Melanie McDonagh

Melanie McDonagh

Melanie McDonagh is an Irish journalist working in London.

The Sussexes’ complete lack of self-awareness

There’s no stopping the Sussexes, is there? Right after they get up everyone’s nose by saying their son’s christening is out of bounds, they’ve gone and told us all to save the planet. On Instagram, obviously. And to help us do it, they posted images of penguins, a sea turtle and a little child holding a placard saying You’re Never Too Small to Make a Difference. They want us to look at 15 different accounts, from – yep – Greta Thunberg to Leonardo diCaprio’s climate change foundation and Elephants Without Borders. And then change our ways. https://www.instagram.com/p/BzWbKn1lW9h/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet That’s right. The Sussexes.

Why should we pay for Harry and Meghan’s new home?

Before you get too worked up about the £2.4 million cost to the taxpayer of refurbishing Frogmore “Cottage” for a family of three – one a baby – bear in mind to keep some indignation in reserve for next year. Because this is only the first instalment of the project before the costs have had a chance to overrun, and you know what it’s like with builders. Wait for the next financial year. The other thing is, this already-not-inconsiderable-sum isn’t actually necessary for the housing of Meghan and Harry in the style they feel they deserve.

Boris has to get out of Camberwell

Well! Just when it looked like the only political question anyone would be talking about is the start of the leadership hustings, what do you know? All anyone can think about is Boris Johnson’s row with his girlfriend on Thursday night. The one police were called to. Just after he’d seen off Michael Gove and the leadership contest seemed pretty well sewn up, now this: a proper row a plate-throwing, loud enough for the neighbours to hear every word sort of row. For anyone who hasn’t actually read the details, here’s the Mail’s account: 'Neighbours told last night how they heard plates and glasses smashing during a "proper tear-up" at the London flat Boris Johnson shares with girlfriend Carrie Symonds in the early hours of Friday morning.

Lead astray

Is the pope a Catholic? You have to wonder. In the old days, a pope’s remit was modest: infallible, but only in the vanishingly rare cases when he pronounced on matters of faith and morals concerning the whole church. But even at their most bombastic and badly behaved, earlier popes would have hesitated to do what nice Pope Francis has done, which is to approve changes in the liturgy which amount to rewriting the Lord’s Prayer. That bit that says ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil’ is, for Pope Francis, a bad translation. ‘It speaks of a God who induces temptation,’ he told Italian TV.  ‘I am the one who falls. It’s not him pushing me into temptation to then see how I fall. No. A father does not do this.

Jeremy Corbyn is right about Iran and the tanker attacks

Jeremy Corbyn’s right about Iran, isn’t he? On the attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, he tweeted (and don’t you just wish politicians could use a more considered medium?): 'Britain should act to ease tensions in the Gulf, not fuel a military escalation that began with US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement. Without credible evidence about the tanker attacks, the government’s rhetoric will only increase the threat of war.' What, precisely, is wrong about that? What exactly about it caused the Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, to call him 'pathetic' and 'predictable'? Hunt himself didn’t exactly follow the US party line in announcing Iran was to blame for the attacks initially.

Pope Francis is wrong to rewrite the Lord’s Prayer

Is the Pope a Catholic? You have to wonder. In the old days, a pope’s remit was modest: infallible, but only in the vanishingly rare cases when he pronounced on matters of faith and morals concerning the whole Church. But even at their most bombastic and badly behaved, earlier popes would have hesitated to do what nice Pope Francis has done, which is to approve changes in the liturgy which amount to rewriting the Lord’s Prayer. That bit that says ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil’ is, for Pope Francis, a bad translation. ‘It speaks of a God who induces temptation,’ he told Italian TV. ‘I am the one who falls. It’s not him pushing me into temptation to then see how I have fallen.

The problem with Jeremy Hunt’s abortion stance

So it turns out that there may have been a quid pro quo behind Amber Rudd’s backing for Jeremy Hunt, her former political mentor, beyond the usual conversations about Cabinet jobs. Amber – who is for some reason that escapes me is considered a kingmaker – was interviewed this morning about one possible impediment to a shared world view between the two of them: Jeremy Hunt’s take on abortion, something that Amber says “is very important to me”. Of Hunt's view, expressed on Sky's Sophy Ridge on Sunday, that the legal limit for abortion should be reduced from 24 weeks to 12, she said it was his "personal, private view".  "That has always been his view," she said.

Sadiq Khan’s anti-Trump crusade is dull and reductive

From our US edition

Perfectly nice man normally, Sadiq Khan, mayor of London. Ambitious as Lucifer, obviously, but unpompous and cheerful in his manner, which is always good. But on Trump, he’s lost it, hasn’t he? Yesterday he was complaining about Trump and other far-right leaders ‘using the same divisive tropes of fascists of the 20th century’. You don’t use the f-word lightly if you’re grown up. And you hesitate, if you’ve got any sense, before using it about a US president who’s here to commemorate the contribution of US forces to the D-Day landings. Trump was wholly unfazed by the observations. In a tweet, he replied: ‘He is a stone cold loser who should focus on crime in London, not me...

sadiq khan

Why the First Wives’ Club should cut Boris a bit of slack

Well, very obliging of Donald Trump to back Boris Johnson – 'a very good guy…he’d be excellent…I like him very much' - in his interesting interview in The Sun, I’m sure. That’ll go down terrifically well with the kind of woke constituency that’ll be on the streets from Monday to make clear that the president is very, very unwelcome here; as it happens it also includes Jeremy Corbyn who is boycotting the president’s state banquet… though I don’t know whether he made clear that this is what he’d so if he were PM, which is kind of worrying. Happily, Mr Trump made clear he doesn’t much care. Anyway, will Mr Trump’s endorsement cut any ice with Tory members?

The BBC’s obsession with diversity has ruined Gardeners’ Question Time

There’s nothing wrong with radio continuity announcers; one is a friend of mine and he’s very sharp. But the doubts about whether reading the news and the jokes between one item and another is a qualification to present programmes that actually require you to know what you’re talking about remain, now that Kathy Clugston has completed her first session as presenter of Gardeners' Question Time. She’s got nice diction, Kathy, but as a gardener she hasn’t got a clue – and in fairness she did let this be known at the outset. She started off by getting her audience at Tiptree in Essex to shout out – on the basis they live near a jam-manufacturers – whether they put jam or cream on their scones first.

Is the Guardian practising what it preaches on climate change?

The Guardian has an advertisement today from Sainsbury’s. Nothing wrong with that; respectable paper, respectable retailer. It’s the nature of the ad that’s interesting: a big bubble saying Save 10p per litre of fuel, surmounted by a picture of a petrol pump nozzle. You can see were the problem lies, can’t you? This is the paper that’s sympathetic to Extinction Rebellion, to Greta Thunberg, to the anti-fossil fuel activists who campaign against the British Museum accepting funding from BP, now giving space to a company flogging petroleum cheap, thereby stimulating consumption.

The problem with no-fault divorce

It looks as if I’m the only one who wants to keep fault in divorce then. Perhaps it’s because I’ve seen so many divorces where there was actually fault, usually one of the parties running off with someone else. I can see why the adulterous party in the business should want to remove the distasteful fault element; I can’t quite see how it improves the situation for the cuckolded or otherwise wronged spouse. Some women I know whose husbands have moved onwards and upwards to marry their mistress have referred to them in a fashion that would make that poor woman who was banged up in Dubai for saying that her ex husband was an idiot and that his second wife looked like a horse sound like Justin Welby.

The problem with no-fault divorce | 9 April 2019

It looks as if I’m the only one who wants to keep fault in divorce then. Perhaps it’s because I’ve seen so many divorces where there was actually fault, usually one of the parties running off with someone else. I can see why the adulterous party in the business should want to remove the distasteful fault element; I can’t quite see how it improves the situation for the cuckolded or otherwise wronged spouse. Some women I know whose husbands have moved onwards and upwards to marry their mistress have referred to them  in a fashion that would make that poor woman who was banged up in Dubai for saying that her ex husband was an idiot and that his second wife looked like a horse sound like Justin Welby.

What the critics of the ‘right to sex’ judge got wrong

There’s a terrifically sensitive, not to say odd, hearing underway this week in which social services are seeking to prevent a man from having sex with his wife. The couple have been married for more than 20 years but her deteriorating mental health means that social services aren’t confident that she’s able to give informed consent to sex so they’ve asked a judge to consider an order barring her husband from engaging in intercourse, which seems like an extraordinary incursion by the state into a couple’s private life. But it’s not the propriety of this involvement that’s getting feminists worked up.

The death of Shamima Begum’s baby is a tragedy – but not Sajid Javid’s fault

It would take a heart of stone – and occasionally I possess just such an organ – not to feel sympathy for Shamima Begum after she lost a third baby, her son Jarrah, barely three weeks old, in a Syrian refugee camp. But should we feel guilt as well as compassion for leaving the child – all unbeknown to him, a British citizen and possibly Dutch too – to fester in the camp occupied by IS refugees? More precisely, how responsible should the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, feel, having deprived Miss Begum of her British citizenship? The BBC news all day long has linked him to the death: criticism of Javid as child dies. That’s its line. Diane Abbott has been keen to draw a link.

The death of Shamima Begum’s baby is a tragedy – but not Sajid Javid’s fault | 9 March 2019

It would take a heart of stone – and occasionally I possess just such an organ – not to feel sympathy for Shamima Begum after she lost a third baby, her son Jarrah, barely three weeks old, in a Syrian refugee camp. But should we feel guilt as well as compassion for leaving the child – all unbeknown to him, a British citizen and possibly Dutch too – to fester in the camp occupied by IS refugees? More precisely, how responsible should the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, feel, having deprived Miss Begum of her British citizenship? The BBC news all day long has linked him to the death: criticism of Javid as child dies. That’s its line. Diane Abbott has been keen to draw a link.

Why can’t Prince Harry be more like the Queen?

Are you feeling better? Anyone who’s seen Prince Harry address the WE Day – Me into We! – gathering in London yesterday of woke young people, chiefly teenage girls, may have taken time to get over the sheer emetic quality of the performance, but I’m there now, thank you. But have you ever heard more unvarnished drivel? “You are the most engaged generation in history!” Harry told his audience. “You have the incredible opportunity to help reshape mindsets, to empower those around you to think outside the box and to work with you, not against you, to find solutions”, one cliché at a time presumably. The rumours about Meghan helping write his speeches? I believe them all.

The Daily Mail’s Brexit volte face has left a hole in British politics

Generally, journalists shouldn’t talk shop about the press in mixed company. But an exception should be made, I reckon, for the Daily Mail, which has had for so long a unique place in national life as a political player in its own right. It gave a voice to a tribe: the socially conservative and it was, most obviously, the house journal and campaigning expression of Brexit: the full-fat version. All that changed when Geordie Greig, an urbane, likeable and intelligent Etonian, replaced Paul Dacre last year as editor, but it’s only now that the changes are really working through. This week, the Mail’s former parliamentary sketch writer, Quentin Letts surfaced in the Times, having left the Mail of his own volition, possibly not wholly enchanted by its volte face on Brexit.

Why I find the George Pell verdict hard to believe

Sorry. I just don’t believe it. The conviction of George Pell – still Cardinal Pell – last December, on which reporting restrictions are lifted today, isn’t credible; he’s appealing against it. Fiat Justitia and all that, but the problem with the rerun of this bizarre trial on five counts of child abuse in 1996 is that the implausibilities of the case against the Cardinal are as great as ever – in his first trial, the Catholic News Agency reported the jury was divided 10-2 in Pell’s favour. Here is what Pell was accused of: “The complainant said that he and another choir boy left the liturgical procession at the end of one Sunday Mass and went fossicking in the off-limits sacristy where they started swilling altar wine.

Isis bride Shamima Begum should be allowed home

So, what do you reckon then about the jihadi bride, Shamima Begum, unearthed by the Times’ Anthony Loyd in a refugee camp in Syria? Should she be brought back home for an NHS delivery for her imminent baby – with the cops hovering backstage – or left to stew in a Syrian refugee camp, to give birth in the same conditions as other mothers-to-be? I may be misjudging my readers here, but I fancy I can discern which way most of us would want to go. But the first thing to say about all this is that this wretched 19-year old is about the least important aspect of the Isis situation.