The Queen’s favourite presidents

Germany’s missile dilemma

German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s popularity is “at a record low”, says Paul Taylor in The Guardian, and his Social Democratic Party (SPD) is languishing at around 15% in the polls. It’s no surprise, then, that he’s “tempted to play the peace card”: Scholz has repeatedly refused to supply long-range Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine, despite “outcry among Western allies”. His public justification is that it would require German soldiers in Ukraine to help operate and target the missiles, “bringing Berlin closer to war with Moscow”. But when David Cameron proposed a workaround – Germany giving the Taurus to Britain, which in turn would send more of its own missiles to Kyiv – Scholz rebuffed it, declaring: “I am the chancellor, so that’s it.”

Germany’s “dour” leader may have 2002 in mind, when the then Social Democrat chancellor Gerhard Schröder refused to bring the country into the Iraq war, boosting his popularity and helping him cling to power. Scholz’s SPD is haemorrhaging voters to anti-war parties on the far right and populist left, so perhaps his move makes “tactical sense”. But there’s another historical precedent: 1982, when an SPD-led coalition collapsed after party members opposed the deployment of US nuclear missiles in West Germany. The party’s subsequent embrace of the anti-nuclear movement “consigned it to opposition for the next 16 years”. If Scholz’s cynical gambit fails, this time “there may be no comeback for the SPD”.

The $11,000 bag that takes 40 hours to make

There are two main obstacles to buying a Hermès Birkin bag, says Amanda Mull in The Atlantic. One is the whopping cost – prices start at more than $11,000, “roughly what you’d currently pay for a gently used 2013 Honda Accord”. The other is that you cannot simply “waltz” into a Hermès boutique and walk out with a Birkin, even if you could afford to. You have to play what’s known as the “Hermès Game”: spending thousands on the luxury brand’s accessories, like shoes and silk scarves, so that you’re given access to the most in-demand products. Of course, “people with enough money for a frisky little Birkin purchase are generally not used to hearing the word no” – two disgruntled shoppers are currently suing the firm in California.

This lawsuit illustrates the luxury industry’s “most precarious balancing act”: how do you sell ostensibly rare things at scale? Most luxury brands, such as Louis Vuitton and Dior, now churn out products in vast quantities, much like cheaper consumer goods. These are still very expensive, but they’re no longer rare – brands have to “manufacture the illusion of scarcity”, often via limited-edition twists on popular items. Hermès, however, has mostly resisted “high-capacity manufacturing methods”: making a Birkin bag takes up to 40 hours of labour from a single craftsman, which is why they’re in perennially short supply, and why Hermès makes so many wealthy customers mad. “Its velvet rope is one of the last that a single credit-card swipe isn’t guaranteed to lift.”

The UK’s response to Israel killing three British citizens in a strike on a Gaza aid convoy has been rather mealy-mouthed, says Aaron Bastani in UnHerd. How times have changed. In 1847, a Jewish Briton living in Athens, David Pacifico, had his home vandalised and robbed by an anti-Semitic mob. After the Greek government refused to do anything about it, the British foreign secretary, Lord Palmerston, instructed the Mediterranean Fleet to blockade Athens and seize the ships of the Greek navy. Two months into the blockade, the Greek king “agreed to settle”. When Palmerston defended his actions in Parliament, he made “the speech of his life”, explaining that a British subject should always “feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England will protect him from injustice and wrong”.