Stephen K. Bannon cuts a rather unprepossessing figure, said Kathleen Parker in The Washington Post. “Photos of him show a dishevelled, shaggy-haired man in need of a shave who appears to have slept in his clothes, possibly on a sidewalk grate.” But he has an intriguing background. A former naval officer, Goldman Sachs banker, Hollywood producer and documentary maker, he helped steer
Donald Trump’s campaign to victory.
And he’s the man the president-elect has now chosen to serve as his chief White House strategist and senior counsellor. Cue outrage from Bannon’s many critics, who believe he is a “racist, xenophobic,
misogynist, anti-Semitic nationalist” who shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the White House.
Let’s get one thing clear, said Ian Tuttle in National Review: “Steve Bannon is not Josef Goebbels”. People who know him well, such as Julia Jones, his long-term screenwriting partner in Hollywood, say he has never displayed any hint of racism or anti-Semitism in his personal life. He does, however, have questions to answer about his chairmanship of the controversial Breitbart News website. Before he took over, in 2012, the right-wing website was provocative and irreverent, but under his aegis the
tone has become altogether more ugly as the site has catered to the so-called “alt-right”, a “small but vocal fringe of white supremacists, anti-Semites and internet trolls”.
For example, Breitbart reported as “100% vindicated” Trump’s specious claim that “thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey celebrated the 9/11 attacks. Bannon might not subscribe to these poisonous views himself, but he was happy to give them a media platform. Bannon’s enemies should beware of
exaggerating the alt-right’s influence for partisan advantage, said The Wall Street Journal. One lesson of 2016 is that denouncing those who disagree with you as bigots is “a losing strategy”. That said, the political tendency Bannon represents “deserves a watchful eye”. The White House will regret it if it encourages the “white-identity grievance politics” fostered by Breitbart. Another lesson of the election, after all, is that partisan propaganda is a misleading guide to reality. Democrats are “reeling” today partly because The New York Times and other liberal media voices assured them that Trump “could never win. Republicans don’t need a right-wing version.”
The best way to ease the housing crisis
“We all know the housing market in this country is a mess,” says
Paul Johnson. Ultimately, this will only be fixed by building more
homes, but it will take many years for the benefits of that to feed
through the system. In the meantime, we could improve the
situation by reforming the nonsensical way property is taxed,
which makes things so much worse. First, there’s council tax. This
is “fine in principle”, but outdated and regressive in practice,
based as it is “on the relative value of properties from a quarter of
a century ago”. What we pay bears increasingly little relationship
to our house’s value. Then there’s stamp duty, a pointless transaction
tax that gums up the housing market by punishing people
for moving. It discourages people from relocating to where jobs
are, makes it harder for young families to trade up, and forces
older people “to hold tight to bigger properties they might prefer
to leave”. The solution is clear: ditch stamp duty altogether, and
recoup at least some of the lost £7.3bn by increasing council tax
on more expensive properties, so that the amount their owners
pay is more closely related to what their house is actually worth.
Paul Johnson. Ultimately, this will only be fixed by building more
homes, but it will take many years for the benefits of that to feed
through the system. In the meantime, we could improve the
situation by reforming the nonsensical way property is taxed,
which makes things so much worse. First, there’s council tax. This
is “fine in principle”, but outdated and regressive in practice,
based as it is “on the relative value of properties from a quarter of
a century ago”. What we pay bears increasingly little relationship
to our house’s value. Then there’s stamp duty, a pointless transaction
tax that gums up the housing market by punishing people
for moving. It discourages people from relocating to where jobs
are, makes it harder for young families to trade up, and forces
older people “to hold tight to bigger properties they might prefer
to leave”. The solution is clear: ditch stamp duty altogether, and
recoup at least some of the lost £7.3bn by increasing council tax
on more expensive properties, so that the amount their owners
pay is more closely related to what their house is actually worth.
“Cult hero” Farage is going global
“Love him or hate him, Nigel Farage is the most successful British politician of his generation,” says Adam Boulton – and he’s not done yet. Although his separation from UKIP is set be formalised when the party’s new leader is announced this Monday, he remains a potent force in his own right. Many in his party and in the Tory ranks would love him to be sequestered in the House of Lords, where he could be “smothered by ermine”, but Farage is not about to fall into that “trap”. He wants to remain at large to wield his influence, fully aware that he is – as Stephen Bannon, Donald Trump’s newly appointed chief strategist puts it – “kind of a cult hero in this global populist movement”. Farage enjoys a high profile, both here and, increasingly, in the US; he has the support of Aaron Banks, the British millionaire who until recently funded UKIP; and, for all his post-referendum talk of wanting his life back, he’s still, at 52, relatively young for a politician, and still driven by a healthy ego. The future of UKIP under its likely new leader, the “authoritarian” Paul Nuttall, is uncertain. But whatever the party’s fate may be, “Farage is going global”.
The real victims of the Nafta trade deal
Donald Trump is right about one thing, says Felicity Lawrence: Nafta – the North American Free Trade Agreement – has been a disaster for many US workers. It’s deeply unfair, though, to seek to blame this on job-stealing Mexican migrants. Poor Mexicans have, in fact, been the biggest losers of the Nafta deal. The reason so many sought work in the US in the first place is that their jobs back home had vanished. When Nafta was introduced in 1994, it led to an initial growth in low-wage factory jobs in Mexico, but many of those have since gone to China. Meanwhile, the entry of giant, subsidised US grain traders into the Mexican corn market has decimated local producers, driving some 1.3 million Mexicans off the land. Ordinary Mexicans haven’t even benefited from the fall in corn prices. On the contrary, tortilla prices rose sevenfold as a result of Nafta, which obliged the Mexican government to remove some of the state supports that kept tortillas cheap. The main winners of Nafta have been local elites and big, tax-dodging US businesses. But Trump seems in no hurry to challenge them.
Why it’s so hard to shed the fat
Diets rarely work – not in the long term, says Jenni Russell. And there’s a scientific reason for this. “Our bodies like equilibrium and they establish set points to which they want to return.” Put a few extra pounds on over Christmas and it’s relatively easy to lose them; remain overweight for a long time – “no one is quite sure how long; perhaps a year” – and you effectively reset your default weight at this higher level.
When you then try to shed that fat, your body fights to retain the extra reserves by increasing the level of your hunger hormones and slowing down your metabolism. So a newly thin person will always have to eat less, or exercise more, than someone who has simply maintained that weight.
The lesson is clear: unless we want rising obesity levels to bankrupt the NHS, we must devote our energies to preventing people, children in particular, from getting fat in the first place. US studies show that 80% of obese children become obese adults, whereas less than 5% of normal-sized children do. In the long run, this is a far more important issue “than HS2, or where to put a third runway”.
When you then try to shed that fat, your body fights to retain the extra reserves by increasing the level of your hunger hormones and slowing down your metabolism. So a newly thin person will always have to eat less, or exercise more, than someone who has simply maintained that weight.
The lesson is clear: unless we want rising obesity levels to bankrupt the NHS, we must devote our energies to preventing people, children in particular, from getting fat in the first place. US studies show that 80% of obese children become obese adults, whereas less than 5% of normal-sized children do. In the long run, this is a far more important issue “than HS2, or where to put a third runway”.
Prisons in crisis
HM Inspectorate of Prisons recently warned that “managers and staff” in prisons in England and Wales have “all but lost control”
How bad is the situation?
Very bad. Our jails have become “unacceptably violent and dangerous places” according to Peter Clarke, the Chief Inspector of Prisons. The latest Ministry of Justice figures show that
there were 17,782 prisoner-onprisoner assaults in the year to June 2016, up 32% on the previous year.
Assaults on prison officers rose by 43% to 5,954, with 697 serious injuries. Rates of self-harm among
prisoners hit an all-time high; and there have been 107 suicides and five apparent homicides. This month alone has seen a riot at HMP Bedford, a “mini-riot” at HMP Exeter, and a jailbreak at HMP Pentonville; while at HMP Isle of Wight, an inmate cut a guard’s throat with a razor. Last month, a prisoner was stabbed to death in Pentonville. Up to 10,000 prison officers held a wildcat strike last week in protest over safety concerns; the Government got an injunction ordering them back to work.
Why have conditions deteriorated?
According to HM Inspectorate of Prisons, “new psychoactive substances” have had “a dramatic and destabilising effect in many of our prisons”. These synthetic drugs, such as “Spice” and “Black Mamba” – once legal, now banned – are favoured because they don’t show up in drug tests. Their effects can be “unpredictable and extreme”. Large quantities are smuggled into jails, sometimes using drones to deliver them through cell windows, and sold by organised drug gangs. The dealers charge
high interest rates on loans, and administer beatings to those who don’t pay up, exacerbating existing problems of debt, bullying and violence. However, the drug problem is thought to be a symptom of two underlying issues: the number of inmates has soared, while the number of prison officers has dropped.
Why has the prison population grown?
The figures for October showed there were 85,108 people behind bars in England and Wales (95% of them male), compared with around 45,000 in 1993. The UK has one of the highest prison populations in Western Europe, at almost 150 inmates per 100,000 people, compared with 118 in France and 81 in Germany. This is largely due to successive governments imposing tougher justice policies: the courts have sent more criminals to prison and, crucially, have imposed longer sentences. Another factor is the high reoffending rate: almost half of adult inmates are reconvicted within a year of release – at an estimated cost to the nation of up to £15bn a year.
Why are there fewer staff?
Largely because of cuts implemented by former justice secretary Chris Grayling. The number of front-line officers fell by 28% between 2010 and 2016, from 25,000 to 18,000. The Prison Officers Association (POA), the union for rank-and-file staff, says long-term underinvestment has made it impossible to recruit and retain officers; the starting salary of £20,500 is too low, particularly in the
more expensive areas of the country.
And how are prisons affected?
More than half of the prisons visited by the inspectorate in 2015-16 had a “significant” overcrowding problem; at HMP Wandsworth, 1,564 men were held in cells designed for 963. The Prison Service is now running at 113% of its “certified normal accommodation” level – the basic standard to which it aspires. Staff shortages mean it’s often impossible to run a normal daily timetable. The POA says that 12 jails are classified as “red sites”, where they cannot operate a standard regime; so activities such as education, work, or visits to the gym or the library – as well as regular cell searches – are cancelled. The inspectorate reports that 20% of prisoners spend 22 hours of the day or more locked up. In these conditions, particularly when many prisons are dirty and dilapidated, many problems are exacerbated, from self-harm and riots to the flagrant drinking and drug-taking in HMP Guys Marsh, Dorset, exposed in last week’s Daily Mail.
What does the Government propose to do?
In this month’s Prison Safety and Reform white paper, Justice Secretary Liz Truss proposed to hire an extra 2,500 prison officers, including high-achieving graduates and former armed forces personnel; and to invest in new measures to keep drugs and mobile phones out of prison – including imposing “no-fly zones” for drones. She has also promised to push on with reforms announced during her predecessor Michael Gove’s brief tenure. New prisons will be built to replace Victorian jails, providing 10,000 new adult places. Prison governors will be given greater autonomy, and jails’ performance will be ranked in league tables.
Could these reforms turn the tide?
The £1.3bn of investment in new prison buildings was welcomed, along with plans to hire more officers. But critics say this is too little, too late – and besides, staff numbers will still remain below
2010 levels. And Peter Dawson of the Prison Reform Trust decried “the complete silence in the white paper on the sentencing and administrative changes” needed to reduce the jail population to “responsible proportions”.
Should prison numbers be cut?
The question of whether “prison works” in principle – or whether community sentences (see box) are
preferable – is an age-old one which won’t be settled any time soon. There is evidence on either side: since Michael Howard began to increase prison numbers in the early 1990s, crime has fallen greatly. Yet the correlation is unclear: many European regimes achieve vastly better outcomes while incarcerating many fewer people. One thing is clear: at present, the prison system in England and Wales is not working at all. As things stand, says Dawson, it can’t even “reliably provide toilet paper for a prisoner to wipe his backside”. “If we do decide as a society that we want so many people in jail,” noted The Spectator, “then the costs must be met head-on.”
The “soft” option
If the aim of prison is to stop people committing crimes, it does a very poor job: 46% of adults and 69% of under-18s released last year have been reconvicted (and that’s before unsolved crimes are included). Prison reformers point to the fundamental problems faced by the prison population. Around a quarter of prisoners were in care as children; 15% were homeless before entering prison; one in three has a mental or physical disability; half have the literacy levels of an 11-year-old; and drug use is rife.
Statistically, it would seem that the simplest way to improve rehabilitation rates would be to put fewer people in prison. Community sentences have consistently been shown to be more effective than
short prison sentences at reducing reoffending, and they are far cheaper (custodial sentences cost £33,000 per person per year). Arguably, a jail term often isn’t even necessary (more than half of prisoners have not committed violent offences). Yet politically, there is always resistance to “soft” penal policies; in recent years the only major change in rehabilitation policy has involved outsourcing parts of the probation service to private firms. An MPs’ report found that this reform was costly, complex and, as yet, entirely unproven.
How bad is the situation?
Very bad. Our jails have become “unacceptably violent and dangerous places” according to Peter Clarke, the Chief Inspector of Prisons. The latest Ministry of Justice figures show that
there were 17,782 prisoner-onprisoner assaults in the year to June 2016, up 32% on the previous year.
Assaults on prison officers rose by 43% to 5,954, with 697 serious injuries. Rates of self-harm among
prisoners hit an all-time high; and there have been 107 suicides and five apparent homicides. This month alone has seen a riot at HMP Bedford, a “mini-riot” at HMP Exeter, and a jailbreak at HMP Pentonville; while at HMP Isle of Wight, an inmate cut a guard’s throat with a razor. Last month, a prisoner was stabbed to death in Pentonville. Up to 10,000 prison officers held a wildcat strike last week in protest over safety concerns; the Government got an injunction ordering them back to work.
Why have conditions deteriorated?
According to HM Inspectorate of Prisons, “new psychoactive substances” have had “a dramatic and destabilising effect in many of our prisons”. These synthetic drugs, such as “Spice” and “Black Mamba” – once legal, now banned – are favoured because they don’t show up in drug tests. Their effects can be “unpredictable and extreme”. Large quantities are smuggled into jails, sometimes using drones to deliver them through cell windows, and sold by organised drug gangs. The dealers charge
high interest rates on loans, and administer beatings to those who don’t pay up, exacerbating existing problems of debt, bullying and violence. However, the drug problem is thought to be a symptom of two underlying issues: the number of inmates has soared, while the number of prison officers has dropped.
Why has the prison population grown?
The figures for October showed there were 85,108 people behind bars in England and Wales (95% of them male), compared with around 45,000 in 1993. The UK has one of the highest prison populations in Western Europe, at almost 150 inmates per 100,000 people, compared with 118 in France and 81 in Germany. This is largely due to successive governments imposing tougher justice policies: the courts have sent more criminals to prison and, crucially, have imposed longer sentences. Another factor is the high reoffending rate: almost half of adult inmates are reconvicted within a year of release – at an estimated cost to the nation of up to £15bn a year.
Why are there fewer staff?
Largely because of cuts implemented by former justice secretary Chris Grayling. The number of front-line officers fell by 28% between 2010 and 2016, from 25,000 to 18,000. The Prison Officers Association (POA), the union for rank-and-file staff, says long-term underinvestment has made it impossible to recruit and retain officers; the starting salary of £20,500 is too low, particularly in the
more expensive areas of the country.
And how are prisons affected?
More than half of the prisons visited by the inspectorate in 2015-16 had a “significant” overcrowding problem; at HMP Wandsworth, 1,564 men were held in cells designed for 963. The Prison Service is now running at 113% of its “certified normal accommodation” level – the basic standard to which it aspires. Staff shortages mean it’s often impossible to run a normal daily timetable. The POA says that 12 jails are classified as “red sites”, where they cannot operate a standard regime; so activities such as education, work, or visits to the gym or the library – as well as regular cell searches – are cancelled. The inspectorate reports that 20% of prisoners spend 22 hours of the day or more locked up. In these conditions, particularly when many prisons are dirty and dilapidated, many problems are exacerbated, from self-harm and riots to the flagrant drinking and drug-taking in HMP Guys Marsh, Dorset, exposed in last week’s Daily Mail.
What does the Government propose to do?
In this month’s Prison Safety and Reform white paper, Justice Secretary Liz Truss proposed to hire an extra 2,500 prison officers, including high-achieving graduates and former armed forces personnel; and to invest in new measures to keep drugs and mobile phones out of prison – including imposing “no-fly zones” for drones. She has also promised to push on with reforms announced during her predecessor Michael Gove’s brief tenure. New prisons will be built to replace Victorian jails, providing 10,000 new adult places. Prison governors will be given greater autonomy, and jails’ performance will be ranked in league tables.
Could these reforms turn the tide?
The £1.3bn of investment in new prison buildings was welcomed, along with plans to hire more officers. But critics say this is too little, too late – and besides, staff numbers will still remain below
2010 levels. And Peter Dawson of the Prison Reform Trust decried “the complete silence in the white paper on the sentencing and administrative changes” needed to reduce the jail population to “responsible proportions”.
Should prison numbers be cut?
The question of whether “prison works” in principle – or whether community sentences (see box) are
preferable – is an age-old one which won’t be settled any time soon. There is evidence on either side: since Michael Howard began to increase prison numbers in the early 1990s, crime has fallen greatly. Yet the correlation is unclear: many European regimes achieve vastly better outcomes while incarcerating many fewer people. One thing is clear: at present, the prison system in England and Wales is not working at all. As things stand, says Dawson, it can’t even “reliably provide toilet paper for a prisoner to wipe his backside”. “If we do decide as a society that we want so many people in jail,” noted The Spectator, “then the costs must be met head-on.”
The “soft” option
If the aim of prison is to stop people committing crimes, it does a very poor job: 46% of adults and 69% of under-18s released last year have been reconvicted (and that’s before unsolved crimes are included). Prison reformers point to the fundamental problems faced by the prison population. Around a quarter of prisoners were in care as children; 15% were homeless before entering prison; one in three has a mental or physical disability; half have the literacy levels of an 11-year-old; and drug use is rife.
Statistically, it would seem that the simplest way to improve rehabilitation rates would be to put fewer people in prison. Community sentences have consistently been shown to be more effective than
short prison sentences at reducing reoffending, and they are far cheaper (custodial sentences cost £33,000 per person per year). Arguably, a jail term often isn’t even necessary (more than half of prisoners have not committed violent offences). Yet politically, there is always resistance to “soft” penal policies; in recent years the only major change in rehabilitation policy has involved outsourcing parts of the probation service to private firms. An MPs’ report found that this reform was costly, complex and, as yet, entirely unproven.
The Trump team
Donald Trump began filling senior posts last week in preparation for taking office on 20 January. The president-elect offered an olive branch to the Washington establishment by appointing Reince Priebus, an insider close to the Republican leadership, as his chief of staff. More controversially, he picked Steve Bannon, the former head of the hard-right Breitbart News, as his chief White House
adviser. Critics were also perturbed by his choice of Mike Flynn, Jeff Sessions and Mike Pompeo to serve, respectively, as national security adviser, attorney general and CIA director. All three are loyalists known for their hard-line views. Trump has continued to use Twitter to attack media critics, and, in a breach of diplomatic convention, recommended this week that Nigel Farage be named UK ambassador to America. He also announced his early agenda via a short video posted on YouTube, in which he promised to torpedo the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. Trump later announced that he would not pursue further investigations into Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, and disavowed far-right activists.
Trump’s first appointments are depressing, said the Los Angeles Times. His choice as national security adviser, Mike Flynn, has outdone even Trump himself when it comes to insulting Muslims. Flynn has reportedly referred to Islam as “a cancer”, and once tweeted that “fear of Muslims is
RATIONAL”. As for Jeff Sessions, Trump’s choice of attorney general, he was once rejected for a judgeship because of alleged racism. Liberals always try to paint Southern Republicans as racists, said The Wall Street Journal. It’s not true of Sessions: as former US attorney of the Southern District of Alabama, he helped desegregate the state’s public schools, and won a death penalty conviction
for the head of the local Ku Klux Klan. As worrying as Trump’s appointments is his thin-skinned reaction to criticism, said The Washington Post. He complained that his vice-president, Mike Pence, had been “harassed” by the cast of a Broadway show and demanded an apology after one actor implored Pence from the stage to work on behalf of all Americans. He tweeted angrily
about a satirical sketch on NBC’s Saturday Night Live. It’s one thing to fire off cranky messages in the heat of a campaign but Trump will soon be president. “His words matter.”
“Let’s dispense with a couple of red herrings,” said Rupert Cornwell in The Independent. “Contrary to many reports, this hasn’t been an especially chaotic transition.” While some of Trump’s procedures have certainly been unorthodox, he’s well ahead of where Bill Clinton was at this stage: Clinton “didn’t manage to nominate his (third) choice of attorney general until three weeks after his inauguration”. Nor is it especially shocking that Trump’s children and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, might play some role in the White House. They seem more “presidential” than him, and it wouldn’t be the first time a US leader relied on family advice. Trump is grappling with “a task that even he and some of his closest advisers had thought he would never have to face”, said Toby Harnden in The Sunday Times. He appears to be approaching it in a similar way to The Apprentice, the reality TV show he used to host. Potential appointees are referred to as “finalists”. “Names are floated, then withdrawn, as if to build up the drama before the finale.” The three most important members of Trump’s team, said David Smith in The Guardian, look set to be Priebus, Bannon and Kushner. They’re all very different, which is sure to lead to some creative tensions, to say the least. But that won’t bother Trump. In the words of one insider, the president-elect “likes to manage with concentric
circles of chaos… He likes the tension between the different sectors of influence.” One significant decision still being argued over is who should serve as Trump’s secretary of state, said Kathleen Parker in The Washington Post. Some, alarmingly, are pushing for the post to go to Rudy Giuliani, who was good as mayor of New York after 9/11 but who now comes across as a ranting reactionary. Let’s hope Trump instead picks Mitt Romney, with whom he held a meeting this week. The former Republican presidential candidate is calm, articulate and well informed, not to mention fluent in French – all things Trump is not. He also has a sound grasp of international politics. It was Romney, remember, who, during his final debate with President Obama in 2012, presciently pointed to Russia as the US’s greatest geopolitical foe.
Trump and his advisers need to fill some 4,000 posts, more than 1,000 of whose occupants will require confirmation from the Senate. Many of the appointees will be fresh faces who have never
served in an administration and will therefore require full background checks. This will create a major headache for the security vetting system, which is already struggling with a big backlog.
Trump says he would “like to do something” to separate his presidential role from his business empire. Although there is no legal requirement for him to liquidate his assets, past presidents have set aside their business dealings. Critics are calling on him to adopt blind trusts, or take other equivalent measures.
adviser. Critics were also perturbed by his choice of Mike Flynn, Jeff Sessions and Mike Pompeo to serve, respectively, as national security adviser, attorney general and CIA director. All three are loyalists known for their hard-line views. Trump has continued to use Twitter to attack media critics, and, in a breach of diplomatic convention, recommended this week that Nigel Farage be named UK ambassador to America. He also announced his early agenda via a short video posted on YouTube, in which he promised to torpedo the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. Trump later announced that he would not pursue further investigations into Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, and disavowed far-right activists.
Trump’s first appointments are depressing, said the Los Angeles Times. His choice as national security adviser, Mike Flynn, has outdone even Trump himself when it comes to insulting Muslims. Flynn has reportedly referred to Islam as “a cancer”, and once tweeted that “fear of Muslims is
RATIONAL”. As for Jeff Sessions, Trump’s choice of attorney general, he was once rejected for a judgeship because of alleged racism. Liberals always try to paint Southern Republicans as racists, said The Wall Street Journal. It’s not true of Sessions: as former US attorney of the Southern District of Alabama, he helped desegregate the state’s public schools, and won a death penalty conviction
for the head of the local Ku Klux Klan. As worrying as Trump’s appointments is his thin-skinned reaction to criticism, said The Washington Post. He complained that his vice-president, Mike Pence, had been “harassed” by the cast of a Broadway show and demanded an apology after one actor implored Pence from the stage to work on behalf of all Americans. He tweeted angrily
about a satirical sketch on NBC’s Saturday Night Live. It’s one thing to fire off cranky messages in the heat of a campaign but Trump will soon be president. “His words matter.”
“Let’s dispense with a couple of red herrings,” said Rupert Cornwell in The Independent. “Contrary to many reports, this hasn’t been an especially chaotic transition.” While some of Trump’s procedures have certainly been unorthodox, he’s well ahead of where Bill Clinton was at this stage: Clinton “didn’t manage to nominate his (third) choice of attorney general until three weeks after his inauguration”. Nor is it especially shocking that Trump’s children and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, might play some role in the White House. They seem more “presidential” than him, and it wouldn’t be the first time a US leader relied on family advice. Trump is grappling with “a task that even he and some of his closest advisers had thought he would never have to face”, said Toby Harnden in The Sunday Times. He appears to be approaching it in a similar way to The Apprentice, the reality TV show he used to host. Potential appointees are referred to as “finalists”. “Names are floated, then withdrawn, as if to build up the drama before the finale.” The three most important members of Trump’s team, said David Smith in The Guardian, look set to be Priebus, Bannon and Kushner. They’re all very different, which is sure to lead to some creative tensions, to say the least. But that won’t bother Trump. In the words of one insider, the president-elect “likes to manage with concentric
circles of chaos… He likes the tension between the different sectors of influence.” One significant decision still being argued over is who should serve as Trump’s secretary of state, said Kathleen Parker in The Washington Post. Some, alarmingly, are pushing for the post to go to Rudy Giuliani, who was good as mayor of New York after 9/11 but who now comes across as a ranting reactionary. Let’s hope Trump instead picks Mitt Romney, with whom he held a meeting this week. The former Republican presidential candidate is calm, articulate and well informed, not to mention fluent in French – all things Trump is not. He also has a sound grasp of international politics. It was Romney, remember, who, during his final debate with President Obama in 2012, presciently pointed to Russia as the US’s greatest geopolitical foe.
Trump and his advisers need to fill some 4,000 posts, more than 1,000 of whose occupants will require confirmation from the Senate. Many of the appointees will be fresh faces who have never
served in an administration and will therefore require full background checks. This will create a major headache for the security vetting system, which is already struggling with a big backlog.
Trump says he would “like to do something” to separate his presidential role from his business empire. Although there is no legal requirement for him to liquidate his assets, past presidents have set aside their business dealings. Critics are calling on him to adopt blind trusts, or take other equivalent measures.
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