Thursday 17th July 2025
Blog Page 955

Can Labour win the Copeland by-election?

Maxim Parr-Reid
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Can Labour win the Copeland by-election?

1982. That was the last time a governing party gained a seat in a by-election. Sitting governments nearly always suffer swings against them in mid-term contests, especially unpopular ones. Be it in Witney, Richmond Park, or Sleaford—the Conservative vote has declined in every one of these seats. Brexit in 2016 will not be to Theresa May what the Falklands War was to Margaret Thatcher in 1982—leaving the EU as we well know will be a much longer process than the recapture of Port Stanley. The Falklands War was manna from heaven for the Conservatives—Brexit may yet turn out to be a poisoned chalice for the party. It may be well over a decade after the initial vote to break with Brussels that the UK actually extricates itself from the EU.

The Conservatives may be happy to rally around that rather hackneyed platitude of “Brexit means Brexit”, but platitudes do not win by-elections. Although a part of the country voted Leave, this fact alone doesn’t necessarily endear it to abandoning the Labour Party. After all, Copeland and the adjoining seat of Workington (both coastal seats in Cumbria) have been won by Labour at every General Election since before World War II. It would be truly momentous if, after six and a half years of being in government, the Conservatives managed to wrestle this West Cumbria seat from the Labour Party, even a Labour Party presided over by a man who has taken the party to its lowest poll rating since 2009. A Conservative victory in Copeland therefore, would be a political earthquake.

Be that as it may, these are not normal times. The old certainties in politics (insofar as they existed) are gone. Copeland’s (soon to be former) MP Jamie Reed resigned after much outspoken criticism of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership (although he maintained that his decision to resign was unrelated to the leader). Another, anonymous, Labour MP has hinted that Reed may be one of “a dozen” to quit the party. Even if the Labour Party can “hang on” (to use Jeremy Corbyn’s own words), Corbyn’s ability to lead it will be impossibly weakened. There is no guarantee at the moment that the party will “hang on” in Copeland.

The very sort of people who voted for Brexit (Copeland had an estimated Leave vote of 62 per cent) seem to be diverging from the North London-based leadership of Labour. For Labour’s bastion of the adjoining boroughs of Camden, Islington and Hackney and the MPs representing the areas (who also happen to dominate the Shadow Cabinet) is worlds away from industrial Cumbria.

Though both areas form a bedrock of Labour support (having been dominated by the party since the 1930s), seats like Copeland are but distant outposts for a party that has appeared to retreat to its urban crucibles in recent years. There’s every chance after the shock result of the EU referendum, that voters in Copeland will turn their back on the Labour Party after 81 years. The very fact that this by-election result is in question is itself remarkable. In years gone by, Labour would be assured of a thumping victory in a mid-term by-election in a hitherto stolidly red seat like this one—no longer.

The party is under threat from all sides. For the Conservatives, Copeland’s voters are the sort of people who have been drifting away from Labour ever since its 1997 landslide—in the intervening 19 years seats like this have become far closer between the two main parties. The old mining vote in seats like Copeland is slowly eroding, while the Conservatives dominate the rural hinterland of this seat where Labour come nowhere near (as is the case in all of rural Cumbria and Northumberland).

The Liberal Democrats too (whose leader Tim Farron has carved out a fortress in another neighbouring seat—Westmorland and Lonsdale) could challenge Labour here. Buoyed by recent post-Brexit bounces in Witney, Richmond Park and even Leave-voting Sleaford (where Labour fell from 2nd to 4th place), the Liberal Democrats will surely look to make a breakthrough among the 38 per cent of voters in the seat who voted Remain. UKIP’s leader Paul Nuttall (a native of Cumbria’s neighbour to the south, Lancashire) may also see this as a unique opportunity to enter Parliament and demonstrate that the party is in rude health despite its main objective of securing a vote to leave the EU being achieved. Labour must contemplate, with some equanimity, the serious danger of haemorrhaging votes to not one but three parties in this once rock-solid seat.

Review: D@tes

James Lamming
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Review: D@tes

Every successful sketch show needs comedy glue. In many cases, this glue is provided by a fantastically talented cast of professional actors, or a particularly dynamic duo. Just think of The Armstrong and Miller Show or A Little Bit of Fry and Laurie, where the principal pair’s wit and confidence creates a sense of unity across a range of seemingly unconnected sketches. On the other hand, Rebecca Heitlinger’s new sketch show D@tes, written for an inexperienced student cast, uses a different kind of comic glue–a single theme. There is little interest in character development or overarching plot, instead, each sketch satirises modern dating in a hilarious, irony-laden way. Last night’s charmingly witty performance paid testament to how successful this novel approach can be.

Staged in the cosy Burton Taylor studio, the show’s first night had sold out impressively early, despite boasting the late start time of 9:30pm. The performance began well, if a little nervously, with a sketch about an amusingly mismatched 21st century couple. Rebecca Heitlinger, both actress and writer, was confident from the off, parodying the hipster craze for “quasi-vegetarianism”, although the sketch took a turn for the bizarre with some jokes about Jews and ethnic minorities, somewhat confusing the audience. However, this did prove that the show would not shy from at times controversial material, with later jokes involving Nazism, Nuremberg and Donald Trump, although I would not be surprised to see jokes about the Paris and Nice tragedies excised from future performances after drawing audience gasps. As with any show, a few of the later sketches did not quite catch on with the audience; some seemed rather laboured, while others could have done with being a little more laugh-out-loud funny, rather than merely ironic. One potentially brilliant sketch, focusing on a man who goes on a date after waking up from a year long coma, was somewhat ruined by a few niche jokes about Taylor Swift’s cultural image. Although I may just be desperately behind on celebrity gossip, I was left racking my brains in search of any Swift related news I might have stored up, but to no avail. It was a shame that such a brilliant idea went to comparative waste.

Despite these hiccups, the show had two veritable masterpieces. The first was the well-publicised ‘Tudor Tinder’, a polished sketch in which a noblewoman browses Tinder portraits (literally) for Earls and Dukes in search of a potential suitor. The piece was full of wit and satire, such as when Lady Anne (Sophie Stiewe) exclaimed, “Finally I can stop being the property of my father—now I can be the property of another man!” In a similar vein, the sketch is at times socially incisive, drawing out shocking similarities between the 21st century and the Tudor era in terms of sexism, and mocking the shallow nature of Tinder itself. Alex Matraxia excels as the suave and sophisticated matchmaker Count Tinder, and the scriptwriting is Heitlinger at her best: concise, witty, and meaningful.

The sketch which unexpectedly drew the most laughs from the audience featured a translingual date performed entirely in German. Thankfully, hilarious English subtitles were projected onto the wall behind the actors. The subtle miscommunications and Heitlinger’s character’s tendency to slip into a clichéd essay style had the audience howling with laughter to such an extent that the German conversation was soon drowned out. Instead, the audience stared at the wall in anticipation of the next mistranslation, and the entire sketch was perfectly acted by the enthusiastic Heitlinger and the bemused Stiewe. Overall, the first night of Dates was a great success. As with any piece of student comedy, a few sketches missed their mark and on occasion the acting was a little rough around the edges, but both the cast and the script produced moments of laugh-out-loud comedy gold while maintaining a meaningful commentary on the perils and pitfalls of 21st century dating.

Oxford food scientist creates ‘perfect’ cheese and crackers recipe

Felix Pope
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Oxford food scientist creates ‘perfect’ cheese and crackers recipe

Oxford food scientist Charles Michel, who previously has worked in Michelin starred restaurants, claims to have devised a formula for the perfect cheese and crackers.

The formula utilises a five layer process to create an ideal taste, sight, and sound profile.

Michel, currently chef-in-residence at the Department of Experimental Psychology’s Crossmodal Research Laboratory, used cheeses created by Blur bassist Alex Jones on his West Oxfordshire farm and Jacob’s cream crackers for his ultimate cracker.

The recipe employs unusual ingredients such as honey, prosciutto and Marmite to include all five tastes: salt, sweet, sour, bitter and umami.

Apparently the layering and exact measurement of each ingredient is key to achieving a perfect balance of tastes.

The cheese ought to cover 72 per cent of the cracker’s surface and be served at no less than room temperature, however no mention of the ideal type of cheese is made.

Commenting on his research, Michel said: “Cheese and crackers are such a timeless combination, I jumped at the chance to work on coming up with a science-based formula for it.”

Michel’s exact formula begins with the ‘sonic layer’.

He commented, “Sound is the forgotten flavour sense; the sound made by a food really can make it taste better, so a cheese and cracker pairing must have both soft and crunchy components. Therefore, an additional layer of a contrasting texture on top of the cracker enhances our pleasure.”

“Adding Umami-rich elements to cheese will increase the deliciousness and mouthfulness. In small quantities, strong-flavoured, Umami packed foods like anchovies, prosciutto, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, and Marmite, will perfectly complement your cheese and cracker pairing.”

After the Umami stage comes the ‘sweet layer’, which involves adding sweet elements like honey or dried fruit in order to “balance the taste equation to maximise flavour enjoyment”.

Next follows the ‘cheese layer’ which must “perfectly cover the cracker’s surface by 72%”.

Michel said, “When served on a Jacob’s Cream Cracker, the slice should measure 5.5cm, by 1cm thickness. Cheese should be served at no less than room temperature (16-20 degrees) so that the texture and flavour intensity is at its best.”

“Smell is probably the dominant component of flavour, and depends mostly on the quality and freshness of the ingredients. It is commonly known that “we eat with our eyes first”, so food must look good to be enticing, and is a determining aspect of the enjoyment of the overall experience—so make it colourful and artistic.”

Recipe: Chanukah doughnuts, a user’s guide

Rachel Korn
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Recipe: Chanukah doughnuts, a user’s guide

As most people will tell you, it’s a tradition to eat foods involving oil around Chanukah. The festival is based around the fact that after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem by the Greeks in the Hellenistic period, there was a miracle where the oil to light the menorah (big spiritual candelabra) lasted eight days from one small jar. Everyone tends to go for doughnuts and latkes because they taste by far the best, so those two foods have become a well-established part of the tradition.

Ingredients:

  1. 6oz flour
  2. ½ tsp salt
  3. 1 tsp baking powder
  4. 2oz margarine
  5. 1oz sugar
  6. 1 egg
  7. 2 tbsp milk
  8. Red jam
  9. Oil

Method:

1 – Sieve the flour, salt and baking powder together.

2 – Rub in the margarine then add the sugar. Mix in the beaten egg and milk to make a light dough.

3 – Roll out the mixture and cut out little circles.

4 – Dollop jam on half, then put the other half on top to make spheres.

5 – Fry in really hot oil in a pan or a deep-fryer for about 7 minutes, then dip in caster sugar.

And don’t worry if your cooking skills aren’t quite up to scratch—there are always shop-bought alternatives! The bakeries in Hendon and Golders Green almost entirely turn over to doughnut production in December—you can’t move for places selling doughnuts at this time of year. Jam, chocolate, custard, fresh cream, and even weird fillings like apple or marshmallows in some bakeries. And, crucially, all deep fried (none of that Krispy Kreme nonsense). Main Chanukah recommendation to anyone new to this: classic jam doughnut covered in sugar from Grodzinski’s. Can’t be matched.

The return of the epic

Emily Beswick
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The return of the epic

“It is a curse having the epic temperament in an overcrowded age devoted to snappy bits,” wrote J.R.R Tolkien prophetically in 1944. The author of The Lord of the Rings never experienced the world of the five-second snapchat or 140-character tweet, but his words seem to resonate on an extraordinary level today.

One of the chief reasons why The Lord of the Rings is so loved—and cursed by some—is the sheer length of the text. Tolkien’s blend of breath-taking fantastical scope with a reverent attention to detail is something that J. K. Rowling has recaptured in more recent times. The irresistibility of the Harry Potter and Middle Earth universes lies in the minutiae of invented languages, species and landscapes which form an epic, self-contained realm of imagination. Paradoxically, the richer the fantasy world, the greater opportunity there is for sequels: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story this year have both grown out of storylines unexplored in the ‘original’ stories.

As the big screen leads, so the small screen follows. Game of Thrones undoubtedly echoes the epic visual fantasy of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films, but the television format also lends itself to even greater possibilities. The TV box set is the ultimate visual epic, as a potentially limited three-hour film can be spun out into a twenty episode series—or longer. There are even fewer constraints on the number of plot digressions and red herrings, allowing the audience to immerse themselves in a slow-burning narrative.

And so to music. Much is often made in music journalism columns of the imminent “return of the album”, after the dark years of 89p iTunes downloads. Yet I think there is a case for designating 2016 a vintage year for albums, and especially for long, epic quests of albums that require at least an hour of listening. The name of the 1975’s I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it is a portend of the album epic to follow: frontman Matt Healy challenged listeners to “sit through an hour and fifteen minutes and seventeen songs… it’s quite an emotional investment.” A diverse range of genres is traversed, but at a remarkably languid pace only possible in an album with so much sonic space. Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo is a similarly sprawling affair, while Beyoncé’s Lemonade weaves together both visual and musical strands into a cultural event of unparalleled scale.

Meanwhile, my favourite album this year, Miranda Lambert’s The Weight of These Wings, is an unexpected double album that recounts Lambert’s emotional response to her recent divorce from fellow country music star Blake Shelton. Instead of a vengeful tirade against her ex, Lambert produces a poignant self-examination, dividing the twenty-four songs into the exterior and interior of her personality: “the nerve” and “the heart”. The stages of pain, acceptance and finally release are documented not as an assured process, but as a slow, uncertain journey of false starts and dead ends. Time is used on these lengthy albums as a tool for self-reflection and growth.

To return to Tolkien, the “snappy bits” he criticised back in the 1940s were part of the growing influence of American popular culture in Britain, which many believed was threatening our national identity. Indeed, the epic has always had a sense of nostalgia about it, hearkening back to an era where we had time to absorb culture at a slower pace. Lord of the Rings always seems to come back into fashion when this feeling is felt most acutely: the novel was reprinted and rehabilitated in the 1970s, as a reaction against technological revolution took hold.

In 2016 there is a lot to be said for escaping the instantaneous gratification of clickbait and Facebook with stories which require time and commitment. Perhaps one of the most radical cultural acts you can do nowadays is shut yourself away from the rest of the world and read Lord of the Rings.

Review: Dreamgirls

Sam Purnell
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Review: Dreamgirls

When I first got the tickets to the West End revival of Dreamgirls, I was unsure whether it would live up to the masterful performances of Jennifer Holliday in the 1981 Broadway Premiere and Jennifer Hudson in the 2006 film. However, after the first five minutes of the show, I knew I would be in for an amazing night.

My main reason for wanting to see the show was Amber Riley, and I believe many in the audience shared this desire, since they erupted into applause every time she came on stage. Despite being too ill to perform on the two previous nights, Riley’s vocals were breathtaking. She effortlessly belted out some unbelievable notes and accented her character with a poignant depth. Her version of the show’s most famous number, ‘And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going’, was the clear highlight of the show. Coming just before the intermission, she poured so much raw emotion into the song that the audience was caught between tearing up and jumping to their feet to applaud this sublime performer.

Although Riley’s Effie White was clearly the star of the show, the rest of the cast held their own, particularly Liisi LaFontaine. LaFontaine displayed her vocal mastery in both the powerful songs and the more intimate, raw ones. Her duet with Riley, ‘Listen’, was unforgettable; the two vocal powerhouses complimented each other faultlessly. Other notable talents in the cast were Ibinabo Jack’s Lorrell, whose bubbly personality brought a grounding element to the trio, and Joe Aaron Reid’s Curtis, the perfect villain in the story with an effortlessly smooth range.

Some technical faults, such as lighting errors and awkward song transitions, did unfortunately weigh the production down at times. However, the audience’s attention was quickly diverted by the spectacle produced by the staging. The costumes were another highlight of the production, particularly the array of sparkling and elegant gowns.

There was a truly touching moment in the curtain call, as all three Dreams took their final bows together. This nicely tied up the main theme of the show—the women’s relationships with each other—and brought an empowering closure to the performance. During the curtain call, it was easy to see that the entire cast was in love with the show. Their joy was infectious as they danced together when the curtain fell one last time. The audience couldn’t help but be swept along in this elation, the entire theatre giving a very deserved standing ovation to the cast.

The production was still in its previews, officially opening on 14 December, yet it was almost flawless at this early stage. It certainly surpassed my expectations; Riley’s vocals will stay with me for a long time to come. If the show can fix its few remaining technical issues, I have no doubt that it will quickly become a runaway hit.

The death of irony: in defence of Giles Coren

Susannah Goldsbrough
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The death of irony: in defence of Giles Coren

This December has seen a small-scale media battle played out across The Times, Cherwell and The Telegraph. One very flippant journalist has been roundly admonished in both the university and national press by a few students whose end of term exhaustion took the form of a serious sense of humour failure. It is now about time to set the record straight. Giles Coren does not believe that terrible teaching is what makes Oxford special, nor is he a racist. He is simply a master of the apparently rapidly disappearing art of irony.

It all started when Faiz Siddiqui, an alumnus of Brasenose College, announced his intention of suing his alma mater for £1 million on the grounds that the “negligent” teaching he received reventing him from obtaining a first-class degree, and seriously impaired his career prospects.

In response, Giles Coren, a columnist and restaurant critic for The Times, penned a dismissal of Siddiqui’s suit entitled ‘Terrible Teaching is what makes Oxford Special’. He explained that “one goes to Oxford precisely because the teaching is rubbish” and mused that perhaps “the problem stems from Mr Siddiqui being of foreign origin and somehow mistakenly equating Oxford University with ‘learning’ and ‘teaching’ and getting value for money.” The article provoked outrage among students.

Speaking to Cherwell, Magdalen College JCR Vice President Amanda Turner commented, “The tutorial system in Oxford means students receive some of the best standards of teaching in the world, and there is a good feedback system for students to use if they aren’t happy with teaching standards.

However, remarks like Giles Coren’s prevent students from speaking up if they aren’t satisfied with how they are being taught.”

Tony Diver, writing in The Telegraph, argued that comments like Coren’s are “exactly what puts off state school applicants to Oxbridge” and that Coren should “stop spreading lies that could do some real damage.”

Reasonable responses, you might suppose. Certainly, if taken seriously, Coren’s airy dismissal of an Oxford education—which thousands of teenagers sweat and struggle to earn the right to every year—as rubbish is in very poor taste, particularly considering anyone who does manage to get there also pays £9000 a year for the privilege. And undoubtedly, his characterisation of student life as “drinking and playing tennis and nicking books out of the Bod under your cricket jumper” could have been lifted straight from the pages of Brideshead Revisited. It does not exactly scream accessibility to an applicant intimidated by Oxford’s reputation as an elite, upper-class playground. But the crucial point here is whether we take him seriously.

In the same article, Coren tells us that he has “never fully recovered” from missing a 13th birthday party which would have enabled him to begin his sex life early. In the last two months he has described ordering food in a restaurant in the terms, “We just shout, ‘PRAWNS CHICKEN CHOCOLATE CAKE’ at some guy” and his own laughter as “so hard that it hurt my face, rattled the chandeliers and caused the mounted stag heads on the wall (if there were any, which I cannot be certain of) to turn and stare and tut.” My point being, we are not expected to take everything he says at face value.

Coren is a good writer. He understands that humour and mockery are a better way to criticise something than simply stating that it’s wrong. Which is why he wrote an article in nostalgic praise of terrible teaching and smug behaviour at Oxford. Because what he was actually doing was tearing the place to pieces. The line, “Maybe the problem stems from Mr Siddiqui being of foreign origin and somehow mistakenly equating Oxford University with ‘learning’ and ‘teaching’ and getting value for money” is not a xenophobic expression of an antiquated viewpoint but a sarcastic condemnation of an institution that defied its international reputation for excellence to provide awful teaching for himself and Siddiqui.

His image of Oxford as a place for drunken undergraduates to lob books at tourists is fully intended to sound equal parts repulsive and fictional because his point is that is precisely not what Oxford is for. In the sharpest and funniest way Coren is making some serious criticisms—the standard of teaching as he experienced it was unacceptable and education should be about more than posh boys behaving badly.

If you don’t believe me, you need only read some of Coren’s other writings on his time at Oxford. He is admirably honest about how miserable he was. Perhaps Diver should have done so before describing his work as “pompous […] Oxford nostalgia”. As Oxford students, I’m pretty sure we’re smart enough to know when someone means the opposite of what they’re saying. Coren may not like the place much but, if he is ever tempted to come back, I think we could all do with some lessons in irony.

‘Last Christmas’: a lingering recollection

Emma Leech
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‘Last Christmas’: a lingering recollection

A jingling synthetic beat begins and a voice croons a wordless melody. It ignites an image in my mind.

It’s the smell that comes back to me first. Warm cigarette smoke surrounds me, enveloping not suffocating, and fills my lungs with its stinging nostalgia. It is intermingled with the scent of a newly opened box of wrapped sweets, a strangely comforting blend of chocolate and manufactured plastic. Elsewhere in the house, potatoes are being roasted, inevitably just past the point of burning which will cause the first point of contention at the Christmas dinner table.

The music continues, bringing back with it more memories as the voice begins, “Last Christmas, I gave you my heart.”

The room, as I remember it, is warm, heated by an overcrowding of cousins and candles. Outside, there is no picturesque field with newly fallen snow, but rather the slushy street of an industrial town with cold pavements and flickering street lights. Some venture out, dragging on their cigarettes to warm their insides as they stand in the icy air. At that young age, I do not realise the irony of their actions.

“Once bitten and twice shy, I keep my distance but you still catch my eye.” The layering of synths resonates, and the landscape of my memory deepens.

My grandmother is there. She towers over me, imposing, intimidating, yet warm. It is strange which parts of a person stick in your memory, strange that I cannot for the life of me remember what she said to me but I remember her soft dressing gown and the way that she slept with her mouth wide open, snoring noisily. Her home was the epicentre at Christmas time and the festivities ripple out from her. She sits in the middle, the root of this family tree whose branches stretch out in front of her as her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren gather in her tiny living room.

As the notes build to a climax, I am fully immersed, I am a child again. “Last Christmas I gave you my heart, but the very next day you gave it away“.

Standing a few feet lower than most others in the room, conversation swirls above my head and out of reach of my understanding as Christmas songs play on a loop quietly in the background. I like it that way. I play with newly opened toys as those dearest to me mill around, sharing, for the briefest of times, the same room, the same air, the same memories, before we all return to our own lives. This collective feels stoic, unchangeable, and makes me feel untouchable. The ever opening and closing door never brings a dark stranger but rather a familiar face and the steamed-up single-paned windows are the sturdy walls to this familial fortress.

The song descends into a fade and, with it, my memory fades too. I am left with reality, cold and harsh as it is. And yet, the warmth lingers for just a moment more.

That house seemed concrete and its inhabitants and visitors seemed like characters in a play, frozen in the timelessness of my childhood. I know now, however, that I was wrong. I drive past that house sometimes and try to picture my family members in the window but it is impossible. All are changed by time and some are no longer with us. It is only through the channels of music, of certain songs, that I can return there, return to my childhood, and recapture that ‘Last Christmas’.

Merkel’s ‘burqa ban’ shows she’s in trouble

Myfanwy Craigie
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Merkel’s ‘burqa ban’ shows she’s in trouble

Angela Merkel—long seen as the bastion of liberal values in Europe due to her open-door policy during the refugee crisis—has endorsed her party’s proposed burqa ban “wherever legally possible”, saying that they are “not appropriate”. Speaking at the CDU conference in Essen to launch her re-election campaign, the German Chancellor highlighted the precedence of German law above “honour codes, tribal customs, and sharia” and suggested that full-face veils were a barrier to integration. Her appeal to the right wing of her party was received with the greatest applause of her 80-minute speech.

The reality is that the burqa barely exists in Germany. The Interior Ministry, upon request, has been unable to publish statistics on how many people in Germany wear the burqa, so it seems the German government itself may not even know.

However, it is estimated that the figure lies somewhere between two and three hundred; an almost negligible amount. Merkel’s new position is manifestly a political, not a practical one.

Her stance bears similarity to France’s 2011 ban of the full-face Islamic veil, in all public places. It seems nothing has been learnt from the effects of such prescriptive legislation. When Muslim women are not allowed to wear the veil in public, many will simply stay home. If the burqa is a symbol of the oppression of women, then a burqa ban is equally so. More pressingly, when the government appears to harbour anti-Islamic feeling it leads to a fractured society and radicalisation with a potential terrorist threat.

Merkel’s acceptance of an estimated 890,000 refugees into Germany last year was a remarkable humanitarian effort. However, since she acted alone without the support of her party, if she is to win the next election, she must now introduce legislation to placate those to her right and win back their trust and support.

In Britain, Ed Balls, speaking in January 2010, said it was “not British” to tell people what to wear in the street, in response to UKIP’s call for a burqa ban. Merkel, on the other hand, said of the veil that it “doesn’t belong to us” (i.e. the German people), which implies a narrow view of what it is to be German, despite the apparent generosity of her immigration policy. This is a disappointment for those who saw British and German principles as aligned. It is also a great disappointment for those who saw Merkel as the new leader of the free world, since the recent US election left an opening for this post.

Britain has not been so welcoming to refugees (supposedly there are only around 4,000 refugees in the UK at this time). Yet the refugees who are here are able to choose what they wear and how they practice their religion.

Merkel has been in power since 2005 and, throughout this time, has been a symbol of stability, especially during a decidedly unsteady 2016. Are these the lengths she must go to in order to ensure her longevity? Or is she no longer the face of liberal Western democracy to which we can turn?

It’s hard not to become disillusioned with politics when, as with Trump, our best hope is that Merkel’s statements, during her leadership campaign, do not translate into policy if she wins.

Christmas around the world: Hungary

Rosie Gyorfi
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Christmas around the world: Hungary

When it comes to celebrating Christmas, most people have some kind of ritual in mind. In the UK, this usually features the opening of presents on Christmas Day morning, sending and receiving glossy cards, singing and listening to festive carols. Some listen to the Queen’s Speech, or so I’ve heard. And, of course, there is the compulsory mammoth meal of turkey, stuffing, the odd boiled vegetables few seem to like, and a surfeit of dried fruity goodness (read: calories) under the names of Christmas pudding and mince pies. For my family, however, we have another tradition to accommodate into our celebrations – the Hungarian Christmas ritual.

Christmas in Hungary kicks off on the 6th December. Children place their shoes out on the windowsill for Mikulás (Father Christmas) to leave packages of chocolate and peanuts for the well-behaved. Schools and work-places also put on Mikulâs-courts, often as part of their annual Christmas parties. These events can be anything between fantastic (if you’re under six years old), to awkward and risible (for everyone else).

There is also always the small chance that Mikulás decides that you have been naughty. The impending judgment is all the more threatening when you fail to note the similarities in appearance between Mikulás and your mum’s weird old colleague, who has been unknowingly absent from the room since Mikulás’ entrance. However, the fear of being beaten and taken away by Krampusz, Mikulas’ devil-like companion, is, of course, never realised. No child is ever found to be naughty. Nor should any child ever try, as I did, to later make sense of Krampusz’s symbolism; terrifying Google image searches ruin over-sentimentalised memories, period.

‘Holy Eve’ on the 24th December is the main event. Gifts are exchanged before dinner, a tradition that my family has maintained since moving to England. After all, who wants to wait when you can justify opening presents a day earlier? Present opening occurs alongside copious sugar consumption, as ‘little Jesus’, who we believe delivers the presents (not Santa Claus), is also credited with decorating the Christmas tree with szaloncukor (a fondant and chocolate-based nibble) and other sweet treats.

Christmas dinner contains notably less meat, due to the influence of the Catholic fast. And, about ninety-eight per cent of food contains compulsory red paprika. Even more importantly, what is dried fruit or minced meat in the UK is replaced with sweetened poppy seed. Flavoured with honey, sugar, rum or cognac (because everything tastes better with sugar and alcohol), it is used to fill everything from strudels, known as mákos beigli, to shortbread croissants, called pozsonyi kifli. Christmas is a sorry time for those who dislike poppy seed.

Whilst some parents nowadays insist on spending Holy Eve alone with their children, mass family gatherings are unavoidable. No excuses are accepted, especially not by love-hungry grandparents who demand a full three to four day access pass to their descendants. For my family, this results in a rapid succession of meals after which one’s sole desire is to crawl up on a sofa, hoping not to burst after the consumption of unquantifiable amounts of ‘lovingly prepared Christmas goodness’. Food, of course, cannot be refused without mortally offending our hostesses.

To keep ourselves entertained throughout dinner, quite a few families, including mine, find time to get into colossal arguments. “You do realise that you are a Nazi?” has previously featured, and no, I don’t think alcohol was involved. In fact, at least in my family, drinking does not usually extend beyond the odd glass of mulled wine or some sickeningly sweet cream liqueur. Serious inebriation is reserved for New Year’s Eve, or ‘Szilveszter’ as it is known in the region.

And, if you were wondering how the above incident ended. Well, my grandmother, well-accustomed to such theatrics, responded by offering said relative another piece of poppy seed strudel, and then ushered him into the living room where he could peacefully drift into a nap whilst watching either Home Alone or one of the Sissi films on the TV.

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