Stephen Pollard

Congratulations are due to the Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson. Not many ministers achieve much at all, let alone ticking off the core of their agenda within a year of taking office. But figures to be released this week, which show that over 13,000 children have had to leave private schools over the past academic year, are merely the latest confirmation that Phillipson is well on her way to achieving what she set out to do when she took office. Phillipson can already boast that she is the most destructive education secretary since 1979.

Should the government set a cap on immigration? Do we need to pull out of the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights) to take control of our borders? Will Keir Starmer’s plan to cut numbers – which involves cutting the recruitment of overseas care workers – work? All vital questions, not least because the result of the next election may depend on the answers. But it is striking that the debate around immigration, and the government’s plan outlined this morning by the Prime Minister, are focused almost entirely on numbers. The total number matters, but what matters even more is who they are and how they behave The total number of immigrants allowed in is fundamental, of course.

Never let it be said that The Spectator doesn’t provide invaluable time saving services. I’m here to help save hours of your life tomorrow, when the results of today’s local elections – 1,641 seats across 14 county councils, five regional and one city mayoralties as well as the Runcorn and Helsby by-election – will emerge. Here’s my election hack: ignore everything said by all of the parties contesting the elections. Literally everything, because all of it is meaningless. It’s clear that you can fit almost any claim to any result – and the parties will do just that More specifically, after four decades of watching and analysing elections, it’s clear that you can fit almost any claim to any result – and the parties will do just that.

If you’ve been in the City of London recently, you’ll likely have seen one of the blue plaques that have sprung up on pavements. Instead of pointing out the home of someone memorable, these tell a very different story: “A member of the public had their phone stolen here” reads the message, with the City of London Police’s logo underneath and the slogan, “Look up, look out” on the bottom of the plaque. When I first saw one, I assumed it was the work of the wave of anti-crime campaigns that have sprung up on social media, which highlight the extent of crime in the capital – and the uselessness of the police in tackling it.

This time last week there was near universal outrage on the left – and even from some Conservative MPs – after Israel barred two Labour MPs, Abtisam Mohammed and Yuan Yang, from entry. The Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, described the Israeli decision as 'unacceptable, counterproductive, and deeply concerning…this is no way to treat British parliamentarians'.  The Middle East minister, Hamish Falconer, opened an 80-minute statement on the matter by summoning all the gravity he could muster and telling the Commons that this was 'unacceptable and deeply concerning. It is no way to treat democratically elected representatives'. Later that day, dozens of Labour MPs gathered for a photograph with Mohammed and Yang to show their solidarity. Phone-in hosts and columnists opined.

Watching Kemi Badenoch being interviewed this morning on the BBC, I couldn’t help but think of one of the public shamings during the Chinese Cultural Revolution: confess your crime, woman who refuses to watch Adolescence. Breakfast hosts Charlie Stayt and Naga Munchetty asked the Conservative leader whether she had finally watched the Netflix drama about a teenage boy who kills a classmate, which has now been adopted as a sort of sacred artefact by much of the left. It has even been the subject of a Downing Street summit, during which the prime minister suggested that it be shown by every school in the country.

We do not know exactly how many girls have been raped by so-called ‘grooming gangs’. We do not know the full extent of police and local authority involvement in covering up these rapes. We do not know where these rapes are still continuing. We do not, in reality, know anything beyond the facts of the individual cases and towns that have so far emerged and which have been properly investigated. And it seems that if Jess Phillips has her way, nor will we ever. In a Commons statement yesterday, the minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls announced that the government may no longer be proceeding even with the five pathetic, utterly inadequate local inquiries that the Home Secretary announced in January.

I suppose we should name it the ‘Lammy Doctrine’, after the Titan of global diplomacy we are so privileged to have as our Foreign Secretary. So many and varied are David Lammy’s achievements that it is difficult to keep up, but this weekend he added yet another to the list. Responding to the decision of the Israeli immigration authorities to bar two Labour MPs from entry, he appeared to announce a new doctrine: that British MPs are allowed to go where they want, say what they like and behave as they wish, and no country on earth has the right to bar them from entering. And yet Britain can nonetheless bar whoever we want from wherever we want, whenever we want. He didn’t put it quite like that, of course; Mr Lammy is obviously far too sophisticated to put it so bluntly.

Tonight, I’m going to hear Joyce DiDonato, one of the greatest living sopranos, sing Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise. On Saturday afternoon, I’ll be at a masterclass given by Gautier Capuçon, a glorious cellist. And on Sunday night, I’m seeing him play all five of Beethoven’s cello sonatas. I tell you this not (just) to make you jealous, but because all three concerts will be at London's Wigmore Hall, which this week told Arts Council England (ACE) where it could put its annual grant of £350,000.

The word ‘surreal’ barely does justice to what’s been happening in recent weeks. Quite apart from the possible collapse of Nato and the US treating Canada as more of an enemy than Russia, there was the previously unthinkable sight last month of the US voting alongside North Korea, Belarus and, yes, Russia at the United Nations against most of its (former?) allies. But while it was unprecedented for the US to cast such a vote, perhaps the best way to view it was as the US at last entering into the true spirit of the UN. Because for the UN, the surreal is the norm.

There is a grim irony in today’s announcement of the commemorations marking the 80th anniversary of VE Day on 8 May – at the very time that the Western alliance is collapsing. The plans include dressing the Cenotaph in Union flags, a military procession and flypast in London and a service of remembrance and thanksgiving at Westminster Abbey, followed by a concert. All good, and all appropriate.  But, according to the government press release, 'street parties will also be held across the country'. Really? The symmetry is obvious, of course. VE Day was one big street party as the country celebrated the defeat of the Nazis and the triumph of freedom.

There has been no more effective and successful defensive alliance in history than Nato. The unity and determination of Nato’s members meant the Soviet Union understood that the doctrine of ‘Massive Retaliation’ was real: if they attacked, Nato would respond with nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union did not attack. But it is clear from events this week – and, in truth, has been clear for some years – that Nato is now effectively dead as a serious force for defence and deterrence, snuffed out by the myopia and weakness of the European political class. Russia’s invasions of Ukraine, first in 2014 and then in 2022, demonstrate how enfeebled deterrence has become since the fall of the USSR.

It sometimes feels as if there is never any good news in the fight to preserve freedom of speech in Britain. At the very moment, for example, when the United States has a president who is ripping up the shibboleths of what Suella Braverman memorably called the 'Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati', our deputy prime minister Angela Rayner is reportedly planning to set up a 16-person council to draw up an official definition of Islamophobia. Rayner’s Islamophobia council could be headed by Dominic Grieve, one of the worst people who could hold such a position But it isn’t all gloom.

When you tweet as often as I do, you learn to take the rough with the smooth. Even though it has led to death threats (dealt with by the police) I overwhelmingly enjoy it. I like the immediacy of it and I like the interaction. Best of all, I learn from it. And yesterday I learned something loud and clear. To be accurate, I had something confirmed that I and many others have long thought: that, at least on social media, much of the support for Jeremy Corbyn is akin to a cult, with the Labour leader worshipped as a god-like creature who cannot be criticised. Yesterday morning, I read President Trump’s statement in reaction to the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which he condemned 'this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.

It is more than possible that before any Brexit deal is discussed, let alone concluded, the EU will have effectively collapsed. And the key factor could be the demise of Algeria’s leader of 17 years. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is 79 and has needed a wheelchair since having a stroke in 2013. ‘His mind is even more infirm than his body,’ one observer tells me. Bouteflika returned home recently after a week’s stay at a private clinic in France. His prognosis isn’t good. Officially, Bouteflika underwent standard ‘periodic medical tests’ in Grenoble. But no one believes this. Among people who know Algeria well, there is little doubt that he is severely incapacitated and does not have much time left.