Sam Leith

Back in the winter of 2012, a postal worker named Zac Sharif-Ali was taking a lunchtime stroll with his dog on Chiswick Common when he was stopped by a police officer named Duncan Bullock. PC Bullock was out for a lunchtime sandwich run himself, and apparently thought this might be a good opportunity to get his numbers up. Two birds with one stone, and all that. According to colleagues testifying to an Independent Office for Police Conduct investigation, he was enterprising in that way. ‘I remember that day PC Bullock had gone out for his sandwich, so I knew he would bring back a stop and search record form,’ the duty sergeant told the inquiry. ‘He always conducted a stop and search when he went to get his lunch.

Should Apple use software to scan the photo library of every individual iPhone in search of images of child abuse? GCHQ thinks so. So does the National Cyber Security Centre. (Well, you might say: they would, wouldn’t they?) And so does professor Hany Farid, inventor of a technology called PhotoDNA, which is already used across the web to scan for illegal images. He told the Internet Watch Foundation that, though Apple paused proposals to roll out this software last year thanks to 'pushback from a relatively small number of privacy groups', 'I contend that the vast majority of people would have said, ‘sure, this seems perfectly reasonable’'.  At issue, it should be said, is not the idea of checking for such images altogether.

The eyes had it, in last night’s leadership debate. Penny Mordaunt and Rishi Sunak took turns directing to the camera a puppy-eyed gaze. Tom Tugendhat blinked manfully, as if overcome from time to time with a sense of his humble desire to serve. Kemi Badenoch blinked, too – but more in the way of someone regretting the decision to switch her specs out for contact lenses. And if Liz Truss – an apprentice of Mrs Thatcher’s gimlet-eyed stare – blinked at all, I confess I didn’t notice it. I was distracted by the fact that she seemed to have four eyebrows rather than the usual human ration of two.

I was in Hyde Park on Friday watching an open-air Pixies show with very great delight when somewhere between ‘Vamos’ and ‘Debaser’ one of my companions bid fair to harsh my buzz by asking what I reckoned to the Tory leadership contest. Well, goodness. I mumbled something about not really having a dog in the fight but thinking that, whatever his other shortcomings (the visible self-love, mostly, and maybe that thing with his wife’s tax status), Rishi Sunak seems to more or less have his head screwed on. ‘But he’s a multi-millionaire,’ my friend said. ‘Isn’t he just going to be hopelessly out of touch?

The overturning of Roe v. Wade is an American story, and a global one. What the hell – it's asked with some justice – does it have to do with the rest of us? In part because, as is sometimes said, when America sneezes the UK catches a cold. But also because the intoxicated global reaction to what, looked at from one angle, is a narrow point of US constitutional law, shows us something about where we’re at. As someone generally of the liberal tribe I find myself slightly out of kilter with my natural allies on this subject. I'm as horrified as the next bloke in a 'this is what a feminist looks like' T-shirt at the 'trigger laws' which at a stroke will curtail women’s bodily autonomy across huge swathes of a supposedly civilised country.

She must be fit to be tied, the Duchess of Sussex. I know I would be. It was reported yesterday that a Palace investigation into allegations that she bullied junior members of staff during her early unhappy years in the Royal Family is to be 'buried'. We're told that the results of the investigation will lead to 'changes to the royal household’s HR policies' – but that these changes will also not be either acknowledged or specified. Well.    Damaging accusations that the little princess behaved like a right little princess have been seeping into the public domain since 2020. Two personal assistants, it was reported, left the Palace in a matter of months and were signed up to non-disclosure agreements. One was said to have been reduced to tears by the Duchess.