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If you want to understand what lies behind the rise of Reform and its consistent – indeed, deepening – lead in the polls, I have a suggestion: French air conditioning. To be more specific, if you want to understand the difficulty Reform’s opponents have in tackling it and why the party’s rise seems inexorable, the row going on at the moment in France over air conditioning offers a guide.
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There have been some interesting takes on Saturday’s protest in London by supporters of Palestine Action. The police arrested 522 people for expressing their support for the organisation, which has been proscribed under the Terrorism Act. But shockingly, according to a social media post by German comedian Henning Wehn, those arrests include geography teachers. ‘I can’t believe the police are put in a situation where they have to arrest hundreds of harmless pensioners and geography teachers,’ he wrote. I have never previously encountered the argument that geography teachers should be exempt from terrorism laws. But Herr Wehn has hit upon one truly absurd aspect to the protest, albeit unwittingly.
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It’s taken me a while, but I’ve finally realised the purpose of the Charity Commission. I’d always thought its role was to regulate charities – to check that they comply with their charitable aims (and with the law) and then to take action if they don’t. But it's finally dawned on me that the real purpose of the Charity Commission is satire. Once you realise that the Charity Commission exists in fact to satirise how pathetically weak we are in the face of radical Islam then everything falls into place – especially its otherwise inexplicably pathetic response to the hate preaching that is commonplace in mosques up and down the country.
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We often think of Sir Keir Starmer as the dull bureaucrat, all at sea in politics – a Prime Minister who is elevated from the concerns of so many of his colleagues, and who just can’t relate to them. Starmer is certainly a leader on the defensive: pushed around by his backbenchers, rather than the man who delivered a Labour landslide who has then plotted his government’s direction of travel. If Starmer is judged on his actions, a damning picture emerges of a man incapable of sticking to any one position But in any meaningful sense, the 'worthy but dull' caricature of the PM is plain wrong – and demonstrably so.
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Two Jewish comedians have had shows cancelled by venues hosting the Edinburgh Fringe. Whistlebinkies told Rachel Creeger that she and her show Ultimate Jewish Mother were no longer welcome, while Philip Simon’s Jew-O-Rama, a rotating line-up of Jewish comedians, was also barred. Another venue, Banshee Labyrinth, followed suit, cancelling Simon’s solo show, Shall I Compere Thee in a Funny Way? It could hardly be more blatant: two Jews have been cancelled because they are Jewish The reason? 'Safety concerns' for staff. Those of us with the Jewish mothers of Creeger’s title can certainly understand why others might have concerns over our mental safety, but I don’t think that’s quite what the venues had in mind when they banned a Jewish son and a Jewish daughter.
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This isn’t a sentiment you’ll have read much in recent weeks, given the BBC’s series of appalling misjudgements and editorial disasters. But here goes: Three cheers for the BBC. Its critics are completely wrong and its decision making is spot on. The BBC is quite right. The party conferences don’t need the broadcast army of hacks they’ve always had To be clear, I’m not referring to its coverage of Bob Vylan at Glastonbury, the Gaza documentary narrated by the son of a Hamas minister or the BBC’s sacking of the two Masterchef presenters. I’m talking about something it has actually got right – but for which it is nonetheless being lambasted: the decision not to decamp its entire political team, and all its political programmes, to this year’s party conferences.
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There is increasing speculation that the UK will recognise a Palestinian state imminently, possibly in coordination with France. On this morning’s Today programme, for example, Emily Thornberry, chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, was the latest senior MP to push the idea. Open Jew hate is now the norm in Britain It sounds sensible, even obvious, doesn’t it? If a ‘political’ solution is the only way out of the current terrible situation in the region, surely a pre-requisite is to create a so-called partner for peace with Israel. But like so many superficially sensible and obvious ideas, that’s what it is: superficial. Worse, it’s dangerous – and specifically dangerous for the UK.
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For any Jew – or anyone who is alive to Jew hate – a report from the commission on anti-Semitism to be published tomorrow will make for uneventful reading. That is no slur on the report or its authors. The Board of Deputies of British Jews asked Lord Mann, the Labour peer who is the government’s anti-Semitism adviser (incongruously often described as the ‘anti-Semitism Tsar’) and Penny Mordaunt, the former Conservative cabinet minister, to look at the state of anti-Semitism in the UK today. John Mann and Penny Mordaunt have done Jews and those who care about Jew hate a great service Their findings have already made front page news, even before the report has been officially published.
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Keir Starmer's government is heading for trouble – again. Last time it was welfare reform, now it’s SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) funding in schools. It’s being widely reported today that Labour MPs are kicking off over ministers’ refusal over the weekend to rule out cuts in SEND provision, by which councils are legally obliged to give extra support to such pupils, such as dedicated teaching assistants or taxi transport to and from school. The parallels with last week’s row over welfare reform and PIPs are striking. Most obviously, both proposals for cuts are the result of an explosion in the numbers in receipt of funding. 525,000 adults now claim disability benefits for anxiety and depression – up from 461,000 just the year before.
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There could be no more deliciously appropriate start to the new party supposedly co-led by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, than the news that the ex-Labour leader is said to be 'furious and bewildered' that it was launched without him even knowing that he is a member of the party, let alone that he is its leader. Although I’m not sure it is really news that Jeremy Corbyn – who has yet to comment on the new party – is either furious or bewildered, since he has spent his entire career being both.
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Here we go: two weeks of wall-to-wall coverage of the sport for people who hate sport. The most boring game ever invented, played by the most boring athletes, watched by the most boring audience, interpreted by the most boring commentators. In case the penny hasn’t dropped, I am of course describing Wimbledon, the only sporting occasion at which the most controversial issue is the cost of strawberries, and the only major competition in which key analysis focuses on the decibel count of female players hitting the ball. Nothing exemplifies better how Wimbledon is the sporting contest for people with no interest in sport than ‘Henman Hill’, a patch of grass on which tennis fans congregate to eat a picnic while the actual sport takes place somewhere else.
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It’s understandable that the focus of coverage of Israel’s strikes on Iran, and the Iranian regime’s response, has been entirely on the potential regional consequences of Israel’s mission to destroy Iran’s nuclear capability. But although this may seem more like a version of Neville Chamberlain’s infamous 'quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing' than an issue of immediate relevance to British national security, it is most definitely the latter. It is vital to our national security that Israel succeeds. For one thing, Iran operates hit squads in the UK with the explicit aim of assassinating British citizens it deems to be enemies.
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On 5 June 1967, Israel destroyed three Arab air forces with a devastating pre-emptive strike at the start of what became the Six-Day War. Overnight, Israel has undertaken what appears to be a similarly devastating pre-emptive attack, this time on Iranian nuclear, military and terror facilities. Israel has undertaken what appears to be a devastating pre-emptive attack But there is a key difference between the two strikes. In 1967, Israel was fighting to defend only itself. It had no allies in the region and little concern with what happened outside its own borders. Today, Israel is not only acting as a proxy for the West itself; it is acting against a tyrannical, terrorist regime.
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The Holocaust Memorial Bill returns to Parliament for its report stage in the House of Lords today. The legislation marks the end point in a – so far – eleven-year process that began when David Cameron set up a commission in 2014 to consider what Britain should do to preserve the memory of the Holocaust and ensure its lessons are never forgotten. The commission recommended building a memorial and learning centre, with a site chosen next to Parliament, in Victoria Tower Gardens. The proposal has been deeply controversial, both because of the site – which Lord Carlile, the former independent reviewer of terror laws, described as a 'self-evident terrorism risk' – and, even more so, because of the likely content of the learning centre.
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The woman two tables from me at a branch of Pret in the City was talking about her chemotherapy. Her male companion asked her how her treatment was going, and she replied that it was gruelling. She was on a short break and was dreading the next round. I have leukaemia, and know the pattern of these conversations. What usually follows is sympathy, or empathy if someone has been through it themselves or knows someone who has. But there was no sympathy or empathy offered. Instead, the man launched into a diatribe. A diatribe of all the most idiotic and dangerous health conspiracies rolled into one. To paraphrase, he told her: ‘They are putting poison in you. The pharma companies need people to die to keep their profits up so they can sell more drugs to pretend to treat people.
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My son has a penchant for fantasy movies, especially Marvel. It’s an expensive taste. The cinema isn’t cheap once you add in food and parking. So in a way I am grateful to Sir Keir Starmer. Because there’s now no need for my son to visit the cinema again. If he wants a fantasy, all he needs to do is listen to the Prime Minister speak about defence. To be fair to the PM, he isn’t the only one. Pretty much the entire political class is, to varying degrees, living in a fantasy – that we have even started to get to grips with the requirements for defence spending, let alone decided to do something about it.
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To understand what’s really going on with the latest British Medical Association strike threat – it is currently balloting 50,000 doctors over a putative six-month strike in support of a 29 per cent pay claim for ‘resident’ (formerly called junior) doctors – it’s instructive to look at what happened to Liverpool City Council in the 1980s. The local Labour party had effectively been taken over by Militant entryists, who then exerted de facto control of the council. One of their aims was financial: they argued that cuts to the Rate Support Grant meant that £30 million had been ‘stolen’ from Liverpool by the government. But they also had a broader political aim: they saw conflict with the government as an end in itself.
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If you think the Tories’ problems would be solved if they ditched Kemi Badenoch and turned to any of the mooted replacements – or indeed to anyone else – then I have a bridge to sell you. When you’re booted out of office less than a year ago because the public despise you – because they think you stand for nothing, are disastrously useless, and are incapable of telling the truth about anything – then the idea that you just need to be a bit better at social media memes and appear on a few more TV interviews is risible. Imagine how refreshing it would be to have a leader who was honest about the need to cut welfare The truth is that even on their current 16 per cent, it’s not clear that the Conservatives have yet hit their floor.
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Benjamin Netanyahu should not be Prime Minister of Israel. It is a stain on Israel’s political system that after the massacre of 7 October, the man whose entire selling point to voters was that he alone could keep Israel secure has been able to remain in power through a deal with extremist Israeli politicians. But none of that changes the fact that Netanyahu’s response to this week’s appalling statement by the leaders of France, Canada and the UK was entirely correct. To recap: earlier this week: Emmanuel Macron, Mark Carney and Keir Starmer issued a demand to Israel: do what we say or face ‘concrete actions…we will not hesitate to take further action, including targeted sanctions.
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Keir Starmer's government has suspended trade talks with Israel and summoned the Israeli ambassador over the 'intolerable' offensive in Gaza. To be honest, I’m surprised it’s taken ten months for any doubt to be cleared up. But now it is entirely clear where the government stands vis-à-vis our supposed great ally in the Middle East, Israel, and the Islamist death cult which seeks to wipe Jews – yes, Jews, not Israel – off the face of the earth: it stands with Hamas.
