Politics is an unforgiving profession, especially in Britain. American presidents who lose an election in November have until the following January to find a new home, a new job and new life away from the White House. British prime ministers who lose must move to a new home immediately. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was at the apex of political power in July and then, just a few hours after losing the general election, forced out of Downing Street. Yet Mr Sunak’s Conservative party is sometimes called “the world’s most successful political party”.
The Economist newspaper says the Tories have been “in the business of winning elections since the 1830s”. That’s true. In the 20th century the Tories held power for longer than any other party. In the 21st century they have been in power for 14 of the 24 years, although the great British philosopher John Stuart Mill also described the Conservatives as “the stupid party”.
As they choose a new leader now, the question is whether their history of pragmatism and ruthlessness will result in a new Conservative leader who is a vote winner, or whether “the stupid party” will yet again find another dud like Liz Truss and the unfortunate Mr Sunak.
The Tories are seeking to recover from one of the worst defeats in British political history. But the contest to choose a new leader, who will be named on November 2, appears to fire the imaginations of very few British people except the party faithful and a few political journalists. That’s because the new leader – whoever it may be – inherits a disconsolate, divided and defeated party.
It may take a decade before the Conservatives are regarded by voters as again fit for government.
The system for electing a new party leader is unpredictable and is part of the kind of systemic failure at the heart of British democracy that led to six rotating prime ministers since 2010 – Conservatives David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak and now Labour’s Keir Starmer.
There are now just 121 Conservative MPs in the House of Commons. Their loyalties to individual candidates are unclear. They have been described by the Conservative party historian Lord Lexden as “the world's most duplicitous electorate” for their supposedly untrustworthy ways of promising a vote to one leadership candidate then voting for another.
The MPs will eliminate some candidates and leave the final choice for leader to 170,000 Conservative party members. But Conservative party members are simply anyone who wants to pay just over £2 a month to join the party. In modern Britain being a political party member is very much a minority sport. In the 1950s the Conservatives had 2.8 million members.
Labour won a parliamentary landslide with just 34 per cent of the vote. That is an alarm bell for the entire British system
Labour had a million members and millions more were affiliated to the party through trades union membership. Nowadays, those 170,000 Conservative members are less than half of one per cent of the British population. Put in perspective, the National Trust, a conservation charity, has more than five million members. And yet those 170,000 Conservatives – 70 per cent male, generally older, wealthier and skewed towards the south of England – get to decide on the identity of (potentially) our next prime minister.
Ms Truss, the prime minister who temporarily sank the British economy in her seven short weeks in office, was elected in this way with just 81,000 votes from party members. That’s fewer than the number of people who attended one night of Bruce Springsteen’s recent London Wembley show. But it’s just the way the British system “works”, although recently it’s been shown not to work very well at all.
One further problem is that the Conservative party is split between centre-right and much further right-wing elements. The leadership candidates include former ministers Robert Jenrick, Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly and others, who all seek to minimise their role in the past few disastrous years of a government in which they themselves were ministers.
No one knows who will win, but the British public does not seem to care. To say that the contest does not set the pulse racing would be an understatement. A leader will emerge in the next few weeks, but we should remember that an astonishing 40 per cent of British voters who could have voted in this year's UK general election chose not to do so.
Labour won a parliamentary landslide with just 34 per cent of the vote. That is an alarm bell for the entire British system. If apathy were a political party, apathy would have formed the British government. Yes, it is significant if Ms Badenoch or Mr Jenrick win, especially if they choose to pull the Conservative party further to the political right, or if the affable James Cleverly steers a more centrist course.
But the truth is, if 40 per cent of British people did not care enough to vote to choose our government, you can be sure that beyond Westminster insiders, the identity of the next Conservative party leader is undeniably important and yet it is equally clearly not a matter of great interest for most British people right now.
WOMAN AND CHILD
Director: Saeed Roustaee
Starring: Parinaz Izadyar, Payman Maadi
Rating: 4/5
The biog
Family: Parents and four sisters
Education: Bachelor’s degree in business management and marketing at American University of Sharjah
A self-confessed foodie, she enjoys trying out new cuisines, her current favourite is the poke superfood bowls
Likes reading: autobiographies and fiction
Favourite holiday destination: Italy
Posts information about challenges, events, runs in other emirates on the group's Instagram account @Anagowrunning
Has created a database of Emirati and GCC sportspeople on Instagram @abeermk, highlight: Athletes
Apart from training, also talks to women about nutrition, healthy lifestyle, diabetes, cholesterol, blood pressure
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
The specs
Engine: Long-range single or dual motor with 200kW or 400kW battery
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Max touring range: 620km / 590km
Price: From Dh250,000 (estimated)
THE SPECS
Engine: 3.5-litre V6
Transmission: six-speed manual
Power: 325bhp
Torque: 370Nm
Speed: 0-100km/h 3.9 seconds
Price: Dh230,000
On sale: now
Electric scooters: some rules to remember
- Riders must be 14-years-old or over
- Wear a protective helmet
- Park the electric scooter in designated parking lots (if any)
- Do not leave electric scooter in locations that obstruct traffic or pedestrians
- Solo riders only, no passengers allowed
- Do not drive outside designated lanes
The Breadwinner
Director: Nora Twomey
Starring: Saara Chaudry, Soma Chhaya, Laara Sadiq
Three stars
Scoreline
UAE 2-1 Saudi Arabia
UAE Mabkhout 21’, Khalil 59’
Saudi Al Abed (pen) 20’
Man of the match Ahmed Khalil (UAE)
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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if you go
Getting there
Etihad (Etihad.com), Emirates (emirates.com) and Air France (www.airfrance.com) fly to Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport, from Abu Dhabi and Dubai respectively. Return flights cost from around Dh3,785. It takes about 40 minutes to get from Paris to Compiègne by train, with return tickets costing €19. The Glade of the Armistice is 6.6km east of the railway station.
Staying there
On a handsome, tree-lined street near the Chateau’s park, La Parenthèse du Rond Royal (laparenthesedurondroyal.com) offers spacious b&b accommodation with thoughtful design touches. Lots of natural woods, old fashioned travelling trunks as decoration and multi-nozzle showers are part of the look, while there are free bikes for those who want to cycle to the glade. Prices start at €120 a night.
More information: musee-armistice-14-18.fr ; compiegne-tourisme.fr; uk.france.fr
Company profile
Date started: December 24, 2018
Founders: Omer Gurel, chief executive and co-founder and Edebali Sener, co-founder and chief technology officer
Based: Dubai Media City
Number of employees: 42 (34 in Dubai and a tech team of eight in Ankara, Turkey)
Sector: ConsumerTech and FinTech
Cashflow: Almost $1 million a year
Funding: Series A funding of $2.5m with Series B plans for May 2020
Who are the Sacklers?
The Sackler family is a transatlantic dynasty that owns Purdue Pharma, which manufactures and markets OxyContin, one of the drugs at the centre of America's opioids crisis. The family is well known for their generous philanthropy towards the world's top cultural institutions, including Guggenheim Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, Tate in Britain, Yale University and the Serpentine Gallery, to name a few. Two branches of the family control Purdue Pharma.
Isaac Sackler and Sophie Greenberg were Jewish immigrants who arrived in New York before the First World War. They had three sons. The first, Arthur, died before OxyContin was invented. The second, Mortimer, who died aged 93 in 2010, was a former chief executive of Purdue Pharma. The third, Raymond, died aged 97 in 2017 and was also a former chief executive of Purdue Pharma.
It was Arthur, a psychiatrist and pharmaceutical marketeer, who started the family business dynasty. He and his brothers bought a small company called Purdue Frederick; among their first products were laxatives and prescription earwax remover.
Arthur's branch of the family has not been involved in Purdue for many years and his daughter, Elizabeth, has spoken out against it, saying the company's role in America's drugs crisis is "morally abhorrent".
The lawsuits that were brought by the attorneys general of New York and Massachussetts named eight Sacklers. This includes Kathe, Mortimer, Richard, Jonathan and Ilene Sackler Lefcourt, who are all the children of either Mortimer or Raymond. Then there's Theresa Sackler, who is Mortimer senior's widow; Beverly, Raymond's widow; and David Sackler, Raymond's grandson.
Members of the Sackler family are rarely seen in public.
'My Son'
Director: Christian Carion
Starring: James McAvoy, Claire Foy, Tom Cullen, Gary Lewis
Rating: 2/5
What can you do?
Document everything immediately; including dates, times, locations and witnesses
Seek professional advice from a legal expert
You can report an incident to HR or an immediate supervisor
You can use the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation’s dedicated hotline
In criminal cases, you can contact the police for additional support
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
The bio
Studied up to grade 12 in Vatanappally, a village in India’s southern Thrissur district
Was a middle distance state athletics champion in school
Enjoys driving to Fujairah and Ras Al Khaimah with family
His dream is to continue working as a social worker and help people
Has seven diaries in which he has jotted down notes about his work and money he earned
Keeps the diaries in his car to remember his journey in the Emirates
Five famous companies founded by teens
There are numerous success stories of teen businesses that were created in college dorm rooms and other modest circumstances. Below are some of the most recognisable names in the industry:
- Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg and his friends started Facebook when he was a 19-year-old Harvard undergraduate.
- Dell: When Michael Dell was an undergraduate student at Texas University in 1984, he started upgrading computers for profit. He starting working full-time on his business when he was 19. Eventually, his company became the Dell Computer Corporation and then Dell Inc.
- Subway: Fred DeLuca opened the first Subway restaurant when he was 17. In 1965, Mr DeLuca needed extra money for college, so he decided to open his own business. Peter Buck, a family friend, lent him $1,000 and together, they opened Pete’s Super Submarines. A few years later, the company was rebranded and called Subway.
- Mashable: In 2005, Pete Cashmore created Mashable in Scotland when he was a teenager. The site was then a technology blog. Over the next few decades, Mr Cashmore has turned Mashable into a global media company.
- Oculus VR: Palmer Luckey founded Oculus VR in June 2012, when he was 19. In August that year, Oculus launched its Kickstarter campaign and raised more than $1 million in three days. Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion two years later.
Our family matters legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
Australia World Cup squad
Aaron Finch (capt), Usman Khawaja, David Warner, Steve Smith, Shaun Marsh, Glenn Maxwell, Marcus Stoinis, Alex Carey, Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Jhye Richardson, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Jason Behrendorff, Nathan Lyon, Adam Zampa
Specs
Engine: 51.5kW electric motor
Range: 400km
Power: 134bhp
Torque: 175Nm
Price: From Dh98,800
Available: Now
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UAE tour of Zimbabwe
All matches in Bulawayo
Friday, Sept 26 – UAE won by 36 runs
Sunday, Sept 28 – Second ODI
Tuesday, Sept 30 – Third ODI
Thursday, Oct 2 – Fourth ODI
Sunday, Oct 5 – First T20I
Monday, Oct 6 – Second T20I
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Global state-owned investor ranking by size
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United States
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China
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UAE
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Japan
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Norway
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Canada
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Singapore
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Australia
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Saudi Arabia
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South Korea
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