Weekend Box #119: Red Sky at Morning, Going for Growth & more

Editor’s Note

Welcome to The Weekend Box, Audley’s round-up of interesting or obscure political, business, and cultural news from around the world.

At the end of every busy week in Westminster, ministerial private offices ask their departments to submit papers to the ‘weekend box’ for Ministers and Secretaries of State to catch up with over the weekend. Similarly, we would like to send you into the weekend with a few stories to catch up with at your leisure.

So, let’s delve inside The Weekend Box.

RED SKY AT MORNING

At 04.48 this morning, Rishi Sunak walked past a man with a bin on his head to concede defeat in the general election. It was a moment that encapsulated the bizarreness and beauty of the British electoral system. A moment of humility signalling the peaceful transfer of power.

The result is first and foremost a triumph for?Keir Starmer, who has transformed his party and won an unlikely landslide victory. A devastating defeat in 2019 has been turned into an historic victory just five years later. The?Labour leader deserves his moment in the sun. We should reflect too on a perfectly designed and executed campaign that helped to get him over the line.

Yet those hoping this election would signal a shift from the ‘chaos’ of the Tories to ‘stability’ under?Labour may yet be disappointed. There are shadows on the horizon.

A number of new independent?MPs who shocked Labour in inner cities in particular, and who now threaten them from the left. The rise of Reform, the insurgent party that now sits in second place in a number of constituencies across the country. A government elected on a relatively low share of the vote, with an overall turnout as low as it’s ever been. To top it off, Nigel Farage threatening to come after Labour as he has done so successfully with the Tories in recent years. Despite the large governing majority, this parliament could yet turn out to be as turbulent as the one just gone.

But perhaps that’s for tomorrow. For now, we celebrate our democracy and the peaceful transition of power in the same spirit as former US President Bush, who left a note for his Democrat opponent in January 1993 that has since become famous: “Your success now is our country’s success,” he wrote, “I am rooting hard for you.”

Similarly, we wish?Keir Starmer well.

Image credit/Keir Starmer on Flickr/License

EU PUTS THE BLOC ON MONTENEGRO

A resolution in Montenegro’s parliament to condemn a genocide committed in the former Independent State of Croatia has put the Balkan country’s campaign to join the EU on shaky ground.

The resolution condemning the?atrocities committed at the Jasenovac concentration camp in the Independent State of Croatia during World War II was met with criticism from Croatia's PM Andrej Plenkovi? (pictured at the Jasenovac memorial site) and its government. Both?argue that Montenegro is using historical events to create unnecessary friction with the EU nation, in a way that does not align with its goal to join the union.

Following Friday's vote on the resolution,?European Council President Charles Michel cancelled a planned trip to Montenegro to meet its Prime Minister?Milojko Spaji?. The country’s President Jakov Milatovi? was also invited to Brussels on Tuesday, suggesting a serious upset has been caused. An?EU official told Politico that Council President Michel is in contact with Prime Minister Spaji?, and in an echo of the Croatian statements that perhaps doubles as a warning, that “[g]ood neighbourly relations … remain [an] essential element of the accession process.”

The resolution was first introduced to Montenegro’s parliament by pro-Serbian party leader Andrija Mandic, following a separate resolution passed in May by the UN General Assembly “condemning the?Srebrenica genocide committed against Bosniaks by Serbia in 1995.” Taking inspiration from this, Andrija Mandic's resolution focuses on the mass killings by the Croatian fascist organisation Usta?a of “Serbs, Jews, Roma, and [the regime’s] Croat opponents” at the Jasenovac camp during the war. 83,145 victims have been identified by name, though many more are believed to have been killed.

While Prime Minister?Spaji? voiced his support of the UN General Assembly's resolution, he has since lamented the “Pandora’s box of resolutions” that it opened and admitted that the vote on Andrija Mandic's resolution was “damaging … definitely not helping us.”

Image credit/Vlada Republike Hrvatske on Flickr/License

GOING FOR GROWTH

Business hasn’t been great in the UK for the past few years. We all know the reasons: Brexit, Covid, inflation, war. But among a disappointing overall picture, there are plenty of success stories.

The Sunday Times 100 is a reminder that British businesses can thrive and entrepreneurialism is alive and well in the UK. The list ranks the top 100 fastest growing private companies by increase in revenue. To make the list, a company must make a minimum of ￡5m in sales, have a minimum of five employees, and be profitable.

The figures are eye-popping. The top 50 companies all recorded on average three-figure percentage growth in sales each year for the past three years. The top eight all hit more than 200% growth.

There are some interesting trends looking at areas of business. Six of the top 10 produce consumer goods, three of which –?Rheal, Trip, and Ancient and Brave – sell supplements.

It’s not all about health and wellbeing. Jeremy Clarkson’s Hawkstone Beer, featured in Clarkson’s Farm, is 24th on the list. Purveyors of sweet treats Wafflemeister came 31st.

Tech and?consultancy businesses also featured heavily, underlying the UK’s strength in the knowledge economy and for creating innovative businesses.

The note of positivity the list brings was highlighted by Ben Francis, the founder of?Gymshark, which topped the list in 2016. Mr Francis was keen to talk up British entrepreneurs’ prospects: “in my experience working overseas, ‘brand Britain’ is very much alive.”

The Weekend Box doesn’t do adverts, but we’ll simply say that the?Audley team has played a small part in the success of Wingstop (ranked 38th).

Image credit/3HeadedMonster/License

GAME-CHANGING GAMING

2024’s summer of sport saw a new annual fixture this week: the Esports World Cup, running for the next eight weeks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Esports? That’s short for electronic sports: competitive video games played by professional individuals or teams and watched by legions of fans at events or online around the world.

Professional Esports started in East Asia in the early 2000s and spread around the world through online streaming. They’re huge among video gamers, who get to see their favourite games like Call of Duty: Warzone or Fortnite played at another level, and now in a spectacular annual tournament funded by the Saudi Public Investment Fund with a $60m (￡47.1m) prize pot. ?

The Saudi initiative builds on a string of some 314 other lavishly funded sports events and assets, including professional boxing title fights and the 2034 Fifa World Cup, as well as Newcastle FC and the LIV professional golf tour. One domestic giga project, Qiddiya, will build a whole city devoted to ‘play,’ i.e. sports and entertainment. Building the sports portfolio is a deliberate political strategy that supports the Vision 2030 mission to open Saudi Arabia up to the world and gain global influence.

Hosting the competition brings profile and revenues, but also international scrutiny regarding KSA’s human rights record around dissent and diversity. Some are staying away in protest, while Team Liquid showed up for day one in their official rainbow Pride kit to show support for LGBTQ+ people.

Esports are also about the home audience. Saudi Esports Federation Chairman Prince Faisal bin Banfar bin Sultan claims that 23.5 million out of a population of 35 million are gamers, and his strategy aims to build an Esports sector contributing $13 billion to the Kingdom’s GDP.

OWN LITTLE WORLD

South Korean parents have begun voluntarily spending time in rooms replicating the experience of solitary confinement cells in prisons, as part of a recently introduced programme responding to the growing trend of youths who have “fully withdrawn from society.”

Parents of withdrawn children are participating in the programme, which is both funded and run by the non-governmental?organisations Korea Youth Foundation and Blue Whale Recovery Centre, to learn how to build bridges with their socially isolated children.

As part of the?13-week programme, they will spend three days in one of the small, bare rooms at the programme’s ‘Happiness Factory,’ or ‘Happitory,’ without access to devices and with the feeding hole in the door to their room as their only connection to the world.

One participant in the programme told the BBC that through reading notes written by isolated young people like her son at the ‘Happitory,’ she came to?realise that her son was “protecting himself with silence because no-one understands him,” and has since accepted that she must not try to “[force] him into a specific mould.”

A 2023 survey by the South Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare found that of 15,000 19-34-year-old respondents, 5% were cutting themselves off from the world. The phenomenon has drawn comparisons with a trend first observed in the 1990s of young Japanese people choosing to live a similarly withdrawn lifestyle, known as ‘hikikomori.’

Respondents to the Health Ministry’s survey cited issues such as difficulty finding employment and relationship troubles as reasons for becoming isolated. Similarly, it has been suggested that Japan’s?hikikomori withdraw themselves due to social pressures, particularly the stigma associated with failing to meet expectations.

The methods of the ‘Happitory’ are unconventional, certainly, though they remind us of how much support our young people need as they grow into a difficult and demanding world. This is, perhaps, more important now than ever.

And that's it for this week. I hope you found something of interest that you might want to delve into further. If so, please get in touch at [email protected].

For now, that’s The Weekend Box officially closed.

Enjoy The Weekend Box? Read back issues of the Box on Audley Intelligence

Could Brexit turn to Bre-joining the EU? Read Audley Policy Director Chris Maitland 's analysis for Trade Finance Global (TFG) here

Follow Audley on LinkedIn