After Munich

This week: on Trump, Starmer and the death of the west; a quick guide to delicious human blood; and the case for Edinburgh’s lost railway.

Events are moving too quickly. On Monday’s Paper Cuts I cracked a joke about walking out of that cinema screening on Friday – an animated recreation of a lost 1966 Doctor Who story about fascism, which may be nerdy but is at least apt – only to find that the post-war world order had collapsed. Jason Hazeley replied by pointing out that this did not really count as a joke. The attempt by Trump and Vance to beat Zelenskyy into submission in the Oval Office really did amount to the collapse of the global security architecture that’s existed for the past 80 years: America now supports Russia against Europe. I had been offline for slightly over two hours.

Over the weekend, as what is left of the Atlantic alliance gathered in London to ask what is to be done, the New York Times reported that US defence secretary Pete Hegseth had ordered his department to cease cyberoperations against Russia. Yesterday morning I woke early, checked the news and learned that the long-threatened tariffs against Canada and Mexico had gone into operation – so, that’s a global recession, probably – and also that the US had officially announced it was pausing support for Ukraine

Well, this went well: Neville Chamberlain brandishes a piece of paper after the Munich conference, 1938. Image: Wikipedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0.

.On Tuesday, stuck on a phrase in another section of this newsletter, I glanced at Bluesky and learned that Deutsche Bank was warning that the dollar might be about to lose its safe-haven status – I’m not a finance guy, but I’m pretty sure that counts as bad – and also that the markets were crashing. And then that night, Germany announced it was rearming and, in the longest speech of the kind ever given – an act of cruelty in and of itself – President Trump seemed unexpectedly conciliatory about Ukraine all over again.

Except today Washington, ended its intelligence sharing with Kyiv.

There are often several hours between my hitting send on this email, and many of you reading it on the commute home. I have very little faith it won’t be horribly out of date by the time you reach this paragraph.

Not for the first time in recent years I find myself thinking that this is simply too big to get one’s head around. Lord knows there have been problems with US hegemony – even leaving aside the military adventurism, the fact its decline can set the world alight is a pretty big problem in itself. But it nonetheless meant that the big boy in the playground was basically on our side, and even those who railed against American power have generally absorbed so much American culture that it was more like being angry with their family than with an entirely alien threat. If the US is to be absent – or worse still, an enemy – what does that mean for the global economy? Or the western alliance? Does the latter even meaningfully exist any more?

I’m mixing my metaphors horribly here. Cut me some slack here¹, the world’s on fire.

There are those who’ve suggested that Keir Starmer is blind to the scale of the challenge. In the past week, after all, he’s invited Trump for a state visit, talked blithely about the UK playing its old role as an Atlantic bridge, and dismissed pretty self-evident claims the US is an unreliable ally. A few weeks ago, our old friend, the anonymous Labour source, was also briefing certain media that his party had more in common with Trump’s Republicans than the Democrats.

Said source is, of course, a moron, and so can be discounted. But – and acknowledging I’ve got myself in trouble here before – I’m not sure Starmer is. It is one thing for you or I or the leaders of the SNP to call Donald Trump what he is, but none of us are the British Prime Minister, a player whose public comments can move markets and directly affect events. Better to show his support for Ukraine through his actions, than speak his mind and risk another tantrum in the Oval Office. Keir Starmer has often shown himself comfortable with lying when convenient. In domestic politics, this has often been infuriating. In diplomacy, it’s a vital skill.

Neville Chamberlain’s belief he could keep a fragile peace in Europe in 1938 using no more than a piece of paper has gone down in history as an act of hubris that threw Czechoslovakia to the Nazis. It was those things – but it also bought time for the allies to rearm. Trump and co may be just as committed to NATO as they were to their free trade pact with Mexico and Canada. That doesn’t mean there’s no benefit in delaying the inevitable, to make time to advance alternative plans. Death is inevitable, too. We still put it off while we can.

Books, Events, etc

Last week I went to Sheffield, to talk about 47 Borders at the central library to these fine people:

Don’t let the faces fool you, at least some of them enjoyed it.

If you’re sad you missed the opportunity to hear me (could happen), then fear not, there’ll be plenty of opportunities. Including, for instance, this online Interintellect Salon thing I’m doing on Friday 4 April. Why not log along, or whatever the correct terminology is?

Alternatively, there’s this event in Liverpool on Monday 14 April (which yes, I’ve mentioned before, but now there’s a graphic):

As ever, if you have things, do invite me to them. I like things.

A quick guide to the varieties of delicious, nutritious human blood

I gave blood for the first time the other week. I’d been meaning to do this for years, but life and events and a fundamental if guilt-ridden selfishness had all got in the way. This time, though, when Londoncentric’s Jim Waterson mentioned on Bluesky that there was a severe shortage of blood, I reached for my usual stock of excuses, realised I didn’t have one and actually did it. I’m glad.

Some brief observations of the process itself. It is deeply weird but not entirely unpleasant to be in a comfy position, knowing that your blood is draining from your body. It is unnerving and amusing in equal measure that, once it has enough of your vital fluids, the machine makes a noise like a fruit machine. Afterwards I felt lovely and floaty, like I had just taken some really good painkillers and then had a small G&T, and spent ten minutes in the Stratford Westfield branch of Foyles marvelling at the sheer existence of books. To get there, though, I did first have to convince a nurse that the kind of lightheaded I was feeling was the good, “nicely stoned” kind, not the bad “danger to myself and others” kind.

On the whole, ten out of ten donor experience. Would donate again.

Another reason I wanted to do it is because I’d always wondered what my blood type was and this seemed one of the least medically unpleasant ways of finding out. And true to form, two days later, the NHS sent me an email congratulating me on being A+, the second most common blood type, possessed by roughly 30% of the population. Brilliant!²

Some helpful information from the NHS Blood Donation service.

Once I was in possession of this information, and had had enough time to ponder how I felt about having a blood type described as “common” and then conclude that this was a stupid thing to worry about, I realised: I have absolutely no idea what it means. What follows is my attempt to find out.