The Economist - Can anyone stop Narendra Modi? Part 6

Such missteps aside, Europe's nervousness about the emergence of China has abated of late. Perhaps Europeans feel more secure, having survived the euro crisis. Or perhaps they have become more pragmatic, realising that they need China to boost their anaemic growth. Rather than fretting that China is buying European firms on the cheap, European governments these days are competing to attract Chinese investment (see article).

It helps that China has become more tractable in trade disputes. The two sides have settled a long row over underpriced Chinese solar panels. Ahead of Mr Xi's visit, China also dropped its threats to penalise imports of wine and polysilicon (used to make solar panels); and the EU dropped charges of alleged dumping by Chinese makers of telecoms equipment (though not an inquiry into alleged illegal subsidies). The EU likes to think the change is a response to its more muscular approach. More likely, it reflects China's worry about being excluded from a series of interlocking trade agreements that America is negotiating with the EU, with countries of the Pacific and with selected partners to liberalise trade in services.

"The Chinese are difficult but you can negotiate with them and they will usually respect the deal. With the Russians it's impossible," says one figure in Brussels. Mr Xi put it more poetically in Le Soir, a Belgian newspaper. "Rocks cannot interrupt the course of a river in its tumultuous voyage to the ocean. I am convinced that no problem or difference can halt the march of Sino-European friendship and co-operation."

More than Sino-European relations, though, the unstoppable river may be the flow of Chinese goods around the world. A recent paper for Bruegel, a think-tank, co-written by Jim O'Neill, a former Goldman Sachs economist who coined the term "BRIC" (for the fast-rising economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China), predicts some striking changes. China has already overtaken America as the biggest single trader and will match the EU by 2020. By then, China's share of global GDP (measured at purchasing-power parity) will also probably surpa.s.s the EU's. Some European countries will lose their share of global trade faster than others. On current trends, by 2020 China will become the biggest single destination for German exports (overtaking France) and the second-biggest for France (displacing Belgium, but still behind Germany). Italy and Germany will export more to emerging and developing markets than to their euro-zone partners (unlike France, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands).

All this raises some big questions. Internationally, it will be ever harder for Europeans to justify their disproportionate seats and voting weights in the IMF and World Bank. That may push some to reconsider the idea of a single seat for the EU or perhaps the euro zone. At home, the implications may be harder still. If European countries trade more with the outside world than with each other, the commitment to a single currency may weaken. Yet diverging trade patterns may also mean that euro-zone countries have to become more integrated to be better prepared to resist asymmetric shocks from external partners.

Europe and Chimerica.

Some Europeans console themselves with the thought that the Chinese miracle cannot last for ever. They also hope a transatlantic deal will allow America and Europe to set global trade rules and standards for years to come. When it comes to China, Europe wants first to test its readiness to open its markets through an investment agreement before thinking of a wider trade pact.

Yet a transatlantic trade deal could easily be halted by political obstacles. Mr Obama has already told Europeans in private that they need the agreement more than the Americans do. And he has warned them that America would not tolerate an agreement that, together with the euro zone's deflationary policy, serves only to increase Europe's trade surplus, particularly with America. Mr O'Neill says that, in any case, trade deals will not do much to alter underlying trends, even if China's growth slows.

So although recent visits flatter some in Brussels into thinking that the EU can be part of a G3 with America and China, Europe remains the weakest link. The EU's exclusive competence in trade gives it real bargaining power. But the single trade policy, like the single currency, makes sense only as part of an effort to stimulate liberalisation and economic dynamism at home. Anything less will be swept away by the flow of globalisation.

Economist.com/blogs/charlemagne.

Britain.

Politics: Winding down.

Ever-smaller offices: Pressed suits Commuting: Metroland spreads out Scottish independence: Nothing sticks Language: Great Scots!

Official statistics: Con census Overseas students: How to ruin a global brand Nuclear decommissioning: A glowing review Lads' mags: Nuts goes t.i.ts up Bagehot: The pinstriped proletarian Bagehot: Internship.

Politics.

Winding down.

Over a year before the general election, Parliament is already clocking off Apr 5th 2014 | From the print edition PARLIAMENT feels different from usual. The lobbies and corridors are quieter. The queues in the canteens are shorter. Records of internet activity in the Palace of Westminster show that monthly visits to YouTube have overtaken those to Parliament's information pages. Visits to cricket websites are up, too. The division bells still ring in MPs' offices to announce votes and the wood-panelled committee rooms are still busy-but debates tend to be on independent (and sometimes eccentric) initiatives by MPs rather than on government bills. Each seems to be doing his own thing.

Britain's Parliament normally stands out for its raucous debates, its might and its bustle. Unlike America's Congress, it is not p.r.o.ne to long spells of deadlock; unlike France's National a.s.sembly, it is not subordinate to a monarch-like president; unlike the German Bundestag, regional legislatures do not dilute its power. And not long ago it was a whirlwind of activity. In the 2010-12 session the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition pa.s.sed 42 bills overhauling the national finances and most major public services.

But last year's Queen's Speech introduced just 15 bills, several of them minor. With seven weeks left in the parliamentary year, MPs have pa.s.sed only 801 pages of government legislation (excluding money-raising measures and bills mostly debated in the last session). Even in the unusually short 2012-13 session they managed more than twice as much. Thirteen months before the next general election, the legislative motor is spluttering.

Why? "They pa.s.sed a h.e.l.l of a lot of legislation in early sessions, much more so than Blair or Thatcher," explains Peter Riddell of the Inst.i.tute for Government. So the government soon ran out of policies that both sides of the coalition found acceptable. It is now stuck. Having fixed the parliamentary term at five years, it must sit out the remaining months.

The slumber of all parliaments Amid the torpor, minds are turning to the election. "A year ago all the conversations were about policy; now it is positioning and campaigning," observes one MP. Those with swing seats, particularly Lib Dems who need to overcome their party's poor polling, are using the quiet time to woo const.i.tuents. Some spend as little as a day a week in Westminster.

Other MPs are away from Parliament for different reasons. For those with comfortable majorities, foreign junkets and media careers beckon. "I've never had more time to write," chuckles one. So occupied are some MPs with their second jobs that Andrew Lansley, the leader of the House of Commons, is said to have reminded them that their first duty is to their voters. Scottish MPs have a less cushy distraction: canva.s.sing voters ahead of the referendum on independence, which will take place in September.

Those left in Westminster spend their time on three main things. One is scrutiny. Since 2010 select committees have been elected by MPs rather than by party bosses. That has enlivened them. They are busy holding the government to account and, in the case of the Consolidation Bills committee, tidying up outdated legislation. One recent victim was a series of 19th-century laws governing the railways in Imperial India. "The romantic in me was rather sad to see them go," says Robert Buckland, one of its members.

Others pursue idiosyncratic political campaigns. Peter Bone, an outspoken Tory, is trying to rename the August Bank Holiday after Margaret Thatcher. Other campaigns concern bread-and-b.u.t.ter matters like household bills and consumer rights. Robert Halfon, the Conservative MP for Harlow, a blue-collar town in Ess.e.x, is especially prolific. His Additional Charges for Utility Bills Not Paid by Direct Debit (Limits) Bill awaits its second reading. In the lobbies and tearooms these campaigning MPs seek their colleagues' support for such private members' bills, Early Day Motions (short written declarations) and backbench debates.

Other parliamentarians are busy agitating within their parties. Pressure groups of MPs are becoming more vocal, and new ones like Renewal (a campaign for working-cla.s.s Conservatism) and One Nation (a gang of young Labour MPs) have sprung up. Some of these publish reports and papers, others host guest speakers. "Every five minutes there is another b.l.o.o.d.y supper club," groans one MP in a marginal seat. These gatherings mostly serve as networking opportunities. More troublingly, for party leaders, they are also perfect places for idle hands to make trouble: for leadership pretenders to peac.o.c.k and for disgruntled MPs to plot and scheme. Tory backbenchers have taken to gathering signatures on letters grousing about government policy.

The depth of Westminster's legislative lull may be unusual, but it is not entirely new. In the 1850s the Spectator, a news magazine, reported that Parliament was so quiet "you may hear a bill drop." In the 18th century MPs could talk for as long as they liked-and often did-as their colleagues ate oranges and cracked nuts. Something for MPs to ponder, in between doing not very much.

Ever-smaller offices Pressed suits Feeling a bit cramped? Blame management theory Apr 5th 2014 | From the print edition "PROJECT gold" and "Project Nexus" sound like plans for bank heists or military a.s.saults. In reality, they are the names for KPMG's ongoing attempt to squeeze its 6,700 London employees into ever smaller s.p.a.ces. Since 2006 the professional-services firm has reduced the number of offices it uses in London from seven to two. By the spring of 2015 everybody will be crammed into one building in Canary Wharf.

According to data from the British Council for Offices (BCO), an industry club, the average office tenant now uses around 11 square metres per worker, 35% less than in 1997. A new building in Ludgate Hill, in London's financial district, will allocate just eight square metres to each employee. In many offices, rows of "hot" desks have replaced individual offices and even cubicles. "Nowadays it's almost frowned on to have your own office," claims Nick Wentworth Stanley, of i2 Offices, a big serviced property firm.

Firms have long known that only about half of all desks are in use at any moment, as employees work odd hours or disappear to meetings, but it was difficult to fill the spares. Better IT systems now mean that people need not be tied to a particular desk. They need not even be in the office at all: as cloud computing and virtual offices take off, more people are working from home or from other places, further reducing the need for desks.

Aside from cheapness, there is a motive behind this squashing. Inspired by Silicon Valley, firms are trying to make their offices into "collaborative s.p.a.ces", where people b.u.mp into each other and chat usefully. KPMG's redesigned Canary Wharf offices will include lots of "breakout s.p.a.ces" where employees can relax, and quiet rooms where people can get away from hubbub, says Alastair Young, who is planning the move. He thinks this will both improve productivity and save money.

In this happy new world, offices are not just places to work but also a way of expressing corporate ident.i.ty and a means of attracting and retaining staff. At the offices of Bain & Company, a management consultancy, inspirational quotes on walls help workers to identify with Bain's brand, explains Sam Axtell, the company's operations director. Games rooms and relaxing s.p.a.ces help them "release alpha waves".

This flummery has a practical consequence: it means more workers can be crammed into the middles of cities. Fewer firms now require suburban back offices, says Sandra Jones of Ramidus, a property consultancy. Between 2001 and 2012 the number of workers employed by large firms in Croydon, on the edge of London, declined by almost a quarter, to around 34,000. In Manchester and Birmingham, too, new office jobs have been created in rejuvenated city centres at the expense of suburbs. This may be one reason commutes are lengthening (see article).

Not everyone is delighted by the rise of cramped hot desks. At Broadcasting House, the BBC's new offices in London, a shortage of good desks has led to frantic morning scrambles. A manager at a financial firm in the City complains that since his firm redesigned its office, there are only enough phones for one between two. KPMG has seen crushes at lifts and in the canteen; the crowds have also put pressure on the air-conditioning system.

A modest backlash is under way, in an unexpected quarter. Google's new offices in King's Cross will have all sorts of collaborative s.p.a.ce. But workers will still get their own private desks. Where that company leads, others tend to follow.

Commuting Metroland spreads out The cost of Britain's strict planning laws is measured in longer commutes Apr 5th 2014 | From the print edition BORIS JOHNSON, the mayor of London, says his city is like a "gigantic undersea coelenterate" sucking talent and people from the rest of the country and from abroad. And so it is. Between 2001 and 2011 London's population grew by fully 12%. But this is to understate the pull of London and other successful British cities. They are less like jelly fish and more like octopuses.

In the 1980s few people in England and Wales travelled more than ten kilometres to work, with most of the exceptions in the "stockbroker belt" surrounding London. Since then, population growth in cities like London and Manchester notwithstanding, commutes have become ever longer. New figures show that the average journey to work grew from 13.4 kilometres in 2001 to 15 kilometres in 2011. Middle-aged men have the farthest to go (see chart).

The shift from manufacturing to services and the rise of dual-earner households are driving this trend. Better transport means people can travel farther, too. Though most people still commute by car, rail travel increased by 37% between 2001 and 2011.

Another cause is Britain's tight planning rules, which make building on the fringes of big cities very difficult. The combination of high demand and limited supply has the expected result: according to Nationwide, a building society, house prices in London increased by 18.2% over the past year, compared with 9.2% across Britain. So commuters are forced ever farther out. Mr Johnson's remit does not yet cover them. But the mayor, like his city, grows in power and ambition.

Scottish independence Nothing sticks Scottish nationalists are made of Teflon Apr 5th 2014 | GLASGOW | From the print edition THE campaign to take Scotland out of the United Kingdom has taken a terrific beating of late. In February the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats ganged up to declare that an independent Scotland could not share the pound. Jose Manuel Barroso, the EU Commission president, added that it would be "extremely difficult if not impossible" for Scotland to join the EU on its own, as it wants to. Standard Life, a big Scottish insurer, and RBS, a bank, hinted they would move to England. Then came figures showing that Scotland was running a bigger fiscal deficit than the rest of Britain. All enough to turn Scottish voters against independence, surely?

Not in the least. An average of ten polls since this drumroll of doom began shows that the proportion of Scots who would leave the United Kingdom has risen by two percentage points, to 43% (excluding those who do not know). It is the independence camp's best run of results yet, says John Curtice, a psephologist at Strathclyde University. Odder still, the number who specifically think independence would be good for their economy is growing.

Something like this happened in Quebec's 1995 independence campaign. At the outset, pro-union businessmen and politicians warned that separation would lead to high public debts and imperil NAFTA and jobs. Jacques Parizeau, Quebec's then premier, lampooned all such warnings as bluff and bl.u.s.ter. Opponents of independence would soon claim more jobs were threatened than actually existed in Quebec, he joked. This tactic worked, says Robert Young, a professor at the University of Western Ontario. The "yes" campaign gained 6% in the final two months of the campaign; it only just lost.

Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party and the architect of independence, has learned that script. And he has another advantage: his opponents are unpopular and p.r.o.ne to missteps. The "no" campaign scored an own goal on March 29th, when an unnamed British minister was reported by the Guardian newspaper to have mused favourably about a currency union. Even before that, 45% of Scots thought George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, was bluffing when he ruled one out.

Mr Salmond's "yes" campaign is built on the formidable Scottish National Party machine, which has outgunned its opponents in the last two elections. Blair Jenkins, chief executive of the campaign, claims more than 10,000 pro-independence activists, who get instant reb.u.t.tal lines for every attack launched from Westminster. He reckons his foot-sloggers, by means of telephone, door-knocking and street encounter, already have details on about 1m of Scotland's 4.1m voters, all graded according to their sympathy for the independence cause. All smiles, Mr Jenkins says his database is tracking constant movement towards his corner.

The "no" campaign is convinced that ruling out a currency union will pay off in the long run: their intelligence suggests currency and pensions are the top two worries for Scottish voters. The unionists have imported some snazzy voter communication and identification technology from America. But only now are they receiving the donations to allow them to match the number of full-time staff deployed by the "yes" campaign.

And they seem aloof. Whereas the "yes" team work from an efficient-looking bas.e.m.e.nt off a busy street in central Glasgow, the "no" folk occupy a gracious former townhouse off a quieter leafier square up a hill. Rather late, they are moving down the hill to offices closer to the voters above a shopping centre. "We are stepping things up," says Alistair Darling, leader of the "no" campaign, in between writing letters to donors. They need to.

Language Great Scots!

The Scots language gets some powerful boosters Apr 5th 2014 | From the print edition Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie AMONG the publications that the Scottish Book Trust, a charity funded in part by the Scottish government, sent to bairns last year was "Katie's Moose: A Keek-a-boo Book for Wee Folk." In this tale, Katie hunts for a menagerie of beasties, locating a pig "ahint the chair, daein a jig" and a "broon bear" whose "airm looks gey sair." The Scots language, long derided as bad English with a thick accent or merely a northern dialect, now enjoys the backing of the state.

In 2011 the Scottish census asked for the first time whether people spoke Scots. Some 1.5m said yes. The true number may be higher, reckons Christine Robinson of the Scottish Language Dictionaries, a research centre, since not all Scots speakers describe themselves as such. Defining it is tricky. A study by the Scottish government in 2010 found that 64% of adults did not think of Scots as a language, "more just a way of speaking."

Boosters point out that Scots has been officially recognised since the British government ratified the European Charter on Regional or Minority Languages in 2001. And Scots has its own distinct history, grammar and lexicon. But it is not standardised: Ulster Scots, spoken in Northern Ireland, is among the varieties. As part of a project to translate "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" into as many languages as possible, eight versions are being produced in Scots.

Speakers of Scottish Gaelic, who number just 58,000, have received more attention: money has been lavished on radio stations, schools and bilingual road signs. But politicians in the devolved Scottish Parliament are now encouraging Scots too. The government is setting up a network of Scots co-ordinators to help teachers. Children are no longer scolded for using Scots at school, according to Michael Hance of the Scots Language Centre. "Studying Scotland", a new online education resource, will "ettle tae place Scots on an equal fittin wi the ither Scottish elements o the curriculum". The first "Scots Toun" prize will soon be awarded to the place judged to have encouraged Scots most vigorously.

All this sits a little oddly with modern Scottish nationalism, which is civic and inclusive rather than cultural and ethnic. Those who want independence for Scotland tend to argue that the country would be richer alone, not purer. But James Robertson of Itchy Coo, which publishes "Katie's Moose" and 44 other Scots children's books, argues that the renewed interest in Scottish culture, literature and language has pushed the politics of independence, not the other way round. If nothing else, a Scots revival would be something to fall back on if, as still seems likely, the independence vote this September is lost.

Official statistics Con census Britain's decennial population count has been saved. Now make it work better Apr 5th 2014 | From the print edition WHEN the first results of the 2011 census were published, almost two years ago, the most striking discovery was straightforward. Britain's population, it turned out, was around 500,000 bigger than statisticians had thought. For all that Britons are relentlessly surveyed, only a full count could reveal the size of the country, yet alone that of individual cities, towns and neighbourhoods.

Given that finding, the proposal made in 2010 by an austerity-minded coalition government to sc.r.a.p Britain's decennial census seemed odd. It now looks as though the census will survive after all. On March 27th the Office for National Statistics (ONS) concluded that a full population count is still necessary, though many people will in future be asked to fill in the census online. In all likelihood, the government will follow its recommendations. Academics, market researchers and social historians breathed a sigh of relief.

Sc.r.a.pping the census in favour of rolling surveys of a portion of the population was always a silly idea. A full count can provide information at the level of a single street, which even very large surveys could never do. The census also supplies detailed data about poorly understood groups of people, such as some ethnic minorities. Each year billions of pounds of government spending are allocated according to estimates derived from the census. Its data determine where new schools and hospitals are built, where planning permission for housing is granted and where money is spent on transport.

The census is hardly perfect. It is expensive-the 2011 edition cost around 480m ($800m). Its findings go out of date quickly. And it is increasingly difficult to conduct, as a rising proportion of people do not fill in their forms. In many European countries, including Germany and the Netherlands, the authorities use administrative data collected by public bodies in place of a traditional census.

In Britain that would be tricky. The nation lacks a central population register or an ident.i.ty-card system that would allow administrative data to be linked up. By northern European standards, Britain also has lots of irregular migrants who have little interaction with the state. That makes a full count unavoidable. Yet the authorities should still be investing in working out how to use administrative data better, argues Chris Skinner, a statistician at the London School of Economics. That would help to provide a check on the accuracy of census and survey data, as well as providing timelier and more precise estimates in between census years.

The ONS agrees-and it is researching the possibility of using government data better. The trouble is that doing so will mean spending money, which is precisely what ministers wanted to stop doing when they pushed the ONS into thinking about cancelling the census. Data users will be hoping that they have a change of heart. If not, Britain might be stuck with inadequate numbers for decades to come.

Overseas students How to ruin a global brand Foreign students are going off English universities Apr 5th 2014 | From the print edition BRITAIN'S private schools are one of its most successful exports. The children of the well-heeled flock to them, whether from China, Nigeria or Russia: the number of foreign pupils rose by 1.4% in the last year alone. One headmaster recently asked a room full of pupils whether they flew business cla.s.s to Britain. Only a few hands went up, suggesting they were not quite as cosseted as he had thought. Then a boy explained: many of the pupils fly first cla.s.s instead.

Yet foreign students, whether educated in British private schools or elsewhere, are decreasingly likely to go to English universities. According to the Higher Education Funding Council for England, 307,200 overseas students began their studies in the country in 2012-13, down from 312,000 two years earlier and the first drop in 29 years. Student numbers from the rest of the EU fell-probably a result of the increase in annual tuition fees in England from 6,000 ($10,000) a year to 9,000. But arrivals from India and Pakistan declined most sharply.

In contrast to the visa regime for private schools, which is extremely lax (the Home Office counts private schools as favoured sponsors) student visas have been tightened. Foreign students used to be allowed to work for up to two years after graduating. They now have only four months to find a job paying upwards of 20,600 if they want to stay in Britain.

This change was intended to deal with sham colleges that were in effect offering two-year work visas. But it seems to have put off serious students too. Nick Hillman of the Higher Education Policy Inst.i.tute says the government has sent unclear messages about the sort of immigration it wants to restrict. An emphasis on holding down net immigration deters young Indians and Pakistanis in particular. Australia and America, which have more relaxed entry criteria for students, are becoming more favoured destinations. Colin Riordan, Cardiff University's vice-chancellor, adds that Britain's student-visa regime has become more onerous and fiddly overall.

As a result, Britain is losing out to other countries in the contest for talent-an oddity, given how often the prime minister bangs on about the "global race". Its unwelcoming stance will harm its long-term prospects. And the drift of foreign students from leading British private schools to American colleges may have another, somewhat happier, consequence: America might become rather better at cricket.

Nuclear decommissioning A glowing review Britain is paying dearly for neglecting its nuclear waste Apr 5th 2014 | From the print edition SWILLING around murky ponds in the oldest part of Sellafield, a nuclear research and reprocessing centre in c.u.mbria, is a soupy, radioactive sludge. For years boffins working on Britain's first military and civil nuclear programmes abandoned spent fuel and other nastiness into the pools and tanks, which now grow decrepit. Though perhaps not the "slow-motion Chern.o.byl" which some environmental campaigners make out, the site is subject to one of the most complex nuclear clean-ups in the world.

Sellafield is the trickiest of several challenges facing the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), a government body that manages the contractors who swab out Britain's defunct facilities. Their projects swallow up about two-thirds of the budget of the Department of Energy and Climate Change; Sellafield alone costs 1.7 billion ($2.8 billion) a year, almost as much as the roughly 2 billion spent subsidising renewable energy in 2013. On March 31st NDA awarded a 7 billion contract to decommission 12 more of Britain's oldest reactor sites over 14 years to a consortium including Babc.o.c.k, a British engineering firm, and Fluor, an American one.

These big sums reflect problems peculiar to Britain. It ploughed into nuclear bomb-making in the 1940s, and nuclear power in the 1950s, with little plan for how contaminated structures would be dealt with. Its first reactors were each built to different specifications, and all contain more irradiated material than is found in more modern designs. The pioneers underestimated the costs of decommissioning, and the meagre sums put aside for this were further diluted during privatisation, says Malcolm Grimston of Chatham House, a think-tank.

Mismanagement has probably made a tough job more difficult. In 2009 bosses thought Sellafield would cost 46.6 billion to make safe; the latest estimate is 70 billion, and rising. In February MPs on the public accounts committee slammed the performance of Nuclear Management Partners, the private consortium currently contracted to detoxify it. They questioned NDA's decision, in October, to award it a second five-year contract, and said taxpayers bore most of the risks.

The NDA has "learnt lessons" from Sellafield, says Bill Hamilton, a spokesman. No one expects the sites in its latest contract-which include shuttered power stations at Hinkley Point, Sizewell and Dungeness-to prove nearly as complicated. Its chosen contractor will remove some of the nastiest waste and demolish superfluous buildings, but will not have to dismantle the reactors themselves, which will stand idle, and toxic, for up to 70 years.

That will give some of the remaining radiation time to dissipate, making the final demolition a little easier. But this slow process is also a way of putting off the bill. Stephen Thomas of the University of Greenwich would prefer a speedier clean-up, which might reduce the likelihood of future leaks and also ensure the skills needed to safely dispose of the stations will not decay. He regrets that each year NDA has only enough money to do "the minimum needed to keep them out of court".

Shaving decades off the decommissioning periods would indeed probably save money in the long run. Yet that depends on authorities swiftly finding a place to hold the radioactive rubble. At present shallow vaults in newer parts of Sellafield hold Britain's most troublesome waste, but that is an expensive and temporary solution, and not a good way to secure the many thousands of tonnes of additional toxic debris that would be produced by taking apart Britain's reactors.

Most people now agree that the best solution is to bury it. For years the government has sought councils willing to host such a site in return for jobs and money. Last January politicians in c.u.mbria vetoed applications from eager councillors in two of its districts. This summer the government will probably nudge them again, and with good reason. Sellafield's neighbours know as well as anyone what happens when a generation pa.s.ses the buck.

Lads' mags Nuts goes t.i.ts up Apr 5th 2014 | From the print edition After a decade of delighting British teenage boys, scandalising housewife shoppers and presenting thousands of naked female b.r.e.a.s.t.s to the world, Nuts, a magazine, is to fold. It once represented an innovation in magazines, by stretching the definition of the saucy, but essentially non-p.o.r.nographic, British "lads' mag" to the limits. One issue of the magazine, which at its peak enjoyed a weekly print circulation of over 300,000, contained images of over 200 naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s. It also depicted lesser numbers of cars and guns. Nuts was initially less fleshly. The prevalence of b.r.e.a.s.t.s proliferated during intense compet.i.tion-known to insiders as the "b.o.o.b war"-with a rival publication, Zoo. But Nuts was undone, in the end, by the availability of innumerable free t.i.ts, and much besides, online.

Bagehot The pinstriped proletarian What other politicians should, and should not, learn from Nigel Farage Apr 5th 2014 | From the print edition IT WAS so dark, when Bagehot first met Nigel Farage outside an East Anglian village hall, that the leader of the populist UK Independence Party (UKIP) was only visible when he sucked on his cigarette. The encounter was more than a year ago and over in seconds. But you would not guess that from the fulsome way Mr Farage describes it and the meeting of Suffolk "Kippers" that followed ("it was like the black hole of Calcutta in there!") a.s.sailed by his blokeish charm, at UKIP's sw.a.n.ky new Mayfair office, your columnist reflects that Mr Farage is not only an unusual British politician, with his spivvy pinstripes and jackanapes gags, but also unusually good.

It is said he rarely forgets a face, which is amazing, given the quant.i.ty of ale he sinks on the campaign trail. And given the thousands of miles he covers, as the talismanic leader of possibly the fastest-growing party in British political history. In tough times, UKIP's blend of Euroscepticism, mild xenophobia and yearning for the old, conservative Britain that Mr Farage's hail-fellow bonhomie recalls is political dynamite. The party has roughly doubled its membership in three years, to 35,000, and is expected to top Britain's elections to the European Parliament in May. As the first truly national political movement to emerge in Britain since the Labour Party in the late 19th century, UKIP has shaken British politics. If its mainstream rivals are wise, its insurgency will also inspire a more profound democratic overhaul.

No longer able to dismiss the party as a bunch of "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists"-as the Tory prime minister David Cameron once did-they are scrambling to understand and maybe emulate it. A general rise in populism is a sign of this: including Labour's serial apologies for the ma.s.s immigration its governments allowed and Mr Cameron's promise of a referendum on Britain's EU membership. So was a televised debate on April 2nd between Mr Farage and Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, on Britain's EU membership. Struggling in the polls, Mr Clegg wanted to tap Mr Farage's popularity-though, in the event, the UKIP leader battered him with savvy putdowns.

UKIP's established rivals are right to be anxious. The party's rise has mainly damaged the Conservatives: a bit under half of UKIP voters are reckoned to be disaffected Tories. But the other two main parties have supplied most of the rest, and Labour's losses are expected to grow. Mr Farage predicts UKIP's spending on the European Parliament elections will be concentrated in the Labour strongholds of the post-industrial Midlands and north. Yet mainstream politicians will not see off UKIP by rivalling the populism of a party whose 2010 election manifesto amounted to 120 billion in unbudgeted spending pledges. Instead of trying to copy it, they need to consider why it is so popular.

With its roots in a Eurosceptic pressure group, formed by academics with a view to getting Britain out of the European Union, UKIP had until recently little to say on any other issue. That changed in the run-up to the 2010 general election, when the party began to connect Euroscepticism with public hostility to immigration from Europe, in increasingly propitious circ.u.mstances. Mr Cameron's efforts to modernise his party, by stressing such lofty metropolitan concerns as gay rights, alienated traditionalists, while the euro-zone crisis boosted Euroscepticism. The Lib Dems' decision to go into coalition with the Tories created a vacancy for a protest party. Almost accidentally, UKIP had discovered its core const.i.tuency-aggrieved, and deeply pessimistic, working-cla.s.s white men. They are the Britons who have proved least adaptable to globalisation. They also feel least represented by the middle-cla.s.s, Oxbridge-educated political cla.s.s that rules the country, whichever party is in power. It is this disgruntlement that Mr Farage, almost alone in his party of, to be fair, quite a few nutters and fruitcakes, has proved most adept at speaking to. When he castigates his rivals as "cardboard cut-outs", for their similar backgrounds and almost total lack of professional experience outside politics, he nails an important truth.

That is not all that can be said for his party, which is much less objectionable than many of the populist outfits growing across Europe. This reflects Britons' historic wariness of hate preachers, which UKIP's rise has in fact reinforced, by hastening the demise of the racist British National Party. But that does not mean the party has good answers to the problems its leader outlines. It is economically illiterate and wrong on every big issue. And Mr Farage can be horribly cynical. When your columnist put it to the UKIP boss, who lives partly in Brussels and is married to a German, that he simply did not believe his claim to feel "uncomfortable" at the babble of foreign languages on British public transport, Mr Farage bl.u.s.tered unconvincingly.

UKIP if you want to That is why younger, better-educated voters-especially female ones-are warier of UKIP. And given Britain's first-past-the-post system, this may be enough to stop it winning any seats in next year's general election. But that is nothing to celebrate. It would mean the party was sufficiently powerful, in a crowded field, to influence the composition of Britain's next government, but not to provide its core supporters with the representation they crave. Instead of improving British democracy, Mr Farage's insurgency would have exacerbated one of its biggest weaknesses.

So it would be better for the mainstream parties to undertake remedial action themselves. There are no easy answers for disaffected Britons fighting the economic currents. But there are some difficult ones. Britain needs a more diverse political cla.s.s than the increasingly professionalised and h.o.m.ogeneous one it is getting. More urgently, it needs party leaders to start prizing creative thinking-especially about the country's left-behind-above personal loyalty. That would be a boon for everyone, not just the aggrieved minority whom Mr Farage has helpfully identified.

Internship Apr 5th 2014 | From the print edition Internship: The Britain section is looking for an intern to work for several months this summer. Applicants should send a CV and an article of 600-700 words suitable for publication in the section. A stipend will be paid. Applications must reach us by May 3rd at

International.

Post-conflict societies: To h.e.l.l and back.

Illiterate voters: Making their mark.

Post-conflict societies.

To h.e.l.l and back.

How nations torn apart by atrocity or civil war can st.i.tch themselves together again Apr 5th 2014 | KIGALI | From the print edition FEW pages of history are as hard to read as those describing Rwanda between April and July in 1994. Working by hand rather than with the industrial methods that the n.a.z.is used to kill Jews, and at more than three times the speed of the Holocaust, militias known as Interahamwe from the ethnic Hutu majority, and others, slaughtered at least 800,000 Tutsis (and Hutu moderates) to remove them from shared land. They raped, tortured and dismembered in hospitals, schools and churches. "The Interahamwe made a habit of killing young Tutsi children, in front of their parents, by first cutting off one arm, then the other," a UN official in the country recounted afterwards. "They would then gash the neck with a machete to bleed the child slowly to death but, while they were still alive, they would cut off the private parts and throw them at the faces of the terrified parents who would then be murdered with slightly greater dispatch."

On April 7th Rwandans will mark the 20th anniversary of the genocide sombrely and peacefully. Their Tutsi-led government stands out for its competence. Around 90% of Kenyans and South Africans worry about corruption; in Rwanda the share is 5%. Life expectancy is twice as high as before the genocide. The economy grows year after year at more than 8%. Though Tutsis are the biggest beneficiaries, Hutus are not excluded.

Memories linger. The rainy season, which coincided with the genocide in 1994, is hard, not least since skeletal remains still poke out of the ground after downpours. But Rwanda's terrible history dominates neither public life nor private conversation as it did even a decade ago.

South Africa, which celebrates the 20th anniversary of its first post-apartheid poll on April 27th, has also moved a long way from its hate-filled past. Race remains a delicate subject. Unemployment is severe and the rate of violent crime sky-high. But the campaign for the general election on May 7th is a display of self-confident democracy in action: a carnival of banners and bombastic prayers, with a record number of parties on the ballot.

Some societies manage to heal the deepest of wounds. As well as the humdrum work of disarming combatants, repatriating refugees and so on, those that succeed also pursue three more ambitious aims: the commemoration of the victims, economic development and (temporarily) the restraint of social divisions.

Commemoration rea.s.sures survivors, and all those who doubt the sincerity or durability of peace agreements. Without it, re-establishing intercommunal relations is hard. The bodies of thousands of Tamils killed by Sinhalese forces in 2009 have never been given a decent burial, poisoning Sri Lanka's politics. Few have been as diligent as the Germans, who created a compound noun, Vergangenheitsbewaltigung, which roughly translates as "the struggle to come to terms with the past". Any lingering anti-Semitism is roundly condemned by politicians and other public figures. After building a Holocaust memorial in Berlin's government quarter and rebuilding synagogues, Germany now has one of the world's fastest-growing Jewish communities. "Jews here feel not just welcome, but understood," says John Feinstein, a transplant from New York.

The chance of a share in new prosperity can help draw warring groups closer-though it is not enough on its own. After decades of hostilities, bush fighters from Renamo and Frelimo, rival factions in Mozambique, struck an on-and-off peace deal in the hope of economic benefits. But repeated promises of a "peace dividend", with economic growth and a boom in foreign investment, were never enough to bring an end to Sri Lanka's long civil war.

Most nations that heal well are functioning democracies. Day-to-day negotiations in a legislature chip away at the zero-sum mentality of the battlefield. Northern Ireland's hard men now sit together at the cabinet table, seemingly with relative ease.

But enforcing new norms to replace those that drove the conflict can require measures that in other circ.u.mstances would be illiberal. Until recently, Germany banned reprints of Hitler's manifesto, "Mein Kampf". (Internet downloads and its copyright ending changed officials' minds.) Philosophers talk of the "paradox of tolerance": that upholding tolerant values may require intolerance of bigots. John Rawls, a liberal American philosopher, argued that keeping an endangered group safe may justify a measure of intolerance.