Society

It is a biting winter’s evening in Cambridge and apparently we are making history. This is the first serious public discussion in the UK of the law on cousin marriage, and the desirability of legislating against it, since the mid-Victorian era. At a time when British universities seem more interested in discussing diversity, equity and inclusion and decolonising the curricula than engaging with the great issues of the day, there is an unmistakable frisson as we gather around a long beechwood table in the brightly lit Weston Room of the interfaith Woolf Institute. A portrait of the no-nonsense Princess Anne, its patron, smiles down upon us. Charles Darwin, who was

It’s grim up north in Scotland, we’re told. A mission from Edinburgh has produced a report about the woes of life in the Highlands and Islands, and a demand for measures to deal with them. Problems include a high incidence of poverty; a lack of affordable housing and public transport; long trips to the nearest hospital or surgery; limited social care; cultural desertification; a lack of local places of worship suitable for refugees; limited childcare and access to fresh food; and a good deal besides. Highlanders aren’t cowering at the feet of some megalomaniac dictator in Lochaber So far, so predictable. But this report comes not from some progressive think-tank, but from

Before MPs voted to support the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, Kim Leadbeater, who has sponsored the bill, rose on a point of order. There were murmurs in the House. Then Leadbeater said, a little sheepishly, that she wanted to correct the record. She had wrongly implied that serving members of the judiciary had indicated they support the bill. The Judicial Office had written to her, telling her off; and now she was repenting at the eleventh hour. It was a fitting conclusion to a debate that has been, from beginning to the end, characterised by falsehoods. Still, MP after MP stood up and thanked Leadbeater for the way

Anyone outraged by Labour MP Tahir Ali calling on the government to introduce blasphemy laws has clearly not been paying attention, for there are already blasphemy laws in this country. All Ali wants to do is make them official. When he urges Sir Keir Starmer to prohibit the desecration of the Qur’an and other Abrahamic religious texts, as he did at Prime Minister’s Questions, he will be aware that people are already punished for desecrating the Muslim holy book, including children. The Prime Minister is too progressive to allow himself to disagree with a religious reactionary In March 2023, a 14-year-old boy was suspended from school in Wakefield after a