Features

Thursday

Rachel Johnson

Women don’t want women-only clubs

In my experience, men offer this infuriating comeback when challenged about the continuing exclusion of women from clubs such as the Garrick (for now at least – the Garrick is voting on 7 May on the admission of women as members). ‘But why don’t you set up your own women-only clubs,’ they sulk, ‘and leave us alone?’ My interlocutors are often members of not one but multiple men-only clubs. My husband, father and brothers, for example, frequent a combination of White’s, the Beefsteak, Pratt’s (men-only until last year) and the Garrick. Two of my siblings à l’époque graced the Bullingdon at Oxford.

Gavin Mortimer

Macron vs Putin: this summer’s Olympic battle

Dixmont, Yonne Last summer, Emmanuel Macron lashed out at France’s constitution because it prevents him from running for a third consecutive term in office. It is, he told his entourage, a ‘disastrous stupidity’. The majority of the French people would disagree. Macron’s approval ratings are dire, and a poll at the start of this month revealed that the youngest president in the history of the Fifth Republic has the support of only 7 per cent of the under-35s. Should anyone be surprised? Immigration is out of control, farmers have marched on Paris and teachers are at the end of their tether because of classroom intimidation. Anti-Semitic acts have surged since Hamas attacked Israel in October and drug cartels are extending their reach into towns and cities.

Laurie Graham

I want to see a doctor – not do another NHS survey

Nye Bevan did not make old bones, and perhaps that’s just as well. According to a recent British Social Attitudes survey, 52 per cent of those polled are dissatisfied with the NHS, in particular with the difficulties in getting a GP appointment, with long A&E trolley waits and with huge delays for hospital appointments. All this, in spite of ever more money being chucked into its maw. If invited, I could immediately save the NHS a packet by dialling down the thermostat that has turned hospitals into Hotel Tropicana for bacteria, and by asking, wherever possible, patients’ relatives to provide food, thereby reducing the amount of unappetising slop that goes straight from plate to bin while the sick go hungry. But that is not my theme today.

David Whitehouse

Farewell, Voyager 1

Some time soon we will have to say farewell to our most distant emissary – the Voyager 1 spacecraft. After almost 50 years in space, it’s 15 billion miles away and showing signs of wear and could soon stop transmitting. Late last year, Voyager 1 began to decline, sending back spools of gibberish to its handlers on this planet. A few days ago, Nasa engineers finally traced the problem back to a single chip but it’s clear that Voyager 1 will shortly have to cut contact and make its way out across the universe on its own. It’s strange to think that it will be exploring on out into deep space long after its makers – humans – have become extinct.

Lara Prendergast

The abortion debate returns

I don’t like talking about abortion and so rarely do. I have never written about it before. I am uncomfortable doing so here. It feels trite even to rehearse some of the debate. Can you simultaneously believe in a woman’s right to autonomy over her body and a baby’s right to life? Can you decide never to have an abortion, but also believe other women should be able to? Is an abortion at eight weeks different to an abortion at eight months? If pushed, I’d probably say that the answer to all of these questions is yes. Labour’s Stella Creasy is campaigning to fully decriminalise abortion in England and Wales. ‘We can stop locking up women and instead lock in our human right to choose,’ she argued this week.

Ross Clark

The truth about ‘boardroom diversity’

We all know that increasing the diversity of your boardroom increases the success of your company because politicians, business leaders and academics keep telling us so. No one has ever got into trouble for making this assertion and, in any case, we have the scientific evidence to prove it – in the form of four studies pumped out by management consultants McKinsey & Company over the past decade. The first of these, Why Diversity Matters (2015), claimed, for example, that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity were 15 per cent more likely to outperform the median company in their industry, and companies in the top quartile for racial/ethnic diversity were 35 per cent more likely to outperform the median.

Owen Matthews

Will Biden support Ukraine’s attacks on Russia?

This time last year, Volodymyr Zelensky was touring western capitals, calling for weapons and money to launch a decisive summer offensive. Nato eventually provided Leopard and Challenger tanks, Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, M777 howitzers, Himars rocket artillery and Patriot air defences – but too little, too late. The much-vaunted offensive went nowhere, despite a mutiny by the Wagner Group and widespread disarray in the Russian army. Instead, Soledar, Bakhmut and Avdiivka were seized. Today, Russian missile assaults are intensifying, not receding. In March, Russia hit Ukraine with 264 missiles and 515 drones. A relentless bombardment of Kharkiv is making Ukraine’s second city uninhabitable.

Thursday

Fredrik Karrholm

Child gangsters: the new Swedish model

Stockholm There were 149 bomb attacks in Sweden last year. Though warring gangs are for the most part responsible, ordinary people are increasingly caught in the crossfire. The violence is brutal and ruthless, something I’ve witnessed up close as a police officer in Stockholm and have also analysed as a criminologist. Last year, 28 innocent citizens died or were seriously injured in bombings and shootings. Our country has gone from the bottom of Europe’s gun-crime league tables to the top and it prompts an obvious question: why has this happened in Sweden and why now? One of the most dismal elements of the epidemic of violence is how often it involves children. Gunnar Strommer, the justice minister, has explained: ‘Criminal networks recruit ten-, 11-year-olds.

Tanya Gold

Even pilgrims are staying away from Jerusalem

Israel has a new train line: 25 minutes from Ben Gurion airport to Jerusalem. The Christian pilgrims would love it but they’re not here. Instead, there are soldiers and visiting American Jews. My taxi driver says American Jews come with thousands of dollars of cigarettes and drive around looking for soldiers to give them to. He says American Jews love Israel more than Israelis. Then he moves his machine gun – it’s on the front seat – and says: ‘Welcome to Israel.’ The American Jews go south to the massacre sites of 7 October to stare at the bullet holes. I don’t. You can’t forget the war here. At the airport you are greeted by photographs of hostages. They are up in windows and on street corners. Some say, ‘Bring them home NOW’, an anti-Netanyahu message.

Hannah Moore

Stop worrying if your child is a picky eater

One parent in our class WhatsApp chat raised a pressing concern: her daughter was coming home every day with a full water bottle. Were other parents faced with the same unsettling discovery? There followed a lengthy discussion of how much water was left in each child’s bottle. Some children, when confronted, testified that they had drunk water during the day and then filled up the bottle at school. Anyone who expects children to enjoy cooked courgette has forgotten what it was like to be a child This was not good enough for the concerned parent. She took the matter to the teacher. ‘I am concerned my daughter is not given enough opportunity to drink water during the school day,’ read her message. She shared it with the group – and the teacher’s response.

Madeleine Teahan

Babies with Down’s syndrome have a right to be born

Many of us remember at least one morning in our childhoods when fate threw us some unexpected twist and we knew instantly that life would never be the same. Mine came in July 1991, two months shy of my fifth birthday. I had just received the news from my aunt that my mum had gone into labour overnight; my siblings and I had a new sister. We were gleefully baking biscuits that morning when we heard my father’s car on the drive returning from the hospital. But someone almost unrecognisable walked into the kitchen; shell-shocked, with a ghostly pallor. Something was wrong. We cannot legislate for the total eradication of suffering and it would be dangerous to try Today, hundreds of women in the UK will discover they’re pregnant.

Mary Wakefield

The ‘luxury beliefs’ that harm vulnerable children

Now that everyone insists that the oppressed must be lifted up – or platformed, if you’re that way inclined: why does no one in the West give a second thought to the most obviously powerless group: kids in care – children who’ve been abandoned by or taken from their parents? An astonishing amount of kids brought up in care end up in jail or homeless or preyed on by gangs. Why no Facebook filter for them? Why no flag-in-bio solidarity? Opposite me now in a café in Cambridge is a man who might have answers. Rob Henderson grew up in institutions and foster homes in California – ‘I think it was like 16 different houses in total.

Christopher Matthew

A.A. Milne and the torturous task of writing

For those of us lucky enough to have been regular contributors to Punch magazine, April is a slightly crueller month than most, since it was on 8 April 32 years ago that the last edition collapsed, exhausted, on to the newspaper stands. By then it was way past its best, but in its day it had employed some of the very best brains in the business, led by some of the very best editors. I was lucky enough to be around when Alan Coren was in his prime. He led the magazine from the front, literally, and set a standard that the rest of us did our hardest to emulate, but rarely achieved. If ever.

Anshel Pfeffer

Joe Biden is running out of time in the Middle East

Jerusalem The idea of a Saudi-Israel rapprochement would have been unthinkable not so long ago, and yet, shortly before the 7 October attacks, it was on the cards. The Emirates and Bahrain had recognised Israel’s sovereignty. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) was positioning Saudi Arabia to do the same. Now Joe Biden – who on Tuesday said he was ‘outraged’ at a convoy strike that killed seven people – is desperately trying to see if he can get things moving again. Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, is in Saudi Arabia this week meeting with MBS in a last-ditch attempt to save Biden’s grand design for Middle East peace.

Katy Balls

What a super-majority means for Labour

When the last Tory government fell, the famous question after election night was: ‘Were you up for Portillo?’ Were you awake in the small hours when the man many expected to be the next leader lost his seat? This year, there’s no shortage of big beasts likely to be turfed out by the electorate. Jeremy Hunt, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Grant Shapps are just some of those tipped to lose their seats. Many touted as potential leaders – Penny Mordaunt, Miriam Cates and James Cleverly – are also endangered. If current polls are to be believed, the Tories could be reduced to a rump of about 100 MPs and Keir Starmer will be sitting with one of the largest majorities in parliamentary history.

John McTernan

Can Starmer control 450 unruly MPs?

It doesn’t matter how loyal a candidate is. Once elected, all MPs (to a greater or lesser extent) conclude they have won their seat because of their unique qualities and personal vision. When they look in the mirror, many will see a future prime minister. Almost every backbench MP believes they are one reshuffle away from ministerial office. Managing 450 MPs is a tall order for any party leader. As prime minister, Keir Starmer would have his work cut out managing the payroll vote of 150-160, especially as only around a third of the new parliamentary Labour party will have been in office before. A big Starmer win would inevitably pave the way for new Labour tribes, each with their own instincts, demands and ambitions.

Tuesday

Katy Balls

Inside Sue Gray’s Labour party

At 8.30 a.m. each morning, Keir Starmer holds a meeting with his inner circle to go over the business of the day. Once, these meetings were mainly filled with unelected aides, but now they are attended by senior shadow ministers, such as Labour’s campaign co-ordinator and Blairite old-timer Pat McFadden or the shadow cabinet office minister and Brown-ite Jonathan Ashworth. Starmer’s deputy, Angela Rayner, may drop in too. If Rachel Reeves can’t make it, one of her shadow treasury aides goes in her place. The new setup is one of the many measures Sue Gray has brought in since she was appointed Starmer’s chief of staff a year ago. Her aim is to strengthen ties between the Labour leader and his shadow cabinet.

Svitlana Morenets

How Ukraine plans to revive its birth rate

In my village in Ukraine, there aren’t many families left intact. The funerals of those who have been killed in the war have been taking place with crushing regularity. It feels like everyone’s loss. Today, in house after house, you can find parents whose children have either died or are still fighting with no indication of when they may return. It’s almost impossible for couples to start families – men are deployed to the front line with little hope of any leave. If they return alive, most are maimed in some way.  There is, though, a spark of hope for these young Ukrainians. Ukraine has quite an advanced network of fertility clinics, which are often used in more peaceful times by foreigners taking advantage of liberal surrogacy laws.

Sophie Winkleman

Why I’m fighting to ban smartphones for children

I am not often lost for words, but the five middle-aged homeless men who spoke at the Big Issue celebration in the House of Lords last month left me truly awestruck. All five had endured lives of childhood abandonment, violence, pain, destitution. All five had emerged from the darkness philosophical, hopeful and loving of their fellow man. I have not stopped thinking about them, and when I start on my usual daily beefs – signs on the Tube telling me I mustn’t give money to beggars (why not if I want to?); signs on the Tube telling me I can’t stare at people (what if someone is listening to a deafening violent video on their phone, should I deck them instead?); signs on the Tube telling me I mustn’t press into someone (try the Victoria line at 6 p.m.

Michael Coren

Grappling with anti-Semitism at Easter

Easter meant little to me as a child. It was chocolate eggs, magical rabbits, films about Jesus on television. I had three Jewish grandparents and, though not raised with any particular religious identity, there was a sense of cultural Jewishness in the home. But those Easter movies must have made an impact, because I became a Christian in my mid-twenties and am now an Anglican priest. I am, however, deeply aware of Christian anti-Semitism – something that is once again becoming grimly fashionable. Anti-Semitism is especially poignant at Easter, the epicentre of the Christian calendar. We remember the great commandment to love one another, and take shelter from an increasingly unforgiving world under the divine promises of Christ personified in the resurrection.