Lara Brown

Next week, we will celebrate a decade since the Brexit vote. The decade that followed was one of political turmoil: five prime ministers in just twice as many years, and maybe a sixth to join them in just a few weeks. David Cameron hoped that a referendum might stop his party obsessing over Europe. Instead, the stalemate in parliament and acrimony that followed Brexit saw his party dealt a semi-fatal blow at the ballot box. To mark this anniversary, on Wednesday The Spectator asked those who played a key role in the events leading up to the vote: was Brexit a mistake?

There appears to be a missing chapter in the story of Andy Burnham. Depending on the whims of voters in Makerfield, Britain could soon have its first prime minister with a degree in English literature and its first Cambridge-educated premier since Stanley Baldwin. And while we have been treated to countless long reads on the so-called King of the North – his political philosophy, his years in Manchester and his apprenticeship in New Labour – his undergraduate years have barely been scrutinised. Burnham is tight-lipped about his Cambridge days (1988-1991). His comments over the years have been mostly limited to saying he had ‘imposter syndrome’ as he struggled to fit in at a university that was dominated, he felt, by private school students.

It took the stabbing of two Jews in Golders Green to bring Arts Council England’s decade of funding hate to a close. On Tuesday, Keir Starmer criticised the Arts Council (ACE) for funding organisations that promote the work of ‘anti-Semitic artists’. The Prime Minister also promised to force the body to ‘suspend, withdraw and claw back’ money from organisations that have platformed anti-Semitism.  It’s nice that Starmer has woken up to the fact Britain’s main arts and culture grant provider is using taxpayer money to fund hate. But one does have to ask where he’s been for the last decade?

Maybe sex realists really are winning the gender wars. But for every two steps we take forward we are relentlessly pushed at least one back. The most recent victory in the war against common sense has seen the University of Sussex dodge a £585,000 fine over their free speech policies. The fine was awarded after Professor Kathleen Stock was hounded out of her job five years ago following sustained protests over her views on transgender rights and gender identity. At one point, just to do her job, Stock had to appoint private security. The Office for Students (OfS) spent three and a half years investigating the circumstances that led to Stock’s departure. Their final report is damning.

On 7 May there will be no competition. Reform is predicted to pull off sweeping victories in councils across the country, while the Tories are preparing to shoulder heavy losses. But at the Emmanuel Centre on Wednesday evening, Spectator readers were treated to a fight for the intellectual ground on the right. Representing the teal team, Danny Kruger, Reform MP for Wiltshire tasked with preparing the party for government, and Matt Goodwin, Reform’s candidate in Gorton and Denton, faced off against Claire Coutinho, shadow Secretary for Energy and Net Zero and Minister for Equalities, and Nick Timothy, shadow Secretary of State for Justice and shadow Lord Chancellor, on the Conservative side. The Spectator’s assistant editor, Isabel Hardman, refereed.

Is it worth going to university? Since 1999, when Tony Blair declared higher education the answer to all society’s problems, it has been a question Britain prefers not to ask. Every September, hundreds of thousands of school leavers pack their bags, wait for their maintenance loan to arrive and head off to their chosen city to drink, go clubbing and occasionally hand in an essay. Does this well-trodden path leave young people better off? It’s almost impossible to find out, not because the information isn’t available but because the government won’t let us see it. The Department for Education knows very well what graduates can expect when they start looking for work.

There is rarely much to commend Keir Starmer for. But on Monday he blocked an amendment to the schools bill which would have required all social media companies to ban under-16s from using their products. In voting against this legislation, MPs have preserved anonymity on the internet, resisted further state powers over what we see online and avoided caving in to a moral panic gripping Westminster. I don’t want to lavish too much praise on the Prime Minister just yet. The sweeping powers brought in by the Online Safety Act already censor most of online life.

Wilson is said to have claimed that ‘a week is a long time in politics’. Not for the civil servants tasked with producing guidance for schools attempting to support gender-questioning children. On Thursday, seven years after the government first promised statutory advice, we got another draft document for consultation. The delay might not be so egregious were it not for the fact that the last consultation on this issue opened in December 2023 (and closed in March 2024 without a whisper from officials about next steps). Since then, teachers have been navigating the safeguarding issues raised in the Cass Review without any legal direction.

A woman confronts a biological man in a female changing room. She is later found to have harassed him because he identified as a woman. Many thought this sort of madness was over, but the findings of Sandie Peggie’s tribunal against the NHS confirm that the battle is not won. This year will be remembered as one in which women’s rights took a step forward. The Supreme Court judgment confirmed what we’ve always known to be true: ‘sex’ means sex. It cannot be altered by a piece of paper. It seemed that sanity had been restored. But sometimes we forget just how fast defeat can be snapped from the jaws of victory. The results of Sandie Peggie’s case against NHS Fife serve as a stark reminder. Many have hailed the tribunal as a victory.