Joanna Williams

Once, a battle for the future of the Labour party meant serious politicians debating ideological differences through lengthy speeches. In 2026, it means 60-second video clips shared on social media. This week, we’ve had a double delight. First up was Andy Burnham’s wistful walk through the Makerfield constituency he hopes to make his own. So far, so clichéd. More interesting – and more disturbing – was Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson’s foray into film. For reasons unexplained, Phillipson has been filmed in the offices of the Department for Education For reasons unexplained, Phillipson has been filmed in the offices of the Department for Education in conversation with ‘media personality’ Gemma Collins.

Moan all you like about Gen Z, but some of today’s youngsters put adults to shame. Take the pupils at Connaught School for Girls in Leytonstone, east London. Tired of their teachers going out on strike yet again, this time during exam season, children and parents have begun mounting their own counter-demonstrations. After years of disruption to their education, they are urging the grown-ups to ‘teach or quit’. Teachers who don a Palestinian scarf and turn their backs on their pupils reveal that education is the least of their concerns A clip of Friday’s protest has been widely shared on social media. Angry pupils confront teachers who have chosen to spend the day on the picket line, rather than in the classroom.

For the past few years, woke has been on life support. Back in 2020, police officers knelt for Black Lives Matter, children were taught that boys could become girls, and the trans-inclusive Pride flag seemed to fly from every building in the country. Since then, there has been something of a retreat. The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) industry still has a pulse and is more than capable of reinvention, but it is less confident and more defensive. Human Resource officers were able to rule the roost Why the change? Donald Trump’s second term in office is one reason for the vibe shift. The US President punctured all manner of sacred convictions as he signed executive orders to keep DEI out of education and men out of women’s sports.

Does being a parent make people happy? Not according to a recent BBC investigation into ‘the women who regret being mothers.’ It features one woman who describes motherhood as ‘like a trap you can’t escape.’ An overwhelming love sits atop happiness, tears, and tantrums alike A slew of other publications have ploughed the same furrow. ‘I’m fed up of being a slave’, led the Daily Telegraph. ‘I love my kids but I regret having them. How can I accept my life as a parent?’ asked the Guardian. ‘I regret becoming a father – the children are ruining our marriage,’ laments a dad across at the i Paper, ‘I wish I could go back in time.’ So much misery. So much regret. And now it’s backed by research.

Say what you like about transgender activists, but they are certainly persistent. Legal judgements, institutional rule changes and moral pressure count for nothing; such is their determination to get men into women’s spaces. Girlguiding HQ had, with arms twisted, accepted the Supreme Court ruling. But there was a problem Take the Girl Guides. For anyone with a scrap of common sense, or even a vague familiarity with the English language, the clue is in the name. This is an organisation for girls. Female children, to be precise. Or at least, it always used to be. Tragically, back in 2018, a year historians might well come to regard as kicking off the ‘peak woke’ era, Girlguiding UK introduced a ‘trans-inclusive diversity policy’.

Remember the Coldplay kisscam couple? Loved-up Andy Byron and Kristin Cabot were caught embracing at a Boston concert, only to pull away and duck for cover once they realised, with horror, that they had been spotted. The drama, intrigue and cringe-factor surrounding the pair, who were both married to other people at the time, ensured the 16-second clip became last summer’s viral hit. Concern about the invasion of their privacy was tempered by the fact that, well, they were at a Coldplay concert. Cabot claims she still cannot find a job, while suggesting that Byron has received ‘lots of interest’ from employers Being thrust into the limelight, particularly for being caught in flagrante, can’t have been pleasant.

Does Bridget Phillipson think that every child has learning difficulties? The government’s long-overdue overhaul of provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) has now been unveiled, revealing a deeply troubling vision of schools. Today’s big announcement about SEND reform reveals Labour’s impoverished vision for schools Announced this morning is an additional £4 billion of funding, spread over three years, to support SEND pupils in mainstream schools. Matt Wrack, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, was quick off the blocks in condemning this amount as ‘barely a drop in the bucket of the investment necessary to drive real improvement in schools.

It’s been a while, but student censors are on the march once more. This time, they have Reform UK firmly in their sights. With eight MPs in Parliament and a huge lead in opinion polls, Reform has rapidly become a key part of Britain’s political landscape. But denial is the current vibe on campus, and students seem determined to make universities Reform-free zones. Students need to get with the times. This anti-free speech on campus stuff is all so 2022 Bangor University is the latest to hit the headlines after a Reform MP was banned from addressing students. Sarah Pochin, MP for Runcorn and Helsby, offered to conduct a question-and-answer session, but her request was dismissed.

Agreeing with David Cameron was not on my bingo card, but politics in 2026 is a funny old game, and so here we are. The former prime minister has blasted the Labour government for taking ‘a spite-laden wrecking ball’ to school reforms that raised standards, improved education, and benefited children from the least well-off backgrounds. And he is right. Labour’s infantile crusade against elitism extended to cutting the state-school Latin Excellence Programme Since their very first days in office, Keir Starmer and his Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson have seemed intent on destroying Britain’s finest schools.

‘It’s a girl!’ New parents, after a long labour or at a mid-pregnancy scan, take huge joy from discovering the sex of their baby. Imagined futures fall into place as the newborn becomes a son or daughter. Relatives are told whether they have a niece or nephew, a grandson or granddaughter. These things matter. Not, for the most part, because parents have a preference, but because with the sex announced, a mystery is revealed and a new person takes his or her place in the world. Shockingly, it seems that the NHS is intent on denying mothers and fathers this pleasure. A new patient record system, produced by a giant American IT company, Epic Systems, gives midwives the option of recording a baby’s gender identity.

The Supreme Court's ruling that the legal definition of ‘woman’ is ‘biological female’ should have meant game over for trans rights activists. One would have thought that following last summer's judgement, there would be no more men in women’s toilets or changing rooms. But in the clearest sign yet that women cannot give up the fight, there comes news that the government is advertising for a senior civil servant to ‘lead on trans equality’. This is not a minor role. The recruit will be a policy manager at the Cabinet Office, heading up some of the government’s ‘top priorities’.

‘I know not how to abstain from reading,’ wrote Samuel Pepys back in the seventeenth century. Were he by some miracle still alive, Pepys would discover that this is a problem entirely alien to most people today. Indeed, his own diaries, avidly pored over by generations gone by, have now been condemned by today’s moralists and seem destined to be ignored. This ‘new evidence’ seems to have prompted Hinchingbrooke School to review its association with Pepys. But why? Almost four hundred years after he was a pupil, Pepys is in trouble at his old school. Following a ‘comprehensive consultation’, students at what is now Hinchingbrooke School, but was then known as Huntingdon Grammar, have voted to remove the name of this famous old boy from one of their houses.

At last, some good news: Stonewall, the charity behind so much of the gender insanity that has gripped Britain in recent years, is going broke. Accounts seen by the Daily Telegraph suggest the organisation reported a net deficit of more than £906,000 at the end of the last financial year. A fall of over £2 million in income on the previous year, alongside spending of £5.6 million, means Stonewall now has a meagre £92,000 left in reserve. Unless there’s a dramatic change of fortune, it seems the charity really could be one legal case or redundancy payout away from bankruptcy. 2026 is beginning to look up! The financial problems Stonewall now faces inadvertently reveal exactly how influential the charity was until just a very few years ago.

Take my advice and steer clear of your local university. It is not just the flu that’s spreading on campus. Last month, an outbreak of trigger warnings occurred at the University of Essex. Up they popped, warning literature students about ‘violence, slavery, racism, and suicide’ in Hamlet, A Clockwork Orange and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Those infected showed signs of ignorance and hysteria. Now the plague has spread to Glasgow. Students at this ancient university are being warned that Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first in J. K. Rowling’s series about the boy wizard, contains ‘outdated attitudes, abuse and language’.

In 1984, I was Middlesbrough’s most eager Brownie. Such was my enthusiasm, I happily chomped my way through raw potatoes after an older girl, having failed to light the campfire, ordered us to tell Brown Owl: ‘This is how we like them!’ That was sisterhood, and I was deeply committed. So imagine my horror upon discovering, a few years ago, that Brownies and Guides were now admitting boys. Not the rough and tough fun kind who probably could have got a fire started, no problem at all. But the drippy ones who like to wear dresses and call themselves girls. I was horrified, but not surprised. The organisation’s woke capture became clear when the promise I made, ‘to do my duty to God’, was replaced by the insipid pledge ‘to be true to myself and develop my beliefs’.