Politics

Poor old BBC. It’s been another torrid year for the Corporation after being embarrassed by Gary Lineker, lambasted over Richard Sharp and humiliated over various Hamas howlers. And now, even the mild-mannered Culture Secretary is having a pop at them. Lucy Frazer – never the most natural of culture warriors – was out on the airwaves this morning, discussing plans to give Ofcom more of a role in regulating the Corporation’s content. Frazer warned on Times Radio that audiences now increasingly feel that the Beeb is failing to be impartial. She said that ‘there was a perception among audiences’ of a problem, after complaints about bias jumped by more than

A century ago today, the first ever Labour government was formed. Yet even many Labour members will probably be ignorant of the anniversary. To be fair, most historians of the party (this one included) have overlooked the government in favour of the superficially more consequential post-war administrations, especially that of 1945. After all, the 1924 government lasted just nine months and its legislative successes were few. Formed after the inconclusive December 1923 general election left the Conservatives unable to command a Commons majority, as his was the second largest party and enjoying qualified Liberal support, Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald stepped in. Few believed he would last long in Number 10:

The row that has erupted at Katharine Birbalsingh’s Michaela school in north London highlights the difference in how Britain and France confront Islamic conservatism in education and wider society.   Birbalsingh has displayed courage in imposing a blanket ban on all ritual prayer in the school, but nonetheless in France such displays of religiosity have been outlawed for more than a century.   Initially this was to curb the influence of the Catholic church, but in recent decades it has been Islam attempting to undermine the secularism of French schools. It began in the autumn of 1989 when three teenage girls arrived at their school in a suburb of northern Paris wearing headscarves.

Today is the centenary of Vladimir Lenin’s death. His Moscow funeral was marked by official communist solemnity, as if a messiah had come and departed. Trams and buses were halted and boats were tied to mooring posts. Factory whistles were sounded at the moment when his corpse, not yet embalmed for the mausoleum that stands today on Red Square, was lowered into the ice-cold earth. Those who refrained from lamenting his passing joked that people who’d had to applaud him in life were whistling when he died. Vladimir Putin does not worship at Lenin’s shrine or memory. He holds him culpable for the 1922 constitutional settlement that gave ‘artificial’ recognition to