Ashlee Crumpton

Ashlee Crumpton

Ashlee Crumpton

What causes acne?

Ashlee Crumpton

Stay informed with free updates

Simply sign up to the Life & Arts myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.

Karl Marx, Hans Holbein, George Frideric Handel, Kai Havertz: some Germans do their best work in London. This, plus Germans being, in my experience, the best English-speakers on the continent, can feed the sense that these are kindred countries, despite the first half of the last century.

But Germany specialises in manufacturing. Britain is the second-biggest exporter of services in the world. Germany has a spread of important regions. Britain is more dominated by its main city than perhaps any rich nation of significant size. Germany has coalition governments, with three parties in the current one. British politics is so winner-takes-all that Keir Starmer got a 174-seat majority from a 34 per cent vote share. Germany’s fiscal policy is prudent to a fault. Britain has not run a budget surplus since the turn of the millennium. Germany is federal. Britain is centralised. Germany was a founding member of the European project. Britain joined late and left.

Even the texture of life in these countries is exactly different. You can ride a space-age train across Germany and then see someone using a fax machine on a non-ironic basis. Britain is better digitised but less good at tangible infrastructure.

These are two distinct, in fact almost oppositional, ways of running a medium-sized, high-income democracy. Yet both are converging on one thing: failure. Britain’s troubles are more famous and chronic, while Germany’s might be more acute. It was the worst-performing major economy in 2023. Its once-serene politics are deteriorating.

The lesson? Never idealise other countries. It feels like a cosmopolitan thing to do, but it is the ultimate in parochialism. The left are repeat offenders. The Sweden-worship of the 1990s was credulous enough. But during the Angela Merkel era, Germany was Shangri-La for UK and US progressives, who hailed proportional representation over brute majoritarianism, industrial strategy over laissez-faire, soft power over Anglo-American militarism. Berlin itself — a hipper and less gilded city than London or New York — became proof of concept.

Well, time has complicated the picture. Multi-party government, it seems, can bring indecision. Shaping the economy can mean backing existing industries over emergent ones. Soft power can be a euphemism for naivety in the face of mortal enemies. Having lots of fine cities but no megalopolis can mean forgoing the economic benefits of agglomeration.

Never idealise other countries. It feels like a cosmopolitan thing to do, but it is the ultimate in parochialism

When two such different countries get into such similar ruts at the same time, we should doubt if there is a “right” model. What there are are trade-offs. Apart from the basics — property rights, tax collection, universal public services, and so on — almost no policy is an unqualified good. Making one thing better will tend to make another thing worse. Leadership is a matter of choosing which problems to have.

Germany’s choices weren’t wrong. It is still richer than Britain. But if the costs and perverse outcomes were hard to anticipate in Germany, imagine how much harder from abroad. This is the inherent risk of adoring foreign exemplars. The UK and especially the US are set on emulating industrial strategy, but without the pedigree for it, or sufficient awareness of its mixed track record.

In the end, which of these two unalike countries is in more trouble? Economically, Britain. Germany carries less public debt. Its quest to make fewer machine parts and more advanced technologies is entirely doable over time. There is the cushion of the European single market.

On the political score, though, Germany’s extremism problem is worse. It has a Kremlin-smitten far left, not just the most strident of the major hard-right parties in Europe. And the advantage of Britain’s Napoleonic centralisation is a ruthless decisiveness. A bad prime minister or two can (and did) wreck things. But a first-class one would get the country moving again.

For better or worse, France is Britain’s real twin: in per capita income, in maritime exposure, in being a unified state for so long, in hoarding so much in its capital, in having lost a vast extra-European empire. A Tale of Two Cities is not about London and Munich. Even that Anglo-German point of contact, football, is a laughable mismatch. Germany has four World Cups to England’s one. The fascination in this bilateral relationship lies in the (peaceful) contrast. How droll, then, that when the two sides arrive at last at something in common, it is national malaise.

Email Janan at janan.ganesh@ft.com

Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and subscribe to our podcast Life & Art wherever you listen

LUCY Letby is set to challenge her most recent conviction for murdering seven babies and trying to kill seven more, the Court of Appeal revealed yesterday.

The nurse, 34, is serving 15 whole-life orders for her year-long killing spree while working on a neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital, Cheshire.

1

Court staff confirmed that Letby is bringing a bid to appeal against her conviction for one count of attempted murder in July.

Judges will consider the case at a hearing on October 24, according to court listings.

Letby previously launched an appeal to challenge her guilty verdicts for seven murders and six attempted murders, which was rejected in May.

A month later she was later sentenced to an additional whole-life order for the attempted murder of a baby girl after a retrial at Manchester crown court.

A public inquiry into the events surrounding Letby’s crimes, chaired by judge Lady Justice Thirlwall, is ongoing at Liverpool Town Hall and is expected to last into 2025.

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Swamp Notes — Misinformation as a campaign strategy’

Sonja Hutson
Springfield, Ohio, is a city of around 60,000 people. For a long time, it was perhaps best known as the birthplace of Grammy Award-winning musician John Legend. But since the US presidential debate earlier this month, Springfield has been in the news for a very different reason.

Donald Trump’s voice clip
In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.

Sonja Hutson
This is Swamp Notes, the weekly podcast from the FT News Briefing, where we talk about all of the things happening in the 2024 US presidential election. I’m Sonja Hutson. And this week we’re asking do American voters care about the truth? Here with me to discuss is Joshua Chaffin. He’s the FT’s New York correspondent. Hi, Josh!

Joshua Chaffin
Hello.

Sonja Hutson
And we’ve also got Ed Luce, the FT’s US national editor and co-author of The Swamp Notes Newsletter. Hi, Ed!

Edward Luce
Hello.

Sonja Hutson
So, Ed, I want to start with you. We’re talking about misinformation today. Can you tell us a little bit about the conspiracy theory about Springfield and how it ended up as one of Donald Trump’s talking points during the presidential debate?

Edward Luce
Sure. This is the cats and dogs one that originated as so many of these things do with a random Facebook post. But it got picked up by one of the sort of heavily followed influencers on the far right and then quickly became a meme. People like Elon Musk then sort of rocket-boosting it with their own endorsements. And JD Vance, who is, you know, of the generation of online Republicans we should never forget the guy’s 40. He’s really been an active online Twitter conservative then, you know, turning it into an even bigger meme and then it finds its way into Donald Trump’s mouth. Donald Trump believes in truthful hyperbole. Truthful hyperbole being his description for strategic lying. And there something sounds like it might be true, you know, and that some people might believe it, then treat it as if it is true. And that is his modus operandi and has been for many years. This is just one example of it.

Sonja Hutson
Now, Josh, you visited Springfield after this theory started circulating. How has the town been impacted by all this new attention?

Joshua Chaffin
Springfield is like a small town, kind of every town that is in the grips of hysteria. And there is an element of it that is almost like The Simpsons, where the fictional town is called Springfield. But you can you know, it’s almost comical in some ways. The sight of it that’s not comical is you see these Haitian immigrants and there is real and legitimate fear. I mean, there are bomb threats that have been called into the city. There are people shouting things out the window of pick-up trucks as they go by, menacing things. And there’s a real fear that somebody will do something terrible.

Sonja Hutson
So I want to leave Springfield for a minute and talk about this on a wider scale. I mean, there are certainly lots of impediments to voters finding out the truth. We talked about some of them in our episode about America’s fractured media ecosystem that’s really developed over the last several years. But Ed, I want to go back to the question that I posed at the beginning of this episode, which is and you know, this is somewhat cliché in the Trump era, but does the truth matter to voters?

Edward Luce
Not that much, no. The reassuring sort of coda to that is it’s never matter that much, you know? It’s just that because of things you’ve discussed on recent podcasts and that brave new technological world wherein that has been this disintermediation not just of legacy media, as it’s called, but also the disintermediation of the parties. You know, you’ve now got a situation where the combination of gerrymandering and the sort of discrediting of the Republican establishment means the more outrageous you are, the more likely you are to get nominated. That’s why there are more Marjorie Taylor Greene in this world. There were just as many in the last world, but they just didn’t tend to become quite so easily. Republican lawmakers, elected Republican lawmakers.

So I suppose my answer to your question comes in two parts: No, in fact, truth is an actual obstacle to career advancement in the Republican party nowadays. But I believe it still matters at some degree in a general election where there is a non-gerrymandered-minded electorate. And that is true in states and it’s true in presidential elections. You cannot gerrymander states or presidential elections. I do believe this will matter and is mattering. And remember, in this presidential election — which is already under way — there are people voting in many early voting states, and some of those are the really critical states. So what’s happening now is influencing votes now, today.

Sonja Hutson
Yeah, it’s interesting that you mentioned the discrediting of the Republican establishment. You know, people that might otherwise try to hold someone like Trump accountable for lying, because we have actually seen some mainstream Republican officials — including Ohio’s governor — try to disabuse people of the Springfield conspiracy theory. Right, Josh? I mean, and has it had any effect from what you’ve seen?

Joshua Chaffin
You know, certainly less than I would have thought. And this is something that I find fascinating. It doesn’t really matter. Somebody had observed to me when I arrived in Springfield, you have the mayor and the police chief have very quickly kind of pointed out that this is not true. And it’s almost like this pernicious weed once it’s out there, that you just can’t get rid of it. And they’re sort of frantically trying to pull it up. You know, every place it pops up and it just keeps growing and spreading.

I’m amazed, I guess, that the many Trump rallies that have gone to, the power that Trump has had just repeating messages over and over and they become a kind of truth for people, even if they start out without any basis. And I guess that the deeper truth behind all this is Trump invents are saying, do you want black Haitians in your community? Do you want them coming to where you live? And I think politically, that’s the message that is getting through, at least to the people who are susceptible to that message.

Sonja Hutson
So I want to play a clip from a recent CNN interview with JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, about Springfield.

JD Vance’s News clip
The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m gonna do. Dana, because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris . . . 

Sonja Hutson
So Ed, is this the truthful hyperbole that you were talking about earlier? And how do you think this all fits into the Trump campaign’s electoral strategy?

Edward Luce
Vance It’s not stupid. I mean, he’s on record as saying before he became the nominee, a lot of stupid things. But what he just said isn’t stupid. It’s really cynical. Which is why, you know, if it serves our purpose doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not, it gets at some deeper underlying truth. He’s not just doing his boss’s bidding, which would be enough in itself to explain him echoing these lies. But I think he has a sort of darker, visceral hint about what impact this might be having on some voters. And if there is whatever the opposite of a silver lining is a dark lining to the exposure of this cats and dogs lie. It is that well, at least from Trump’s point of view, we are talking about immigration.

Immigration is an issue on which Trump leads by quite a lot. And even if it’s, you know, it’s the same principle. Better to have bad publicity than no publicity. They are on Trump’s turf. And as Josh rightly pointed out, the real issue here is really, do you want black Haitians living in your community? And so we could be underestimating the degree to which this is at some level beneficial to Trump-Vance.

Joshua Chaffin
I would add that in terms of the mainstream media is neglecting Springfield. You go back through the clips and I saw some really rich, deep reporting about the plight of Springfield. This is before the dog and cat story. About the plight of a rustbelt town that has tried desperately to make a comeback. And actually, the Haitians’ arrival is, perhaps, unexpected consequence of the town’s success. You know, all of that, which I think is fascinating, hopefully for FT readers, is not the kind of thing that you would probably hear about at a presidential debate or on the campaign trail.

Sonja Hutson
Just to wrap up, I want to ask kind of a big picture question, which is, does this phenomenon of politicians so brazenly spreading misinformation? I mean, you have JD Vance going on CNN and talking about how he knows he’s spreading a lie and feels good about doing that. Does that feel like something that can be at all put back into the bottle? You know, Ed, you said earlier that this is nothing new, but could it get worse or could it continue even after Trump leaves the political scene?

Edward Luce
No, I think I mean, I’ve always thought Trump has a very, very specific and sort of irreplaceable symptom of a sort of deeper malaise about or loss of confidence in American. The American creed that you’ve seen in parts of the population. And therefore, I think forms of that will outlast Trump. And I mean, at the moment, I am expecting Trump to lose in November. I mean, very marginal expectation, which could easily flip the other way. But should he lose . . . 

Sonja Hutson
Predicting an election is a dangerous game these days, Ed. (Laughter)

Edward Luce
That’s why I immediately unpredicted my prediction. But, you know, Vance was chosen very clearly with the future in mind. And, you know, there’s a lot of money behind Maga continuing. I wouldn’t write it off.

Joshua Chaffin
I agree with that, that Trump is kind of singular. But am sad to say as a mainstream reporter, I think this is here to stay. And I don’t see it being put back in the bottle.

Sonja Hutson
All right. We’re gonna take a quick break. And when we come back, we’ll do Exit Poll.

[WIRED POLITICS LAB PODCAST TRAILER PLAYING]

Sonja Hutson
And we are back with Exit Poll where we talk about something that did not happen on the campaign trail and apply rigorous political analysis to it. Ben & Jerry’s is a beloved American ice cream brand famous for somewhat eccentric flavours like Goodbye Yellow Brick Road in honour of Elton John or Yes, Pecan — depending on how . . . that’s a very controversial pronunciation — that’s in honour of Barack Obama. And this week they unveiled Kamala’s Coconut Jubilee, named after Kamala Harris and the famous you-think-you-just-fell-out-of-a-coconut-tree meme. It has coconut ice cream with a caramel swirl and star shaped sprinkles. So what do you both think that a Donald Trump-flavoured ice cream would include? And bonus points if you have a name to go along with it?

Edward Luce
Yeah, I mean, there’s a reason why I went into journalism and not marketing. (Laughter) The favourite thing of mine that Trump has said in recent weeks is I hate Taylor Swift. It was just . . . 

Sonja Hutson
In all caps!

Edward Luce
In all caps. After she endorsed Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. And he’s kind of obsessed with her and he’s kind of obsessed with a romantic life, he’s obsessed . . . So I like a play on Taylor Swift, something like ‘Taylor humble pie’. And I would like it to have all the worst ingredients because he’s gonna be forced to eat his ‘Taylor humble pie’.

Joshua Chaffin
Mine would be called ‘Megalicious’. It would be ice cream with kind of gold leaf and it would be full of nuts and it would be served atop a Roy Cohn.

Edward Luce
And that’s good.

Sonja Hutson
All right. Well, I want to thank our guests, Joshua Chaffin, he’s the FT’s New York correspondent. Thanks, Josh.

Joshua Chaffin
Thank you.

Sonja Hutson
And Ed Luce, he’s our US national editor and columnist. He also is the co-author of The Swamp Notes newsletter. Thanks, Ed.

Edward Luce
Always a pleasure.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Sonja Hutson
This was Swamp Notes, the US politics show from the FT News briefing. If you want to sign up for the Swamp Notes newsletter, we’ve got a link to that in the show notes.

Our show is mixed and produced by Ethan Plotkin. It’s also produced by Lauren Fedor and Marc Filippino. Special thanks to Pierre Nicholson. I’m your host, Sonja Hutson. Our executive producer is Topher Forhecz, and Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of Audio. Original Music by Hannis Brown. Check back next week for more US political analysis from the Financial Times.

A subway rider was stabbed in the back by an apparent stranger Friday night as he stepped off a train at a Manhattan station.

The 29-year-old victim had just stepped off a Brooklyn-bound L train at the First Ave. subway station near 14th St. in the East Village at about 8:45 p.m. when another passenger suddenly plunged a knife into his back, police and witnesses told the Daily News.

A security guard monitoring the platform witnessed the victim looking confused and in pain, and someone fleeing up the stairs to the street. Police later described the possible attacker as “an Asian man with a bag.”

“Someone came up behind him and stabbed him in the back,” said the security guard, who gave his name as Samba. “He never saw it coming.”

“He yelled, ‘Somebody punched me.’ But then we looked and we saw all the blood.”

Medics rushed the victim to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition.

Police were hoping a review of the station’s close circuit video cameras would help to identify the attacker.