MAGA slammed as a ‘cult’ as poll reveals followers believe Trump over family and friends

Namita Singh
Tue, 22 August 2023 


MSNBC host Joe Scarborough compared supporters of Donald Trump to cult followers after a new poll revealed that they trusted the former president more as a source of true information over their loved ones.

The latest CBS survey conducted between 16 and 18 August found that 71 per cent of US adult residents believed the former president as telling the truth, while 63 per cent picked friends and family. Conservative media figures stood at 56 per cent, and religious leaders gathered about 30 per cent fewer votes than the former president, gathering 42 per cent of the votes.

The CBS poll also showed Mr Trump was the preferred candidate for 62 per cent of Republican voters, with Ron DeSantis trailing at 16 per cent.

“How could people support Donald Trump? And the question just kept coming up,” said the Morning Joe host on Monday as he marveled at the findings.

Seemingly attempting to decode Mr Trump’s continued popularity among his supporters, he said: “And there were really no good answers except, you know, the question is, is it a cult?

Scarborough then read out the definition of cult from Google, while trying to link it to Mr Trump’s appeal, as he turned to show’s guest Charlie Skyes for discussion.

“I just saw this on Google. Off the top, cult leaders must be dynamic, charismatic, and convincing because their goal is to control their members to acquire money or power-related advantages. These characteristics are crucial because a cult leader needs his members to strictly adhere to his teachings and doctrines.

“Now the funny thing there is, he doesn’t really fit there because Donald Trump doesn’t have any teaching or doctrine other than ‘follow me blindly’.”

“But think about it Charlie, how twisted it is just generally that in America, people follow a political leader. Like we always ask questions ‘’Why? Why do people have flags of a politician?’

File: Joe Scarborough, a one-time friend of former president Donald Trump, does not hold back as he calls his supporters ‘cult’ in the light of CBS polls (Getty Images)

“Trump people might be proud of that. No, that’s nothing to be proud of. Politicians serve us,” he continued as he repeated the findings of the polls.

“You look at the number, they trust a politician, a failed reality tv talk show host, who has been indicted because of what he did with a porn star, who has been indicted for trying to steal the elections which they (the supporters) know he tried to steal.”

“I think they must be happy that he tried to steal the election. They’ve heard the tapes.”

Probing if conservative media played a role in Mr Trump’s strengthened supporter base, he says: “‘Oh, it’s because they watch Fox. It’s because they watch Fox.’ Well, now, Trump members are attacking Fox News!”



“And then this is the most shocking thing coming from the evangelical church,” he added. “Nearly 30 per cent more people blindly follow their cult leader, Donald Trump, than their own religious leaders.

“Please don’t tell me about how this is a Jesus thing. It’s not a Jesus thing. It’s a cult thing when 30 per cent more blindly follow Trump than listen to their religious leaders.”

Meanwhile, another poll revealed Mr Trump’s commanding lead over his Republican rivals in the state of Iowa, where the party’s presidential nominating contest begins in January.

The Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom survey of likely Iowa Republican caucusgoers shows Mr Trump has the backing of 42 per cent, with Florida governor Ron DeSantis at 19 per cent and US senator Tim Scott in third place with nine per cent.

Other Republican candidates in the crowded field aiming to take on Democratic president Joe Biden in the November 2024 election registered in lower single-digit numbers.

Mr Trump‘s four indictments showed little signs of deterring his supporters. The poll found 65 per cent of likely Republican caucusgoers didn’t think he had committed serious crimes, compared with the 26 per cent who believed he had.

The poll was conducted 13 to 17 August, coinciding with news on 14 August that a Georgia grand jury had issued an indictment accusing him of efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Mr Biden.

Additional reporting by agencies

THERE IS NO TWO PARTY SYSTEM IN THE USA, THE DEMOCRATS NEED TO SPLIT IN TWO; THE WALL STREET PARTY AND THE PROGRESSIVE PARTY TO MAKE UP FOR THE IMPLODED GOP

UK

Opinion 

FROM THE RIGHT
Voices: Why Starmer is running scared of Angela Rayner and Ed Miliband

John Rentoul

THE INDEPENDENT
Tue, 22 August 2023

The absence of a reshuffle is a reminder that even the power of an opposition leader on the threshold of government has its limits (PA)

After two years of Tony Blair’s government, Martin Rowson, the cartoonist, identified what he thought was “the fundamental problem with New Labour…” He drew an adviser holding a satchel upside down and saying to the prime minister: “Hey boss! We’ve run out of principles to betray!”

After this week’s latest retreat from the policies on which Keir Starmer was elected Labour leader, Rowson could re-do it, with Starmer as the central figure instead of Blair.

In fact, the U-turn on employment rights took place four weeks ago, at the party’s National Policy Forum in Nottingham. Labour discipline is now so strict that it has taken this long for some of the key text to leak. Instead of promising full employment rights to all workers from the first day in a job, employers will be allowed to put new hires on probation.

This is a switch from the wrong policy to the right one, but it will be seen as yet another betrayal by many party members – not just by Corbyites, but by some of those who see themselves as in the Labour mainstream.

Indeed, Starmer’s hurtle towards the embrace of the Tory-minded swing voter has been so fast, and so little defended and explained, that many Labour right-wingers are suffering from whiplash. So much so that Starmer’s party management problems have nothing to do with the common myth of a Labour government held to ransom by the Socialist Campaign Group, the Corbyite faction of 32 Labour MPs. They have nowhere to go, and will find it hard to make common cause with the Conservative opposition if Labour wins the election.

The real threat to Starmer is noisy resignations by significant members of the shadow cabinet – or, if Labour wins, the cabinet. This is the tension delaying Starmer’s reshuffle. On the one hand, the imminence of the election and the prospect of office exerts a strong restraining force on shadow ministers. On the other, the mix of principle, ambition and pique could explode if pushed too far.

The two main risks are Angela Rayner and Ed Miliband. They both have a standing in the party that is independent of the leader. As Rayner reminded us on Wednesday, she and Starmer were “both elected by the membership differently and independently”.

She is not only the elected deputy leader, but shadow secretary of state for the future of work, and as such she guards Labour’s employment policy jealously. She responded to the leak of the new policy by insisting that, “far from watering it down, we will now set out in detail how we will implement it”. Yet she could not tell Nick Robinson of the BBC that she would be responsible for the policy in government. “The important thing is that I will be the deputy prime minister,” she said.

Miliband’s power is different. As a green champion, he has a status that rests on the urgency of stopping climate change, especially as felt by younger voters. He is not as popular with the youth as is often assumed. Indeed, he is the most unpopular member of the shadow cabinet in YouGov’s likeability ratings, reflecting his high visibility as former leader, but he is less unpopular among young people.

And he has a credibility on green issues as a former leader and a former energy secretary. For different but overlapping groups of admirers, St Edward and St Angela are the guarantors that Labour actually believes in something, and so they have some power to push back against Starmer’s ruthless electoralism.

That said, they are both choosing not to use that power yet. Despite comparing her relationship with Starmer to an arranged marriage, St Angela was strenuously loyal to her political spouse, saying her role was “supporting Keir as the leader”, and “the important job is getting into government”.

St Edward, meanwhile, strongly supported Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, when she postponed plans to borrow £28bn a year for green investment. But it is easy to imagine him resigning, accusing Starmer of willing the ends but not the means in slowing climate change. He is dangerous because he has nothing to lose.

Rayner, on the other hand, is dangerous because she believes she has everything to gain. She thinks that, if Starmer falls, she would win the leadership – and the premiership if that is what followed. I don’t know if she is overreaching herself, but if there were a vacancy, she would stand a good chance in a leadership election among Labour members against Rachel Reeves and Wes Streeting.

These calculations may explain a couple of recent oddities. Rayner’s working-class and trade-union credentials may have something to do with Starmer suddenly adopting the un-Blairite language of class in an article this week. He wrote for The Scotsman on Tuesday that “you cannot seriously take on inequality, or poverty ... without talking about class”. He even said: “My political project is to return Labour to the service of working people and working-class communities.” He wants to head off the charge of betraying the workers.

And the power of St Edward may explain why Starmer was so emphatic about sticking to the 2030 target for decarbonising electricity generation. I suspect this is not going to survive until the election, because it hasn’t been prudently costed yet, but Starmer also wrote: “There has been a lot of noise about this in recent weeks, so let me be crystal clear – we will throw everything at making sure our electricity system is carbon free by 2030.”

Wariness of the power of Rayner and Miliband may be one reason Starmer has not yet reshuffled his shadow cabinet, six months after Rishi Sunak created four new departments. Some of those around the Labour leader say this is because he wants a shadow cabinet that reflects his five “missions” rather than just copying the government’s reorganisation. But what does that mean? The five missions are growth, clean energy, NHS, crime, and opportunity (childcare and education). If anything, that suggests leaving things as they are – and Labour still doesn’t have a shadow science secretary.

Starmer is in a period of maximum power, as election victory edges tantalisingly closer, and yet the absence of a reshuffle is a reminder that even the power of an opposition leader on the threshold of government has its limits.

Opinion
FROM THE LEFT
Labour is parading its true leftwing credentials in the byelection fight against the SNP

Polly Toynbee

THE GUARDIAN
Mon, 21 August 2023 

Angela Rayner was in Rutherglen 

Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

In the upcoming byelection in Rutherglen and Hamilton West, Labour faces an altogether different battle from those fought recently in three English constituencies. Here, it confronts incoming on its exposed left flank in a firefight with the Scottish National party. Far from engaging in daily combat with English Tories and their press, Labour leaders parade their leftwing credentials in Scotland, without giving ammunition to the old blue enemy south of the border.

Both the SNP and Labour desperately need a win. It would only take a 5% swing for Labour to unseat the SNP here; if it can’t, with all the brouhaha surrounding Nicola Sturgeon, her husband and police investigating party finances, hopes of capturing a tranche of crucial SNP seats at the general election will fade. But the first minister, Humza Yousaf, with low ratings and a quarrelsome party, will be urgently looking to shore up the SNP after 15 long years in power.

Knuckle-dusters are out already. SNP leaflets in the constituency target Keir Starmer’s decision not to scrap the two-child benefit cap, suggesting there’s no difference between Starmer and Rishi Sunak. Labour ripostes that Rutherglen has been “failed by two sleaze-ridden governments and a shameless MP”: the former SNP MP, Margaret Ferrier, was ousted by a recall petition for travelling with Covid to London to speak in the Commons. The SNP boasts of its Scottish child payment, giving all families on universal credit an extra £25 a week per child. That’s in contrast to Starmer’s less-than-agile BBC interview in which, on the spur of the moment, he chose to prove Labour’s fiscal discipline rather than cancel the two-child cap affecting 1.5 million children.

The two sides will fight over the recent claim that Labour has softened its radical workers’ rights plan. Angela Rayner was in Rutherglen with a forceful rebuttal: it’s just not so. Meeting apprentices in Glasgow, she promised that Labour’s new deal for working people would be law within 100 days of the party coming to power: “the biggest levelling up of workers’ rights in decades”. And so it is.

It bans zero-hours contracts, and fire-and-rehire policies, makes the presumption of flexible working a day-one right, and strengthens parental leave and pregnancy protection. “We’ll make sure work actually pays with a genuine living wage that covers the cost of living,” Rayner has said. Ending bogus self-employment is “a key priority”. Pledging fair pay agreements that vary according to sector means some sectors that can afford it will have to pay a higher minimum. Trade unions will see their membership rise steeply when they are given access to recruit in every workplace.

The issue that blew up last week concerned whether everyone would get rights from day one in a new job. Rayner said Labour would be “ending qualifying periods for basic rights, which currently leave working people waiting up to two years for basic protections”, with “stronger protections against unfair dismissal”. The claim is that Labour’s national policy forum weakened this with some permissible probationary periods for new employees: it caused a furore, with Unite and Momentum accusing Labour of kowtowing to employers, but Labour says a probationary period was always there. The GMB, Unison and all other affiliated unions have backed the policy.

That’s because the rights that Rayner spelled out in Scotland are indeed radical. Labour expects this policy to come under the same relentless Tory attack at the election as introducing a minimum wage did in the 1997 campaign. Tory HQ has drawn up a list of 20 “anti-business” Labour policies, which it calls a job-killing “Trades Union Congress wish list”. Indeed, these rights were drawn up with strong backing from Frances O’Grady, the former TUC leader, and as Rayner told Glasgow apprentices, they would “raise living standards for all”, tilting power back towards employees.

Is it because of a clumsy mishandling of messaging that Labour’s two most radical policies of recent years have now been tarred as “retreats”? Or is it Labour’s own ambivalence on whether to present them as radical or moderate? The £28bn pledged for Labour’s green investments – for jobs in clean energy, battery factories and home insulation – is enormous and popular. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown never dared make such a spending promise in 1997, even when the economy was growing, not stagflating, as it is now. It’s more money per capita than Joe Biden’s mighty green infrastructure fund. Taking two years to build up to this huge spend is reasonable: how do you get £28bn worth of spades in the ground, without waste, on day one? Yet Labour has let this delay enter the political lexicon as a green retreat.

There are always doomsters eager to get disillusion with Labour in early, forever expecting betrayal. But Angela Rayner herself stands as guarantor for workers’ rights: it’s unlikely she would stand by and see those pledges seriously diminished. In the same way, Ed Miliband stands guard over Labour’s green credentials. But nor do I think Keir Starmer or Rachel Reeves has any less commitment to the radicalism of policies they drew up.

Nerves and lack of self-confidence seem to make Labour hesitate to issue loud rebuttals when these “retreat” stories appear. They know the Tories’ well-oiled campaign machine (and its foghorn press) hasn’t yet got out its knife sharpener to begin assaulting Labour with utterly mendacious distortions of its policies. They know, despite an 18-point lead, that 55% of voters say they might still change their mind. They know that the party scoring best on the economy always wins. Labour has shifted that dial: entering No 10 last year, Sunak was most “trusted to run the economy” by 33% to Starmer’s 29%, according to Opinium. Though Labour now leads on the economy by six percentage points, that still feels precarious.

Fighting to win Rutherglen against an SNP foe purporting to be more leftwing is doing Labour good. As he travels up and down to Scotland almost monthly, do read Starmer’s thundering essay in the Scotsman, full of words Blair and Brown feared to use. “In the recent past,” he wrote, “Labour was afraid to speak the language of class at all – but not my Labour party. No, for me, smashing the ‘class ceiling’ that holds working people back is our defining purpose … Because you cannot seriously take on inequality or poverty … without talking about class. This is personal.” On poverty, he wrote, “This isn’t the trickle-down Tory nonsense that, for working-class communities, means jobs trickle out and power trickles up … I don’t look at our current social security system and think tinkering at the edges will be good enough.” And he repeats Rayner’s list of “a new deal that will strengthen workers’ rights and finally make work pay”.

Expect this to be the mood of Labour’s October conference: messages get clearer as elections approach. As ever, Labour will do more in office than would be wise to promise in advance, but that requires some trust and patience from its natural supporters.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

UK
Rishi Sunak facing red wall wipeout at general election, shock poll shows

Archie Mitchell
Tue, 22 August 2023

Rishi Sunak faces losing all 42 red wall seats won by his predecessor Boris Johnson, polling seen by The Independent shows (Getty/AP)

The Tories are facing electoral oblivion in the red wall as a shock poll reveals they will lose every single seat.

Polling from Electoral Calculus, shared with The Independent, reveals all 42 red wall seats held by the Conservatives are set to return to Labour at the next general election.

The scale of the rebellion against the government appears to in part be driven by the spiralling cost of living, with a separate analysis seen by The Independent showing the crisis is having a devastating impact on Tory-held seats in the red wall.

The data, compiled by analytics firm Outra, show 15 Conservative-held red wall seats, which were won at the last election but have historically supported the Labour Party, are among the 50 constituencies with the highest number of financially distressed voters in the country.

Such as Great Grimsby, Blackpool South and Walsall North are among those with the highest portion of voters deemed financially vulnerable.

In total, 15 of the top 50 seats in which voters are at risk of falling behind on their bills were won by the Conservatives in 2019.

It follows research by investment firm Hargreaves Lansdown that shows the northeast has been hit hard by the cost of living crisis – with the joint lowest level of savings in the country, and just a third of households reporting they have enough cash left at the end of the month.

The figures will set alarm bells ringing in Downing Street, with experts warning that voters facing financial distress will make their voices heard in the ballot box.

Pollster and political analyst Robert Hayward pointed to a defining phrase from Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 run to unseat George HW Bush as US president: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

He told The Independent that the economy is “always the most important issue” on polling day across all age groups, social groups and genders.

Lord Hayward said it was especially important for the Conservatives, having historically been considered better managers of the economy than Labour.

“The government has to restore that credibility,” he warned.

Pollsters predict a landslide Labour victory at the next election,

 with the Tories losing all of their red wall seats (PA)

Lord Hayward added that Mr Sunak’s party may be doing so “slowly”, with inflation finally falling, but without further progress before an expected general election in October 2024, the Conservatives will lose.

Almost two-thirds of voters believe the economy to be one of the top three issues facing the country, putting it significantly ahead of health and immigration, YouGov polling shows.

The risk of a red wall wipeout will also raise fears in Conservative HQ, with Lord Hayward warning it will leave Mr Sunak facing “serious difficulty” securing an overall majority.

Addressing the collapse in support facing Tories in the red wall, Lord Hayward said that while the party has achieved majorities without the voting bloc in the past, “it delivered the size of that majority last time around”.

He added that the failure to win those seats next year “would leave the Conservatives in serious difficulty trying to find an overall majority”.

Electoral Calculus chief executive Martin Baxter pointed to former PM Mr Johnson’s acknowledgement that red wall voters had “lent him” their support in 2019.

“And it looks like they are taking it back,” he said. “The Conservative tide went up that beach in 2019, and it looks like the tide is going out again.”

The pollster is forecasting that the Tories will lose all 42 of their red wall seats.

And Mr Baxter said that while the economic figures “underline” the struggle in voters in those areas for the Conservatives, the prospect of the party holding on to power in the general election is already “not likely”.

Nationally, Electoral Calculus predicts a landslide Labour victory, winning around 460 seats, with the Conservatives reduced to just 90 seats.

Many red wall seats were turned blue in 2019 as voters repulsed by the Labour leader at the time, Jeremy Corbyn, backed Boris Johnson to “Get Brexit Done” and “level up” neglected towns and cities.

But Outra’s figures show that in many of those seats, voters are now feeling the pinch of the cost of living squeeze.

In Great Grimsby, which Mr Johnson loyalist Lia Nici won from Labour’s Melanie Onn in 2019, more than a quarter of constituents are at risk of financial distress.

Ms Onn, who is Labour’s candidate hoping to win back Great Grimsby next year, told The Independent the figures “laid bare the reality of life under the Conservatives”.

“Areas like ours that placed trust in the Tories have been hit the hardest,” she added.

Ms Onn said: “Their economic mismanagement has caused incomes to nosedive, revealing a disregard for ordinary working people.”

In Blackpool South, held by suspended Tory MP Scott Benton, just under a quarter risk not being able to meet payments. And in Walsall North, represented by Eddie Hughes, 23.1 per cent of voters are at risk of financial distress.

Other Tory MPs believed to be vulnerable to losing their seats include Jonathan Gullis, Johnny Mercer and Jack Brereton.

Warnings of scientific ‘suicide’ as US-China research collaboration hangs in balance

Amy Hawkins,

 Senior China correspondent

THE GUARDIAN
Tue, 22 August 2023 



In 1991, about 25 babies in every 100,000 in the United States were born with spina bifida, a birth defect that can cause paralysis and brain damage. Fifteen years later, the likelihood had fallen by nearly one-third. That so many babies could be spared such a fate was thanks to the simple discovery that folic acid supplements could dramatically reduce the chances of neural tube defects, which cause spina bifida and anencephalus, a rarer condition.

It was “one of the great successes of public health,” according to Tom Frieden, a former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – and it was a success that was established in China during a collaboration between researchers from the CDC in Atlanta and Peking University Health Science Center in Beijing.

Related: China’s war chest: how the fight for semiconductors reveals the outlines of a future conflict

Now, such collaboration – which has also led to advances like reductions in air pollution and improved understanding of earthquakes – is under threat. The US-China Science and Technology Agreement, the umbrella framework under which the birth defects study was facilitated, is set to expire on 27 August. The agreement – the first signed after Beijing and Washington normalised relations in 1979 – is normally renewed every five years. But amid growing tensions, the future of US-China scientific collaboration looks uncertain.

US legislators from the select committee on China are urging US secretary of state Antony Blinken to let the deal expire, lest Beijing use it to “advance its military objectives”. Mike Gallagher, the chair of the congressional committee on China, has said that the agreement jeopardises US intellectual property. But scientists argue that such a move would hinder progress on transnational problems.

“Failure to renew the agreement would have a highly negative impact on scientific cooperation of all kinds,” says Deborah Seligsohn, a political science professor at Villanova University and former science and technology counsellor at the US embassy in Beijing. “It would make it much more difficult to increase cooperation in areas we really care about, like climate change.”

A spokesperson for the state department declined to comment on international negotiations. The Chinese embassy in Washington, DC, did not respond to a request for comment.

Xie Feng, China’s ambassador in Washington, has said that Beijing wants to renew the agreement. China has long benefited from US funding and partnerships. Between 2015 and 2021, US government agencies provided nearly $30m to Chinese entities for a range of activities, including disease surveillance, vaccine studies and drone technology. But since China’s leader Xi Jinping took power in 2012, Beijing’s annual spending on scientific research has doubled. Lately, he has emphasised the need for “high quality growth” and technological self-reliance, particularly in strategic areas like artificial intelligence. So despite China’s struggling economy, government support for research and development has continued to be generous. In 2022, spending on basic research increased by 13.5% and total spending on research and development surpassed 3trn yuan (£326.3bn).Interactive
China ‘setting the priorities for the next decade’

The most striking metric of China’s growth has been in the sheer number of research papers that the country produces. In 2020, it overtook the US to become the world leader in terms of the overall volume of research published, according to Clarivate, a data firm that tracks scientific research. “What [China] is doing is going to set the priorities for the next decade,” says Jonathan Adams, the chief scientist of the Institute for Scientific Information, the research arm at Clarivate.

But as the volume of research from China has increased, some experts have raised concerns about its quality. Between 2017 and 2022, 2,500 Chinese or Chinese co-written papers were retracted because of concerns about plagiarism or due to being linked to a paper mill, according to Retraction Watch, a website that monitors scientific retractions. Paper mills are black market vendors that sell ghostwritten studies to researchers desperate to get published. For studies from US institutions in the same time period, just 123 papers have been retracted for similar reasons.

Interactive

In 2020, Beijing instructed Chinese institutions to stop offering cash rewards for published research, in a bid to crack down on high quantity, low quality research. But other incentives remain. Many paper mills in China appear to be linked to medical institutions, says Elisabeth Bik, a microbiologist-turned-science investigator who studies research for signs of manipulation or plagiarism.

Medical students are expected to publish research in order to climb the career ladder, an “impossible requirement” considering their training schedules, Bik says. So some students end up turning to the black market. In January, the Ministry of Science and Technology said that dozens of medical researchers at hospital-affiliated universities had been punished for academic fraud, including using ghostwriters and falsified data for PhD theses.

Scientists interviewed by the Guardian stressed that China’s top universities and reputable international journals still maintained high standards. “There will always be low quality research,” says Joy Zhang, a professor of sociology at the University of Kent who focuses on transnational scientific study. “The issue is really about how we filter them.”

Interactive

Several indicators suggest that the quality of Chinese research is improving. Between 2012 and 2021, China’s share of the top 1% of the most-cited papers grew by 40%, while the US’s share dropped by 18%. The US is still ahead, according to Clarivate’s data, but the gap is narrowing, and other estimates suggest that China has already overtaken the US.

This is particularly apparent in fields that China considers a strategic priority. In computer science, China’s share of global research far outstrips the US, and is increasing rapidly. Washington is concerned about Chinese advances in artificial intelligence, especially for military applications, and has restricted China’s access to the most advanced semiconductors in a bid to slow down this research. In August, the US president, Joe Biden, signed an executive order restricting US investment in semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum computing and artificial intelligence, having already banned the export of certain types of these technologies in 2022.

Fear, stigma and slowing collaboration

The Biden administration’s restrictions are a product of the souring ties between the US and China. Between 2018 and 2022, the US Department of Justice ran a project known as the China Initiative, which aimed to weed out spies in American research and industry. Critics of the initiative, which resulted in more than 100 people losing their jobs, said that it discriminated against researchers of Chinese origin.

In November last year, Sherry Chen, a Chinese-American hydrologist, was awarded $1.75m in damages from the US commerce department. Although Chen’s case predated the China Initiative, it was seen as a bellwether for the increasingly hostile environment for Chinese researchers in the US.

Washington no longer operates the China Initiative as a formal programme, but it “created a strong sense of fear among the scientific community”, notes Yu Jie, senior research fellow on China at Chatham House, in a recent report. Several scientists spoken to by the Guardian say the effects have endured.

There is a “social stigma” attached to working with Chinese scientists, says Zhang. “A lot of young researchers who are not Chinese have expressed concern about collaborating with China.”

Interactive

One Chinese clinical researcher in the US told the Guardian that she had turned down multiple promising job offers because they came from people or institutions with links to China. “It’s sad to say that. I still have attachments there. But in the US I need to sustain myself, and no one is going to be my saviour if I get into trouble. So I stay ultra safe”.

Chinese universities have also increased their scrutiny of any international engagements. Zhang says that it is now much harder than it used to be to get a response from Chinese research teams, because “establishing international collaborations doesn’t mean that much to them any more,” as Chinese institutions put more emphasis on producing their own research.

Beijing is also trying to lure back Chinese researchers. Yu notes that the standard salary for a natural sciences researcher returning to China is $150,000. In 2021, China went from being a net exporter to a net importer of scientists, helped in part by restrictions in G7 countries on Chinese students working in strategically important sectors such as AI. “The US government’s various initiatives have inadvertently boosted Chinese Stem researchers’ returning home,” says Yu.

Interactive

All this, and the restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic, mean that the pace of collaborations between US and Chinese researchers and institutions has slowed. That threatens to undermine some of the most cutting edge scientific advances.

Between 2017 and 2021, around one-third of US research on telecommunications and computer science was produced in collaboration with China, according to Clarivate. One-fifth of environmental science research published in that time period was done with Chinese scientists. “All the high impact research is international collaboration,” says Clarivate’s Adams. “To miss out on that would be suicidal.”

TELL ME ABOUT UPS DRIVERS AGAIN

PwC partners to be paid £906,000 this year

Rob Davies
Tue, 22 August 2023 

Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

More than 1,000 partners at the UK division of the “big four” accounting firm PwC will be paid £906,000 this year, a slight fall on last year’s record payout as profits fell despite rising revenues.

Unaudited accounts released by the company showed that PwC’s UK profit fell from £1.5bn to £1.3bn in 2022, although last year’s figure was boosted by a £139m gain from the sale of its global mobility business.

Excluding the asset sale, revenues rose by 18%, from £4.9bn to £5.8bn.

Last year PwC’s partners celebrated their highest-ever personal rewards, pocketing more than £1m each as their record £920,000 basic pay was topped up by a £100,000 bonus.

The top-up was linked to the $2.2bn (£1.7bn) sale of a business providing tax advice for companies moving staff overseas to US private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice.

There was no such bonus for 2023, while basic pay for the 1,057 partners dipped to £906,000.

Kevin Ellis, the chair and senior partner at PwC, said senior partner profits were still ahead of forecasts, highlighting investments in staff and technology, including AI, which had increased costs.

“Against a backdrop of political and economic upheaval, our multidisciplinary business has charted a strong course.

“Considering the sizable investments we’ve made in our people and technology, partner profits beat our forecasts. Our strong performance is due to the adaptability of our business in supporting our clients and is a credit to the talent of our people.”

PwC invested £100m in new technology, while UK staff numbers increased from 24,500 to 26,000.

The company said it had also paid about half of that workforce an extra £1,500 over five months to help them cope with soaring winter energy bills.

The group’s UK results also include its Middle Eastern business, which was the driver of 30% growth in revenues from PwC’s consulting business, up from £1.3bn to £1.7bn.

This was down to Gulf countries seeking to “modernise and diversify the region’s economy beyond oil”, PwC said.

Ellis added: “The economy may be sluggish but it is also changing as new technologies and the climate emergency change production and consumption.

“We will continue to invest in skills and technology so we can help our clients and communities adapt. This way we can address the unknowns with confidence – both the challenges and opportunities.”

PwC’s UK division and its partners operate separately from PwC Australia, which is at the centre of a scandal that has cost 12 partners their jobs.

The Australian outpost of the big four accounting firm is subject to several investigations, including a criminal inquiry, after its now-former international tax chief Peter Collins used confidential information and documents obtained through government contracts for the firm’s commercial gain.

Twelve partners have been forced out as a result of the scandal. Some are accused by PwC of misusing classified information, while it is alleged others did not properly exercise their expected leadership or governance responsibilities.

VESTIGIAL RELIC 

SNP snare ban will deliver ‘crippling blow’ to Scottish sports estates

Simon Johnson
Tue, 22 August 2023 

The Scottish Government has already tightened controls on pest control - John MacTavish / Alamy Stock Photo

SNP ministers have been accused of delivering a “crippling blow” to Scotland’s sporting estates and farms after unveiling plans to ban them from using snares to control predators such as foxes.

Land managers warned the ban would damage livestock and be “devastating” for their efforts to conserve vulnerable species such as black grouse, capercaillie, curlews, golden plovers, grey partridges, lapwings and oystercatchers.

Scottish Land & Estates (SLE) said it would be “impossible” to prevent further “biodiversity loss” following “widespread declines” in their populations since the 1960s.

This is especially after a recent SNP crackdown on hunting with dogs in Scotland made it more difficult to flush foxes from cover to waiting guns.

Chris Packham, the TV presenter, lauded the plan as “excellent news”, saying: “These torture devices ought to have been banned a long time ago and I’m glad that the Scottish Government has finally recognised snares for the unacceptably cruel traps that they are.”

He urged the UK Government to follow suit in England after Wales became the first home nation in June to vote through a snare ban.

But SLE and Scotland’s gamekeepers pleaded with SNP ministers to allow an exemption so they could use “new humane holding devices” that they said allowed “non-targets” such as deer and badgers to free themselves.

They also expressed concern about plans to hand sweeping new investigatory powers to the Scottish Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SSPCA).
Authority to enter farms

This included giving SSPCA inspectors more authority to enter any farm or estate to search for evidence of alleged wildlife crimes, such as the killing of birds of prey.

SNP ministers unveiled the plans despite Police Scotland having previously opposed the move, warning that giving an animal welfare charity such powers could compromise an investigation’s impartiality.

A snare is a wire noose, usually attached to a stake or tree acting as an anchor, that is usually set to catch predators such as foxes or rabbits.

Although SNP ministers have previously tightened the rules around their use, they have previously recognised that setting them was a “legitimate activity” to control pests.

A Scottish Government consultation proposing the ban admitted that “control of predators is sometimes necessary” but said there was “sufficient evidence to show that use of snares can lead to unacceptable levels of suffering for wild animals”.

Arguing that snares were “indiscriminate”, it warned “they pose an unacceptable risk to non-target species including other wildlife and domestic species such as cats”.

The consultation will run six weeks until Oct 3, after which a snare ban is expected to be added as an amendment to the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill.

Gillian Martin, the SNP’s environment minister, said: “Snare traps lead to unnecessary suffering for animals and these proposals are part of our ongoing efforts to ensure that wildlife management is both sustainable and humane.

“Currently, only a small number of farmers and land managers use snare traps. More effective and humane forms of managing wildlife are available and we will continue to support the industry to make use of these methods.”

But Jake Swindells, director of the Scottish Countryside Alliance, said it was “alarming how dangerously inaccurate” her comments were and argued they showed a “complete misunderstanding” of how snaring works.
‘Already legislated’

He said: “Given the Scottish Government has already legislated against other practical and effective alternative forms of pest control, this proposal leaves risking those working in the countryside even more unequipped.

“The consequences of which could be devastating for some of our rarest species, including curlew and capercaillie. Well-designed snares, used properly, are a humane and effective form of fox control.”

It emerged last month that numbers of critically-endangered capercaillie have increased for the first time in eight years, but there remains only 542 left.

Ross Ewing, SLE’s director of moorland, said: “It is deeply regrettable that, at a critical moment in efforts to sustain biodiversity in rural Scotland, the Scottish Government is moving towards a ban on the use of snares, thereby removing another tool to manage predation pressure on vulnerable species.”

He urged SNP ministers to allow an exemption for humane cable restraints, which differ from conventional snares by including a breakaway function, warning it would be an “abdication of responsibility” for these to be included in the ban.

This was echoed by the Scottish Gamekeepers Association, which supported a ban on traditional snares but said the new devices were a “step-change for welfare”.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Ex-OPEC president facing corruption charges in UK

Phil HAZLEWOOD
Tue, 22 August 2023 

Former Nigerian oil minister and OPEC president Diezani Alison-Madueke was arrested in London in 2015 (SAMUEL KUBANI)

Former OPEC president Diezani Alison-Madueke has been charged with bribery offences relating to her time as Nigeria's oil minister, the UK National Crime Agency said on Tuesday.

Alison-Madueke has been on bail since first being arrested in London in October 2015. She will appear in court in the British capital on October 2, the NCA said.

Soon after her arrest, her family's lawyer told AFP she would strongly contest corruption allegations that have dogged her during and after her time in former president Goodluck Jonathan's government.

She has been linked to a string of money laundering, bribery and asset recovery cases in Nigeria, as well as in Italy and the United States.

In an interview with a Nigerian newspaper in November 2015, she was quoted as saying: "I challenge anyone to come forward with facts showing that I stole government or public money.

"I've never stolen Nigeria's money."

Alison-Madueke, who was in office from 2010 to 2015, was the first woman to be oil minister in Nigeria and the first female president of the global oil cartel OPEC.

The head of the NCA's international corruption unit, Andy Kelly, said: "We suspect Diezani Alison-Madueke abused her power in Nigeria and accepted financial rewards for awarding multi-million-pound contracts."

The NCA said Alison-Madueke allegedly benefitted from at least £100,000 ($127,000) in cash, chauffeur-driven cars, flights on private jets, luxury holidays for her family and the use of multiple London properties.

The charges also detail financial rewards including furniture, renovation work and staff for the properties, payment of private school fees and gifts from top designer shops such as Cartier jewellery and Louis Vuitton goods.

"Bribery is a pervasive form of corruption, which enables serious criminality and can have devastating consequences for developing countries," Kelly said.

"These charges are a milestone in what has been a thorough and complex international investigation," he added.

- Prominent -

Alison-Madueke has been living in the upmarket St John's Wood area of north London since she was first arrested and has undergone chemotherapy for breast cancer, according to her family.

At the time of her arrest, the NCA said only that it had detained five people in London on suspicion of international corruption, without naming those held.

The Nigerian government of Jonathan's successor, Muhammadu Buhari, later confirmed Alison-Madueke's arrest and said its law enforcement agencies were cooperating with their British counterparts.

Soon after taking office, former army general Buhari began a drive to root out endemic corruption and end impunity in Africa's most populous nation.

That included reforming the notoriously opaque Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), which Alison-Madueke oversaw.

But Buhari -- who said "mind-boggling" sums had been "looted" from the country over decades -- was accused of largely targeting his political opponents and those from the previous administration.

The NCA said that assets worth millions of pounds in relation to the case have been frozen as part of the long-running investigation.

Earlier this year, the agency, which targets international and serious and organised crime, said it provided evidence to US prosectors allowing them to recover assets totalling $53.1 million linked to Alison-Madueke's alleged corruption.

They included luxury real estate in California and New York, as well as a 65-metre superyacht, the Galactica Star, the US Department of Justice announced on March 27.

Alison-Madueke, born to a well-off family in the oil city of Port Harcourt in 1960, studied architecture in Britain and the United States before joining oil major Shell's Nigerian subsidiary.

In politics she held three major positions in government -- first as transport minister in 2007 under president Umaru Yar'Adua, then minister of mines and steel development.

When Jonathan -- who was also from southern Bayelsa state -- took over after the death of Yar'Adua, he appointed her minister of petroleum resources in April 2010, making her a powerful figure.

phz/jwp/gil

Former Opec president bribed with Cartier jewellery and Louis Vuitton, corruption case claims


Jonathan Leake
Tue, 22 August 2023 

Diezani Alison-Madueke faces allegations of corruption from her time as Nigeria’s Minister for Petroleum Resources - JOE KLAMAR/AFP via Getty Images

A former president of the Organisation for Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) accepted Cartier jewellery and Louise Vuitton handbags as bribes, the National Crime Agency has alleged.

Corruption charges have been levelled against Diezani Alison-Madueke, who is alleged to have not only received luxury goods but also benefited from chauffeur-driven cars, flights on private jets, £100,000 in cash and private school fees.

Ms Alison-Madueke was a key figure in the Nigerian Government between 2010 and 2015, during which time she also became Opec’s first female president.


The NCA claims she accepted bribes during her time as Nigeria’s Minister for Petroleum Resources in exchange for awarding multi-million-pound oil and gas contracts.

Assets worth millions of pounds relating to the alleged offences have already been frozen as part of the ongoing investigation.

As head of Opec, she was responsible for overseeing 13 oil-producing countries in the middle east, South America and Africa – including Nigeria – which collectively controls 60pc of the oil traded on global markets.

Madueke has since moved to the UK and lives in St John’s Wood, London. She will appear at Westminster Magistrates Court on October 2.

Andy Kelly, head of the NCA’s international corruption unit said: “We suspect Diezani Alison-Madueke abused her power in Nigeria and accepted financial rewards for awarding multi-million-pound contracts.

“These charges are a milestone in what has been a thorough and complex international investigation.”

In March this year, the NCA also provided evidence to the US Department of Justice that enabled them to recover assets totalling USD$53.1m (£42m) linked to Diezani Alison-Madueke’s alleged corruption.

ICU officers worked closely with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission of Nigeria during the investigation, as well as with the International Anti-Corruption Coordination Centre.

Andrew Penhale, chief crown prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “The CPS has authorised the NCA to charge Diezani Alison-Madueke with bribery offences.”

World’s biggest driverless car experiment goes haywire

James Titcomb
Mon, 21 August 2023 

Cruise has been testing driverless cars in California since 2015 – but one of its vehicles recently collided with a fire engine - David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Long at the bleeding edge of culture and technology, San Francisco this month became the testbed for one of the world’s most radical trials of driverless taxis.

Regulators voted to let autonomous cars from two companies – Cruise and Waymo – circle the city’s streets, picking up passengers and charging them for trips at any time of day and night.

Unlike many previous similar experiments, the vehicles would not require safety drivers, with only software and sensors preventing passengers from getting into accidents. These were driverless cars in the truest sense.

Robot cars would share San Francisco’s hilly roads with its 150-year-old cable car system, picking up those who had snagged a spot on Cruise and Waymo’s waitlists. It felt like a taste of the future, especially in a city that is notoriously averse to bold policymaking.

But less than two weeks later, that experiment seems to be unravelling. In the days since driverless cars were given the keys to the city, a string of embarrassing incidents – from traffic jams to crashes – have threatened to set the driverless revolution back years.

Over the weekend, San Francisco’s Department of Motor Vehicles demanded that Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors, reduce its fleet by 50pc after a crash with a fire engine. The decision took around 150 cars off the road. However, some want to go further: now, local politicians are seeking the reversal of the experiment before it had truly got going.

Driverless car companies claim that autonomous vehicles will be safer than having people behind the wheel - 

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North America

Driverless car companies and the technology’s supporters claim that autonomous vehicles will be safer than having people behind the wheel. They say the cars do not speed, do not drive drunk or get tired, and statistically will get into fewer scrapes than their human counterparts.

Cruise has been testing driverless cars on San Francisco’s streets since 2015, a year before GM paid a reported $600m (£471m) for the company. It was granted permission to conduct limited tests without a safety driver in 2020 and started charging passengers last year.

The cars, modified white Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles with cutesy names such as Poppy, Crepe and Scampi, were at first a curiosity and then became just a part of the city’s fabric, only noticed by the odd motorist frustrated at their cautious approach to junctions. Waymo, a subsidiary of Google’s parent Alphabet, started ferrying passengers in 2021.

Yet what was a minor quirk observed only occasionally on the roads has been significantly expanded. On August 10, Californian regulators gave Waymo and Cruise permission to operate paid rides throughout the city, at any time of day.

The vote was controversial. San Francisco officials said they had logged around 600 incidents such as illegal manoeuvres or unexpected stops in the last year. In dozens of cases, passengers had been stuck inside vehicles when a car malfunctioned and stopped without an explanation, having to be physically rescued.

Jeanine Nicholson, the chief of the city’s fire department, said firefighters had had to repeatedly waste time dealing with the cars, including one case in which a car with no driver had inched towards a blaze, unable to be stopped until one firefighter smashed its window. “It is not our job to babysit their vehicles,” she said.

A group of anti-driverless car activists also took to placing cones on the cars’ bonnets to disable them in an extended protest dubbed the “week of cone”. The shapes confused the vehicle’s sensors, shutting them down as a result.



Nonetheless, Waymo and Cruise secured victory. After billions of dollars in investment in driverless technology over the last decade, the decision seemed to offer the companies a path to commercial success.

Yet it took just hours for things to start going wrong. California’s Public Utilities Commission approved the 24/7 service late on a Thursday. The following evening, around 10 Cruise cars caused traffic chaos when they appeared to stall around junctions in a busy part of the city.

The company initially suggested that overburdened mobile networks related to a nearby music festival had interfered with the cars. Later, Cruise blamed the incident on a single pedestrian interfering with one vehicle.

The next week, one of the company’s cars became stuck after driving into wet cement, apparently ignoring the cones marking the area off. It was forced to pay for the road to be repaved after the vehicle was recovered.

And just the following day, a Cruise vehicle collided with a fire engine responding to an emergency, after failing to recognise its sirens and stop in time. The passenger was taken to hospital by paramedics with injuries that were described as non-serious, but it meant the company had disrupted two emergency services with one incident.

Greg Dietrerich, Cruise’s general manager for San Francisco, said the crash was a unique case with “several factors that added complexity”. But the string of incidents so soon after driverless cars had been given such freedom was unfortunate at best.

Over the weekend, California’s Department of Motor Vehicles demanded that the company halve its fleet of up to 300 driverless cars in San Francisco and said that it is investigating the situation.

San Francisco’s city attorney David Chiu has launched a legal battle seeking to block Waymo and Cruise’s permits - Eric Risberg/AP

Phil Koopman, an autonomous vehicle safety expert at Carnegie Mellon, says Cruise should have voluntarily paused operations before regulators forced action.

“Cruise could have been seen to do the right thing if they really care about safety. They didn’t, and the DMV had to come down on them.

“Driving into concrete is not the end of the world. And people do it all the time. But if your narrative is that we’ll be perfect and humans are terrible, you just eviscerated your narrative.”

Waymo, which has fewer cars on the road, has not faced the same intense scrutiny as Cruise, although its cars have also been recorded interfering with emergency services. In June, one of its driverless cars hit and killed a dog that had run into the road, with the vehicle unable to avoid contact.

One driverless car executive says the spate of incidents shows that the cars are simply not ready to function on their own.

“They’re doing many of the right things with good-quality science. And they are driving a lot of simulation and testing and simulation, all of which is necessary. The thing is, it’s just not enough.

“The design of the systems and the amount of testing that goes on, and the degree to which they’re being supervised is all falling short of where it should be. And as a result, we are unnecessarily putting the public at risk, really, in these trials they are effectively human guinea pigs.”

A Cruise spokesman said the company still compared favourably to human drivers.

The company said: “Over 100 people lose their lives every day on American roadways, and countless others are badly injured. We believe it’s clear that Cruise positively impacts overall road safety, and look forward to working with the CA DMV to make any improvements and provide any data they need to reinforce the safety and efficiency of our fleet.”

However, it faces growing opposition. Last week, San Francisco’s city attorney David Chiu launched a legal battle seeking to block Waymo and Cruise’s permits, while local politician Aaron Peskin said he planned to appeal them.

Driverless car advocates may insist the technology is safe. But they might lose their best chance to prove it.

Biden trade war on China threatens our business, warns Arm

Gareth Corfield
Tue, 22 August 2023

Joe Biden has targeted China with sanctions designed to limit its access to the most advanced computer chip technology 

- SAUL LOEB/AFP

Arm has warned revenues are being hit by President Joe Biden’s trade war on China as the British chipmaker unveiled plans for a $70bn (£54bn) listing in New York.

Growing tensions between Beijing and the West are already harming business, Arm said, which could intensify as governments increase restrictions on investments in artificial intelligence and other high-tech products.

The geopolitical risks threaten to overshadow Arm’s highly anticipated float, which was announced on Monday.

As part of its 330-page IPO announcement, Arm said almost a quarter of its sales come from China, which makes the business “particularly susceptible to economic and political risks” that affect the country.

The Cambridge-based company, owned by Japan’s SoftBank, develops semiconductor designs used by the world’s technology companies in billions of smartphones and similar devices.

Risks in this sector have increased after President Biden targeted China with sanctions designed to limit its access to the most advanced computer chip technology.

Arm said sales made by divisions including Arm China fell by $28m over the three months to June, including a $12m decrease in royalty revenues, which it blamed on “trade protection and national security policies” from the US that impacted China’s “semiconductor suppliers and customers”.

In December, Chinese tech giant Alibaba was blocked from buying Arm’s Neoverse chips because the UK and US said the technology could be used for military purposes against the West.

Trade sanctions resulted in an 18pc slump in Chinese chip imports during the first of the year, customs data shows.

Potential internal rifts could also pose a problem for Arm in China, Monday’s prospectus revealed.

Arm China is an independent company part-owned by SoftBank, which licenses the Arm brand and sells chip designs to local customers.

A long-running power struggle recently took place at Arm China after local boss Allen Wu refused to step down despite being sacked in 2020.

That dispute concluded last year after Wu’s eventual departure, although the company has warned investors of potential fault lines in the domestic relationship.

“If that commercial relationship no longer existed or deteriorates, our ability to compete in the PRC market could be materially and adversely affected,” it said.

UK chip designer Arm starts US listing process after snubbing London

Jasper Jolly
Tue, 22 August 2023

Photograph: ARM Holdings/PA

The British chip designer Arm has started the process of listing its shares on New York’s Nasdaq, in one of the biggest flotations of recent years after the London Stock Exchange lost out.

The company, owned by Japanese investor SoftBank, registered to list its shares late on Monday night, after months of waiting amid tricky conditions for stock market floats.

The listing will return Arm to stock markets after seven years under SoftBank and its leader, Masayoshi Son, who took the chip designer private in 2016 in a £24bn deal. An internal SoftBank transaction this month valued Arm at $64bn (£50bn), according to reports.

Arm, based in Cambridge, is one of the UK’s rare big tech champions. Founded in 1990, it has played a key role in the mobile computing revolution, with its designs used for semiconductor chips in Apple’s iPhones and laptops, Samsung’s phones and a host of other devices ranging from electric and driverless cars to drones. Its chip designs have been used in more than 250bn devices.

While the company has remained rooted in the UK, the New York listing comes after a failed effort by the British government, led by Rishi Sunak, to persuade it and other tech companies to list shares in London.

The listing is the second time that SoftBank has tried to cash in on its investment. In 2021, the tech-focused investor agreed a deal to sell Arm to the US chipmaker Nvidia for $40bn. However, that deal fell through last year after UK competition regulators objected.

The US filing showed that 30.6bn chips using Arm designs were made in the year to March, up from 29.2bn the year before. However, revenues were flat at $2.7bn, and its net income dropped from $676m to $524m.

Arm has not revealed how many shares it will offer or the hoped-for valuation, although SoftBank will continue to control the company. The listing will not provide any proceeds to Arm itself.

Arm said it expected the chip market to grow by 6.8% a year until 2025, with the increasing complexity of semiconductors required to power smartphones and to train artificial intelligence algorithms allowing the company to contribute more towards the value of each chip.

The filing also revealed that Arm earns a quarter of its revenues from China. Arm said that reliance made it “particularly susceptible to economic and political risks” at a time when the US government is attempting to limit China’s access to the most advanced chip-making technology. It said US, UK or Chinese restrictions could “materially harm” its business.

The Arm chief executive, Rene Haas, has been awarded $20m in stock, and will receive a further $20m in cash if the listing completes.

Barclays, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Japan’s Mizuho will lead the initial public offering of Arm’s shares, with another 24 banks lined up to share in the fees for the mega-deal.

AUSTRALIA
Labor’s intergenerational report will be released this week. But just how reliable will it be?

Peter Hannam

Guardian Australia
Tue, 22 August 2023 

Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

The Australian government is preparing to release the sixth iteration of the intergenerational report (IGR) this week, which will include forecasts about the economy and budget over the next 40 years.

But what are the pitfalls or potential utility of making projections over that timeframe? We take a look.

How useful are forecasts?

Many people have discounted the value of forecasting.

“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future,” was the view of Danish Nobel physicist Niels Bohr.

That quip, of course, doesn’t stop the prognosticators. Every Reserve Bank meeting brings dozens of expert predictions of an interest rate rise or hold, with little price beyond bruised egos for an erroneous call.

One economist told Guardian Australia his bank tried to be as accurate as possible for clients about one year out. (His bank miscalled the past three RBA monthly meetings.)

The IGR will project out four decades, extrapolating in part from the May budget, which had forecasts running out to 2033-34.

“Three years of the forward estimates is probably about as far as you want to go for a realistic sort of forecasting,” says Ben Phillips, a modelling expert at the Australian National University. “So 10 years is pushing it and 40 years is really what I would just call an interesting projection into the future.”

Should I take the results literally?

This year’s IGR comes just 26 months after the release of the last one, by the then treasurer, Josh Frydenberg. Labor has tended to release them every three years or so when in office, compared with five-year breaks or longer for Coalition governments.

Related: Australia’s population to grow at slowest rate since federation, intergenerational report forecasts

We’re told to expect a 300-page missive, about 50% bigger than the 2021 effort. A whole section on “climate change” will swamp the two mentions made in Peter Costello’s inaugural IGR (all of 100 pages long) two decades ago and the 31 mentions two years ago.

Each day of late, the government has released another dollop of this year’s IGR’s findings, such as how spending on defence and aged care is forecast to swell in coming decades or how population will grow at the slowest pace since federation.

John Hawkins, a former Treasury and RBA economist now at the University of Canberra, noted in a 2019 Treasury report that official forecasts really took off after the second world war. Australia’s first macroeconomic forecasts were prepared in about 1945.

Forecasts, he says, are typically better for macroeconomic variables such as inflation and GDP than for exchange rates or stock market prices. They also “tend to have significant difficulties with large turning points”.

“Despite the significant margins of error, there are some aspects [of IGRs] such as population ageing where we can make reasonable projections, eg projecting the number of centenarians in 2063 based on the number of 60-year-olds now,” Hawkins says.

Danielle Wood, chief executive of the Grattan Institute, agrees that the “pretty ugly” demographic challenges facing Australia are important to discuss even if the precise numbers turn out to be off. Not all developments break in a bad way, though, such as the increase in women’s participation in the workforce that the 2002 IGR didn’t pick.

“The benefits are in the conversations,” Wood says.

How is the data used?

Anthony Scott, a professor in Monash University’s Centre for Health Economics, says debate can also spur action to ensure the worst “doom and gloom” don’t eventuate.

“It’s really about how this information is used, particularly by government, and also by everybody else because it affects the whole economy and all of our society,” Scott says.

For instance, if tax revenues must increase to meet rising aged and disability care demands, should stage-three tax cuts proceed? Some observers think the Albanese government had intended to use an early IGR to shift public support, allowing them to trim the most lucrative tax cuts for big earners. That impetus, though, has gone.

Related: Intergenerational report reveals spending in key areas to blow out to half Australian budget by 2063

Scott notes technological advances – including artificial intelligence – offer the promise of improved health and reducing need for care. Population trajectories, too, can change with incentives for migration or more babies – or the reverse.

Climate change doesn’t have to be as bad as 2063 might look, if Australia and the rest of the world got serious about cutting greenhouse gas emissions, says Andy Pitman, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes.

As Pitman has noted previously, institutions are kidding themselves if they think they can forecast with precision how a heating planet will affect us. Last year’s record floods in Lismore, for instance, would have been far less damaging had the rainfall centre been only a few kilometres different.

“We know broadly what’s coming,” he says, adding “it’s the extremes that have the big impact on the economy”.

“We have a wicked problem of building climate change into our forecasts,” Pitman says.