Politics

As soon as Channel 4 announced Benedict Cumberbatch had been cast as Dominic Cummings in its Brexit film, a hatchet job was expected. Some might still see it this way. I found it balanced, gripping, and at times funny, even moving. Plenty will be written about which parts were accurate and which not, but this was drama, not documentary. The story it tells is perhaps the most important story of our times: how politicians had become stuck in a late-90s time warp using a Clinton-era playbook, and thought Remain would easily win the referendum. But they lost because politics changes and the new energy was coming from forgotten voters who saw a chance to be counted. And Dominic Cummings, an outsider with contempt for the establishment, spotted this.

As MPs prepare to return to Westminster following the Christmas recess, the Prime Minister has given her first TV interview of the new year. With the deadline for Brexit fast approaching, Theresa May again put the case for her Brexit deal, on which she postponed a crucial Commons vote in December. Andrew Marr asked her if this time, the vote would definitely be going ahead: TM: Yes we are going to hold the vote... The debate will start next week and it will carry on until the following week, but we will be holding the vote. AM: We’re talking about the 15th or 14th? TM: That sort of timing, yes. However, when Marr asked if she would invite the Commons to vote for her deal again if it was rejected first time round, May was non-committal.

The Prime Minister does have a strategy to prevent what she sees as the chaos of a no-deal Brexit. The flaw in it is that the strategy probably has a shelf life of just over one week. Because her strategy is to persuade MPs to back her version of leaving the EU in a vote on 15 or 16 January, and in the words of one of her senior ministers: “I will be shot for telling you this but we are going to lose that vote”. So what then? Well, amazingly, no one around her – not her ministers, not her officials – seem to know. Why not? “She won’t tell us” says a minister. “We go to see her. We give her our ideas about what to do next. She listens politely. She even asks questions. But none of us have a clue whether she agrees, whether she is persuaded.

Jeremy Corbyn has a message for the people of Milton Keynes: I condemn you. The Labour leader delivered his criticism at an event in 2011 after voters in the town booted out pro-Palestinian Labour MP Phyllis Starkey. He told the audience: ‘I condemn the people of Milton Keynes for the mistakes that they made in the May election but they will have a chance for (sic) correct their mistakes hopefully in the very near future.’ https://twitter.com/TheGolem_/status/1080886732701253633?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Unfortunately at the two general elections since Corbyn made his comments, the people of Milton Keynes failed to learn their lesson by twice electing two Tory MPs.

For Silicon Valley, 2018 was defined by one impossible question: should there be limits to free speech on the internet? The first amendment is hardwired into the (American) CEOs of the big three social media sites: Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Each platform grew its user-base with a “words can never hurt me” attitude. Back in 2012, Twitter defined itself as the “free speech wing of the free speech party”; Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has defended his users' right to be wrong – even for Holocaust deniers. For years, social media platforms allowed posts that could arguably inspire real-life violence in the US, Germany and in Myanmar. But now things are changing.