The Archbishop of Canterbury is facing mounting pressure to resign over his failure to report a prolific child abuser associated with the Church of England. Justin Welby was made aware in 2013 of allegations against John Smyth, a barrister who sexually abused as many as 130 boys and young men in the UK and Africa over almost five decades, but did not alert police. Gary Lineker will leave Match of the Day next summer after 25 years of hosting the show. The presenter is expected to depart the BBC entirely after the 2026 World Cup. A new anti-smoking pill will be given to tens of thousands of adults in England on the NHS as part of a major government crackdown on the habit. The cheap daily tablet, varenicline, works by binding to receptors in the brain to stop people craving or enjoying nicotine.

Voters everywhere just want to “throw the buggers out”

The biggest factor behind the Democrats’ defeat may have been something they had no control over, says Matthew Parris in The Times: “the curse of incumbency”. Emmanuel Macron in France, Pedro Sánchez in Spain, Donald Tusk in Poland – all are reviled by voters despite overseeing respectable economic growth. Olaf Scholz’s approval ratings are the lowest ever recorded for a German chancellor (see Comment below); Anthony Albanese is hitting similar lows in Australia. Keir Starmer’s popularity has plummeted now he is in power, just as Rishi Sunak’s did “almost from the moment he entered Downing Street”. The message from voters is clear: “Throw the buggers out!”

All these politicians have annoyed voters for different and country-specific reasons: personality defects, scandals, economic woes. But there’s something bigger going on, which is the widening gap between what Western politicians must promise to get elected and what they can actually deliver. The simple truth is that the economic growth spurts that made developed nations so rich are now over. So whereas it used to be possible for our leaders to follow through on their promises of better times, now they are destined to renege and get ejected. Just look at Argentina, which has gone from being the world’s seventh-richest nation in 1908 to the 57th-richest today. The Argentines have gone through around twice the number of governments as the US and the UK over that period, as successive politicians have failed to satisfy the electorate’s sense of “disappointed entitlement”. I’ll never forget watching footage of middle-class protesters in Buenos Aires banging saucepans under the windows of politicians’ houses. Where Argentina leads, the rest of us, I fear, will follow.

😡📈 This year in particular has been terrible for incumbents, says John Burn-Murdoch in the FT. The governing parties in every single one of the 10 major countries to hold national elections in 2024 have been “given a kicking by voters” – the first time this has happened since records began almost 120 years ago.

Liz Truss spent her final days in No 10 preparing for radioactive fall-out to hit the UK, says The Sun. American officials reportedly concluded in autumn 2022 that there was a 50% chance Vladimir Putin would deploy a small “tactical” nuke in Ukraine or test a larger bomb over the Black Sea. According to Truss’s updated biography, Out of the Blue, she spent hours “studying satellite weather data and wind directions” over fears that radioactive material could drift the 1,700 miles across Europe to Britain.

Squeamish diners no longer have an excuse to dodge oysters, says Tessa Allingham in The Daily Telegraph. High pressure processing – a bacteria-killing technique common in making juices, dips and cold meats safe for human consumption – has been successfully used on oysters in the UK for the first time. Though the high pressure does also kill the oyster, it’s done at low temperatures so that the meaty mollusc remains raw. The new “worry-free oyster”, produced by the Colchester Oyster Fishery in Essex, went on sale last week at £12 for half a dozen. Order yours here.

Germany’s government is imploding

The collapse of the German government may seem “insultingly banal” compared to what’s currently happening in America, says Nikolaus Blome in Der Spiegel, but it’s a very big deal. This barely ever happens here: the last time a coalition broke down was 42 years ago, while the last legislative term that ended early was 20 years ago. Olaf Scholz didn’t just send his finance minister Christian Lindner packing last Wednesday, “but himself as well”. He has no majority, and it would be impossible for him to finish the legislative period “in office and with dignity”. He seems to be struggling to accept that his term must end, insisting that there won’t be elections until next year – a ridiculous suggestion. But soon reality will dawn. “That’s it, Chancellor, let it go.”

It’s easy to assume all this chaos will present an opportunity for the populist parties that have made such big gains in Germany recently: the hard-right AfD and the far-left BSW, both of which have capitalised on a growing hostility to migration and green policies. But if the number of new asylum seekers continues to fall at its current rate, both these upstart parties may well struggle to make significant gains. Instead, the election campaign will likely be dominated by a duel between Scholz and opposition leader Friedrich Merz: two “steam-powered politicians from earlier times”, who will ignore the culture wars and argue about boring-but-important issues like growth, jobs and finances. Dull? Certainly. But given everything else that’s going on, “a little predictability and boredom would do us all good”.

To The Economist:

The September 28th issue explained that Volodymyr Zelensky is “the president of Ukraine” and that Sir Keir Starmer is Britain’s prime minister. But curiously there was no need for any explanation of a “lashing of S&M” in Sally Rooney’s writing. Clearly the editors know the minds of their readers intimately.

Brian O’Brien
Kinsale, Ireland

It’s a bust of Winston Churchill, which Donald Trump has vowed to return to the White House, says the Daily Mail. A gift to President Lyndon Johnson in 1965, the bronze has caused a certain amount of fuss in recent years. It took pride of place in the Oval Office until 2009, when President Obama replaced it with one of Martin Luther King Jr. Trump, an avid Churchill fan, immediately brought it back when he was elected in 2016 – only for it to be removed again four years later by Joe Biden. Sources close to the president-elect say bringing the bust back is “one of the first things he will do” on taking office, “as a mark of respect”.