9/11 @ 25: THE DAY THE ORDINARY ENDED

The towers fell on a Tuesday, which is the sort of day that usually reserves its dramas for committee meetings and the slow death of office plants. Twenty-five years on, one is still obliged to notice that the sky was the colour of a particularly smug postcard, the sort that arrives from a friend who has forgotten you exist until the photograph proves otherwise. Then the first aircraft arrived, and the postcard tore itself in half.

I was not there, of course, most of us were not, I was at home from University. Distance is the modern condition, and television made sure of it. We watched the second impact live, which is a phrase that still sits in the mouth like a bad olive. Live. As if death had decided to keep office hours. The commentary teams, those professional noticers of the obvious, fell briefly silent, which is the nearest television ever comes to dignity. Then they recovered, as they always do, and began the long process of turning horror into narrative, narrative into analysis, and analysis into the sort of solemn waffle that eventually requires a theme tune.

What remains, a quarter-century later, is not so much the image of the buildings collapsing—though that has been burnt into the collective retina with the efficiency of a branding iron—as the sudden discovery that the ordinary was not protected by its ordinariness. People went to work. They carried coffee. They argued about nothing in particular in elevators that would shortly cease to exist. The banality was the point. Evil, when it bothers to show up, rarely bothers with originality. It prefers the familiar street, the familiar skyline, the familiar assumption that today will resemble yesterday closely enough to allow for lunch plans.

The aftermath was a masterclass in competitive solemnity. Flags proliferated with the enthusiasm of a rash. Politicians discovered their inner Churchill, or at any rate their inner Churchill impersonator, and the language of resolution thickened like gravy left too long on the stove. We were assured that the world had changed forever, which is the sort of claim that looks impressive until one notices that the same people making it continued to book tables at the same restaurants and complain about the same traffic. Forever is a long time, and most of us are not built for it. We are built for the next news cycle, the next scandal, the next opportunity to feel briefly important by association with catastrophe.

There was, inevitably, the war. Or rather the wars, plural, which multiplied with the generosity of a bad idea that has found funding. One could argue about the wisdom of any particular response, and many did, at great and largely pointless length. What was harder to argue with was the spectacle of a civilisation that had spent decades congratulating itself on its subtlety suddenly discovering that subtlety is of limited use when the other party has decided that aeroplanes make excellent missiles. The satire wrote itself, which is always a bad sign. When reality starts producing its own punchlines, the professional satirist is left looking for alternative employment, preferably something involving less irony and more gardening.

Memory, meanwhile, has done what memory always does: it has edited. The sharp edges have been smoothed by repetition until the event resembles a particularly grim public holiday, complete with obligatory moments of silence and the soft focus of retrospect. Young people who were not alive at the time now study it as history, which means they study it with the same mixture of duty and mild boredom that earlier generations brought to the Treaty of Versailles. The photographs remain, of course—those terrible, beautiful photographs in which the light is perfect and the smoke is photogenic and the falling bodies are reduced to abstract marks against the blue. Art has always known how to make suffering look interesting. That is one of its less attractive talents.

And yet the lament persists, dry as it may sound. One does not need to inflate the occasion with purple prose to notice that something was taken that day which has not been returned. Not innocence—innocence is a commodity that was already in short supply—but a certain unexamined confidence that the skyline was permanent, that the morning commute was a private affair between a person and their destination, that the ordinary day could be trusted to remain ordinary. That confidence has been replaced by a low-grade vigilance, the sort that checks the exits in restaurants without quite admitting it is doing so. It is not heroic. It is merely accurate.

Twenty-five years is long enough for the politicians who spoke of resolve to have been replaced by other politicians who speak of other resolves. It is long enough for the children who watched the towers fall on classroom televisions to have children of their own, who will one day be shown the same footage and asked to feel something appropriate. Feeling appropriate is a skill that can be taught, rather like table manners. Whether it is the same as understanding is another question, and one that the anniversary industry is not notably eager to answer. The dead remain dead. That is the one fact that has resisted all attempts at narrative improvement. Their names are read aloud each year with the careful neutrality of a railway timetable, and then the living go back to their living. There is no satisfactory conclusion available, which is perhaps why the occasion continues to attract the attentions of those of us who make a living from unsatisfactory conclusions. 

The towers are gone. The sky is still the same colour on a clear September morning. The difference is that we now look at it with a certain suspicion, as if it might be planning something. That suspicion is the real memorial, and it requires no plaque. It is carried, uncomfortably, in the ordinary act of looking up.

BURNHAM'S CHOICE: WELFARE OVER THE REALM

There are moments in politics when a phrase drops with the soft, wet thud of a body hitting a skip. Andy Burnham’s contribution this week was one of them. Standing at the despatch box, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom delivered a line so perfectly calibrated for the current age that it deserves to be carved into the side of a white elephant somewhere in Whitehall: national security “can’t come at the expense of social security.” Let that settle for a moment. The first duty of any government, the one they all claim with a straight face when the flags come out, has just been politely informed it must wait its turn behind the housing benefit spreadsheet. The tanks can wait. The submarines can hold their breath. The serious threats that 'cannot wait,' as the opposition kept insisting, will simply have to form an orderly queue behind the resilience of our communities, which, as we all know, is best measured in the unbroken flow of local housing allowance.

It is a masterpiece of modern political English. It sounds compassionate. It sounds balanced. It even sounds vaguely profound if you say it slowly enough while staring at a middle distance that contains no actual enemies. What it actually means is: we will do everything for national security except the difficult bit that involves choosing. We will not be forced to choose between the two. Which is politician-speak for “we have already chosen, and the choice is the one that keeps the more immediate domestic constituency from shouting too loudly.” Imagine the briefing notes: “Prime Minister, the world is getting darker. Russia is poking around the North Sea. Argentina still mutters about the Falklands. Defence spending needs to rise if we are to keep pace with the commitments we keep signing.” Burnham’s answer, distilled: yes, absolute commitment, of course, but not if it means anyone ends up in temporary accommodation because we reformed housing benefit. Strong national security, you see, depends upon having resilient communities. And resilient communities, in this telling, are communities that continue to receive the current level of transfer payments without interruption. Deterrence, it turns out, is downstream from the benefits system.

There is a darkly comic elegance to it. Picture the hypothetical invasion. The enemy lands, looks around at the temporary accommodation statistics, and decides the game is not worth the candle because the social fabric is simply too robust. “Stand down the battalions,” the foreign general mutters. “Their housing benefit is intact. We cannot prevail against such resilience.” Or the cyber attack that pauses mid-keystroke because somewhere a young person is receiving enhanced mental health support. The absurdity writes itself, and yet here we are, treating the phrase as statesmanship rather than a sophisticated form of kicking the can while looking concerned. The real fury is in the false choice presented as moral clarity. No one serious argues that the answer to every problem is simply to slash the welfare bill and hand the money to the Ministry of Defence. 

But the inverse position—that the defence of the realm must never inconvenience the domestic transfer system—is not compassion. It is a refusal to admit that resources are finite and that some priorities are, by definition, prior. Burnham’s formulation pretends the two can always expand in harmony if only we fix education, support young people, and expand mental health provision hard enough. It is the politics of the perpetual free lunch, delivered with the solemnity of a man who has just discovered the secret to governing without trade-offs. And of course the language is designed to make any disagreement sound monstrous. Challenge the priority and you are apparently volunteering to put hundreds of thousands of children into temporary accommodation. 

The alternative—actually funding the hard power that keeps the soft power possible—is framed as cruelty. It is a rhetorical trap so neat it should come with a small round of applause from the people who write the lines. National security is important, naturally. Just not important enough to sit at the head of the table when the social security bill is already in the room looking hungry. This is the same political class that will lecture you about seriousness on the global stage while treating the defence budget as the residual claim after everything else has been protected. They will talk about resilience until the word loses all meaning, then act surprised when the actual threats do not check the latest welfare projections before acting. The phrase will be repeated, softened, explained away by spokesmen who insist the Prime Minister remains absolutely committed to national security as the first duty. The record will show the hierarchy he actually voiced when the cameras were rolling.

In the end it is pure Orwellian territory: a society so determined to protect every domestic comfort that it treats the protection of the society itself as an optional extra that must not disrupt the main programme. National security cannot come at the expense of social security. Of course it can’t. Not in a country that has decided the real front line is the benefits office, and the real threat is the possibility that someone, somewhere, might have to make a harder choice than the one currently on offer. The rest of the world can wait. The spreadsheet comes first.

THE NOT-SO-QUIET REDISTRIBUTION

The Portsmouth affair of early September 2026 has already taken on the slightly moth-eaten dignity of a provincial pageant, the kind of thing that future historians will file under “Incidents of Mild Inconvenience” before moving on to the more photogenic collapses. A large rubber dinghy, freighted with approximately one hundred and forty individuals who had apparently decided that the English Channel was less a barrier than a slightly damp suggestion, bobbed into view near Eastney. The local response was instantaneous and, in its way, rather touching. Citizens, many of them dressed in the contemporary uniform of the concerned civilian (black clothing, facial concealment, and an expression of sustained disappointment), decided that the coaches waiting to convey the newcomers onward might benefit from an extended period of contemplation. Roads were occupied. Traffic was discouraged. Chants of the traditional English variety were offered up into the night air. The police, those eternal umpires of the national cricket match, eventually restored order with the weary efficiency of men who have seen this particular play before and rather hoped the run would close. 

The coaches departed. The statement was issued. And the great British public was left to reflect that democracy, in its modern form, consists largely of being allowed to complain about the arrangements after the arrangements have already been made. Compare this genteel English kerfuffle with the more robust theatre of Ceuta. There, at regular intervals that would do credit to a railway timetable, large cohorts of young men assemble on the Moroccan side of the fence and, with a collective enthusiasm that would make a Wall of Death rider look hesitant, surge over the barrier in a cascade of limbs, plastic bags, and official Spanish consternation. The Spanish authorities still retain a residual belief that a border is something more than a decorative feature for the tourist brochure; they respond with a degree of physical assertion that, had it occurred in Portsmouth, would have produced at least three emergency sessions of the European Court of Human Rights and a special edition of Newsnight featuring a solemn academic explaining that fences are a form of violence. Yet the underlying choreography remains eerily familiar. The arrivals are counted, processed, and redistributed. The fences are mended. Expressions of regret are drafted with the care once reserved for diplomatic notes. And the whole performance is ready for its next booking.

What unites these two productions is not merely the logistics of arrival but the sublime consistency of the official reaction. Across Western Europe the governing classes appear to have arrived at a quiet understanding that the steady importation of large numbers of uninvited persons is less a policy failure than a form of long-term social engineering, conducted with the unhurried confidence of people who no longer feel obliged to consult the audience. The language is invariably humanitarian, the mechanisms invariably bureaucratic, and the consequences invariably described as “complex challenges requiring nuanced responses.” One is invited to believe that the repeated inability to stop the boats, or the fence-climbers, or the coaches, is the result of legal knots, budgetary constraints, or an excess of national compassion. Alternative interpretations are available, of course, but they tend to be filed under “regrettable opinions” and left to circulate among those who have not yet been issued the correct talking points.

A more jaundiced observer might notice that a population continually topped up with newcomers who possess neither deep historical attachment to the host society nor any particular reverence for its awkward traditions of free speech and limited government is, over time, a population less inclined to make a fuss when the rules change. The resulting electorate becomes more “inclusive,” more “forward-looking,” and, in the quieter rooms where the real decisions are taken, considerably more convenient. Whether this amounts to a deliberate strategy for the gradual installation of a more compliant citizenry suitable for the enforcement of some global, back-door variety of collectivism, or merely the accidental by-product of a ruling caste that has grown bored with the tiresome particularities of the nations it administers, is a question the reader may entertain while waiting for the next coach to leave. Public discussion of such possibilities is, naturally, regarded as a form of intellectual untidiness, rather like mentioning the cost of the catering at a state banquet.

The Portsmouth protesters, in their unrefined way, seemed to grasp that the coaches were not simply moving people from one place to another; they were confirming a principle. The principle is that the border is now more of a conversation starter than a fact, and that any citizen who treats it as a fact will be treated, in turn, as a temporary obstruction to the smooth running of the system. A national strike, as the original chronicler of the Portsmouth scene suggested, would at least possess the elegance of reciprocity: if the state can bring daily life to a standstill through calculated inertia, the citizens might try the same through calculated action. Whether such a gesture would permanently alter the deeper trajectory is another matter entirely. Governments that have already demonstrated an impressive ability to absorb successive waves of arrivals while simultaneously instructing their populations on the virtues of quiet acceptance are unlikely to be permanently inconvenienced by a few days of closed shops and empty trains.

Ceuta continues its ritual of energetic fence-scaling and temporary official dismay. Portsmouth has enjoyed its evening of blocked roads and subsequent dispersal. The coaches roll. The statements are polished. And somewhere, in those air-conditioned chambers where the demographic and political balance of Western Europe is quietly adjusted, the work proceeds with the serene confidence of people who no longer feel the need to explain themselves to the audience they once claimed to serve. The satire, as so often these days, requires no exaggeration. One only wishes the scriptwriters would occasionally vary the plot.