Twelve arrested as more than 200,000 pro-Palestine marchers walk through London to Israel embassy

Jacob Phillips
Sat, 17 February 2024 


Twelve people have been arrested at a pro-Palestine demonstration in central London.

The arrests were for a string of alleged offences, including inciting racial hatred, suspicion of support for a proscribed organisation in relation to a placard, and assaulting emergency workers.

But the Metropolitan Police said the "overwhelming majority" of people who took part were peaceful and acted lawfully.

Between 200,000 and 250,000 people were expected at the demonstration, according to a spokesman for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Protesters met at the south of Park Lane, holding banners calling for a “ceasefire now” and chanting “free, free Palestine”, before leaving for designated place near the Israeli embassy where speeches would be made.

Among the speakers was former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Palestinian ambassador to the UK Husam Zomlot, who both called for “justice” for the Palestinian people.

Pro-Palestinian activists and supporters wave flags and carry placards during the march (AFP via Getty Images)

The Islington North MP also told the crowd he will be voting in support of a ceasefire motion being held by Westminster next week, due to be tabled by the Scottish National Party.

Before the march began at 1.30pm, the Metropolitan Police announced on X, formerly Twitter, that officers had arrested one person on suspicion of support for a proscribed organisation in relation to a placard.

About two hours later they tweeted: “Officers have made nine further arrests during an incident at Hyde Park Corner.

“A man was seen in the crowd with an antisemitic placard. He has been arrested for inciting racial hatred.

“When officers went in to arrest him they were assaulted, resulting in six arrests for assaulting an emergency worker.

“Two other people were arrested for refusing to remove face coverings when required to do so by officers under Section 60AA of the Public Order Act.”

Pro-Palestinian activists and supporters in central London (AFP via Getty Images)

At around 4pm, the Met announced one further arrest “for an antisemitic placard”, bringing the total number of arrests so far to 11.

The force explained that the Section 60AA order requires anyone wearing a face covering “for the purpose of concealing their identity” to remove it when asked to do so.

It was in force until 8pm in a designated area.

Just before 6.30pm the Met posted on X, formerly Twitter: "Today's protest has now fully concluded.

"There were 12 arrests for placard related offences, assaults on officers and refusal to remove face coverings. Thankfully, none of the officers who were assaulted were seriously injured.

"Despite these arrests, the overwhelming majority who took part were peaceful and acted entirely with the law. We worked closely with the organisers and their stewarding team in the run up to and during the protest and we're grateful for their cooperation."

A Section 35 dispersal order is in place until 11pm, meaning anyone refusing a direction to leave the area can be arrested.

Police also stopped a "pro-Palestinian car convoy" in Neasden, north-west London, and monitored it to ensure it was not "causing fear".

Mr Corbyn took to the stage amid raucous applause, telling the crowd: “We’ve got to carry on. This is the 14th national demonstration and there’s going to be as many more as it takes until there is a ceasefire, until there is justice for the Palestinian people.”

He added: “We’re witnessing something globally horrific in real time on our televisions.

“And so on Wednesday, when the UK Parliament has a motion before it tabled by the Scottish National Party, I am signing in support of that motion.

“And I want every one of you here demand, demand of your MP, your elected representative, be there, vote for a ceasefire.

A Pro-Palestinian supporter waves a Palestinian flag (AFP via Getty Images)

A Pro-Palestinian supporter poses with a placard (AFP via Getty Images)

“No ifs, no buts, no qualifications.”

Mr Zomlot told the crowd: “You see what is happening, you are horrified at what is happening, you are shocked to your core at the inaction of your government.

“Hang on to your anger, hang on to your enragement, hang on to your horror and use it, use it in the pursuit of justice.”

At least 28,663 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel began its military operation in the strip in October in response to the October 7 attacks, where militants killed some 1,200 people and took another 250 hostage.

Israel is being urged not to send ground forces into Rafah on the Egyptian border, where many of the strip’s citizens are now living after areas closer to their homes became engulfed by fighting.

 

Twelve arrested at pro-Palestine march near Israeli embassy in central London

Matt Mathers
Sat, 17 February 2024 

Twelve people were arrested at a pro-Palestine march in central London on Saturday afternoon which called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

The arrests were for a string of alleged offences, with one person detained on suspicion of support “for a proscribed organisation in relation to a placard”.

Others were arrested for alleged assaults on officers and refusal to remove face coverings. The Metropolitan Police said none of the officers who were assaulted were seriously injured.



The Palestine Solidarity Campaign said that between 200,000 and 250,000 attended the demonstration, which started at the south side of Marble Arch at 1.30pm. The Metropolitan Police said the “overwhelming majority” of people who took part were peaceful and acted lawfully.

Demonstrators held banners calling for a “ceasefire now” and chanted “free, free Palestine” in the streets of the capital. Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader, was among those who spoke at the march. The Islington North MP told the crowd he will be voting in support of a ceasefire motion at Westminster next week, to be tabled by the SNP.

Taking to the stage amid raucous applause, Mr Corbyn told the crowd: “We’ve got to carry on. This is the 14th national demonstration and there’s going to be as many more as it takes until there is a ceasefire, until there is justice for the Palestinian people.”

Saturday’s demonstration was the second time since the 7 October terror attacks by Hamas that a pro-Palestine protest has taken place near the Israeli embassy.

A static rally was held near the embassy on 9 October. Police said the start time allowed for a synagogue event to finish.

People take part in a pro-Palestine demonstration in central London (PA Wire)

The Met said “there will be some who ask why” a decision to allow the protest so close to the embassy was allowed but that it is a “common misconception” that forces can allow or refuse permission for a protest to take place.

“A real risk of serious disorder” sufficient for the Met to request that the home secretary ban the protest has not been seen at recent demonstrations, the force added.

The march set off along Park Lane and continued to Knightsbridge and Kensington Road, ending at the junction with Kensington Court where the speeches took place.

Around 1,500 police officers from forces across the UK were on public order duties during the demonstration.

Protesters were kept more than 100m away from the embassy grounds, behind barriers controlled by officers and faced arrest if they tried to get closer.

About 1,500 police from forces across the UK were on duty during the demonstration (PA Wire)

Conditions under Section 12 of the Public Order Act mean that any person participating in the march must not deviate from the route.

Police also said no gazebos or other stalls were allowed to be erected in a specified area at Marble Arch.

Two other people were arrested for refusing to remove face coverings when required to do so by officers under Section 60AA of the Public Order Act.

Just before 6.30pm the Met posted on X, formerly Twitter: “Today’s protest has now fully concluded.

“There were 12 arrests for placard-related offences, assaults on officers and refusal to remove face coverings. Thankfully, none of the officers who were assaulted were seriously injured.

“Despite these arrests, the overwhelming majority who took part were peaceful and acted entirely within the law. We worked closely with the organisers and their stewarding team in the run up to and during the protest and we’re grateful for their cooperation.”

The force had imposed Section 60, 60AA and 35 orders, giving police additional powers. The Section 60 order gave police additional search powers and the Section 60AA required anyone wearing a face covering “for the purpose of concealing their identity” to remove it when asked to do so.

The Section 35 dispersal order meant anyone refusing a direction to leave a specified area could be arrested.

Police also stopped a “pro-Palestinian car convoy” in Neasden, northwest London, and monitored it to ensure it was not “causing fear”.

At least 28,663 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel began its military operation in the strip in response to the 7 October attacks, where militants killed some 1,100 people and took another 250 hostage.

Israel is being urged not to send ground forces into Rafah on the Egyptian border, where 1.5 million Palestinians are now seeking refuge.

Greta Thunberg in Glasgow as huge pro-Palestine march gets underway

James Walker
Sat, 17 February 2024 

Greta Thunberg with climate protesters in London (Image: Angela Christofilou)

GRETA Thunberg is in Glasgow and will attend a huge pro-Palestine march.

Thousands of people are expected to attend a national demonstration in Glasgow calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Organised by the Gaza Genocide Emergency Committee, the group is made up of multiple organisations, including the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, Palestine Action Scotland, Scottish Human Rights Forum and Muslim Council of Scotland.

On Friday, Greta Thunberg posted a photo to social media showing her and young Scottish climate activists outside Glasgow Royal Concert Hall (below).

“Week 287,” she wrote – alongside hashtags giving a nod to her Fridays for Future climate movement.

READ MORE: Everything you need to know about Saturday's Gaza demo

It comes two weeks after a district judge threw out a public order charge against Thunberg after police attempted to impose “unlawful” conditions during an environment protest.

The 21-year-old, from Sweden, was arrested during a demonstration near the InterContinental Hotel in Mayfair, London, on October 17 as oil executives met inside for a conference.

Thunberg pleaded not guilty to breaching Section 14 of the Public Order Act 1986 alongside two Fossil Free London (FFL) protesters and two Greenpeace activists.

At Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Friday, District Judge John Law said conditions imposed on protesters were “so unclear that it is unlawful” which meant “anyone failing to comply were actually committing no offence”.

The famous activist has been notably outspoken about Israel's ongoing war on Gaza.

The pro-Palestine march will head towards the Scottish Labour party conference today in protest of the party’s stance on a ceasefire in Gaza.

Starmer and the Labour party have continued to call for a "sustainable ceasefire" despite the public urging them to support immediate action.

Unlike Starmer, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has previously called for an “immediate ceasefire” alongside a number of his colleagues in Holyrood.

UK
Southampton Airport seeks to butcher 200-year-old trees - and cut down others

Natalia Forero
Sat, 17 February 2024

Marlhill Copse, which is next to Southampton Airport

Southampton Airport wants to cut off the tops of 25 trees in a 200-year-old woodland - and cut down 15 more.

But the bid is set to be thrown out by city development chiefs.

The airport applied to reduce the height of 25 trees in the woodland area but it is set to be rejected since it will harm the conservation area.

However, a second application to remove 15 trees in the same woodland is recommended to approve the cutting down of 14.

READ MORE: Southampton Airport loses bid to work on trees at Marlhill Copse

In October 2023, Southampton City Council received the planning application from the airport which outlined its plan to reduce the tops of 24 individual trees and one group of broadleaf trees within Marlhill Copse in Bitterne Park, on the southern side of the airport over the M27.

According to the report by officers recommending refusal, the reduction in height of the 25 trees included one oak by more than 13 metres, another by 12, metres and one Douglas Fir by more than 10 metres.

The airport said the work related to the Civil Aviation Act, which gives the secretary of state powers to make direct orders restricting the height of trees; however, the order hasn’t been received, meaning the application had to proceed via the usual council’s planning process.

Daily Echo: Marlhill Copse has been the scene of protests by environmentalists opposed to the felling of trees

Marlhill Copse is a nationally registered garden within the Itchen Valley conservation area. It is estimated that trees there were planted around 1800.

The report indicates that the woodland is a “fine example of mature oak trees grown as standards” and added: “During the 1920s and ’30s, these were thinned, and the glades were planted with many unusual trees and shrubs, particularly Rhododendrons, Magnolia and Nothofagus, some of which remain today.”

The council’s historic environment officer presented its objection, saying the proposal’s negative impact on the woodland, would “diminish” the woodland and would “fail to preserve and hence cause harm to, the character or appearance of the Itchen Valley Conservation Area.”

Ten public comments were also received objecting to the proposal. One objector said that the application is absolutely “shocking” and will add more noise and pollution to the area.

They added: “I am sure there are ways for this airport expansion to proceed without this destruction of protected trees, which we have seen many times before, protected trees are not protected.”

Another resident said: “It would be a bit hypocritical that, after objecting to the runway extension, the council should now allow this action, which will facilitate the airport’s intentions of increasing air traffic along with more emissions over Southampton as they take off. So much for a ‘greener’ city.”

More comments said: “This will harm local wildlife and the conservation area. Why can’t the airport continue to manage these slow-growing trees in the way it has successfully done before, instead of this? This would cause harm to the individual trees from the huge ‘crown reductions’. It would cause harm to other trees within the wood resulting from so much removal of vegetation, exposing them to wind and more light.”

The planning authority will also consider a second planning application. However, in this case, it is proposed to fell 15 trees at the same location, of which officers recommend 14 are approved and one refused.

The reason for the felling is based on grounds of safety. However, the proposal includes provision for Monterey pines to be planted along the boundary of Marlhill Copse.

The council’s planning committee is set to decide both applications on Tuesday (February 20).

The crack Ukrainian assault brigade sent to launch counterattacks around Avdiivka has a murky past

The brigade is led by a right-wing politician and former white nationalist

Rebecca Rommen
Sat, 17 February 2024 

Members of the 3rd Assault Brigade during a trench clearing training exercise on October 14, 2023 in Kramatorsk, Ukraine.

Diego Fedele/Getty Images

Ukraine's 3rd Separate Assault Brigade is supporting the withdrawal from the city of Avdiivka.


The battle-hardened unit has a contentious political history.


It emerged from a brigade linked to far-right groups and neo-Nazism.

Ukraine's 3rd Separate Assault Brigade has been deployed to support the withdrawal from the city of Avdiivka in the Donetsk Oblast, announced on Saturday.

The brigade is fighting to stabilize the frontline by counterattacking Russian forces attempting to encircle Ukrainian forces in Avdiivka to conduct an orderly retreat, the Institute for the Study of War reported.

"Despite the fact that the occupiers are suffering disproportionate losses, the situation in Avdiivka remains extremely difficult," said the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade's Telegram account.



The brigade is led by a right-wing politician and former white nationalist

While it is one of Ukraine's most battle-hardened units, the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade's roots are controversial.

The brigade emerged from the Azov regiment and is led by a right-wing politician and former white nationalist, Andriy Biletsky.

In 2010, Biletsky said Ukraine is meant to "lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen (subhumans)," it was reported.

Biletsky founded the contentious Azov regiment, a volunteer militia, in 2014. Some of its members wear symbols of the Third Reich and have been backed by the alt-right and neo-Nazis in the US.

In 2018, The Guardian wrote that Andriy Biletsky had "toned down his rhetoric in recent years."

The 3rd Seperate Assault Brigade was created through a merger of the Azov special forces units established by former Azov veterans following the siege of Mariupol in 2022.

In 2023, Biletsky said there was "no split" between the Azov Brigade and the 3rd Assault Brigade," Ukrainska Pravda reported.

"The evolution of the Azov unit as a part of the Armed Forces will continue. We will embody military prowess, cold rage against the enemy and the desire to liberate our own in the fight against the occupiers on the way to our final victory. The time for the decisive battle has come," per a translation by Ukrainska Pravda.

The brigade went on to receive acclaim for its role in defending the outskirts of Bakhmut throughout 2023. It also took part in the liberation of Kherson.

But fringe beliefs plaguing Ukrainian volunteer units have been weaponized by the Kremlin. Putin notoriously justified the full-scale invasion by claiming it was a "denazification campaign" and Nazis ran the Ukrainian government.

Meanwhile, Ukraine's democratically-elected president,Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is Jewish. His national approval rating peaked at over 90%.

Far-right ties have been documented on both sides of the war.

In 2022, the Russia-backed Donetsk People's Republic rewarded one of its soldiers with a medal for killing Ukrainian "nationalists." The fighter was pictured wearing neo-Nazi symbols while receiving his medal.

Adviivka has fallen

Ukrainian troops withdrew from the war-torn eastern town of Avdiivka on Saturday after months of fierce fighting.

In a post on Facebook, Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander in chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, wrote that he had decided to pull out of the region "to avoid encirclement and preserve the lives and health of servicemen."

Withdrawn troops have been moved to "more favorable lines," and they were "taking measures to stabilize the situation and maintain our positions," Syrskyi continued.

Biletsky praised the fighting spirit of his men who fought to defend Avdiivka.

"I thank the soldiers for the worthy fight they gave the enemy in Avdiivka in the face of the total numerical superiority of the Russians in manpower, equipment, and shells. They did everything and more. I am grateful to everyone for their resilience," said the commander of the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, on Telegram.

 Business Insider

Ukraine's military is shifting to a defensive strategy that failed Nazi Germany in WWII

Michael Peck
Sat, 17 February 2024 

Ukrainian soldier of the 28th Mechanized Brigade fires with Carl-Gustaf recoilless rifle on Russian position on December 25, 2023 in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine.Vitali Nosach/Getty Images

Ukraine's military has chosen a defensive strategy that echoes the German approach from WWII.


Lacking enough troops to defend its huge territory, Nazi Germany opted for a mobile defense.


Even an full-scale active defense has limitations and won't help Ukraine seize back its land.

In 1943, as the tide of war turned against the Third Reich, the German high command opted for a desperate strategy on the Eastern Front. Outnumbered and outgunned by the Red Army, the Germans pinned their hopes on a mobile, aggressive defense to stop a relentless series of Soviet offensives in Ukraine and southern Russia.

As today’s Ukraine fights over many of the same battlefields of 1943, it has chosen a strategy that echoes the German approach from 80 years ago. After the failure of its much-anticipated summer counteroffensive, and running low on ammunition and stamina to fight off continual Russian attacks, Ukrainian commanders talk of switching to an “active defense.” It hopes to block Russian advances while looking for opportunities to counterpunch and regain ground.

But if that approach failed to stop the Red Army from conquering Berlin in 1945, could it save Ukraine today?

Answering that question first requires defining “active defense,” one of those broad military terms that mean different things to different people. The US Army’s field manual of operational terms defines active defense as “the employment of limited offensive action and counterattacks to deny a contested area or position to the enemy.”

But that isn’t what Ukraine is doing, Douglas Nash, a retired US Army colonel and author of several books on German military operations in World War II, told Business Insider. Active defense is meant to be waged by large units, while Ukraine appears to conducting small-unit operations.

“Active defense was understood to be generally applicable to divisions, corps and field armies,” Nash said. “Not squads, platoons, companies and battalions.”

The scale of these forces are drastically different. A US field army, for example, typically ranges upwards of 90,000 soldiers while a battalion has about 1,000.

Nazi Germany’s approach – what the Germans called “elastic defense” – also differed from Ukraine’s current tactics. By mid-1943, Germany’s strategic situation had become ominous. The Soviets were continually on the attack after their victory at Stalingrad. Yet after four years of war, Germany lacked enough troops and equipment to strongly defend the entire 2,000-mile-long Eastern Front. Meanwhile, the Western Allies were preparing to land in Italy and France, which would squeeze Germany in a two-front war. Thus, the Wehrmacht had to conserve its resources.

German soldiers evacuating a house in Kharkov destroyed by Russian artillery fire, circa 1943.Keystone/Getty Images

The solution devised by German commanders, notably the legendary Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, was a mobile defense that would take advantage of German tactical and operational prowess, especially of the elite panzer (tank) divisions. In military textbooks, von Manstein is famous for his “backhand blow” concept of letting the Soviets advance into German-occupied territory, and then launching an exquisitely timed counterattack to encircle and destroy the Soviet spearheads. The classic example is the Third Battle of Kharkov in February 1943, when von Manstein’s unleashed a planned counterblow that annihilated Soviet armor pursuing the retreating Germans after Stalingrad.

However, this was more of a strategic rather than a tactical concept. “Von Manstein was willing to trade space for time in order to draw the enemy into a well-laid trap, which would be sprung once the enemy's forces entered the kill zone,” Nash explained. “Once that occurred, artillery and obstacles would be used to pin the enemy in place, while mechanized forces would attack into the neck of the enemy penetration to cut him off and destroy him piecemeal, thus restoring the front line to where it was before.”

“This type of active defense was usually conducted at the field army level, with different units designated to play the defensive role by holding the trap open, while other units played the maneuver and offensive role. It usually worked, but depended quite a bit on the quality of those leading the battle.”

In fact, during its summer 2023 counteroffensive, Ukraine did attempt larger-scale mechanized operations with its new Western-equipped strike brigades. But Ukraine — and Russia — lacked adequate numbers of trained junior officers and command staffs. Suffering heavy losses for minimal gains, Ukraine switched to a trench warfare strategy of attacks by small units to seize perhaps a few hundred yards at a time to stem heavy losses from anti-tank mines, artillery fire and drones.

In 1943, von Manstein’s counterattack comprised around 280,000 soldiers and 30 divisions. For Ukraine, “offensives at the level of a battalion are a major rarity," a Ukrainian officer told Reuters in January 2024.

A Ukrainian soldier fires with an AK-47 during training at an undetermined location in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine on February 02, 2024.Diego Herrera Carcedo/Getty Images
'Static defense'

The essence of von Manstein-esque victory is maneuver — and a willingness to lose ground to entrap an advancing enemy. The most notable feature of the Russo-Ukraine war is how difficult battlefield maneuver has become when drones are constantly spying overhead, and guided missiles can strike targets from 50 miles away. To survive, Ukrainian and Russians troops try to stay under cover of trenches as much as possible. And politically, a policy of ceding ground — albeit temporarily — may not appeal to Ukrainian leaders who wore down their army in brutal battles to keep cities such as Bakhmut.

“If one looks at what the Ukrainian armed forces are doing on the ground at this moment, they are pursuing more of a static defense,” Nash said. “Active defense implies maneuver, and there is very little maneuver happening at the moment on the Ukrainian side. The Russians are attempting to use maneuver, but they are paying an extraordinarily high price for it, gaining very little in exchange for very high losses in men and material.”

Russia has lost hundreds of tanks and vehicles and as many as 20,000 troops in its attempts to capture the city of Avdiivka in Ukraine’s east.

It’s not that Ukrainians don’t want to conduct deep mechanized offensives. They simply lack the means to do so. “The Ukrainians learned the hard way this past summer that an army must have all the pieces together in order to practice any kind of maneuver on the modern battlefield, even active defense,” Nash said. “Tanks, artillery, air defense, air superiority, counter-mine warfare tools, drones, electronic warfare, and so on. Even a limited ‘active defense’ needs all of these elements, too.”

Last summer, Ukraine’s frontal assault with vehicles hit mines and were menaced by missiles fired from Russian helicopters. In a later effort to clear a path through the mines, dismounted troops were picked off by attack drones and artillery.

NATO in the late 1970s was bigger and better-armed than Ukraine today, when it took up the active defense doctrine and it’s not clear how well it would have worked. NATO embraced the concept as a response to the USSR’s numerically superior Warsaw Pact forces, and the devastating effect of modern weapons seen in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The idea was that the West would remain on the strategic defense, using firepower, guided missiles and local counterattacks to attrit the Soviets as they advanced deeper into Western Europe. This pleased neither the US Army, which has historically preferred to remain on the offensive, nor West Germany.

Active defense was adopted “against West German opposition, because the Germans did not want to give up any territory,” Nash said. “Yet with overwhelming Soviet military power arrayed against it, NATO — led primarily by the US — felt it had no other choice.” By the 1980s, the US Army had switched to the AirLand Battle concept, which envisaged taking the initiative in offensive operations to defeat an enemy attack.

German Field Marshal Erich Von Manstein, in Germany, in 1942. After the war, in 1949, a British court-martial found him guilty of crimes including execution of civilians and mistreatment of prisoners of war.AP Photo

Whether it’s called active defense or something else, the concept has limitations. Von Manstein is often portrayed as the genius whose advice was ignored by Hitler, who inflexibly chose to defend every inch of conquered territory. But while von Manstein’s backhand blows would have been the better option, they couldn’t solve Germany's strategic dilemma. To remain on the defensive would have handed the strategic initiative to the Soviets. The Stavka (Soviet high command) could concentrate overwhelming force at will to smash through any sector of the thinly manned German lines. The German panzer divisions would eventually have been worn down as they acted as armored fire brigades, rushing from crisis point to crisis point to stem a breakthrough.

Ukraine’s strategy of strategic defense and tactical attack is a reasonable choice — at least in the short term. For an army desperate to conserve resources, and looking for any way it can to sting and discomfit a larger opponent, it’s better than sitting passively on the defensive.

But if the goal is to defeat Russia and liberate occupied Ukraine, this is not the solution. “Ukraine can launch local counterattacks to regain lost platoon, company, or battalion positions,” Nash said. However, this “cannot lead to victory.”

Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds a master's in political science. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.

 Business Insider

The Tories’ tax plans are absurd. When will Labour be brave enough to say so?


William Keegan

The Guardian
Sun, 18 February 2024 

Jeremy Hunt was reported to have planned a tax-cutting budget, gone back on that idea, then reinstated it in the wake of the Conservatives’ poor polling.

Photograph: Reuters

As a longstanding observer of the British economy, I sympathise with the general reader trying to make sense of recent reports on what is happening to it.

One week he or she is told that inflation is falling; another week that it isn’t. One week we are reliably informed that interest rates are going to be reduced; the next that they are not. One week there is no danger of falling into recession. The next week we are informed that we are already in one.

Perhaps the most perplexing of all has been the reporting in recent months of the prospects for the imminent budget on 6 March.

Yes, there is going to be a tax-cutting bonanza on the lines of the historic Nigel Lawson budget of 1988 (which happened to end in tears, with one of the biggest recessions since the 1930s). But hang on a minute. While the ink is still drying on those reports, we are reminded that – with memories still fresh about the disastrous market reaction to the Truss-Kwarteng mini-budget – Chancellor Hunt is going to be fiscally responsible, keep to strict fiscal rules, and ignore the extreme right’s calls for an “election-winning, tax-cutting” budget after all.

But hang on another minute, or another week. Despite the way that the Labour party is tying itself in knots over its choice of candidates, the Tories carry on polling badly, and “something must be done”. That something turns out to be a leak to the Financial Times that there is, after all, a plan for a tax-cutting budget, but that it will be “fiscally responsible”, with tax cuts counterbalanced by reductions in public spending.

Labour is terrified above all of being accused, as it was in 1992, of planning a ‘tax bombshell’

Now, the Conservative party is in a fissiparous state. It is furlongs behind in the general election stakes, and is as unpopular as a British governing party could possibly be. Yet the Labour opposition is like a rabbit cowering in the headlights, terrified of committing itself to the Attlee-style economic reconstruction programme it is patently obvious the country needs, let alone to a complete overhaul of the welfare state – very much including the National Health Service – which was once Labour’s pride and joy.

It is terrified above all of being accused, as Labour was in 1992, of planning a “tax bombshell”. So it finds itself too nervous to say that it would reverse the Tory tax cuts, let alone come clean with the electorate and admit that, with many public services in desperate trouble, a financial rescue operation requires Scandinavian levels of taxation.

But that is not the end of it. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, we and other nations enjoyed a “peace dividend”, when defence spending could safely be reduced, affording room for domestic needs. President Putin and Donald Trump have put a stop to that, and if Labour is indeed elected, it is going to have to increase the defence budget substantially.

What Labour should not be frightened of is long-term borrowing to finance the many investment projects – green or any other colour – that it knows are needed to revive the stagnant economy it will probably inherit. In the end, such investment should pay dividends.

Of course, life for a Labour government, and for the rest of us, would be brighter if Keir Starmer recognised that he was right about Brexit and that we should return to the EU single market and customs union as soon as possible. After the Office for Budget Responsibility’s estimate of a Brexit blow to the nation’s output of 4% of GDP, and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research putting that figure at up to 6%, we now have Goldman Sachs telling us that output is already running 5% lower – with all that that connotes in lost tax revenues – than it would be if it were not for the folly of Brexit.

JK Galbraith once observed, in a very different context: “In Goldman Sachs we trust.” That was an ironical reference to the investment bank’s contribution to the debacle described so eloquently in Galbraith’s definitive work, The Great Crash, 1929. However, I am struck by the judgment of James Moberly and Sven Jari Stehn in Goldman’s report The Structural and Cyclical Costs of Brexit that “UK goods trade has underperformed other advanced economies by around 15% since the referendum” and that “business investment has been weak since 2016, falling noticeably short of the pre-referendum trend”. This fits with one’s general impression from other analyses.

What a shambles it all is. Let us hope that the Labour leaders, buoyed by their sensational victories in last week’s byelections, conduct yet another policy U-turn, this time on their attitude towards rejoining the customs union and single market!

‘It’s legalised robbery’: anger grows at China’s struggling shadow banks

Amy Hawkins 

Senior China correspondent

THE GUARDIAN
Sun, 18 February 2024 

Economic data on display in Beijing; China’s wealthy middle class has a lot of money to invest, and not many outlets for it.

Photograph: Alex Plavevski/EPA

Wang Jin felt sure that he could invest in Sichuan Trust, an institution that was part of one of what he describes as the “four pillars” of China’s financial system: banks, securities, insurance and trusts. Promised a return on his investment of 8.3%, he handed over 1.6m yuan (£178,000) in 2019. “The trust had a state licence, so we believed in its integrity,” Wang (not his real name) recalls.

Unluckily for him, in May 2020, the company said that it would be unable to repay 20bn yuan of investments. Protests ensued, with hundreds of middle-aged investors gathering outside the headquarters in Chengdu to demand their money back. By the end of the year, the local government had taken over the firm, which was reported to have a shortfall of more than 30bn yuan on its books, although the company said the sum was closer to 25bn.

Now, Wang is one of more than 8,000 investors who have been given until 5 March to accept a sliding scale repayment plan that would return 80% of capital to the smallest investors, while those who had invested more than 10m yuan would get back 40%. Investors are furious. The offer is “legalised robbery”, one of them says, in chat messages seen by the Observer.

The troubles at Sichuan Trust are a microcosm of the strain spreading through China’s £2.3tn trust industry as an economic downturn, combined with tighter government regulation, risks torpedoing a major part of the “shadow” banking industry that has filled the gaps left by traditional financial institutions.

“Sichuan Trust was one of the earliest to fail,” says Diana Choyleva, chief economist at the consultancy Enodo Economics. “But its issues are broadly representative of issues that face the whole industry because of the rolling crisis in real estate.”

The trusts are a uniquely Chinese phenomenon. They are financial institutions that blend banking, wealth management and hedge fund activities, offering investment products to institutions and wealthy individuals. They exist to provide credit to parts of the economy that have traditionally struggled to access financing from traditional banks, such as property and mining.

As private sector companies, particularly property developers, boomed in the 00s, trusts became an important part of the economy, providing cash to hungry businesses. They have become a pillar of the non-bank financial system – otherwise known as shadow banking – that has come to account for between 40% and 60% of China’s GDP, although estimates vary wildly.

Sichuan Trust has blamed the regulatory squeeze on the sector for its troubles. But analysts had been raising the alarm about practices at the firm for years. Sichuan Trust has “consistently stood out for the past 10 years as being one of the more trouble-prone players in the industry,” says Jason Bedford, an analyst in Singapore who is an expert on China’s trust sector. In 2021, the company was fined 34.9m yuan for making illicit loans and illegally transferring money to shareholders.

Considering the firm’s troubles, Bedford says that the level of the proposed restitution is “quite high”, which “suggests either government or other money might be funding those payouts”.

Several investors wrote to China’s National Administration of Financial Regulation, demanding to know what assets were ­underlying the trusts’ investments. But in January the authorities refused, ­saying that the information was a “state secret”.

Wang says: “It’s normal to take our money and invest it, and if it does lose money, or the investment fails, that’s normal, and we’ll accept that.”

But he and other investors suspect foul play, especially since the former controlling shareholder of the company, Liu Canglong, was detained by police in 2021. Sichuan Trust declined to comment for this article.

While Sichuan has not disclosed its holdings, they are likely to include property assets. Trusts have disproportionately helped to finance China’s real estate boom, which since 2008 has been one of the main drivers of its economic growth. That makes them particularly vulnerable to contagion from the current downward spiral in the property market. According to the publicly available financial statements, between 6% and 7% of their lending is to real estate. But Bedford estimates the exposure is more like 30-35%, with lending often disguised under other structures or industries.

Since Beijing unleashed a regulatory whirlwind on the property sector in 2020, which was aimed at deleveraging the sector, real estate has been in the doldrums. Although the government has since backpedalled on some of these measures in an effort to boost the market, lending to property developers remains low – not least because developers no longer want cash to build flats that people are not buying.

“In the long term, trusts will have to fundamentally change their business model,” says Choyleva. They may shift their financing towards the government’s preferred industries, such as hi-tech manufacturing. But banks are much more willing and able to lend to these companies than they were 20 years ago, reducing the demand for trust products.

“As the potential investment returns in this area are much more uncertain than during the peak years of property growth, the attractiveness of their products to retail investors will also decrease,” says Choyleva.

All this is little solace to middle-class investors such as Wang, who increasingly feel that the government has broken the social contract that allowed people to get rich so long as they didn’t get involved in politics. “It’s robbing people’s blood and sweat … it’s the government doing this: it’s shameless,” he says.

There is a sense that China’s leaders, who are becoming less keen on bailouts, in case they sustain economic bubbles, are not sympathetic to well-to-do people such as Wang.

Trust investors normally need a minimum of about 1m yuan in cash to get started. The firms promise higher interest rates than traditional banks in exchange for higher levels of risk. But their practices are opaque and there is widespread concern that investors are not made fully aware of the risks of their investments.

Bedford recalls the boss of a major trust company saying: “Banks do whatever they are explicitly permitted to do. Trust companies do anything, so long as they are not explicitly not permitted to do so.”

In 2018, China’s regulators introduced a host of reforms to try to get a grip on the shadow banking sector, including banning financial institutions from offering guaranteed returns on investments. In recent years it has also allowed an increasing number of trust firms to default; in January, Zhongzhi Enterprise Group, a shadow banking institution with up to £50bn in debts, filed for bankruptcy.

“What is happening is kind of in line with what the government has been striving for, for a very long period of time,” says Dinny McMahon, the head of China markets research at Trivium, a consulting firm – to establish the principle that an investor “should go in with their eyes open”.

But even as trusts run into crises, wealthy Chinese people who cannot move their money out of the country have few places to invest their cash. During China’s boom years, the rich put money into property, the stock market or wealth management products. All three of those industries are crashing.

This reflects a wider shift in China’s economic policymaking, with Beijing increasingly reluctant either to save failing companies or to inject the massive stimulus that economists say is needed to reboot the flagging economy. Some analysts even believe that Xi Jinping, China’s leader, no longer sees the economy as the ultimate indicator of his success.

In 2018, Daniel Rosen and Logan Wright, researchers at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, wrote that “periods of financial stress with the potential for crisis have been relatively short-lived” because of the belief that the government would “step in to resolve any financial instability”. But that belief is starting to fade.

Additional research by Tau Yang

EU set to fine Apple €500m over music streaming misconduct

Lars Mucklejohn
Sun, 18 February 2024 

The Financial Times reported that the fine, worth roughly €500m (£428m), is expected to be announced early next month.

The European Commission is reportedly due to hit Apple with its first ever fine against the company following an antitrust investigation into its music streaming business.

The Financial Times reported that the fine, worth roughly €500m (£428m), is expected to be announced early next month, citing sources with knowledge of the matter.

It is understood to be part of an antitrust probe launched in 2019 after a complaint from Spotify, which is looking at whether Apple blocked apps from telling iPhone users about cheaper music streaming services outside the App Store.

The Financial Times reported that the commission would rule Apple’s actions are illegal and ban the firm from continuing the practice.

The commission is reportedly due to accuse Apple of abusing its powerful status in the market and perpetuating anti-competitive trading practices.

Brussels narrowed the scope of its probe into the tech giant last year and withdrew a charge claiming that it pressured developers to use Apple’s in-app payment system.

If imposed, the fine would be one of the EU’s biggest penalties against a Big Tech firm. In 2018, Brussels fined Google a record €4.3bn for abuse of dominance over Android phones.

Apple’s previous fines in Europe include a €1.1bn penalty in France for alleged anti-competitive practices that was revised to €372m on appeal.

Apple declined to comment when approached by City A.M.

In a statement last year Apple said it was “pleased” Brussels had narrowed the scope of its investigation, adding that it would address concerns while encouraging competition.

The company added: “The App Store has helped Spotify become the top music streaming service across Europe and we hope the European Commission will end its pursuit of a complaint that has no merit.”

The commission did not respond to a request for comment by City A.M.

Morgan Stanley accused of duping EU regulators to comply with post-Brexit rules

Elliot Gulliver-Needham
Sun, 18 February 2024

The Financial Times reported that a German banker, who was hired in 2021 as an executive director, the rank below managing director, was given the title 'head of loan trading', but was allegedly told not to actively use the title.

Morgan Stanley has been accused of making up a fake job title for one of its employees in an attempt to trick EU regulators into believing it had moved top execs to Europe to meet post-Brexit rules.

The Financial Times reported that a German banker, who was hired in 2021 as an executive director, the rank below managing director, was given the title ‘head of loan trading’, but was allegedly told not to actively use the title.

In a German court case, which is hearing the appeal to his dismissal from Morgan Stanley, the banker said he had been told by his superior that his title “only existed on paper”.


Instead, he said he had been given the title solely to meet regulatory requirements, as the European Central Bank has pushed international banks to move top staff managing European businesses to the continent after the UK left the European Union.

The banker claimed that his job had been to find and sell distressed European loans, rather than overseeing a trading desk, giving him more ability to impact the bank’s risk profile.

Changes to Germany’s employment law since Brexit mean that material risk-takers can be fired more easily than normal employees, meaning that the misleading job title has left the banker more vulnerable to dismissal.

The bank’s arguments were rejected by the court, which ruled that his formal position was not enough to qualify him as a material risk-taker, which should instead be decided by actual tasks and competencies.

The court added it was not convinced that the banker was given relevant “tasks, responsibilities and competencies” and ruled that, legally, “he was no risk-taker”.

While the court case does not name the bank, sources with knowledge of the case told the Financial Times it was Morgan Stanley.

Morgan Stanley was contacted for comment on the report.

Last month, Morgan Stanley reported that its profits had missed analyst expectations, due to paying over $500m in one-time charges over investigations by US authorities.

Profits of UK’s private train-leasing firms treble in a year

Gwyn Topham 

Transport correspondent

The Guardian
Sun, 18 February 2024 

Unions have urged a windfall tax on the dividends, describing the financing of trains as a ‘racket’ without risk to the leasing firms.

Photograph: Richard Saker/The Guardian

Private firms that lease out trains for Britain’s railway have seen their profits treble in a year, with more than £400m paid in dividends, official figures show.

The rolling stock companies paid out a total of £409.7m to shareholders and profit margins rose to 41.6% in 2022-23, according to the Office of Rail and Road, as the rest of the railway was told to make swingeing cuts and salaries were frozen. Taxpayer subsidies are still running at twice pre-pandemic levels.

Unions have urged a windfall tax on the huge dividends, describing the financing of trains as a “racket” without risk to the leasing firms.


Financial analysis by the ORR, the rail regulator, shows that although the total in leasing costs paid by train operators fell slightly last year to £3.1bn, it is still almost 30% higher than five years ago, in a period when overall rail industry staff costs remained static.

The ORR said the rolling stock companies, or Roscos, paid dividends of £409.7m in 2022-23, up from £122.3m a year before. Their net profit margins went up from 14.3% to 41.6%.

Since the collapse of franchising, train operating companies are now on management contracts of margins of about 2%. Train operators’ contracts are now structured for the government to make up the shortfall between revenue and costs, meaning taxpayers are now effectively paying the £3.1bn spent last year on leasing trains, almost a quarter of total industry costs.

“Hell and high water” clauses protect lease contracts on rolling stock despite passenger revenue virtually disappearing in 2020 during the pandemic. According to well-placed sources, the Department for Transport did not attempt to renegotiate or reschedule lease payments to rolling stock companies, despite demanding Network Rail and train operators find huge savings.

The three rolling stock companies are Eversholt, Porterbrook and Angel Trains. They were created at privatisation with the controversial sell-off of state-owned British Rail trains, and still lease the majority of UK trains. They have paid cumulative dividends of around £2bn in the last decade, and the highest-paid directors earn almost twice as much as the chief executive of Network Rail, Andrew Haines.

According to its latest accounts, filed last year, Eversholt, a subsidiary of Li Ka-shing’s Hong Kong firm CK Hutchison, paid dividends of £40.7m in 2022, while its chief executive, Mary Kenny, was paid £1.075m.

Porterbrook, owned by a group of shareholders led by Luxembourg-based insurer Allianz and Canadian pension fund AIM, paid dividends of £80m in 2022, while chief executive Mary Grant was paid £1.2m.

Angel Trains, majority-owned by the Canadian pension fund PSP, paid dividends of £124.6m, and chief executive Malcolm Brown was paid £900k.

Mick Lynch, general secretary of the RMT union, said the firms neither built nor commissioned trains but were taking huge profits: “If a traditional company invests, researches, spends its capital, then they’ve got the right to make a return – but the rolling stock leasing companies don’t do that. They are a middle person between essentially now the taxpayer and the manufacturers.

“These fancy financial instruments and leasebacks are just another version of PFI, which has been a disaster for our hospitals and local councils. It’s legal, but there is a racket going on, where the structure of rolling stock leasing has just created massive dividends and massive profits entirely without risk.”

Most rail fares in England are due to rise by 4.9% next month.

Labour has said that if elected, it will bring train operating companies into public ownership as contracts expire, but it declined to comment on the Roscos.

Bringing rolling stock back into public ownership was complicated, Lynch admitted: “But at least Labour could look at a windfall tax on these Roscos to get some of our money back.”

Within parts of the rail industry, there is significant support for Roscos. One senior source said: “They’ve made big bucks, but we’ve got thousands of new trains … If [buying trains] was on the government books, schools, the NHS or police would have got the spending first.”

Roger Ford, industry editor of Modern Railways, said competition had improved since the post-privatisation triopoly, while some direct government procurement had proved worse value for money: “The Intercity Express trains which the government procured with a 27-year maintenance contract was much more expensive than leasing – and makes it very difficult to change things.”

A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “By taking on the financial risk, rolling stock companies drive up the quality of our trains while freeing up billions of pounds to be spent on schools, hospitals and roads. Although ultimately for operators, we have spent over a decade working to introduce competition into the market and drive down costs.”

A Porterbrook spokesperson said it had invested over £3bn in passenger and freight vehicles in the last 30 years, supporting more than 100 UK companies and 7,000 jobs.

“We’re able to invest in groundbreaking innovation for the railway because of the funding that our shareholders provide, and in the normal course of business, when appropriate, dividends are paid.

“This funding has allowed Porterbrook to invest over £350m in significant fleet upgrade programmes, £12m in the development of the UK’s first hydrogen-powered train, HydroFLEX, to support net-zero targets, and over £10m upgrading the Long Marston Rail Innovation Centre in Warwickshire to support innovation and maintenance for our customers and the railway”.

An Angel Trains spokesperson said the firm had invested more than £1.5bn over a decade and spent most of the money on services from small and medium-sized firms.

“In the last year alone, in excess of £250m was spent on rolling stock. This substantial financial risk is borne by our shareholders and business, not the UK taxpayer, and is crucial to driving change in our rail network.”

They said the dividend was the first paid in three years and represented an annual return of 4.1% for shareholders, while every Angel Trains company, including the Jersey-based parent companies, was registered for tax in the UK.

Eversholt declined to comment.

The couple trying to keep killer ‘zombie viruses’ at bay – and protect us from another pandemic

Simon Usborne
Sun, 18 February 2024 

Jean-Michel Claverie and Chantal Abergel in their laboratory just outside Marseille - Jeremy Suyker

Jean-Michel Claverie was already at retirement age when he travelled to Siberia to hunt for ancient viruses in the Arctic. After a long career as a research scientist – and 25 years since he had set up a laboratory outside Marseille with his wife Chantal Abergel – he could have put his feet up. He and Abergel, who is 62, commute to their lab from a comfortable house near the pretty harbour town of Cassis. But Claverie, who was about to turn 70, had no intention of hanging up his lab coat.

It took days, several flights and a ride in a rickety boat made from old war plane parts to reach the banks of the Kolyma river west of Chersky, a remote town not far from the East Siberian Sea. Once a transit hub for Soviet Gulags, Chersky and its river had become a magnet for scientists trying to unearth secrets from the frozen deep.

At a tight bend in the river he set up a makeshift research station inside a tent and from there, he and a small team began removing soil from the steep-sided riverbank to expose earth that has been frozen for 30,000 years.

A layer of this hardened soil and sand, known as permafrost, lies beneath the earth’s surface across vast areas of the northern hemisphere, largely in Arctic regions of Russia, Scandinavia and North America. In places such as Chersky, the permafrost stays below freezing even while the summers are hot and the surface landscape verdant. In some Arctic regions, life in this layer has been suspended for around 700,000 years.

But climate change and rising temperatures mean that permafrost is now thawing. As a result, powers including Russia, China and the US are stepping up efforts to drill and dig through it in pursuit of precious metals and fossil fuels.

Suspended within this thinning layer, however, are the preserved remnants of prehistoric life. Some of it – including viruses – may yet return from the dead with unknown consequences.

I meet Claverie, who is now 73 and wears blue jeans and running shoes, in the genomic and structural information lab at Aix-Marseille University, where he is now a professor emeritus. He and Abergel, an experimental biologist who runs the lab, lead an international team of a dozen researchers in a stout concrete building on a hilltop campus between Marseille and Cassis.

Claverie (pictured) points out that we still don’t know for certain what role viruses might have played in the demise of major species such as Neanderthals or woolly rhinos - Jeremy Suyker

Inside a small lab with a yellow biohazard danger sign on the door, alongside the logo for the Back to the Future film, Claverie pulls a small plastic bag out of a freezer. It contains what looks like the damp remains of a sandcastle. It is in fact thawed Siberian permafrost. During his two-week field trip, Claverie’s team used a drill with a cup-shaped coring bit to prize more than 20 such samples from the banks of the Kolyma. He brought them back to the French Riviera in his suitcase.

The team study these, as well as permafrost samples already stored in scientific institutes, in a race to understand the microbes suspended within them. While virology research tends to focus on threats lurking in more tropical climates, Claverie and Abergel are searching for potential dangers now emerging from the frozen north, including what have become known as ‘zombie viruses’.

‘The real danger would be to be confronted with viruses we’ve never seen before,’ Claverie tells me in the lab, where a low winter sun streams through a high window. He points out that we still don’t know for certain what role viruses might have played in the demise of major species such as Neanderthals or woolly rhinos.

And consider, he says, the huge efforts required to suppress pathogens already familiar to science, such as the coronaviruses. ‘So think about a totally new virus that might have caused [an] extinction. What happens if it comes back?’

Claverie and Abergel fell in love at a science conference in a French ski resort in 1987. They were both interested in the then emerging field of bioinformatics – the use of computers to make sense of biological data. In 1995, after working in the US for five years, the couple settled in Marseille, where Abergel had grown up, to establish their lab. They now have two grown-up sons – a chef and an engineer.

The couple occupy neighbouring offices above the labs. ‘We had to work together at home in the pandemic and Jean-Michel was upset because I was making too much noise,’ Abergel tells me at her desk, which is next to a vast potted Flamboyant tree she planted as a seed. ‘It is very capricious and has never flowered,’ she adds with a smile.

Abergel: 'We’re both stubborn and, like all scientists, we always think we’re right' - Jeremy Suyker

Claverie had enjoyed an early career as a nomadic researcher in multiple fields, including theoretical physics. The lab’s early work involved the sequencing of bacterial genomes – the genetic information that defines organisms. The switch to virus research was accidental. A sample that had originally come from a hospital in Bradford as part of a search for the origins of a pneumonia outbreak contained what scientists had assumed was a new type of bacteria. On closer inspection in Marseille, the bacteria turned out to be a virus that broke all the rules.

There are more viruses than stars in the universe and most remain undiscovered. They lurk anywhere there is life – in the sea, soil and air – but only replicate when they meet a host. They were always thought to be tiny and genetically simple, containing only what they needed to invade cells, replicate and move on. The new microbe from Bradford was orders of magnitude larger and more complex than any known virus. ‘I can still remember when we got the image from the microscope,’ Claverie recalls. ‘I said, “Jesus, what is this?!”’

They named it Mimivirus. The discovery stunned the field of virology, which was concerned largely with diseases caused by viruses in humans, livestock and agriculture. Viruses existing in the wild without a known host had flown under the radar. Mimivirus opened a new field of research. ‘This was the start of environmental virology,’ says Claverie, who quickly refocused his lab’s work.

For several years, the team discovered more giant viruses, which they helped detect by introducing amoebas to samples; if the single-cell organisms died, it signalled the presence of a virus and the need for further research. This work, which added to wider understanding of viruses and how they interact with hosts, found a new avenue in 2013 when Claverie read a Russian paper about the regeneration of a plant from fruit tissue that had been frozen in the Siberian permafrost for 30,000 years. ‘I thought, if they can revive a plant, can we revive a virus?’

The ground floor of the building in Marseille is divided into a series of modest labs, many cluttered with microscopes, chemicals, glass flasks and beakers. While Claverie is the de facto chief virus hunter, Abergel has led the development of the techniques used to isolate and study them. ‘We complement each other well, even if we sometimes fight,’ she says. ‘We’re both stubborn and, like all scientists, we always think we’re right.’

Machines and air-conditioning units hum in the background, maintaining climates for each stage of the process. One of the machines, called a ‘mosquito robot’, incorporates 96 needles capable of inserting virus proteins into wells containing different culture conditions. In another room, the amoebas that are used as bait to catch viruses are grown and stored. When a virus is detected in a sample, technicians purify and amplify it before its DNA can be sequenced.

Claverie can’t remember who first used the word ‘zombie’ in relation to his virus work. Certainly it did not appear in his landmark paper in 2014, which detailed the first revival of a virus preserved in permafrost. He named the microbe, which he found in an existing, 30,000-year-old sample taken from ground not far from Chersky, ‘Pithovirus sibericum’. Not long after the discovery, a specialist toy company made a stuffed Pithovirus, added a cute smile, and called it Zombie Virus. ‘The whole thing started going crazy,’ Claverie says.

A permafrost sample - Jeremy Suyker

The sci-fi name challenged Claverie’s academic instincts but it has also amplified his and Abergel’s research over a decade in which the climate crisis has become more urgent. The couple have continued to revive more than a dozen distinct viruses from permafrost, including in the last meals found in the frozen stomachs of woolly mammoths. In one case they reanimated a virus that had hibernated for 50,000 years.

None of these viruses would pose a risk to humans even beyond the controlled environment of the Marseille lab; they are specific to their amoeba hosts. But the scientists are anxious to raise awareness of potential threats that may still emerge. ‘If there are viruses that have been preserved for 50,000 years, there will probably be others from long before that,’ Claverie says. ‘The human species is only 200,000 years old. We don’t know what kind of viruses existed before that and we’re certain our immune systems were never exposed to them.’

There have been early warning signs of the health effects of climate change in the Arctic. In 2016, a young boy and thousands of livestock died in the Yamal-Nenets region of Russia when a reindeer that had been dead for decades thawed in a record heatwave, releasing the anthrax bacteria.

Scientists fear that centuries-old shallow graves that herders used for livestock (firewood being too scarce to burn carcasses) may become anthrax infection sites, although the disease is not contagious between people. Meanwhile, the DNA of the smallpox and influenza viruses has been detected in human corpses that had been frozen for over a century. Those samples were not revived and even the deadliest virus poses no threat if it remains locked in permafrost. But Claverie fears that this may be about to change.

Over the past four decades, the Arctic has warmed up four times faster than the global average – and up to seven times faster in parts of Norway and Russia. A doom loop known as Arctic amplification involves the absorption of more sunlight as a result of the loss of reflective ice, leading to further warming and melting.

View from Chersky stone hill, Siberia - Alamy Stock Photo

Melting ice is bad news for polar bears and other Arctic fauna but there is perhaps less awareness of the effects of thawing permafrost. Earth that has been frozen solid is turning to mud, causing giant sinkholes to open up. Phone lines, roads, airport runways and whole towns are at risk.

Meanwhile, the thawing of organic matter within permafrost is releasing vast quantities of methane, creating a second vicious cycle as the potent greenhouse gas exacerbates global warming. These effects strike fear into the hearts of scientists, but present opportunities to businesses and nations still struggling to break bad habits. Melting sea ice is opening up shipping routes to support growing industrial exploitation of thawing ground that is becoming more viable as a source of minerals and fuel.

Russian nuclear-powered icebreakers are supplying plants that make up the growing Yamal liquified natural gas project. In Norway, Canada and the US, prospectors are eyeing up Arctic ground for the precious and rare metals and minerals needed to power technology such as batteries for electric vehicles. As workforces the size of large towns gather at these sites, Claverie worries about the potential threat of exposure to viruses that may be churned up in the course of drilling and digging.

‘There are a lot of sharks in Australia, but if you don’t go surfing, that’s fine,’ he says, reaching for a metaphor from an even warmer climate to illustrate the point that there is no danger without exposure to an underlying hazard. ‘But now, with the development of industrial activities in the Arctic, we are going to have contact with these things.’

Then there are the effects of Covid. The pandemic has been positive for investment in viral research, but Claverie is also concerned that this is bringing us closer to danger. Parts of the scientific community are going out in search of exotic viruses that they know are deadly to humans. Yet one bite from a bat in the field, or a slip of a needle, is all it can take for a disastrous outbreak to occur.

Claverie shows me two photos from an Arctic research centre in which a baby mammoth carcass is laid out on a slab. In the official image, scientists wear masks and full-body protective suits. In another snap taken privately, a small crowd in everyday clothing gathers around the animal as if it were an item on Antiques Roadshow. ‘There are scientists in Russia who are already trying to revive viruses that infected mammoths and woolly rhinos,’ the professor adds. ‘This is totally stupid and dangerous. You do not revive viruses that infect animals.’

Jean-Michel Claverie was nearly 70 when he travelled to Siberia to study 'zombie viruses' - Jeremy Suyker

Claverie is part of an increasingly vocal campaign within the science community to prioritise surveillance over prospecting, finding sick patients early rather than investing millions in the risky search for pathogens in the wild. The Marseille lab is now part of UArctic, a consortium of educational institutes that is working to establish a monitoring network and quarantine protocols in the event of an infection from a permafrost virus. ‘The idea is that you capture the virus before it becomes a pandemic.’

Yet scientific cooperation with Russia, which has the largest share of permafrost (two-thirds of the country sits above it), has been on ice since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, blocking access to researchers and samples. Claverie is worried about this collaborative breakdown, as well as Putin’s disregard for climate targets and rush to exploit Arctic resources. ‘My trip was funded partly by the Russian Academy of Sciences,’ he says. ‘Those things don’t exist any more, they are frozen.’

Up in Claverie’s own office, fragments of mammoth bones sit on a bookshelf. The professor smuggled them out of Russia along with his permafrost samples in 2019. He is glad he was able to make it to Siberia before the pandemic and the Ukraine invasion. Either way, he sees no reason to return now he has proved his point: that the world should be alert to the viruses that may be released from thawing permafrost.

He has grave concerns about the future but does not come across as a doomsayer; he is driven by a natural curiosity and passion for science. Work at the lab goes on to find viruses in existing samples, including thousands stored at a polar research institute near Hamburg. Meanwhile, he has expanded his interest south to Antarctica.

He tells me he has already made promising discoveries in samples of sediment he asked scientists on an Italian research vessel to retrieve from beneath the Ross Sea in 2022. Only a last-minute change of the expedition’s budget prevented him from travelling to the frozen south himself. As he sails through his notional retirement in Marseille, he says Abergel’s relative youth, apart from anything else, keeps him working. ‘Perhaps when she retires I will stop, but until then I’m not going to go on a cruise by myself,’ he says, before returning to his screen.