George Galloway will be a nuisance for Keir Starmer

The return of ‘Gorgeous’ George Galloway to the House of Commons may not be Keir Starmer’s worst nightmare, but it is certainly the recurrence of a bad dream. No one who recalls how Galloway harried Tony Blair over the Iraq war twenty years ago can deny that the new Workers Party MP for Rochdale can be a powerful Commons speaker. His Old Testament-style may seem ridiculous to many, like his adoption of that fedora – which he presumably will have to discard in the hatless debating chamber – but on issues of war, and the plight of the dispossessed, he can certainly rouse emotion. His declamatory style goes down well in the mosques attended by Galloway’s many Muslim voters, who applaud his campaign’s condemnation of ‘genocide’ in Gaza.

Most Labour MPs will avoid him like the plague, but the new MP will no doubt be embraced by the former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who has also had the distinction of being given the boot by Labour. Galloway will miss no opportunity to remind Starmer that, only the day before yesterday, he was actively campaigning to have Corbyn installed in Downing Street. The forty odd Socialist Campaign group of left Labour MPs feel a deep sense of betrayal at Corbyn being written out of Labour history. They may not openly support Galloway on issues other than Gaza, but they’ll certainly be happy to see him cause irritation to their current leader. 

There is no greater irritant in Labour politics than George Galloway, largely because his roots in the Labour movement go so deep, since he joined the Labour young socialists over half a century ago. And he can still turn a populist phrase or two. His election night description of Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak as ‘two cheeks of the same arse’ may not be very original but he certainly gave them a good ‘spanking’ in Rochdale, overturning a 9,600 Labour majority. Only Galloway could compare himself to Winston Churchill with a straight face as he did last night. He’s now equalled the great man’s record of representing four different seats in parliament: Glasgow, London, Bradford and Rochdale. 

Galloway is undoubtedly the great opportunist of electoral politics, having launched more parties than the Great Gatsby. However, his support for the Palestinian cause is sincere and of long standing. He has been tied emotionally and politically to the occupied territories since he was a councillor in Dundee in the 1980s and was responsible for twinning the Scottish city with Nablus on the West Bank.

This passion puzzled many of his Labour comrades back in the day since few Scottish voters seemed engaged with the politics of the Middle East. But Galloway – who became the youngest ever chair of the Scottish Labour Party in 1981 at 26 years of age – was a real working-class hero back then. Five years later, he defeated the Social Democrat leader, and former Labour chancellor, Roy Jenkins, to become the Labour MP for Hillhead. Typically dressed like a gangster with his big coat, flashy ties and moustache, Galloway had no time for the scruffy intellectuals who dominated the Labour leadership in the 80s. Donald Dewar loathed him from the start and Tony Blair thought he was deranged, not least for his famous visit to Iraq to praise the ‘indefatigability’ of Saddam Hussein in 1994.

Galloway was expelled from Labour in 2003 over his opposition to the Iraq war and went on to form Respect along with various far-left fragments, including members of the Trotskyite Socialist Workers Party. He then infuriated Blair by winning Bethnal Green and Bow in the 2005 general election, defeating Oona King and showing that he could win seats even in a general election. A year later, Galloway’s midlife crisis took him into the Big Brother household where he delivered his celebrated impression of a cat. He lost his east London seat in the 2010 general election.

But history was not finished with the great feline impersonator. His sensational by-election victory in Bradford West in 2012, capitalising on the Muslim vote, catapulted Galloway back to the Commons. He lost again in 2015 but has now returned, in his seventieth year.

So what will Galloway do in his next hundred days in parliament? Well, he will not necessarily be the darling of Muslim Labour MPs like Naz Shah, who replaced him as MP for Bradford West after he had accused her of lying about the circumstances of her forced marriage. The vast majority of Labour MPs will also give him a very wide berth. But he will make sure he is seen and heard and will not just be the anti-zionist member for Gaza. Galloway may be of the left but he is also a social conservative and has repeatedly rounded on ‘anti-Brexit woke liberal identity politics and cancel culture’. He insists that Richard Tice invited him to become a Reform candidate, which might even be true.

As well as campaigning against what Starmer’s stance over Gaza, Galloway can be expected to oppose liberalisation of abortion and the banning of conversion therapy and to support sex-based rights for women. The former Russia Today presenter will also be calling for a halt to the war in Ukraine. He aroused some media mirth by promising to bring a Primark store to Rochdale. But Galloway is a consummate populist who doesn’t care what the metropolitan ‘globalists’ think of him. An icon of anti-politics, he is the ultimate member for ‘none of the above’. He may not be around for long, but we will certainly hear his voice. 

China’s nickname for Macron is perfect

Alexei Navalny is being laid to rest in Moscow today, a fortnight after the Russian opposition leader was found dead in a gulag in the Arctic circle. His death prompted an outpouring of grief but also anger among Western leaders. Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak and Emmanuel Macron expressed their sadness at the news and their indignation, pointing the finger of blame for Navalny’s death at Vladimir Putin.

Navalny was a courageous man who paid a heavy price for his dissidence. So, too, did Jamal Khashoggi. The Saudi journalist was a fierce critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, using a monthly column in the Washington Post to denounce the de facto ruler of the kingdom. In October 2018, Khashoggi was lured to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul where he was tortured, murdered and dismembered.

The West was outraged at the murder of Khashoggi, and Britain and France were among the countries demanding that those responsible ‘must be held to account’. In February 2021, the CIA released their findings on the killing: Khashoggi was murdered on behalf of bin Salman, who ‘approved’ the death because he regarded the journalist a threat to his rule.

The silence from Western leaders was deafening. According to the New York Times, president Joe Biden went quiet because the diplomatic cost of directly penalising Saudi Arabia’s crown prince was ‘too high’.

The following year in July, Biden ‘fist bumped’ the Crown Prince at a meeting in Jeddah, the same month that Macron invited bin Salman to dinner at the Elysée Palace. Macron hosted MSB shortly after a trip to Africa where he had lectured Cameroon about the immorality of doing any energy deals with Russia. ‘I too often see hypocrisy…in not knowing how to qualify a war,’ he declared.

This behaviour is the ‘politics of double standards’, a phrase coined in a recent interview by Laurent Bigot, a former senior civil servant in France’s Foreign Office. ‘It is no longer tolerated in Africa,’ he explained. As an example he contrasted France’s reaction to coups in Chad and Mali in 2021. They supported the coup in Chad, citing ‘exceptional circumstances’, but condemned the one in Mali, with Macron calling it ‘unacceptable’. The Chad coup was acceptable because it was led by Idriss Deby, whose family’s friendship with France goes back decades.

France’s ‘politics of double standards’ has been in evidence this week with the announcement of a strategic partnership deal with Qatar. As part of the agreement, the Gulf State will pour €10 billion (£8.6 billion) into start-ups and investment funds in France in the next six years.

The deal is an indication that Macron bears no grudge towards the Gulf State despite their moral and material support of Hamas, the terrorist organisation that five months ago slaughtered 42 French citizens in Israel.

At a recent commemoration in Paris to remember the dead, Macron described Hamas’s attack as ‘barbarism… which is fed by anti-Semitism’. On the very day that Hamas committed their barbarity, Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement declaring that they ‘held Israel solely responsible for the ongoing escalation due to its ongoing violations of the rights of the Palestinian people’. The Ministry called on ‘the international community to act urgently to compel Israel to stop its flagrant violations of international law’.

Not a word about the 1,200 men, women and children who had been butchered, but then why would the Qataris commiserate with Israel? They not only hosted Hamas’s leaders in Doha, but funded the terrorist organisation, doubling its aid to Gaza in 2021 to $360 million (£290 million). Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh said the money ‘proves the depth of the ties between the Palestinian and Qatari peoples’.

Macron is not alone in turning a blind eye to some of Qatar’s more dubious relationships (they are also on good terms with Putin) in the name of realpolitik. A few weeks ago, Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden visited Doha on official business and boasted that bilateral trade is currently worth £11.4 billion, up 29 per cent on 2024. Dowden said he was ‘keen to discuss with our partners the ways in which the UK can support Qatar in delivering its new “third national development strategy”‘.

Shortly before Dowden jetted off to Doha, Politico ran an investigative piece headlined: ‘On Hamas, what did Qatar know and when did it know it?’. In response to whether Qatar knew the attack on Israel was coming, the publication quoted a senior ‘intelligence official of a major European power’ as replying ‘we’re still looking into it’.

It is not only Qatar’s links to Hamas that should trouble the West; for many years they have been a financial and ideological backer of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose influence is spreading rapidly throughout Europe. In 2015, the then prime minister of France Manuel Valls declared that the time had come to combat ‘the discourse of the Muslim Brotherhood in our country’.

That fight never materialised because there is little fight left in the West. In 2021, Biden warned Putin that there would be ‘devastating consequences’ if Navalny died in Russian custody. That wasn’t long after he declared Saudi Arabia a ‘pariah’ for murdering Khashoggi.

It’s said that the Chinese have a nickname for Macron; they call the French president ‘Macaron’ because like the biscuit he is hard on the outside and soft in the centre. The same could be said of all Western leaders.

Four bets for the weekend’s big handicaps

BENSON did this column a massive favour a year ago when landing the bet365 Morebattle Hurdle after being put up at 16-1 (he went off at a starting price of 11/1). In truth, he faces a stiffer task in the same race tomorrow because he is both one year older and running off the top weight of 12 stone in a fiercely-completive 18-runner handicap.

However, with more rain forecast between now and the off, along with his trainer Sandy Thomson in fine form (six winners from his last 15 runners for a 40 per cent strike rate over the past 14 days), I am happy to stay loyal to this battle-hardened warrior on his 26th visit to the racetrack.

Benson, a nine-year-old grey gelding, is arguably a better horse over two and a half miles rather than the two mile distance of tomorrow’s contest at Kelso (2.50 p.m.). However, with a likely fast-run race and with fairly soft ground to slow up the speedier types, I expect jockey Ryan Mania to hold him up again near the back of the field before picking off rivals in the last quarter of a mile. Back him 1 point each way at 12-1 with bet365, paying six places.

The forecast favourite Under Control looks an improver for the J.P. McManus/Nicky Henderson owner/trainer combination but he is far too short in the betting for me at around 7-2 and, if the ground came up very soft he might not even run because he has targets at the forthcoming Cheltenham Festival too.

I will, however, go into the race double handed because I am also keen to back course and distance specialist CRACKING RHAPSODY, who was first and second at this track in his last two runs, both in small-field handicaps. I think this lightly-raced five-year-old gelding will be better suited to the hurly-burly of a bigger field and he can outrun his odds.

The horse’s trainer Ewan Whillans failed by only a neck to land last weekend’s Betting.Bet Eider Handicap Chase with Prince Des Fichaux and he could well go one better in this weekend’s big handicap. Back Cracking Rhapsody 1 point each way at 16-1, once again with bet365, paying six places.

Shropshire-based Henry Daly is another in-form trainer with four winners from his last 17 runners for a strike rate of 24 per cent over the past fortnight. He saddles FORTESCUE in the Get Best Odds Guaranteed At BetVictor Veterans’ Handicap Chase (Newbury 1.20 p.m.).

With just eight rivals to beat and with Harry Cobden booked for the ride, he seems generously priced at 6-1 with most bookies, all paying three place. Once again, 1 point each way is the suggestion. Forgive him his poor run at Sandown a month ago when the ground was far too quick for him as he thrives on soft, or even heavy, ground.

Secret Reprieve, a former Coral Welsh Grand National winner, is interesting off a mark of just 130 for his shrewd handler, Evan Williams, but he might need the race after a break from the racetrack of nearly a year. However, if he is back to his anything like his best, he will land a decent race this season on soft ground.

I had expected to put up Grandeur D’Ame in the BetVictor Greatwood Gold Cup Handicap Chase (Newbury, 1.55 p.m.) but that was before Alan King’s eight-year-old gelding halved in price from 8-1 to 4-1 in the space of the past 48 hours. Since he unseated his rider at the very first fence last time out at Cheltenham, he is not one to back at short odds.

Instead, I would rather take a chance on a horse that has been very disappointing in four runs this season: Warren Greatrex’s BILL BAXTER. He is another who will relish the very soft ground and he is down to an official mark of 135, just 2 lbs higher than when lifting the Randox-sponsored Topham Chase at Aintree 11 months ago.

Bill Baxter is definitely not one for the mortgage as he may have fallen out of love with the sport but I am willing to have 1 point each way on him at 17/2 with SkyBet, paying a generous four places in a nine-runner race. There are odds of 10-1 out there for the horse but with one place less.

Roll on the Cheltenham Festival, just 11 days away and counting. In fact, I can’t resist adding one horse to my ante-post portfolio. If BOWTOGREATNESS is only half as good as his handler Ben Pauling thinks he is, then he is well treated off his current rating of 133.

He is a bull of a horse and clearly takes a lot of getting fit and his last run, third at Kempton in the Coral Trophy Handicap Chase just six days ago, will hopefully have put him spot on for the Festival.

We now know that the Fulke Walwyn Kim Muir Challenge Cup on the Thursday (14 March) is almost certainly his aim so back him 1 point each way at 20-1 NRNB, five places, with bet365 for that contest. Then hope that Pauling books a decent amateur jockey for the ride if his charge makes the cut for the race.

Pending:

1 point each way Benson at 12-1 in the Morebattle Hurdle, paying 1/5^th odds, 6 places.

1 point each way Cracking Rhapsody at 16-1 in the Morebattle Hurdle, paying 1/5^th odds, 6 places.

1 point each way Fortescue at 6-1 in the BetVictor Veterans’ Handicap Chase, paying 1/5^th odds, 3 places.

1 point each way Bill Baxter at 17-2 in the Greatwood Gold Cup, paying 1/5^th odds, 4 places.

1 point each way Stumptown at 12-1 NRNB for the Ultima Handicap Chase, paying 1/5^th odds, 5 places.

1 point each way Giovinco at 20-1 for the Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase, paying 1/5^th odds, 3 places.

1 point each way Libberty Hunter at 12-1 NRNB for the Grand Annual Chase, paying 1/5th odds, five places.

1 point each way Doddiethegreat at 12-1 NRNB for the Coral Cup, paying 1/5th odds, five places.

1 point each way Djelo at 20-1 NRNB for the Turners Novices’ Chase, paying 1/5^th odds, 3 places.

1 point each way Home By The Lee at 28-1 for the Paddy Power Stayers’ Hurdle, paying 1/5^th odds, 3 places.

1 point each way Bowtogreatness at 20-1 NRNB for the Kim Muir, 1/5^th odds, 5 places.

1 point each way Bravemansgame at 20-1 NRNB for the Boodles Cheltenham Gold Cup, paying 1/5^th odds, 3 places.

1 point each way Mahler Mission at 20-1 for the Randox Grand National, paying 1/5^th odds, 5 places.

1 point each way Vanillier at 16-1 for the Randox Grand National, paying 1/5^th odds, 5 places.

1 point each way Panda Boy at 40-1 for the Randox Grand National, paying 1/5^th odds, 5 places.

There were no settled bets from last weekend.

2023-4 jump seasons to date: + 1.81 points.

2023 flat season: – 48.22 points on all tips.

2022-3 jumps season: + 54.3 points on all tips.

My gambling record for the past eight years: I have made a profit in 14 of the past 16 seasons to recommended bets. To a 1 point level stake over this period, the overall profit of has been 475 points. All bets are either 1 point each way or 2 points win (a ‘point’ is your chosen regular stake).

Keir Starmer must stand up to George Galloway

George Galloway has done it again. As an expert in riding waves of fury among Muslim voters about happenings in the Middle East, from the Iraq War to the Gaza conflict, Galloway has turned into a skilled tormentor of successive Labour leaders. 

The biggest short-term risk by far that Galloway’s win in Rochdale poses to Keir Starmer is that it will force an over-correction in Middle East policy from the Leader of the Opposition. Were Starmer to become detectably more anti-Israel and pro-Palestine over the coming weeks as a result of pressure from a perceived Muslim block vote, it would certainly shore up Labour’s position in a couple of dozen urban seats. But such a move would come at a grave cost to the party’s overall standing in the eyes of millions of mainstream centre-right voters who are currently sufficiently relaxed about the idea of Starmer taking over in Downing Street that they have withdrawn their support from the Conservatives.

If Starmer’s Labour becomes ‘unsafe’ in the eyes of these voters then it could well presage a mass decision among such voters to hold their noses and put their crosses in the Tory box on the ballot paper yet again. That would completely change the electoral calculus, severely damaging Labour’s prospects in literally hundreds of constituencies that pollsters say they are presently on target to win.

It may not always be true, but for now by far the best strategy for Labour is to be seen to stand up to pressure from Galloway and his fellow travellers. Doing so will mean the general election becomes a particularly unpleasant experience for Labour MPs defending inner-city seats. Perhaps a handful will even lose to Galloway’s latest vehicle, the Workers’ Party of Britain, though the first-past-the-post system will assist Labour in consolidating its own vote in general election conditions.  

While many left-wing voters share the concerns of British Muslims about Israel’s protracted military assault on Gaza, it is ultimately very hard to envisage them passing up their best opportunity in many years to be rid of the Tories as a governing party. To get the Conservatives out, they know they must vote Labour.

Roy Jenkins famously likened Tony Blair in the run-up to the 1997 election to a museum curator carrying a Ming vase across a highly-polished floor, determined not to drop it. If anything, Starmer has adopted an even more risk-averse approach to his own period transporting the priceless porcelain.

The political shockwaves emanating from the Gaza conflict have made the floor more slippery. But they also give him a heightened opportunity to show naturally conservative-leaning sections of the electorate that he won’t turn Britain into a leftist madhouse if he gets to lead the nation. 

Given the peculiar conditions that prevailed, it is hard to draw many more lessons for the other parties from this by-election. The Tories were knocked into third place by an impressive local independent, yet could have done even worse. Reform bombed and will by now surely be regretting having chosen the former Labour MP for the constituency Simon Danczuk as its candidate. His mission was to use his profile to hoover up the white working class vote and he simply proved unable to do so. Even the Lib Dems beat him, though a seven per cent vote share shows that party is not going to be a big part of the politics of working class northern constituencies for the foreseeable future. 

A similar vote share for the candidate Labour abandoned, Azhar Ali, will probably have come as a relief to some in Starmer’s circle. Their boss effectively urged Labour voters not to back Ali when he withdrew official backing for him and they largely followed that recommendation.

‘Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza,’ said Galloway in his victory speech. He added that the result meant Starmer waking up to his ‘worst nightmare’. But that will only be true if the Labour leader goes on to fold in the face of the pressure he will now face from Muslim voters and his party’s left-wing. 

Oscar Wilde once joked that he could resist everything apart from temptation. If Starmer shows in coming weeks that he can resist everything apart from pressure then all bets are off.

There is still hope for the Scottish Tories

As Douglas Ross and his colleagues gather for the annual Scottish Tory conference in Aberdeen this weekend, there are good reasons for the Scottish Conservatives to feel more upbeat than their counterparts elsewhere.

In 1997, Scotland proved particularly emblematic of New Labour’s landmark victory. Where the Conservative Party had held 11 seats, they now held none. Their share of the popular vote fell to just over 17 per cent. Three serving cabinet ministers – Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind, Scottish Secretary Michael Forsyth and President of the Board of Trade Ian Lang – were among the more high-profile casualties. As defeats go, it was comprehensive, and reflected a UK-wide disaffection after nearly two decades of Conservative government.

But today, while polls frequently suggest Rishi Sunak’s party could be facing a result of equal calamity across much of the country, this is not the case in Scotland. Though the Scottish Conservatives have fallen back in the polls, they are facing nothing close to a 1997-style wipe-out and could even gain on the seven seats they already hold in Scotland. 

Late last year, a seat-by-seat polling analysis by the consultancy Stonehaven suggested the Scottish Conservatives could win as many as 11 seats. Such projections may prove ambitious but, as the 2017 general election proved, it is now possible for the Conservatives to make substantial gains in Scotland while falling back elsewhere in the UK.

Firstly, there is the steady disintegration of the SNP vote amid incompetence, scandal and police investigation. While this is equally – if not more of – a boon to Scottish Labour, it will also benefit the Scottish Conservatives. Thanks in large part to the work of former leader Ruth Davidson, the Tories are once again the main challenger to the SNP in much of Scotland outside the Central Belt. Therefore, it is Ross’ party that stands to benefit in large parts of Scotland when voters express their disaffection with the SNP and nationalists choose to stay at home.

Secondly, through prudent positioning, the UK government has actively wooed many Scottish voters and particular those in Conservative heartlands and target seats. Under Alex Salmond, the SNP was very much the party of Scotland’s oil and gas industry, but equivocation around its future by first Nicola Sturgeon, and then Humza Yousaf, has allowed Sunak and Ross to steal this mantle. 

Meanwhile, Scottish Labour are in even more difficulty on this issue, facing a massive backlash over their plans to raise and extend a windfall tax on the North Sea industry, which companies warn could cost tens of thousands of jobs. The Scottish Conservatives are therefore now the only avowedly pro-oil and gas party in Scotland, and this could prove a decisive factor as they look to hold onto existing seats and make gains in Scotland’s north east.

Equally, support for investment zones in cities such as Aberdeen – as well as tax breaks for the Scotch whisky industry, much of which is based in Ross’ constituency of Moray – are part of a wider economic charm offensive in Tory target areas. Further support for Scottish industry in Jeremy Hunt’s coming budget would only enhance his party’s appeal.

Finally, the Scottish Conservatives – and their oft-maligned leader, Ross – have in recent years frequently proved themselves a better judge of the public mood in Scotland than their seemingly more popular competitors. For instance, they were the only party to oppose the SNP’s deeply-flawed gender bill, which was backed by every every other party. 

Similarly, they were also the first party to call out the SNP‘s woeful record on economic growth, the consequences of which were particularly strongly felt in the nationalists’ recent tax-raising budget. During a trying two years for the Tory brand, such positions have helped keep the Scottish Conservatives relevant where they may otherwise have sunk without trace.

Of course, there is still considerable time before the next general election, and much could still change. But it is already clear that the Scottish Conservatives are not going to see a 1997-style wipe-out in Scotland. On the contrary – and perhaps surprisingly – Scotland could well turn out to be a bright spot for the Conservative party in an otherwise very dark general election campaign. 

George Galloway’s Rochdale win should trouble Labour

The Rochdale by-election raises a question that Labour will find hard to duck in government: can a European left-wing party survive without a pro-Islamist foreign policy? They can’t win with one, as Jeremy Corbyn proved twice. But the shocking success of George Galloway last night shows that the arguments of the Corbyn years have not been settled.

No one can pretend they do not know who the loudmouthed old ham really is after all this time. Just before Muslim voters propelled him to victory, Galloway received the endorsement of none other than Nick Griffin, the former leader of the British National Party (BNP). 

To use an overused label correctly for once, the BNP is genuinely neo-fascist. And yet Griffin had no qualms in recommending that his followers ‘get out and vote for George Galloway’ and ‘stick two fingers up to the rotten political elite and their fake news media cronies’. Like cocktails before a dinner party, obsessions about Jews bring all the extremists together.

What better illustration could you have of the horseshoe theory? Admirers of dictators admire each other. Galloway ‘saluted’ Saddam Hussein, whose forces killed tens of thousands of Muslims. He praised Bashar al-Assad, as the Syrian president’s forces slaughtered the country’s Sunni Muslim population, for maintaining the ‘fortress of the remaining dignity of the Arabs’ – the grandiosity of Galloway’s pompous language was in inverse proportion to the misery Assad inflicted.

None of this concerned Muslim voters in Rochdale. Opposition to Israel was all that mattered.

There’s an argument doing the rounds this morning that Labour’s disastrous performance was just a blip. Galloway is a narcissist, it runs, who won’t last long. Muslim voters responded to his anti-Iraq war campaign and gave him victory in Bethnal Green in the 2005 general election. He was out by 2010. He won the Bradford by-election in 2012, and the voters rejected him in the 2015 general election. The voters of Rochdale will almost certainly do the same later this year.

Labour sounded confident this morning. ‘George Galloway is only interested in stoking fear and division,’ the party told the BBC. Labour will ‘quickly’ select a new candidate for the upcoming general election, the spokesman said, adding the party wants to deliver the ‘representation and fresh start that Rochdale deserves’.

I am sure they will. Labour’s poll lead is so great, it can afford to be confident. But Rochdale raises a question about how Labour will deal with the obsessions of a large section of the left once in power, which are unlikely to go away.

The best way to think about it is to look at the threats to MPs and the endless denunciations of Keir Starmer. They are absurd on the face of it. Labour is in opposition. It has no influence over the Israeli government or Hamas whatsoever. What it says is supremely irrelevant.

But the explosion in rage makes sense if you see the anti-Starmer campaign as an attempt to bolster the chances of independent left-wing candidates and to change party policy. For one, Jeremy Corbyn, kicked out of the party in October 2020 will be thinking of running in Islington North after Galloway’s victory.

To date it has been a mess. Tom Baldwin, Keir Starmer’s biographer says that the Labour leader and his team had simply not thought about Israel when they gave Benjamin Netanyahu a blank cheque after the Hamas atrocities in October. My guess is that they were so appalled by Labour’s anti-Semitism scandals of the 2010s they swung to the opposite extreme.

You can see how extreme they became by watching a YouTube clip from four months ago of Starmer telling Nick Ferrari that Israel had the right to ‘cut off power, cut off water’ to civilians in Gaza. It has been played tens of thousands of times by Starmer’s opponents. Now he has spoken to the Israeli left, government figures in Qatar and Jordan, and the Biden administration and has embraced a standard centre-left suspicion of Netanyahu as a result.

I could go on about the Labour leadership’s naivety. How can you not have a settled view on the Israel/Palestine question when Israel so dominates leftist thinking? When, indeed, supporting Palestine is now for a large faction on left almost the definition of what it means to be left-wing? It’s astonishing.   

It is equally astonishing that due diligence did not spot that the official Labour candidate held views about Jews that weren’t just anti-Israel but were simply racist. Now Labour has moved on, and I can easily see a Labour government offering full diplomatic recognition to the Palestinian Authority as a compromise.

But that is no more than a Conservative government is likely to do. The activists are crying ‘from the river to the sea’ on the streets, and the Labour left do not want compromise. They want Labour to be like France’s largest left-wing party La France Insoumise (LFI), which is for electoral, as well as ideological, reasons pro-Islamist.

LFI repeatedly declined to call Hamas a terrorist group (a conclusion the EU came to about Hamas a full 20 years ago). Their initial communique on 7 October used Hamas’s own language about itself, calling the attack ‘an armed offensive by Palestinian forces’ that came ‘in the context of the intensification by Israel of the policy of occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem’.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party can’t win a presidential election any more than Corbyn could win a general election. And as with Corbynism, its foreign policy is not just about Palestine but includes a softness towards Vladimir Putin and the other dictators George Galloway salutes. On the other hand, LFI captures a large chunk of the Arab-French vote because it is pro-Islamist. And no French left-wing party can succeed without that vote.

Labour is so far ahead at present it can shrug off the mess in Rochdale, and predict with assurance that it will retake the seat at the election. It can say it has learned from its mistake in underwriting Netanyahu and his extremely right-wing government and moved on.

In power, however, things will be different. What Labour says and does will finally matter, and elements in its electoral coalition will be making their demands very clear. Labour hopes that Joe Biden’s ceasefire initiative will work, and that Israel will just go away as an issue. That hope, as anyone who knows the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict since 1948 will guess, is likely to be vain. This is the conflict that never goes away.

Watch: Galloway heckled by Just Stop Oil during victory speech

You’ve got to hand it to Just Stop Oil: just when you think you’ve seen the last of the climate protest group, up they pop again. The eco-activists gave George Galloway a not-so-warm welcome back to Parliament, heckling the newly-crowned MP for Rochdale during his victory speech.

Galloway was mid-flow in his speech, declaring bullishly, ‘Keir Starmer – this is for Gaza’, when a spray of orange confetti fluttered towards Galloway – but didn’t quite hit its target.

Undeterred, a Just Stop Oil protester then began shouting: ‘George Galloway, you are a climate change denier! You said in the hustings that you want to extract oil and gas from the North Sea…’

The heckling stopped Galloway mid-speech, but his supporters were having none of it. The protester was cut off by audience members who shouted at them to ‘be quiet’ and ‘get out’, before starting a chant of ‘Galloway, Galloway!’

What a way to return to Westminster…

"Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza"

George Galloway gives his victory speech in Rochdale, saying Labour's leader will "pay a high price", shortly before a climate protester interrupts

Follow live reaction https://t.co/8wfboVpCrq pic.twitter.com/rJsGoL49sG

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) March 1, 2024

George Galloway’s Rochdale victory is nothing to celebrate

George Galloway has won the Rochdale by-election. The new MP for the town announced the result as a ‘shifting of the tectonic plates’ in his acceptance speech, but that’s not an accurate way of describing what’s just happened. It’s more like a blip and an unpleasant one at that. No one who hopes for the best out of British politics can look at Rochdale with any joy.

Certainly not celebrating this morning will be the Reform party, who came a shocking sixth, behind even the Liberal Democrats. Richard Tice was campaigning heavily in the constituency himself yesterday, with various Reform figures having talked up the candidate Simon Danczuk’s chances of winning. To get a measly 1,968 votes after all that, barely clinging on to the deposit, is laughable.

There is a lot of talk right now about Reform causing the Conservative party a huge headache at the general election. Based on this result, Tory campaigners might want to reconsider how seriously they take that threat from here on out. Those hoping for some sort of Reform-European Reform Group realignment of British politics after the general election, one capable of winning a majority at some point, might want to do some heavy thinking also.

Azhar Ali, the former Labour candidate, deserved to lose: his fourth-place finish seems about right, in retrospect. Where Ali ended up finishing doesn’t say anything much at all about the Labour party or if they will win the general election. It would have been interesting to know how they would have done against Galloway had they had a decent candidate that they didn’t have to disown, but unfortunately, we’ll never know. It’s easy to say that Labour would have won it with someone that was still actually their candidate come polling day, but given Galloway got almost 40 per cent of the vote, it feels difficult to be too confident in that assertion. The Tories, at least, can feel good about coming in third, ahead of the ‘Labour’ candidate.

George Galloway will now make a return to the House of Commons. He almost certainly won’t be there for long, less than a year. But he’s back for now nonetheless, and that return will be speculated on endlessly. So what does his return as an MP truly mean, for British politics, for the Rochdale, for the country?

The Rochdale result will be used to talk up the rising tide of political Islam in British politics; some will go even further down this road and use Galloway’s return to say that British democracy faces an existential threat to its very existence. Another, related angle that will be chewed over by the political and media class is the degree to which this result threatens Labour’s ability to win the general election due to losing Muslim and young leftist voters to a challenger like Galloway and his party. There is also the questions of whether Labour needs to move closer to a pro-Palestinian position to stem this flow of voters away from them.

Labour certainly shouldn’t overreact to the Rochdale result. For a start, Galloway is a one-off in British politics, a far-leftist who nonetheless was happy to stand beside Nigel Farage and Peter Bone during the Leave campaign. He is unique – Galloway himself also cannot stand in more than one place at any given time.

Galloway has demonstrated an ability to win by-elections with a corresponding inability to hang on to those constituencies come the general election. He has also never demonstrated an aptness for taking the political draw he himself possesses and rolling that out into a political party capable of winning in multiple seats. No, the only lesson Starmer should take out of this whole event is that his office needs a much, much tighter hold on candidate selections from here on out, taking the process away from constituencies completely if he can.

Rochdale itself deserved better than this by-election and being Galloway’s latest pit stop in British politics. Labour needs to make up for the Ali debacle by finding the best possible candidate to put up against Galloway in the general election, particularly given Labour are likely to win the seat back at that point. It’s the least the town deserves.

This is an ugly result that few who care about this country and its democracy should be cheering about. It has been a chastening episode for Starmer and his party, one they will hopefully take the right lesson from. Galloway managed to win in a field of unattractive options to provide himself with a platform upon which to espouse upon his many awful political positions. We can only hope that the general election comes around sooner rather than later, so that this electoral blip can become nothing more than what it deserves to be: an obscure pub quiz question. 

Richard Tice and George Galloway in war of words

Following his triumph in the Rochdale by-election, George Galloway marked the occasion by dropping another bombshell. Speaking to reporters at the count, Galloway was asked about the criticisms of Richard Tice, Reform party leader, who said that his candidate Simon Danczuk suffered intimidation throughout the campaign. Yet, in a shock twist, Galloway responded by claiming Tice had previously asked him to a Reform candidate. He told reporters:

I think Mr Tice has rather lost his balance, and Mr Farage too, and I remind Mr Tice that I have on my telephone a text from him inviting me to be the Reform UK candidate in a by-election not that long ago. I’d prefer not to publish it, but if he keeps telling lies about me I will have to tell the truth about him.

He added that ‘absolutely none’ of his supporters had engaged in bad behaviour: ‘Ask the police, ask the police if a single one of our supporters has been arrested or spoken to by them.’ In a statement, Tice responded:

I genuinely have no idea what Mr Galloway is referring to. It is clearly an attempt to distract attention away from the appalling way that this by-election in Rochdale has been conducted. In addition, notably, he has not condemned the appalling racist death threat against our Reform candidate and intimidation of our team and firebomb threats to our business supporters.

Will Galloway now show the text? Don’t hold your breath…

Labour nightmare as George Galloway wins Rochdale by-election

George Galloway is back. The former Labour MP has triumphed in the Rochdale by-election, taking the seat from Starmer’s party with a majority of 5,697. Galloway – standing for the Workers Party of Britain – won comfortably with nearly 40 per cent of the vote at 12,335 votes. The independent candidate David Tully came in second place on 6,638, the Tories in third on 3,731 and Labour in a dismal fourth place on 2,041 votes in their former seat after Keir Starmer suspended the party’s candidate part way through the campaign. The Reform party – which put up another former Labour MP in Simon Danczuk as its candidate – came sixth with 6 per cent of the vote (1,968 votes) meaning they just managed to keep their deposit.

On hearing the news in the early morning of Friday, Galloway used his victory speech at the count to deliver a message to the Labour leader: ‘Keir Starmer – this is for Gaza’. Galloway, who served as a Labour MP between 1987 and 2003 and for the Respect party between 2005 and 2015, warned that this was just the beginning and his old party will ‘pay a high price’ for ‘enabling, encouraging and covering for the catastrophe’ being inflicted on Palestinians. In an interview with the BBC, Galloway claimed Rochdale would not be a one-off: ‘Beginning here in the north west, in the west Midlands, in London, from Ilford to Bethnal Green and Bow, Labour is on notice that they have lost the confidence of millions of their voters who loyally and traditionally voted for them, generation after generation.’

So, how bad is the result for Labour? As soon as Labour had to suspend its candidate there was so such thing as a good result for Starmer here. In the end, Labour managed its worst ever performance in a post-war by-election. Ever since Starmer had to belatedly suspend Azhar Ali, the Labour candidate for the Rochdale by-election for comments he made claiming Israel had allowed Hamas to attack on 7 October, it’s been clear the vote would be messy. A fear in Labour that suspending Ali would allow Galloway a route into parliament is what initially stopped the party from suspending Ali – only to make the decision a few days later when more comments came to light.

Since then, Galloway has been the bookies’ favourite. But Labour figures thought Ali still had a chance of winning as a result of the postal vote (which went out much earlier) as well as focus groups suggesting voters cared about domestic issues more than Israel/Palestine. When pressed in interviews on how people should vote, various Labour frontbenchers suggested voters could spoil their ballot given there was no official Labour candidate. This is in part because it is against party rules to endorse a non-Labour candidate. However, it was still clear that they saw Galloway as the very worst option. Over the weekend, frontbencher Lisa Nandy urged voters to ‘please consider voting for anybody who you believe will help to bring an end to this hate and division’.

Galloway winning is an uncomfortable outcome for Labour. Galloway not only won but won comfortably by running a single message campaign urging voters in the constituency, which has a large Muslim community (three in ten people in Rochdale identify as Muslim according to the census), to send a message to Westminster over Israel/Gaza. By-elections are often protest votes and this time Galloway has succeed to get the vote out on these grounds. It means Starmer will likely come under pressure from the left of his party once again to toughen his ceasefire line in support of Gazans.

Starmer managed to get himself out of a difficult vote last week when the Speaker Lindsay Hoyle ripped up convention in the SNP’s opposition day debate calling for a ceasefire to allow a Labour amendment with its own carefully calibrated position to be voted on. This led to uproar from both the SNP and Tories given the result was to effectively get Starmer off the hook and allow him to avoid a large Labour rebellion on the issue. The Rochdale result, however, shows that he is still not out of the woods on the issue. Some in Labour argue it could have been worse for them if they had contested the seat only for the party to then come second after Galloway despite their efforts.

It’s worth pointing out that it also wasn’t a great night for the Tories – given they only managed third, with an independent candidate in second place. However, the mood in Conservative Campaign Headquarters is still likely to be pretty chipper this morning. Of course the usual caveats apply when it comes to reading into by-election results: they are often not a reliable indicator of what will happen in a general election. But this will be taken as evidence that Starmer does have an electoral problem when it comes to British Muslim voters as result of his position on Israel/Gaza. That could manifest itself in a general election in a handful of Labour seats if alternative candidates are available. Don’t be surprised if some in the Tory party use this to argue there could be an incentive to going to the polls sooner rather than later.

For now though, Starmer’s more immediate problem is Galloway’s return to the House of Commons. With it, expect plenty of theatre now that Galloway is able to put pressure on his former party from the Commons chamber.

What has Amy Lamé actually done for London?

It’s no surprise that Britain’s night economy is in dire straight given a quarter of people told pollsters they would like to see nightclubs permanently closed even after the pandemic. Yet nobody embodies modern society’s contempt for club culture quite like Amy Lamé, Sadiq Khan’s embattled ‘Night Czar’.

Yes, as she stressed in a recent op-ed defending her record, she did her stint on the scene herself. But as any investor will tell you, past performance is no guarantee of future returns – and Lamé’s record speaks for itself. According to figures from the Night Time Industries Association (NTIA), since she was first installed in 2016, the capital has lost almost half of its nightclubs.

The Night Czar has plenty of excuses, first and foremost the pandemic. But while lockdown obviously had a impact on the scene, the problem long predates it: between 2007 and 2018, London lost 40 per cent of its live music venues and half its clubs. Lamé’s abject record is a fall from an already terrible starting point. She assumed responsibility for a sector in dire straits, and has done absolutely nothing to stop the bleeding.

Indeed, she has found plenty of time for globetrotting at the taxpayers’ expense, but a 2019 FOI of her diary found very little in it, and no meetings with the industry at all. None of this seems to have troubled Khan, who last year handed Lamé a 40 per cent pay rise – now at £120,000 a year – and allowed her to start being paid through a company, Amy Lamé Ltd, to cut her tax bill too.

Perhaps this is why the Night Czar is so determined to pin responsibility for the state of the sector anywhere except its main cause: the politicians. The biggest structural challenge facing clubs, bars, and other late-night venues in London is licencing. It is all but impossible for prospective businesses to get the necessary permissions from local authorities, whose councillors answer only to a truculent minority of local residents that turn out for council elections or, worse, to licencing committee meetings.

Even places that ought to be the capital’s dedicated nightlife districts, such as Soho, are being squeezed to death by locals who, despite choosing to live in a historic party area, feel entitled to the same peace and quiet one finds in the suburbs. Noise complaints shut venues – and where they don’t, they lead to ever-more early kicking out times, and music controls that kill the vibe even before that unhappy hour.

If it isn’t residents, it might be the police. Remember the absurd battle over whether or not Greggs – not a rave club, not a dive bar, Greggs – would be able to trade from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m., in central London? The Met warned it would become a locus for ‘crime and disorder’. A bakery.

Naturally, there is no record of Lamé taking the fight to local authorities over this. Nor of Khan, happy to demand extra powers to set rent controls, seeking control over licencing to protect the capital’s nightlife.

All this has been deeply corrosive to London. Spontaneous nights out, rolling from bar to bar as the flow takes you, are all but impossible. Destination clubbing, focused on larger venues such as Fabric and Ministry of Sound, has it slightly better. But the trend is still downward there too. Remarkably, two of the venues namechecked by the Night Czar in her defence of her record – G-A-Y and Printworks, the latter was consistently voted Europe’s best nightclub – have shut down.

The real tragedy in all this is contrasting Lamé with Sacha Lord, her counterpart in Manchester. Lord, an unpaid adviser, has built a real profile as a champion of the night economy, and been unafraid to speak bluntly about the challenges facing the sector. Meanwhile Lamé, with her 97^th-percentile salary, offers only excuses. Her boast that ‘London is the best 24-hour city in the world’ could be believed only by someone who has never visited another global city – or indeed, can’t read a clock. 

The joy of going solo

Managing other people’s expectations takes the joy out of pretty much any excursion. Most things are better enjoyed alone. This hit me many years ago when I decided to risk a bullfight in Las Ventas in Madrid. My grandfather wasn’t long dead, and had been a fan of la corrida; I felt that this was something I wanted to do alone, lest whoever I was with think I’m a total sicko.

I’ve since become less cautious about admitting how much I like going solo. Without the pressure of having to think about whether everyone else is having fun, you can immerse yourself fully in whatever new experience it is, and not be subjected to conversational post mortems either.  

Exhibitions alone are obviously preferable: the pain of dealing with well-meaning but facile commentary from friends who feel the need to comment, generally uncritically, is a soul-crushing buzzkill. Gigs alone are good too. I’ve learnt the hard way (as have far too many of my friends) that one can drive those one holds dearest to a concert, but they won’t necessarily share the love. Several still haven’t forgiven me for an Electric Prunes gig back in 2002.  

I feel similarly about travelling alone. As a naturally highly neurotic mother, it’s liberating not having to worry if one’s uniquely precious offspring is at risk of exposing themselves to contagion in a foreign setting. And while nobody who knows me actually believes this, I’m actively relaxed on a solo holiday. It’s a twist on the classic conundrum of what happens when a tree falls in a forest: if there’s nobody there to see you’re not obsessively checking the beds for bed bugs, perhaps you scoured the mattress all night?   

But by far my favourite act of solitary cultural activity is going to the cinema alone. There are few greater pleasures than the indulgence of a matinee showing of a ponderous foreign film with a glass of chardonnay. I used to think there was something mateless, even a little furtive and grubby about it, but two events bolstered my resolve to sit these things out alone.  

The first was dragging my poor father to a Pedro Almodovar double bill. In a fit of youthful arrogance about 20 years ago, I felt that it was somehow blinkered of him not to have risked any of Almodovar’s high campery and melodramatic vibrancy before (I assumed he was fearful that the director’s homosexuality were somehow visually contagious). And never one not to do things to excess, I thought a double bill seemed a good place to start. High stakes if the virgin Almodovar viewer’s favourite film is The Third Man, closely followed by High Noon. And if you’ve never seen Talk to Her, I can now assure you it’s not a gentle introduction for an elderly reactionary, beginning as it does with a man walking in and out and reclining on the walls of a giant, inflatable fanny. I’m not sure how long the scene lasts, but aeons of agony are all I can recall when I think of the trip. That and how quickly my father necked his drink.  

The second event was when I persuaded my newly acquired husband to come and see a screening of Fanny and Alexander. Such was the heady rush of early marital romance and his ignorance of Bergman, he mucked in. But when a few weeks later I suggested another cinema trip, he asked me how long it was, whether there were subtitles, and if there’d be a car chase this time. Reader, I’d already married him. I like to think I might know a sufficient number of clerics who could have wrangled an annulment, but I failed to see the warning signs, and am now committed to a life of cinematic onanism. 

I make an exception to these solo cinema jaunts for one person only, and that’s my remarkable and favourite cousin. For a mother of five gazing into the gaping maw of middle-age who sits on the local parish council, she has a surprisingly high threshold for what she can endure cinematically, as I learned when she didn’t flinch during the hotel room scene involving a real-time jacking-off over a hostess trolley of mille-feuilles in Toni Erdmann. She was even keen to join me for all seven hours of Sátántangó. Though I don’t think she’s enthusiastic about bullfights.  

How to carry out a citizen’s arrest

One Monday morning about 30 years ago, I drove to work, parked my car in the village car park, and started hauling my bags of files out of the boot. In my new role with a firm of solicitors, the weekend had been a chance to familiarise myself with my pressing caseload. I initially paid little attention to a small group of people in heated animation nearby as I unloaded the car. Then I realised what was in fact going on was an attack; someone was pinned against a van. Seconds later, I heard weak squeals for help. I dropped by bags and bellowed, ‘Stop! Stop that now! I am a solicitor and I’m telling you to stop now!’ I strode to the huddle and continued yelling at them to stop.

Three surprises followed. First, the attack ceased. The two attackers then moved away from their victim who was curled up on the ground in self-protection. She stumbled upright to reveal herself as a petite young woman. Clutching her midriff and with her face bleeding heavily, she staggered to the other side of the road towards onlookers – clearly desperate to flee her attackers with any strength she could muster – before I could speak with her.

The second, greater surprise – given that I wouldn’t regard myself as an imposing or scary-looking figure – was that the assailants now stood before me, staring at me as if awaiting further instructions.

The third surprise, straying almost into the realms of the surreal, was that one of the assailants, a hefty-looking woman about my height but twice as broad, casually introduced herself as the victim’s mother and – equally casually, as though introducing a friend at a party – identified her cohort, a tall, burly young man, as the victim’s boyfriend.

Given the repeated, violent kicking and punching of the victim by two people, I suspected the victim was sustaining or had sustained serious injury that could amount to grievous bodily harm. I told the mother and boyfriend I’m making a citizen’s arrest of them both and that they were to wait while I called the police. Apparently, however, the onlookers on the other side of the road had already called the police after hearing my shouts. While the attackers were explaining themselves to me, the police arrived and assumed responsibility for them.

I’d like to think I could do the same again were I to come across an assault in progress. However, our society isn’t what it was in the 1990s. I can’t imagine a situation nowadays where, on witnessing an attack upon another person, I could order the attackers to cease whereupon they would swiftly and meekly obey, introduce themselves, then stand looking contrite while awaiting my further instructions. I would be lucky not to be attacked myself.

A civilian may, by virtue of the Criminal Law Act 1967, use ‘such force as is reasonable in the circumstances’ to prevent a crime or help with a lawful arrest of an offender or a suspected offender. This is the ‘reasonable force’ argument often cited, for example, in cases where burglars have been tackled by their homeowner victims during a burglary. The argument is not always successful, as many publicised prosecutions have shown.

However, section 24A of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 specifically permits a person who is not a police officer to make a citizen’s arrest if they reasonably suspect an ‘indictable’ offence is being or has been committed, i.e., one that may be tried in the crown court. This would therefore mean a serious offence, such as murder, rape, or grievous bodily harm.There is, however, the obvious risk of the civilian being injured by the person or persons they are attempting to arrest.

The person making the arrest must have grounds for suspecting an indictable offence has taken or is taking place. Additionally, the person making the arrest must reasonably believe that it is not practicable for a police officer to make the arrest instead – for example, one simply might not be immediately present. What is ‘reasonable’ depends on the circumstances.

Further, the citizen making the arrest must also have grounds for believing it is necessary to arrest the person in question to prevent them causing physical injury to themselves or to someone else, or to prevent them from suffering physical injury, causing loss of or damage to property, or making off before a police officer can assume responsibility for the person.

There is no formal wording to use when making a citizen’s arrest but the person making it must, as soon as possible, tell the person concerned that a citizen’s arrest is being made and for what suspected offence. The police should also be called as soon as possible.

Reasonable force, i.e., force that is reasonable in the circumstances, may be used to detain a person placed under citizen’s arrest, but this also carries risks. If the force used is deemed unreasonable, criminal charges against the citizen making the arrest, for false imprisonment and/or assault, are possible.

If the suspect refuses to be detained, the police should also be informed of the suspected offence and that the suspect has fled. If a police officer later locates the suspect, who then resists the officer’s arrest, the suspect may be charged with resisting arrest or obstructing the officer in the execution of their duty, an offence that is dealt with in a magistrates’ court.

A citizen’s arrest may not be made for certain offences, known as ‘summary offences’, which, while serious, can only be tried in a magistrates’ court. In addition to resisting arrest, these offences would include threatening or disorderly behaviour and minor motoring offences. A citizen purporting to arrest a person suspected of committing a summary offence could find themselves being sued for unlawful arrest and/or false imprisonment. Worse, they could be prosecuted for assault, and possibly convicted and imprisoned.

When I think of the deplorable, barbaric attacks in the UK in recent years that have been met with the most heroic bravery by ordinary civilians, my micro-intervention in the car park pales into insignificance. I never cease to be astounded by the selflessness of untrained civilians intervening at immeasurable risk to themselves in such atrocities. Most recently, there has been the appalling, vicious attack in south London upon a woman and her children by a man hurling corrosive liquid at them, with those rushing to help also sustaining injury. Attempting a citizen’s arrest in such circumstances would likely be impossible and would carry the obvious risk of severe injury to whomever attempts it.

Some of the heroism from the recent interventions has been honoured with awards for bravery. For example, in 2013 a woman approached one of the attackers of Lee Rigby, the fusilier who was horrifically murdered. The woman spoke with one of the attackers who was still brandishing a bloodied knife. She tried to calm him and prevent any further attack. The woman received several awards for her bravery but has since spoken of how the incident caused her prolonged and severe psychological trauma. Given the obvious risk to herself, this would not have been an instance for attempting to place the attacker under citizen’s arrest.

In countries accustomed to relative peace, an ordinary, untrained civilian typically won’t know how they will react when faced with a terrifying attack on others. To go to their aid is an instinctive, instant reaction – one I certainly hope I would be armed with were I in such a position in the future. However, taking that reaction further to making a citizen’s arrest should not be undertaken lightly, given the risks. Making an arrest is, in the first instance and wherever possible, best left to the police.

This article is for guidance only and does not constitute legal advice. Obviously.

In Bermondsey I heard the future – at the Barbican I smelt death: new-music round-up

To Dalston to witness the worst gig of my life. The premise of the Random Gear Festival was simple and rather inspired: gather some arbitrary objects; get people to play them. In previous iterations, the offerings had included an ice skate, a wet baguette and an exercise bike. This time we had a trampoline, a microwave, a dead fish. I kept an open mind.

I was reminded that years ago at Cafe Oto I had seen the then chief conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra Ilan Volkov rub two blocks of polystyrene together with the subtle virtuosity of Martha Argerich at a Steinway. I was reminded too of what the composer Hector Berlioz had declared in his 1844 Treatise on Orchestration: ‘Every sounding object employed by the composer is a musical instrument.’

In theory, then, there is nothing to stop a wet baguette becoming an instrument. Nothing, that is, except for man’s lack of imagination. And the lineup at this one-night event consisted of some of the most savagely primitive imaginations I’d ever encountered at Cafe Oto. Enticing combinations of objects – chosen by lot – came and went with no one doing anything remotely interesting with them. A toothbrush was used to brush teeth. A nine-inch pizza (Hawaiian) was smeared on a keyboard. Top marks to the man playing the umbrella, however, and to the artist Paul Purgas who drew a beautiful, fragile line with a clarinet.

Terrible gig, excellent lesson: a reminder that, no, free improv isn’t something anyone can do, however much people think it is. Unleash free drummer Steve Noble onto a wet baguette and you would have had a whole different night. Noble was the star attraction at a great newish monthly series called Grain at the Avalon Cafe. Watching him propel his ad hoc trio (Caius Williams on double bass; Tara Cunningham on guitar) through a 40-minute set, seeing him capitalise on every inch of his compact drum kit, convert every coincidence, every cymbal-toppling accident, into a gift, a new groove, a fresh scenario, was pure joy. Such shape-shifting was also creating a kind of cinema, jump-cuts flinging us into strange new neighbourhoods – Williams wheezing out whale songs; Cunningham being joyously wonky; Noble frog-marching us into the sonic wastes with a bullying tattoo.

Later, we witnessed a coder improvising with a set of algorithms. Harry Murdoch typed up his algo-improv live on a laptop and projected it onto the wall – I could make out some ‘chopping’ and ‘striating’ of ‘jerseyperc’, whatever that meant – while Theo Guttenplan on drums glitched his own riffs in emulation.

The future has set up camp here in Bermondsey, in the wilds around Millwall’s stadium. Avalon, Venue MOT, Ormside Projects: these are the main labs where the sounds of the 2030s are being cooked up.

In our supposed centres of excellence, by contrast, I smelt death. At the Barbican, to thin audiences, the BBC presented a ‘Total Immersion’ into the work of Missy Mazzoli. A strange choice. Within the neo-romantic shallows this American inhabits – all cheap sentiment and never-ending glissandi – there’s precious little to immerse yourself in. Mazzoli’s main talent is for turning everything into baby food. And syrupy pap is conducive to easy digestion, not rumination or depth. We were diving into a puddle. That said, her earlier postminimalist work– the string quartet Harp and Altar (2009) and opera Song from the Uproar (2007-12) – has a certain vulgar appeal.

At the Wigmore Hall the Riot Ensemble played Hilda Paredes’ new The Hearing Trumpet twice. Which was more than a touch hubristic. A second listen doesn’t necessarily lead to deeper appreciation: it can lead to deeper hatred. Here the repeat merely confirmed how anaemic the work was, populated by musical gestures that, in the supermarket of new music, felt like they had been grabbed last minute at the till of a Sainsbury’s Local.

The piece we really wanted to hear twice was sandwiched in the middle. Brian Ferneyhough’s Liber Scintillarum (2012) is a lithe, sinewy chamber work, gruff and exhilarating. People love to hate Ferneyhough. But to be able to bottle that spontaneous, transmogrifying energy that seems to be the preserve of free improvisers, as he does, is no mean feat.

That same vitality was in evidence among two electronic duos at the ICA last year. As part of a residency by cult Berlin festival CTM, Prison Religion showed up kitted out as American cops and barrelled through the crowds with cigarettes dangling from their lips looking murderous. They specialise in a type of apocalypse-core that makes Autechre sound like Chopin, exploring massive, nebulous structures whose sharp glistening edges occasionally heave into view amid machine-gun bass and vast metallic clouds of intoxicating noise. The thrilling Gabber Modus Operandi provided something more mischievous though no less hardcore, yoking the scales of Indonesia’s gamelan tradition to the speeds and intensity of Dutch gabber. To top it off, one half of the duo, Ican Harem, would periodically spring onto the decks like a cat and howl into the mike. As composer Ed Henderson once noted, this is music that requires you to move your feet so fast you feel like an ant.

By far the most astonishing new work I heard recently, however, was Rebecca Saunders’s Us Dead Talk Love (2021), based on a text by artist Ed Atkins, which received its UK première last November at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Moving with monstrous inevitability in the hands of Ensemble Nikel, and burning up everything in its path, the piece was terrifyingly, demonically alive. At the centre of the fireball was the extraordinary contralto of Noa Frenkel, who devoured the words and converted them into smoking hot rocks and flaming lava.

It was a tantalising glimpse of what the British composer’s first opera might sound like, which will be another collaboration with Atkins and is set to première in Berlin. Will it make it to the UK? Who knows. Saunders – winner of every award going in Europe – has still never been the subject of a Total Immersion portrait, never had a Proms commission and, I’m willing to bet, no one at the Royal Opera or ENO has heard of either of them.

How long will it be – years? Decades? – before the British musical establishment realise what an act of aesthetic self-harm they’ve committed in ignoring one of this country’s greatest composers?

Putin wants to talk about Russia’s future, not the war

Vladimir Putin’s annual address to the Federation Council (the upper chamber of the legislature) is rarely an exciting event, but it does provide an opportunity to gauge his mood and assess his priorities. This year’s – the longest yet, at over two hours – was in many ways his stump speech for March’s presidential elections, without ever even acknowledging the upcoming vote.

Early on, there was an array of the familiar talking points around his ‘special military operation’ – the invasion of Ukraine. That it was forced upon him by a ‘Nazi’ regime in Kyiv and a hostile ‘so-called West, with its colonial practices and penchant for inciting ethnic conflicts around the world, [that] not only seeks to impede our progress but also envisions a Russia that is a dependent, declining, and dying space where they can do as they please’. That ‘the absolute majority of Russians’ support it.

This was backed by the usual mix of threat, bravado, and trainspotterish fascination with the various new weapons systems he has brandished in the past, from the Kindzhal hypersonic missile (that have proven easier to shoot down than expected) to the Peresvet laser complex (that doesn’t yet seem to have been used). The suggestion that Nato combat troops could be deployed to Ukraine floated by France’s Emmanuel Macron provided Putin the opportunity for a similarly ritual warning that ‘they must grasp that we also have weapons – yes, they know this, as I have just said – capable of striking targets on their territory’.

Yet all this took up no more than perhaps fifteen minutes of the speech, rattled through at the beginning to get it out of the way. What Putin really wanted to talk about was the future. What followed was a detailed, technocratic address, complemented by that modern-day scourge, the PowerPoint slide deck, about how Russia was going to be turned into a promised land.

The ironically-challenged Putin quickly pivoted from his not-so-oblique threats of nuclear war (‘the strategic nuclear forces are on full combat alert’) to asserting that ‘we have chosen life’, and that Russia, ‘a stronghold of the traditional values on which human civilisation stands’, needs more children (over and above, presumably, those stolen from Ukraine). So there would be more benefits for families, and billions of roubles to support larger families in impoverished regions.

Beyond that, there would more support for impoverished families, a health campaign to raise life expectancies, investment in innovative economies, new university campuses and regional development projects. By 2030, average life expectancy should have risen from the present 73 to 78 years. By 2030, the minimum wage should have almost doubled, to 35,000 roubles (just over £300 a month at current, albeit misleading exchange rates). By 2030, the number of 20-24 year olds should have risen from 7.3 million to 8.3 million.

But why are so many of these targets set for 2030? This is the nub of the speech. On 15-17 March, elections will determine who becomes president. Spoiler alert: it will, of course, be Putin, and he will then be in power until 2030. In other words, this is essentially his campaign speech, even if the only actual election he mentioned is in the United States.

This fits his overall strategy. He opted to pass up the higher-risk option of making it a khaki election focusing on the war, because this is a topic that divides and dismays many Russians. He needs the wider theme of an existential struggle with a hostile West to justify his repressions and explain away the privations of the present, but keeps his discussion of the actual fighting in Ukraine to a minimum, focusing rather on praise for the ‘true patriots’ on the ground.

His programme out to 2030 plays nakedly to a range of constituencies that form the bedrock of his electoral base: pensioners, veterans, larger families and the byudzhetniki (federal and local government employees), all of whom were promised more benefits, more money. Quite how this – along with infrastructural development and regional levelling up – will be affordable, especially at a time when 40 per cent of the federal budget is going on the war, is unclear. But unfunded mandates and unrealistic promises are a staple of campaign promises around the world.

Beyond that, an optimist might wonder if the focus on 2030 might be a hint that he is contemplating stepping down rather than going for one more term in office. Of course, his health may determine his term. However, it may be worth noting that the president who wants to see the average life expectancy reach 78 in 2030 (which is, admittedly, higher for women than men), will have his 78th birthday that year.

The Scottish Tories are facing an identity crisis

Why is the only party of the centre-right in Scotland so far away from government? As the Labour Party becomes more sensible under Sir Keir Starmer and Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Conservatives are facing an increasingly existential threat. Their conference gets underway in Aberdeen this weekend — and the party must not waste this opportunity to confront what is going wrong.

One of the main problems facing Douglas Ross’s Scottish Tories is that his party and the SNP are inextricably linked. Both groups are utterly dependent on the prospect of a second independence referendum being credible and real. Think about it: the SNP’s overarching narrative for the last 10 years has been ‘vote for us and you will have a second independence referendum’. For the Tories, their solitary message has been ‘vote for us and we will stop a second independence referendum’. Both have been successful strategies, because indyref 2 looked plausible — until the Supreme Court ruled that the Scottish Parliament doesn’t have the power to legislate for a referendum on Scottish independence. And now, relaxed by this legal barrier and attracted by the rebirth of Labour, these apparently dedicated Tories have suddenly found themselves falling into the loving arms of Starmer. 

This is not a surprise to those of us who have remained semi-detached from the party and unemotional about the reality of its position. In recent years, many Scottish Tory voters were not in fact Conservatives. Instead, they were Unionists, and their relationship with the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party was a transactional one. They have got what they wanted. The Union is safe — and now they’re off.

Still, things could be worse. As the Scottish Tory party heads into its annual conference, it is gearing up for a general election in which it is almost certain to eclipse the performance of its parent party throughout the rest of Britain. Sitting on six seats, most of which are only moderately impacted by boundary changes, party leader Douglas Ross is highly likely to emerge from the election intact. In fact, it’s not impossible for his party to make small gains and the Scottish Tory leader isn’t afraid to point this out — ‘I think we could have a really good general election,’ Ross told The Spectator in October. So when the rest of the Conservative party inevitably enters a period of deep introspection and probably internecine warfare after what is predicted to be a very unfortunate general election result, Ross will be able to turn around and say: ‘nothing to do with me, guv’.

But this will be a Potemkin triumph. Six, seven, or eight seats is, for the purposes of analysing the long-term health of the party, not really the point. At the general elections of 2017 (over 28 per cent) and 2019 (over 25 per cent) the party commanded a vote share far in excess of anything obtained during the devolution era, and not far off the highs of Margaret Thatcher’s time in office. Current polling, though, has the Tories back in eerily familiar territory, consistently in the high teens and unable to break through the 20 per cent barrier. And the reason this vote share collapse is not expected to lead to a commensurate collapse in seats is because all of the Tory-held constituencies, and all of the Tory targets, are head-to-head races with the SNP, another party which has seen voters leaving in their droves, and which lacks the strength to challenge.

After the post-general election celebrations and back-patting, the penny will drop. The party can mask its problem at a Westminster election based entirely on first-past-the-post where the key battles are with the flailing SNP. But there will be no hiding place 18 months later, at the part-proportional representation elections to the Scottish Parliament.

Of the 31 seats won by Douglas Ross in 2021, matching the achievement of Ruth Davidson in 2016, only five were won in the constituencies. The other 26 were elected through the party list system, based exclusively on vote share, with the party picking up a minimum of two seats in each of the eight Scottish regions. The Tory MSP elected last in each region by the D’Hondt system will, if currently polling is remotely accurate, be out of a job in a couple of years. 

This looming disaster will be swept under the blue carpet at the P&J Live Arena this Friday and Saturday. There’s nothing a Scottish Conservative member likes more than a flying visit from an SNP-bashing Prime Minister, and Rishi fever will take over. The members will leave happy and energised, safe in the knowledge that their core objective of defeating Scottish nationalism is going rather well.

It is 22 years since I started working for the then Conservative leader David McLetchie — a man of outstanding intellect and ability who struggled to lift the party’s vote share out of the teens. The core issue is not much different now to what it was then: the only party of the centre-right in Scotland is far, far away from government in Scotland. The Scottish Tories cannot avoid the question for much longer: how do they turn their fortunes around?

John Major urges Hunt to up defence spending, not cut taxes, in Budget

John Major has called on Chancellor Jeremy Hunt not to cut taxes in his Budget next week – but to spend more on defence instead. The former prime minister said that Russia’s war with Ukraine – as well as rising tensions in the Middle East – meant that it was vital Britain ensured it allocated proper resources to defence, rather than lower the tax burden on Brits.

Asked whether defence spending should be Hunt’s priority, Major said: ‘That would be my choice. We face a real difficulty, both with defence and some public services. Usually when defence spending increases, it is because a threat is evident. There is a threat that is evident.’

Major also warned that Britain would ‘be making a mistake over the next few years if we turn away from the necessary expenditure that must go into the armed forces.’

The former prime minister’s comments, made during a discussion with Andrew Neil at the Global Soft Power Summit in Westminster this afternoon, echo calls from other high-profile Tories to allocate more resources to the Ministry of Defence, even if that means the Sunak administration cannot give voters the tax breaks they are looking for.

Penny Mordaunt, the Commons Leader and former defence secretary, told Hunt this week that the Government’s ‘first duty’ is to protect Britain – amid reports in the Daily Telegraph that the MoD would not get any extra funding at the Budget on 6 March. Ben Wallace, another ex-defence secretary, said the UK’s ‘hollowed-out’ military would not be ‘match fit’ without a funding boost. Writing in the Telegraph, Wallace said:

‘At the general election, defence must be a priority for all the parties. If it is not, know that in four to five years’ time, when we are not ready and more vulnerable, it was in 2024 when the government of the day, be that Conservative or Labour, failed to invest in the safety of the UK.’

Major also used his address this afternoon to voice his opposition to the UAE, or any other foreign government, taking over the Telegraph or The Spectator. The government is currently conducting a probe into the UAE-backed bid for the publications.

The speech that reveals the DUP’s radical shift

The Democratic Unionist Party is nothing if not intransigent. For many years, the DUP provided a masterclass in judging the past, and tying it round the neck of the future. Its founder, Ian Paisley, was best known for uttering the same word three times: ‘Never! Never! Never!’. But now that the party has once again started the hard yards of governing Northern Ireland with Emma Little-Pengelly as deputy first minister, there are signs that the DUP is radically changing.

It is still not quite four weeks since the Northern Ireland Executive was appointed after the devolved assembly at Stormont had sat idle for two years. Michelle O’Neill of Sinn Féin became first minister and leads a ministerial team jointly with Little-Pengelly. Yet it was a speech given by party leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson yesterday that appears to show the shift the DUP has undergone.

Addressing a party gathering in Newry and Armagh, Donaldson talked about recognising change and welcoming different identities. People must ‘feel at home whether in their Britishness, their Irishness or something in between,’ he said. No-one, not even the most fervent Unionist, could pretend any longer that they existed in a society ‘where 70 per cent of the population are red, white and blue British’.

This autumn will mark the 10th anniversary of the death of Ian Paisley. Donaldson’s language was not the rhetoric we easily associate with the DUP’s founder, who led them for nearly 40 years and crowned an unlikely career with 13 months as first minister (2007-08). It is possible, though far from certain, that his speech represents one of the most significant philosophical shifts in the party’s history.

Donaldson has not gone soft on the Union. On the contrary, his argument was that it must be defended and strengthened: but, he proposed, ‘a fully functioning Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly, delivering on key issues, is the best way to build that support’. The way to maintain the Union and the electorate’s backing for it is for the devolved administration to make life better for everyone, to show that the Union works:

‘Our objective must be to make Northern Ireland an economic powerhouse for the United Kingdom. This more than anything will secure our place in the Union for generations to come.’

Anywhere else, this might seem an uncontroversial thesis. To encourage voters to be content with the constitutional status quo, it seems obvious that politicians should work to make them prosperous, affluent and safe. But this is a political culture in which it is a stinging insult for one Unionist to call another a ‘Lundy’, a byword for treachery derived from the governor who abandoned Londonderry and its garrison to Jacobite forces during the siege of 1689.

We should not underestimate the scale of the challenge on which Donaldson touched relatively lightly. Northern Ireland’s economy is sluggish and lacking dynamism: the public sector accounts for a quarter of output and a quarter of the workforce, there is a huge crisis in pay which has brought about major industrial disruption, and the new executive is squaring up for a fight with the government in London about the long-term sustainability of the public finances. Levels of economic inactivity among 16 to 64-year-olds are stubbornly high, at nearly 27 per cent, and the rate of those without educational qualifications is double that of the United Kingdom as a whole.

Donaldson does not stand with a united party at his back. Earlier this week, the House of Lords debated the return of devolved government. Lord Dodds of Duncairn, the DUP’s deputy leader for 13 years but not one of the party’s zealots, spoke damningly of the deal which had brought the executive back to life and condemned it as a mechanism for improving life in Northern Ireland:

‘If we settle for and champion the current position then there is little hope of getting the change we need in the future.’

The DUP chairman, Lord Morrow, was equally mordant. The new arrangements were not an opportunity but a grave, perhaps existential, threat to the Union:

‘You cannot remove foundations, even temporarily, without placing the superstructure that they uphold in jeopardy.’

The deal which revived the assembly and executive was not perfect. It has entrenched a constitutional gap between Northern Ireland and Great Britain which many Unionists rightly find noxious. There is absolutely no guarantee that the power-sharing administration will be able to tackle Northern Ireland’s deep-seated problems and build the ‘economic powerhouse’ that Donaldson spoke of. But the DUP leader has significantly recast the debate.

By using the language of co-existing identities, of winning converts and making a positive case for the Union, and of anchoring those ideals in tangible, real-world progress and prosperity, Donaldson has opened the door to a different tenor of politics. If the DUP relies on church and flag, its Unionism will fail. Whatever happens now, this rethought way of framing public affairs gives the party another option. Devolved government has functioned for just over half the time since it was established in 1998. Clearly, something has to change.

Watch: Penny Mordaunt slaps down Andrew Bridgen

Thursday morning in parliament brings with it Business Questions and the chance for Penny Mordaunt to slap down another opponent from the despatch box. Today though, her stand-out moment came not against her regular SNP opponents but rather a former colleague. Andrew Bridgen, the sage of North West Leicestershire, called for a debate on capital punishment in a not-so-subtle way of obtaining a clip for his vaccine-hating fan-base. He said to Mordaunt:

I’ve always opposed capital punishment on the principle that it’s wrong to take a life so it can’t be right for the state to take a life in revenge. Events have caused me to reconsider my position. So, Madam Deputy Speaker, can we have a debate on crimes against humanity and the appropriate punishment for those who perpetuate, collude and cover up for these atrocities, atrocities and crimes so severe that the ultimate punishment may be required?

It was left to Mordaunt to reply and administer a withering put-down that would have embarrassed even the most brazen of MPs. Warning Bridgen of the impact of his words, she told her fellow MPs to noises of approval that:

I think the Honourable Gentleman’s incredibly subtle question is not lost on anyone in this House where he might be taking it. It is appropriate that the finale of this session, which has featured conspiracy theories, should fall to the honourable gentleman. And I would just caution him also just to reflect with the things that have been said about his own behaviour, what he does on social media, the security measures that have had to be stepped up for honourable members in this place in the wake of some of his social media tweets and questions in this House.

Whatever my disagreements with the honourable gentleman, I will always stand ready to get answers from departments and assist the honourable gentleman in his work. But I’m going to call out on every occasion when he is doing things that are, I think, a danger to our democracy and also the safety and security of members of this House.

Ouch. Talk about a Penny pounding.

Shame on the Met Police for hiring Wayne Couzens

Three years after the murder of Sarah Everard, the long-awaited Home Office-commissioned Angiolini Inquiry into Wayne Couzens has been published – and it is damning of the Metropolitan Police. Those who turned a blind eye, ignoring the attitudes and actions of the officer, should hang their heads in shame. Former Met Commissioner Cressida Dick’s description of him as a ‘bad apple’ is inappropriate; it would appear that the whole barrel is rotten.

The country was shocked to the core when it was revealed that a serving police officer had abducted, raped and murdered 33-year-old Everard, before disposing of her body. To get her into his vehicle, Couzens used his warrant card to deceive her, saying he was arresting her for breaking lockdown rules.

It has since been revealed that prior to the murder, he had exposed his genitals three times, including twice at a drive-through restaurant. Couzens was in a WhatsApp group with other serving police officers sharing horrendous sexist, racist and anti-gay remarks. Despite his reputation, he was an armed officer with the Met Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection unit.

Couzens joined the police force in 2002. How did he get through vetting when there had already been allegations of rape made against him and an attempted kidnapping at knifepoint? We will never know the full extent of his crimes against citizens and other police officers. Why, also, was he not prosecuted for the indecent exposure offences he committed in 2015 and 2021?

This report feels like the final nail in the Met’s coffin. Made public today, it is unequivocal in its condemnation of those who turned a blind eye to the character and actions of Couzens. The key finding is that Couzens should never have been a police officer. He regularly accessed violent and extreme pornography and his sexual offending dated back 20 years prior to the Everard murder. He had sexually assaulted a child described as ‘barely into her teens’ when he was in his early 20s. Even more damming is the conclusion that ‘without a significant overhaul, there is nothing to stop another Couzens operating in plain sight’.

Home Secretary James Cleverly has tried to reassure the public that the actions of Couzens are not a reflection of the majority of police officers. It is true that Couzens’ actions were extreme, but this does not mean that other crimes causing significant harm are not being committed on a regular basis by serving Metropolitan (and other) police officers. The report focuses on the crimes of Couzens and the culture that allowed him to operate within the Metropolitan Police – but this is a problem in every force in England and Wales. Across the 43 police areas, 1,100 officers are currently under investigation for sexual or domestic abuse, with 657 involving Met officers.

Up until recently, vetting for new officers has been woefully inadequate, allowing these attitudes to become institutionalised. Last year, a spokesperson for the Met announced itself as the first force in the UK to adopt a new process in which dismissal could be considered for officers who would no longer pass vetting and have lost the confidence of the Commissioner. But who is doing the vetting? Who is protecting the whistle-blowers naming these officers as problematic? Are women being routinely overlooked (or even frozen out) by colleagues and bosses when they name officers who are watching pornography whilst on duty, and actively sexually harassing female colleagues?

The report includes 16 recommendations for change, and those changes cannot come soon enough. It opens with a quote from Susan Everard (Sarah’s mother), who says: ‘I yearn for her. I remember all the lovely things about her: she was caring, she was funny. She was clever, but she was good at practical things too. She was a beautiful dancer. She was a wonderful daughter. She was always there to listen, to advise, or simply to share the minutiae of the day.’

Sarah Everard would still be alive today had Couzens been reported, and action taken for his previous crimes. We know that indecent exposure – particularly where the perpetrator is masturbating – is a red flag. Revelations about the history of Couzens’ offending mean that flashing is – at last – being taken seriously as a sex crime by media and politicians.

But why has it taken the kidnap, rape and murder of a woman by a serving police officer for flashing to be seen as a proble, rather than a joke? Double child killer Colin Pitchfork, who raped and strangled to death two 15-year-old girls in the 1980s, confessed to police that he had exposed his penis to more than a thousand girls and women over the years.

Yet despite its prevalence and the obvious harm experienced by its victims, flashing remains underreported and rarely prosecuted. When Couzens’ victims reported his offending over the years, they were – like all the other warning signs that should have triggered action – dismissed and ignored by Police.

Couzens was on a trajectory of sexually motivated behaviour and offending. So many red flags were ignored. Three investigations into his offending (in 2015, 2020, and 2021) were inadequately investigated, with no further action. He attempted to sexually assault a man (who was dressed in drag) in a Kent bar in 2019 – then used his status as a police officer to prevent his victim from complaining. The fact that he was cleared to carry a firearm is in itself alarming.

The workplace culture (formerly referred to as ‘canteen culture’ and widely assumed to be a thing of the past) provided the perfect environment for Couzens to hide in plain sight. On duty, he targeted women. He had a history of abusive and predatory behaviour, including intimidation, sexual touching, sharing unsolicited photographs of his genitals, and showing extreme, pornography to female and male colleagues.

The Angiolini Inquiry has brought out into the public domain what many feminists campaigning against male violence have known for decades. A uniform is not necessarily an indication of a safe and decent man: it can mean a wolf in sheep’s clothing.