

As the most inspiring fighter the world had ever seen, that was. His legacy as a superb creation of the human spirit had, of course, already been secured.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / June

Brian Adcock on the pre-Brexit brawl

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / June

‘An act of terror and an act of hate’: 50 killed in worst mass shooting in US history

Friends and family console one another outside the Orlando police headquarters

ANDREW BUNCOMBE IN ORLANDO

Bewilderment. Horror. Sheer incomprehension.

Pick any such words and discard them – none were sufficient for those gathered close to the Pulse nightclub in Orlando yesterday, trying to somehow make sense of the worst mass shooting in modern US history.

How could a lone gunman, apparently inspired by Isis, make his way into a popular gay venue on a busy weekend night and leave devastation and murder on his wake, before he was eventually shot and killed by police? Furthermore, what drove him to do so?

With the death toll having reached 50 and with 53 more people injured from the attack launched in the early hours of Sunday morning, and which for many called to mind last November’s shootings at the Bataclan Theatre in Paris, there were more questions than answers.

Omar Mateen, who has been identified as the Orlando gunman by police (Myspace)

Seven of the victims have so far been named – Edward Sotomayor Jr, Stanley Almodovar III, Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, Juan Ramon Guerrero, Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, Peter O Gonzalez-Cruz and Luis S Vielma.

“I’m just shocked, stunned. We heard the explosion,” said Elizabeth Kohl, who lived close to the scene and who drove one of those injured to hospital.

Police named the the gunman as 29-year-old Omar Mateen, an American citizen who lived in Port St Lucie, Florida and whose parents are from Afghanistan. While police said they were treating the incident as an act of terror, it was unclear whether the young man armed with a semi-automatic rifle, a handgun and possibly an explosive device, was directed by Isis or merely inspired by the group or others to act.

The Isis-linked Amaq news agency reported that Mateen was a fighter for the group, but officials warned that this was unconfirmed. Officials said he had previously been on the radar of investigators, but he was not currently being investigated. Local media said the man – whose wife said he had beaten her before they got divorced – had made several declarations of support for Isis.

His father, Mir Seddique, told NBC News his son had become angry a couple of months ago when he saw two men kissing in Miami, and he believed that could be related to the shooting. He said the incident had “nothing to do with religion”. Yet many will seize on the incident as another incident of the threat posed to the US by domestic Islamic terror and those who self radicalise.

People treating the wounded on the street (EPA)

“What is clear is he was a person filled with hatred,” said President Barack Obama. “We know enough to say that this was an act of terror and an act of hate. And as Americans, we are united in grief, in outrage, and in resolve to defend our people.”

The presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was quick to condemn President Obama for not referring to “radical Islamic extremism” in his speech, calling for him to “immediately resign in disgrace” on Twitter.

The Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said the nation should redouble efforts to stop similar attacks. She postponed a campaign rally in Wisconsin in the wake of the shooting.

Reports said that a police officer working as a security guard inside the club, which has operated in the centre of Orlando since 2004, exchanged fire with the suspect at about 2am, according to Reuters. A hostage situation developed in the club – established to keep alive the memory of the owner’s brother, who died of Aids – and three hours later SWAT team officers stormed the club before shooting the gunman dead. It was unclear when the gunman killed his victims.

“Do we consider this an act of terrorism? Absolutely,” Danny Banks, special agent in charge of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, told reporters. “Whether that is domestic terrorist activity or an international one, that is something we will certainly get to the bottom of.”

Asked if the FBI suspected the gunman might have had inclinations toward militant Islam, including a possible sympathy for Islamic State, Ronald Hopper, an assistant FBI agent in charge, told reporters: “We do have suggestions that the individual may have leanings toward that particular ideology. But right now we can’t say definitively.”

Orlando police officers outside the Pulse nightclub after the fatal shootings (Getty)

Senator Marco Rubio of Florida told CNN he understood that the gunman had worked for a security company and so would have undergone some background checks. “Over the next couple of days they’re going to be looking to see where this individual was inspired to carry out this horrifying act of terrorism,” said Mr Rubio. “I think we’re going to be talking about a very different kind of case here soon.”

Reports said that Mateen, who was divorced, had two licences to carry a concealed weapon. He attacked the club when there were about 300 people inside. He held dozens of people hostage, while others hid in the club’s lavatories until police stormed the venue using an armoured vehicle and stun grenades. The survivors escaped under the cover of what the police called two “discretionary explosions”. By 5am, the gunman had been killed.

The club posted a message on its Facebook page at about 3am that read: “Everyone get out of Pulse and keep running.” It added: “Please keep everyone in your prayers as we work through this tragic event.

Thank you for your thoughts and love.”

Elizabeth Kohl lives near the Pulse club and drove a victim to hospital (Andrew Buncombe)

Giancarlo Sola said he had been to Pulse several times (Andrew Buncombe)

The wounded were taken to three hospitals in the area. Most were taken to Orlando Regional Medical Centre, the area’s main facility, where friends and family members gathered for news on the injured.

The Pulse nightclub was known as a friendly, welcoming club that was part of the community and had never experienced or caused any trouble. “I feel like this an attack on the whole LGBT community,” said Giancarlo Sola, who said he had been to the club several times. “I don’t know about Isis. I don’t think this was Isis – this was a hate crime.”

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / June

‘Unite to fight against the hatred that killed Jo’, says husband in moving tribute

Jo Cox with her husband and their two daughters demonstrating support for the Remain campaign a day before the attack (Reuters)

OLIVER WRIGHT MPs from across the political spectrum last night set aside their differences to pay tribute to one of Parliament’s most promising young MPs who was killed in the street in her constituency. Her suspected killer is a man police are investigating for possible far-right links.

Jo Cox, who helped spearhead the campaign to help Syrian refugees, was shot three times outside her constituency advice surgery in Birstall, West Yorkshire.

The suspect, who was arrested at the scene, was named as Thomas Mair, aged 52. He was reported to have shouted “Britain First” during an attack in which he fired three shots from close range while stabbing the MP with a knife.

Video footage of police wrestling a man to the ground near where Jo Cox was killed (YouTube)

Security sources told The Independent that police were investigating Mair’s possible interest in far-right politics and pro-apartheid South Africa.

David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn led the tributes to Ms Cox, a mother of two young children, who had only been elected as an MP in 2015. She is the first MP to have been fatally attacked while in office since Ian Gow was killed by a Provisional IRA car bomb in 1990.

Both sides in the European Referendum campaign cancelled events due to be held as a mark of respect.

Flags across Whitehall were lowered to half-mast. Her husband Brendan said the family was going to work “every moment of our lives” to “fight against the hate that killed Jo”.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was among colleagues from all parties at a vigil for Jo Cox in Parliament Square (AFP)

He added: “Jo believed in a better world and she fought for it everyday of her life with an energy, and a zest for life that would exhaust most people. She would have wanted two things above all else to happen now: one, that our precious children are bathed in love and two, that we all unite to fight against the hatred that killed her. Hate doesn’t have a creed, race or religion, it is poisonous.”

Mr Corbyn said Ms Cox died “doing her public duty at the heart of our democracy. In the coming days, there will be questions to answer about how and why she died. But for now all our thoughts are with Jo’s husband Brendan and their two young children. They will grow up without their mum, but can be immensely proud of what she did, what she achieved and what she stood for.”

Mr Cameron added: “She had a great track record of caring about refugees and had taken a big interest in how we can look after Syrian refugees and do the right thing in our world. She was a star for her constituents, a star in Parliament and a star right across the House.”

Police refused to speculate on what motivation lay behind the attack but witnesses reported hearing her attacker shouting “Britain First”, which may be a reference to the far-right BNP splinter group. Ms Cox had been a high-profile campaigner for the rights of Syrian refugees and was fighting to force the Government to take in more asylum seekers.

“He was shouting ‘Britain First’ when he was doing it,” said Graeme Howard. “He was pinned down by two police officers and she was taken away in an ambulance.”

A makeshift memorial for Jo Cox in Parliament Square (PA)

Clarke Rothwell, who runs a cafe near the murder scene, added: “He was shouting ‘Put Britain first’. He shouted it about two or three times.” Britain First is the name of a far-right BNP splinter group. It issued a statement saying it was “not involved and would never encourage behaviour of this sort”.

Mair’s house was sealed off by police, who were guarding the property as forensic officers worked in the garden. Neighbours said he had lived there for more than 30 years – on his own for the last two decades since the deaths of his mother and grandmother. “He’s lived there longer than me and I’ve lived here since 1975,” said one. “I still can’t believe it. He’s the last guy I would have thought of. He likes gardening. He did a lot of people’s gardens round here.”

Politicians from across all major parties expressed their shock at Ms Cox’s untimely death. Theresa May said Ms Cox was one of the “brightest and most popular” MPs and the pain her family and friends are suffering is “unimaginable”.

“It is entirely appropriate that all campaigning for the referendum has been suspended. All of us are united in our deep sadness at the loss of one of our brightest and most popular Westminster colleagues.”

The former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who knew Ms Cox well when she worked with his wife Sarah, said: “Jo Cox was the most vivacious, personable, dynamic and committed friend you could ever have.

Whenever you talked to her, the compassion in her eyes and the commitment in her soul shone through.

Sarah and I were privileged to work with Jo and her husband Brendan over many years and in her tireless efforts on behalf of poor and desolate children and mothers. She went to some of the most dangerous places in the world. The last place she should have been in danger was in her home town.”

The Ukip leader Nigel Farage said: “Deeply saddened to hear that Jo Cox has died. Sincerest condolences

to her family.�

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / June

Britain votes Out, Cameron resigns, sterling plummets – and all before midday

David Cameron announces his resignation on the steps of 10 Downing Street as his wife Samantha looks on (Getty)

OLIVER WRIGHT POLITICAL EDITOR

David Cameron paid the price for his failure to secure Britain’s future in the European Union as he announced his resignation, saying the country now needed “fresh leadership”. Flanked by his wife Samantha, and at one stage close to tears, Mr Cameron said it would be wrong for him “to be the captain that steers our country to its next destination”.

He announced that he would stay on in a caretaker capacity but expected a new leader to be in place by the time of the Conservative Party conference in October. His decision fires the starting gun on a Tory leadership contest, with Boris Johnson and the Home Secretary Theresa May as the early front-runners to succeed him. However, there are likely to be calls for a fresh general election to give voters a direct say on the team that will lead the Brexit negotiations.

Importantly, Mr Cameron said he would not invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty that will start the process of Brexit, leaving that decision to his successor. Speaking outside Downing Street, Mr Cameron praised the Remain supporters but said he respected the will of the British people.

“We should be proud of the fact that in these islands we trust the people for these big decisions,” he said.

“We not only have a parliamentary democracy, but on questions about the arrangements for how we’ve governed there are times when it is right to ask the people themselves and that is what we have done.” He added: “The will of the British people is an instruction that must be delivered.”

Addressing his own future, Mr Cameron said he did not believe he was the right person to lead Britain's exit negotiations with the European Union. “We must now prepare for a negotiation with the European Union. Above all this will require strong, determined and committed leadership,” he said. “I think the country requires fresh leadership to take it in this direction. I will do everything I can as Prime Minister to steady the ship over the coming weeks and months but I do not think it would be right for me to try to be the captain that steers our country to its next destination.”

Hinting at his deep disappointment with the result, Mr Cameron insisted he had no regrets about the campaign he had led. “I fought this campaign in the only way I know how, which is to say directly and passionately what I think and feel – head, heart and soul,” he said. “I held nothing back, I was absolutely clear about my belief that Britain is stronger, safer and better off inside the European Union and I made clear the referendum was about this and this alone – not the future of any single politician including myself. But the British people have made a very clear decision to take a different path.”

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / June

Dawn breaks on a very different kind of Britain

The sun rose over a capital whose workers had worries over the Brexit vote (Reuters)

ADAM LUSHER In the pale dawn sunlight, the Union Flag slowly unfurled in the soft breeze over the Houses of Parliament. On Westminster Bridge, as the early-morning haze cleared, you began to discern that the spires of London’s churches still stood. Big Ben still chimed. The river still flowed, calm as a millpond, with only a few ripples disturbing the mirror-like surface. And just as Wordsworth had written while composing his lines upon Westminster Bridge, dull – still – would be the soul who could pass by a sight so touching in its majesty.

But who now could be sure that this “calm so deep” could last? Not Joseph Fox. Not Ilana Melka. Still in

their “Stronger In” T-shirts they came, walking across the bridge from the Royal Festival Hall, from a Remain campaign party that had died long before it officially ended. The two Bristol University students saw no point in denial. “It was just quiet,” said Joseph. “Quiet with the realisation that things had come to an end.” Clarification seemed needed that they were talking only about the campaign ending in an unhoped-for manner. Not the world.

No, said Joseph. Things would just get “stormy, in normal people’s lives, especially in Labour voters’ lives.”

Ilana had been working on the social media side. Joseph had been on the “Labour In For Britain” battle bus for five weeks. He had visited Sheffield, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sunderland – Sunderland, which had voted so emphatically for Brexit. “Labour tried,” he said. “Tried to get the message across.”

If these two 19-year-olds were the future, that future, they said, had just been turned a whole lot bleaker by the UK’s decision to vote for Brexit in the EU referendum. “This is our future on the line,” said Ilana. “It has already been quite hard for my generation, living through recession, being told there were fewer jobs.

Now it’s going to be harder for us to work abroad, to travel...”

Youthful idealism dies hard, of course. They worried not so much for themselves – at a good university, with good prospects – but for those they had tried to persuade, those with fewer opportunities. “If you look at the people who led the Leave campaign – Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Nigel Farage – you’ll see workers’ rights, women’s rights, the NHS, all at risk,” said Joseph.

Before she walked on, towards the building so often hailed as the crowning achievement of a nation priding itself on being “the mother of parliaments”, Ilana had one last thought about the Leave campaign’s “xenophobia”.

“This country has always been open-minded, forward thinking. What message has gone out to the world now?”

Supporters of the Stronger In campaign react as referendum results are announced (Getty)

And yet as he took a walk after a long night of watching – and trading on – the referendum, James Knight, 20, a banking student at the Institute of Financial Services, could adopt an air of breezy insouciance. If not quite the dawn of “independence day”, as so loudly trumpeted at 4am by Nigel Farage, it was at least a pleasing “new start”.

“Immigration was a big issue,” said this Leave voter. “But it wasn’t the main issue.” The clincher, he insisted, was asserting the right to make laws in this country. And if, as Brexit victory loomed, the pound had hit its lowest level against the dollar since 1985, that was mere short-term volatility.

“Traders make money off volatility,” explained Mr Knight, patiently. “There will have been a lot of people coming into Canary Wharf with sleeping bags and trading off it [the referendum result]. If you know what you are doing, you can make some money.” We did ask how much he had made by juggling euros and pounds. “I couldn’t tell you,” he laughed, “It’s in the hundreds.”

East Ender Vera Neilson, 53, working as a technician in St Thomas’ Hospital, across the water from Parliament, hadn’t made a penny, but was still ecstatic. “Fantastic!” she said. “We’ll build the pound back up, because we had nothing to fear from Brexit. We have taken back control of our own country, stopped being dictated to.” And it wasn’t as if things could get any worse than they were already, she said. “With too many people, too much immigration.”

Although, in the cold light of day, Leave voter Darren, 45, a civil servant at the Ministry of Defence, did wonder what he, and the country, had done. Voting Leave had been a last-minute decision, he said, “just for a change, to see what we could do, without the Brussels bureaucrats thing”. And how, now, did he think we would do? A wry smile, a frank admission. “I’m really not sure. It could be a good thing. It might turn out to be a disaster.”

‘There will be a lot of uncertainty. It will knock the confidence of foreign countries. They will have to think hard about investing here’

And so, after a short stroll along the South Bank, to Waterloo Station as it disgorged the day’s first commuters. Scowling, sharp-suited men scurried past, too preoccupied, perhaps, to notice they were trampling underfoot the already disintegrating, discarded “Vote Remain” flyers, and last night’s newspapers, with their “Remain ahead in final poll” headline and photograph of a smiling David Cameron.

“Shocking,” said one particularly dapper fiftysomething who had taken the early train from Twickenham.

“There will be a lot of uncertainty. It will knock the confidence of foreign countries. They will have to think hard about investing here.” And how would he know? “I am the head of regulatory affairs for a Japanese bank.”

John, 49, mustered the kind of understatement you expect from a City gent with 25 years’ experience.

“I’m very disappointed,” he said. We pressed a little. “It feels as if we have had an emotional vote that people don’t understand the consequences of. Our economy is going to suffer. The Leave campaign has overplayed our ability to negotiate a new settlement with the EU.” We pressed a little more. “It could prove to be the biggest uniquely British – as opposed to global – financial challenge the City has faced in my life, certainly in my working lifetime.” Which gave the morning stroller something to ponder as he returned along the riverbank to Westminster Bridge and the news that David Cameron had resigned.

Wordsworth had enjoyed the calm of this bridge in 1802, when British anger was already gathering about John Bull having been short-changed by another settlement with “Europe” – the Peace of Amiens. The anger would break just eight months later, when Britain went to war to stop the expansionist ambitions of Napoleon Bonaparte. At least war was stretching it this time, whatever the Remain propaganda – or the distorted reporting of Remain propaganda – had said.

But when we mentioned Nigel Farage’s hope that a Brexit victory would “bring down this failed [European] project”, we received a proper south London response. “He’s a knob,” said Marcus Miller, 28, a construction worker engaged on what will be One Blackfriars, a 52-storey addition to the London skyline.

Farage would see his dream come true, said Mr Miller, from Elephant and Castle, south London, and it would be a nightmare for everyone else. “When we leave the EU,” he said, “France and Germany won’t be able to handle the burden of carrying the European bloc. The EU will disintegrate. And I predict turmoil and disaster.”

On the river, gusts began to scud across the water. The wind had picked up.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / June

The voters told the experts where to go. And who can blame them?

In one of the campaign’s most notorious remarks, Michael Gove claimed that Britain has had enough of experts (Getty)

SEAN O’GRADY Well, the economic experts were wrong after all about Brexit, just as Michael Gove and others said.

Wrong, because when they – the economic establishment – warned about the economic damage a Leave vote would inflict, “Project Fear” appears to have pulled its punches. Few actually predicted a 30-year low for sterling and the UK losing its AAA credit rating. In the short run it will mean more expensive mortgages, imported goods from cars to cheese, and devalued pension pots. We were warned.

But the alphabet soup of economic wisdom – IFS, IMF, OECD, Bank of England, HM Treasury – were ignored, and evidently Mr Gove was right; people have had enough of experts, especially economists. He was vindicated, and for a reason. It is true, as many in the profession agree, that they failed to foresee the financial crisis of 2008, but their failures go back much further than that.

In the past century the economic consensus gave us, in turn, the Gold Standard; the doctrine of the balanced budget; Keynesian demand management; prices and incomes policy; fixed exchange rates; financial deregulation; and, most grievous of all, the euro. All in turn were eventually disastrous. All were what the great liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith called “the conventional wisdom” – “the ideas that are esteemed at any time for their acceptability, and it should be a term that emphasises this predictability.” Herd mentality, in other words.

Yes, we have had enough of experts: the architects who gave us the high-rise blocks; the scientists who told us nuclear power would give us electricity so cheap it wouldn’t be worth metering; and the engineers who pushed diesel technology as the green future of driving. Not to mention decades of dodgy advice about which foods are bad for us, whether we should legalise various drugs and whether we should mess with nature with genetically modified foods.

We rightly cast a wary eye over such debates. Once upon a time many in the West believed in the barbaric pseudo-science of eugenics. The men and women in white coats are always ready to agree with each other.

And why should we believe that John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are biblical authorities to be obeyed? It was voodoo politics, and that sort of deference had long gone.

Rightly, we do not have rule by experts but by the voters.

“Trust the people” is a fine old democratic slogan, and the British people, a little falteringly, have decided to trust their own judgement. Are they wrong? Maybe, but maybe not. There is an alternative view of the future that embodies that popular consent. People sense rightly that economies do adjust to change, and just as we once traded more with the rest of the world than with Europe – before we joined the EU – decades later things were very different. The UK will refocus again, gradually, to other economic powers and markets, many faster-growing than Europe. A cheap pound kick-starts that process by making our goods and services much more competitive.

The best way to ensure long-term prosperity with faster economic growth and healthy wages is to build a competitive economy. It has proved more difficult to do that in the EU, and the chance is there. Once again the nation will choose the policies it thinks fairest and most sustainable and it will draw its conclusions from experience.

That, by the way, includes migration, which is usually good for economic growth, especially by making sure we have enough younger people to support the welfare state. Yet there is a balance to be struck, and that has to be managed by consent. It is a lesson of history.

So maybe that is why older people voted Leave; it is they who lived through too many episodes of expert failure on the economy as elsewhere. They will also have witnessed how three Conservative prime ministers – Margaret Thatcher, John Major and now Cameron – have had their careers ended by Europe.

Cameron and the establishment may be surprised, but not all of us.

And that is why we have had this “peasants’ revolt”.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / June

Russia facing investigation as England fans are chased from Euro 2016 stadium

England and Russia fans clash after the 1-1 group-stage draw between the two sides (Getty)

IAN HERBERT IN MARSEILLE

Russia face a Uefa investigation after England supporters fled the Stade Velodrome in Marseille last night, in fear of being physically attacked by opposition supporters after the worst days of football violence in decades. Women and children were thought to have been caught underfoot in a stampede out of the stadium at the end of England’s 1-1 draw, when Russian fans broke from their area of seating and ran at the

English supporters. Russia’s fans are serial offenders when it comes to misconduct at games and the national side have only just avoided an automatic six-point deduction that would have seen them effectively thrown out of the European Championships.

They received a suspended six-point deduction for throwing fireworks and displaying illicit banners in 2012 but their period at risk ended after the Euro 2016 qualifiers. Uefa will now examine how they should be punished for the severe violence of supporters which saw English fans set upon and one man suffer a cardiac arrest. Deducting World Cup points would be difficult as they are 2018 hosts.

Uefa also face severe questions about the handling of security at a game which was always destined to be a potential flashpoint. In particular, the lack of segregation at Stade Velodrome was astonishing and there were deeply inadequate numbers to deal with an obvious threat of violence. Uefa said they would reveal details of disciplinary proceedings when they receive information from their disciplinary department.

But Russia faces the most questions. Before the English fans were chased, three flares were set off in the stadium, some burning for several minutes before they exploded. The players were alarmed to hear the accompanying loud bang and see the flares sent across the pitch towards them.

At the end of the match, the England goalkeeper Joe Hart mouthed to his family in the stand to stay in the ground at the end of the match, for their own safety. Jamie Vardy’s wife Rebekah tweeted: “That has to be up there with the worst experience ever at an away game! Teargassed for no reason, caged and treated like animals.”

The Russia manager Leonid Slutsky ducked questions on the violence. He said: “I can’t really comment on what’s gone on. I can’t really address that. To be honest, I’m not really up to speed with what’s gone on.

We were focused on the game, so I’m not really up to speed with what’s been going on outside the stadium. But, clearly, that’s not good to go hand in hand with football.”

Reminded of the previous offence, he said: “What problem did we have in the qualification campaign?

What problems did we have? I don’t remember that situation with the six points. I think you’re mistaken there. I don’t think there was a six-point suspended sentence.”

The violence earlier in the day was far more severe, when English fans who had been drinking in the sun for much of the day found themselves set upon by gangs of Russians, many wearing uniform black T-shirts.

Some of the English were simply too drunk to escape the faster, fitter Russians, who clearly arrived intending violence and attacked with any weapon that came to hand.

England fans were involved in three days of fighting in Marseille (Getty) Though the Russian behaviour and Uefa’s own organisation pose the prime questions, the inflammatory conduct of some English supporters will come under question. Senior British police have urged England fans to consider the fact that their French officers are already dealing with a serious security threat before acting in a way which may provoke clashes throughout the tournament.

The reputation of the nation’s supporters took a further battering yesterday when there were more running battles between English fans and French police, confirming the worst fears of senior British officers about the scheduling of the opening game on a hot Mediterranean weekend.

Mark Roberts, head of the UK Football Policing Unit, told The Independent three months ago that he wanted fans to consider the size of the task facing the French force before they travelled. With the first fixture having brought the worst instances of English excess drinking and anti-social behaviour to southern France, officers desperately want to prevent the actions of a minority spiralling out of control by provoking an increasingly strong French reaction.

Though there has been a substantial element of provocation behind the violence in Marseille’s old port, some English conduct has been an embarrassment and has shown the absence of any kind of self-policing among groups. A low point was the chanting about Isis by a few fans – which shows a blatant disregard for the seriousness of the task in hand for the French.

In a series of tweets, shadow homes secretary Andy Burnham said England fans had been “let down by a minority”, who may have been provoked but were “not blameless”. Burnham said when the terror threat in France was taken into account, it made the “behaviour of these England ‘fans’ even more embarrassing”.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / June

Brian Adcock on Brexit

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / June

Boris’s leadership hopes come crashing down as Gove sticks the knife in

Michael Gove leaving his home before announcing his leadership bid (Getty)

CHARLIE COOPER WHITEHALL CORRESPONDENT

The race to Downing Street has been blown wide open, and the Conservative Party plunged into bitter infighting, as Michael Gove sensationally entered the Tory leadership contest, in the process disowning and denouncing his ally and fellow architect of Brexit, Boris Johnson.

In the latest day of astonishing political drama, the former London mayor shocked the country by

withdrawing from the Tory leadership race with minutes to go before the midday deadline for nominations. It followed Mr Gove’s bombshell decision to run against him, announced just hours earlier.

Mr Johnson faced bitter recriminations for spearheading the campaign to take Britain out of Europe, only to abandon his long-standing ambition to succeed David Cameron – leaving another candidate to steer the country through the turbulent times ahead. Mr Gove meanwhile, attracted the furious ire of some Conservative MPs for turning on Mr Johnson, whose campaign he had been expected to run.

Theresa May making her official announcement to run for the Tory leadership (PA)

The dramatic reversal leaves Theresa May the odds-on favourite to become Prime Minister. Launching her campaign, the Home Secretary said she was not a “showy” politician and that politics was not a “game”, and she pledged to be a Prime Minister “ready and able to do the job from day one”.

Ms May backed remaining in the EU during the referendum campaign but pledged not to go against the people’s decision to leave. Saying “Brexit is Brexit”, she committed to seek a deal that would end the free movement of EU citizens into the UK while retaining access to the single market for British goods and services – an ambitious combination that Brussels has already said will not be possible.

Mr Gove will pledge to seek a similarly ambitious settlement for Britain outside the EU. Explaining his dramatic decision to enter the leadership race, he said that he had concluded that Mr Johnson was not able to build a strong leadership team or create the unity in the party and the country required to be prime minister “In the last four days I had a chance to see up close and personal how Boris dealt with some of the decisions we needed to make in order to take this country forward,” he said. “During that period I had hoped that Boris would rise to the occasion because inevitably when you have a leadership election, people

are tested, questions are asked of them, tests are set. Boris has formidable qualities, but I saw him seek to meet and not pass those tests. As someone who had argued consistently that we should leave the European Union, and as someone who is experienced at the highest levels in the Cabinet, I felt it had to fall to me,” he added.

Mr Johnson, who despite being the favourite for Downing Street 24 hours ago, must now face up to a potentially fatal blow to his political ambitions, had been due to launch his leadership bid, but his stump speech at the luxury St Ermin’s Hotel in Westminster turned into a shock withdrawal from the race.

Pointedly referencing Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, he proceeded to set out a pitch for leadership only to conclude: “That is the agenda for the next Prime Minister of this country. But I have to tell you my friends, you who have waited faithfully for the punchline of this speech, that having consulted colleagues and in view of the circumstances in Parliament, I have concluded that person cannot be me.”

His decision shocked even close allies. Speculation in Westminster was rife that without Mr Gove’s backing Mr Johnson was not confident of attracting sufficient support from MPs or influential media backers to guarantee victory.

The drama led to fierce recriminations within the party. Former deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine, who campaigned firmly for a Remain vote, likened Mr Johnson – who first entered Parliament as MP for his old seat of Henley – to a general who abandoned the battlefield at the first sight of trouble.

“There will be a profound sense of dismay and, frankly, contempt. He has ripped the party apart. He has created the greatest constitutional crisis in modern times. He has knocked billions off the value of the nation’s savings,” he told BBC 5 Live. “He is like a general who led his army to the sound of guns and at the sight of the battlefield abandoned the field to the claims of his adjutant who said he wasn’t up to the job in the first place. I have never seen such a contemptible and irresponsible situation. He must live with the shame of what he has done.”

Mr Gove also came in for fierce criticism. Jake Berry, Rossendale and Darwen MP and Johnson supporter, tweeted: “There is a very deep pit reserved in Hell for such as he”.

While Mr Gove will stand on the same Leave campaign ticket as Mr Johnson planned to, there is no guarantee he can count on the support of the 100 or more MPs who had been expected to back Mr Johnson. One senior MP told The Independent that Ms May, or the other leadership candidates, Andrea Leadsom, Liam Fox, and Stephen Crabb, would be beneficiaries as Mr Johnson’s supporters “scrambled for lifeboats”.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / June

The Gove email landed – and all hell broke loose

Boris Johnson waves goodbye to his leadership ambitions (Getty )

TOM PECK Boris Johnson was still wearing his red tie when he bumbled up to the lectern. Vote Leave chose red to make people think of Labour. They were the votes they needed above all else. British Tommies wore it for morale. To hide the blood.

“This is a time not to fight against the tide of history but to take that tide at the flood and sail on to fortune,” he said. The first and the last drafts of history will all recall that it was through these words of Brutus, the uncrowned emperor of political assassins, that he revealed his mortal wound.

Equally, it served as a gentle reminder that Boris is working on a biography of Shakespeare with a

£500,000 advance, and it was kind of him to reassure his shell-shocked audience and the wider world that, don’t cry for me, I’ll be all right.

It was the loudest explosion of a morning of blue-on-blue blitzkrieg the like of which has not been seen. If the two main parties are about to revert to recent type and fight for the centre ground, never has there been a more denuded exhibition of their most fundamental difference. Angela Eagle, in these mad days, has cried on the radio at her party’s seeming powerlessness to remove its leader. When there is power to be had, the Tories let blood like a shark with a machete.

At 9am we waited, surrounded by war histories in the library of the Royal United Services Institute, for Theresa May to arrive and explain how, having campaigned to Remain, she and no one else could deliver Britain’s exit from the European Union. At the moment, this type of truth-gymnastics could hardly come with a lower difficulty rating. The Gove email landed like a grenade. “I have come, reluctantly, to the conclusion that Boris cannot build a team for the task ahead.”

For the next two hours the Boris Johnson speech was on, then off, then on again. Andrew Mitchell, Nadine Dorries, Kwasi Kwarteng all whooped with joy uncontrolled as he finally made his way to the stage, in a well-appointed room of a plush St James’s Hotel. He had freed them from the “job-destroying coils” of the EU, this nation with the lowest unemployment it has ever had, standing on the brink of an entirely selfinflicted recession. They didn’t care.

“You have waited faithfully for the punchline of this speech,” he said. The country would need a new prime minister. “In view of the circumstances in parliament, I have concluded that person cannot be me.”

Boom.

David Cameron never wanted this referendum. Boris Johnson never meant to win it. The racist genie now running the streets with wild abandon was never meant to come out of the bottle. The UK was never meant to come out of the European Union. Beneath the political drama of it all, this is the coldest, most important fact of all. With Johnson gone, Brexit means Brexit. Theresa May had said as much herself.

“There will be no general election. There will be no second referendum.”

The thing that no one wanted – apart from 52 per cent of the population – will happen. “There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” Shakespeare, the classics, Tom Brown’s School Days, Brideshead Revisited and the rest will all find their way into what may turn out to be only the first round of eulogies for the great political wrecker of his age, this bike-riding cannonball with flaxen fuse.

I see no metaphor more appropriate than the moment at which the 1997 alien sci-fi movie Men In Black moves to its resolution, when it transpires that the whole turning galaxy and all intelligent life within it are contained in a pendant hanging on the collar of a cat on a Brooklyn sidestreet. This shaved orangutan, as the comedian John Oliver called him, has picked up our little lives, whirled them above his head in a mad centrifuge, smashed it all to the ground and walked away, back to a life entirely shielded from the consequences the rest of us now face.

The whole charade has been a chimpanzee’s tea party. The china’s all smashed. There’s cake everywhere.

These cheerful imbeciles have known not what they do. The tide of men will not lead on to fortune. At least that’s what Michael Gove’s loathed experts say, and you won’t need to be told they’ve been right about everything so far.

What prompted Gove to wield the knife in this way? We do not know. The “Murdoch/Dacre” threat in his wife’s leaked email? The two men have spent the last three months in intense partnership. The realisation that Boris was not fit for the job cannot have come overnight. What’s certain is that Gove will never be trusted again. And nor should the Conservative Party. To do anything.

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / June

Brian Adcock on Boris’ downfall

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / In pictures

The year in pictures: January and February

5 January: US President Barack Obama wipes away a tear as he speaks at the White House about reducing gun violence (Getty)

January

7 January: Duane Ehmer rides his horse, Hellboy, at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on the sixth day of the occupation of the federal building in Burns, Oregon by a group of armed activists who occupied the refuge to try to force federal agencies to hand over the land they administer to individual states (Getty)

11 January: David Bowie fan Rosie Lowery pauses after laying flowers at his mural in Brixton following his death from cancer at the age of 69 (Getty)

15 January: An Indonesian policeman stands guard in front of the damaged Starbucks building in Jakarta, the day after a series of explosions hit the Indonesian capital. Isis suicide bombers and gunmen murdered several people and blew up a Starbucks in an assault police said bore the hallmarks of the Paris attacks (Getty)

29 January: A rebel fighter, reportedly belonging to the Faylaq al-Rahman brigade, looks up from his hiding place in the rebel-controlled area of Arbeen on the outskirts of the Syrian capital, Damascus (Getty)

February

1 February: Health ministry personnel fumigate a classroom against the Aedes aegypti mosquito, vector of the dengue, Chikungunya and Zika viruses in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, three days after the country's president, Juan Orlando Hernandez,declared the country on a state of alert due to the Zika virus (Getty)

7 February: A survivor is carried by rescue workers at the site of a collapsed building in Tainan, Taiwan. A magnitude 6.4 earthquake hit southern Taiwan, toppling several buildings, killing more than 100 people (Getty)

10 February: Bystanders watch as a wild elephant with a tranquilliser dart in its back walks along a street in Siliguri, India. The adult male was captured by wildlife officials and taken to a nearby forest (Getty)

18 February: A migrant child waits on a train heading to Serbia from the Macedonian-Greek border near Gevgelija. Macedonia began building a new razor-wire fence parallel to an existing one on the Greek border to make it harder for migrants to enter illegally (Getty)

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / In pictures

The year in pictures: March and April

3 March: A woman walks among the ruins of damaged buildings following heavy fighting between government troops and Kurdish fighters, in the southeastern Turkey Kurdish town of Cizre, near the border with Syria and Iraq (Getty)

March

3 March: A group of people with disabilities hold a protest hanging with their wheelchairs from a bridge to demand that the government doubles their monthly assistance voucher, in Cochabamaba, Bolivia (Getty)

19 March: Russian emergency rescuer walks through wreckage of the flydubai passenger jet which crashed, killing all 62 people on board, as it tried to land in bad weather in the city of Rostov-on-Don (Getty)

21 March: Cuban President Raul Castro (R) raises US President Barack Obama's hand during a meeting at the Revolution Palace in Havana. Mr Castro declared his opposition to a long-standing economic blockade, saying that it would need to end would need to end before ties are fully normalised (Getty)

23 March: People hold a minute of silence around a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels, the day after blasts hit the Belgian capital (Getty)

April

9 April: Thousands gather on Whitehall to demand that British David Cameron resign after he admitted to profiting from the sale of shares worth more than ÂŁ30,000 in Blairmore Holdings, an offshore investment fund set up by his late father Ian Cameron (Rex)

16 April: A man carries a child at the migrant and refugee makeshift camp near the village of Idomeni on the Greek-Macedonian border (Getty)

17 April: One of Ecuador's worst-hit towns, Pedernales, the day after a 7.8-magnitude quake hit the country. The death toll eventually rose to 637, with more than 16,000 injured (Getty)

19 April: A South Sudanese wrestler from Imatong State covered in chalk waits for the start of a match in Juba (Getty)

30 April: Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS) rangers stand guard around illegal stockpiles of burning elephant tusks, ivory figurines and rhinoceros horns at the Nairobi National Park. Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta started the world's biggest ivory bonfire after demanding a total ban on trade in tusks and horns to end "murderous" trafficking and prevent the extinction of elephants in the wild (Getty)

SUNDAY 25 DECEMBER 2016

Review Of The Year / In pictures

The year in pictures: May and June

6 May: Canadian police lead convoys of cars through the burning ghost town of Fort McMurray in a risky operation to get people to safety far to the sout, in the latest chapter of the drama triggered by massive fires in Alberta's oil sands region (Getty)

May

7 May: London's incoming mayor, Sadiq Khan, during his swearing-in ceremony at Southwark Cathedral (Getty)

17 May: A demonstrator in Rennes holds a wheelie bin to protect himself from tear gas canisters during a demonstration against the French government's planned labour law reforms (Getty)

17 May: An overloaded car travels through the Assaga refugee camp in Diffa, close to the Niger-Nigeria border (Getty)

22 May: US Navy lieutenant Curtis Calabrese on board an aircraft searching the area in the Mediterranean where the Egyptair flight 804 en route from Paris to Cairo went missing on 19 May (AP)

23 May: A schoolgirl runs past a burning barricade in Kibera slum, Nairobi, during a demonstration of opposition supporters protesting for a change of leadership (Getty)

25 May: Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Anaheim, California, shortly after Ted Cruz and John Kasich had withdrawn from the race. At the Republican convention in July he accepted the party's nomination (Getty)

June

10 June: A man watches a slide show of Muhammad Ali photographs on a screen outside the KFC Yum! Centre in Louisville, Kentucky, where mourners were due to attend a memorial service for the boxing legend (Getty)

12 June: Friends and family members embrace outside Orlando police HQ follopwing a shooting at the Pulse nightclub in which 50 people died, including the perpetrator, Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old security guard (Reuters)

15 June: Paralympic champion Oscar Pistorius walks across a Pretoria courtroom without his prosthetic legs during resentencing hearing for the 2013 murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp (Reuters)

20 June: A Wales supporter in Toulouse gets in the mood for his national side's Euro 2016 group game against Russia. The Welsh went on to reach the semi-finals, their best performance at a major tournament since the 1958 World Cup (Getty)

24 June: Ukip leader Nigel Farage celebrates the Leave victory in the referendum on Britain's membership of the EU. He resigned as leader 10 days later, declaring, 'What I said during the referendum campaign is I want my country back. What I'm saying today is I want my life back' (Getty)

24 June: Prime Minister David Cameron makes his resignation speech outside 10 Downing Street (PA)

24 June: A young couple painted as EU flags protest outside Downing Street against the vote to leave the EU (Getty)