Politics

Earlier this month, I attended a family-friendly music festival in the glorious sunshine. There was stone-baked pizza, a champagne bar and paddle board yoga. There was also quite a lot of ecstasy, ketamine and cocaine. You cannot attend a music festival – even a supposedly wholesome one – without realising how normalised drugs have become among my generation of middle class young professionals. The mention of Class A drug use may conjure images of single-use phones, street corners and sneaking into the toilets – there was none of that. Cheery, well-spoken dealers offered my friends and me their wares as we sunbathed outside our tent; by the stage, fellow attendees

There are 960 miles as the crow flies between Paris and Stockholm, but when it comes to dealing with Islam they are separated by light years. In France this week there has been something of a kerfuffle caused by a Gap back-to-school campaign that features a young girl in a hijab. One female MP from Emmanuel Macron’s ruling La République en Marche party said the campaign left her ‘sickened,’ while Marlène Schiappa, the gender equality minister, has demanded an explanation from Gap, saying: ‘You don’t choose to wear the veil at nine to ten years old.’ Incidentally, France has looked on in bemusement at Boris Johnson and his comments about

This week, a Sky News video has been doing the rounds on Twitter in which an exasperated Jeremy Corbyn supporter cast doubt on the row over the ongoing wreath-laying controversy by declaring that the Labour leader is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. End of. https://twitter.com/Jamin2g/status/1029448470028013570 Just in case readers are in any doubt, Mr S can confirm this claim is not true. But Mr S thinks he can guess where it came from. A few months ago, Corbyn’s supporters began to rebut questions about his commitment to peace by asserting that he was a winner of the Gandhi Peace Prize. The prize is bestowed annually by the Indian

Will the latest anti-Semitism row damage Jeremy Corbyn? The row over the Munich memorial rumbles on for another day following the Labour leader’s refusal to apologise for attending a wreath-laying ceremony for members of the terrorist organisation behind the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. Although there are photos of Corbyn holding a wreath near those gravestones – and he previously said that he laid a wreath at the ceremony – he says there were multiple wreaths and multiple people moving wreaths. His wreath was for the victims of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation base in 1985. Not helping matters is the fact that Corbyn appears to have changed his story a number

Oh dear. As many politicians have discovered, trial by Twitter rarely ends well. And neither does poll by Twitter. Where in a normal poll, factors such as sample size and demographic can be controlled, these thing are taken out of control when you ask the Twitterati to decide. Despite this, many campaigners see this set-up as actually beneficial to their aims – starting polls on issues they believe to know their own followers’ opinions on already in order to prove a point. So, spare a thought for the pro-Corbyn grassroots organisation Momentum. They asked their followers whether Boris Johnson ought to have the Conservative whip withdrawn for comparing women wearing

Poor old Chris Williamson. Jeremy Corbyn’s changing story over whether he did or didn’t lay a wreath on the graves of the Munich terrorists must make keeping up difficult for his loyal and faithful follower. Which perhaps explains why Williamson was somewhat lost for words when he was challenged on the subject on Newsnight last night: Evan Davis: ‘A wreath was laid by your party leader at the graves of four members of Black September – true or false?’ Chris Williamson: ‘Jeremy was there to lay a wreath…’ ED: ‘You’re unable to answer that question and that is why this fuss goes on.’ CW: ‘But no, it’s going on because