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Now Labour blocks Lloyd Russell-Moyle from standing
It is a bad time to be a member of the Socialist Campaign Group. Hours after Mr S revealed that Labour activists in Poplar are urging the party to intervene against Apsana Begum, tonight Lloyd Russell-Moyle has confirmed that he will be blocked from standing again in Brighton Kemptown. The left-winger, a former frontbencher under Jeremy Corbyn and Keir Starmer, told activists tonight that ‘yesterday, out of the blue, I received an administrative suspension letter.’
According to Russell-Moyle, an unknown person has made ‘what I believe to be a vexatious and politically motivated complaint about my behaviour eight years ago. This is a false allegation that I dispute totally.’ He claims that this was ‘designed to disrupt this election’ and that because there ‘isn’t enough time to defend myself as these processes within the party take too long’ the party has now ‘told me that I will not be eligible to be a candidate at the next election.’
With a ‘gutted’ Russell-Moyle bowing out, who will deliver a rant on election night now? The news means of course that the Labour leadership can begin imposing a candidate on Brighton Kemptown where the party currently has a majority of more than 8,000. A Labour spokesman said: ‘The Labour party takes all complaints extremely seriously and they are fully investigated in line with our rules and procedures, and any appropriate disciplinary action is taken.’
Who’s next on the list eh? Watch out John McDonnell…
UPDATE: Well, that didn’t take long. An hour after news of Russell-Moyle’s enforced retirement broke, the Times is now reporting that Labour will suspend Faiza Shaheen as its candidate for Chingford and Woodford Green. Joseph Starmer strikes again!
Why are French politicians obsessed with world war two?
War talk is all the rage in France. The conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza are often cited, but the war that has come to increasingly obsess the political class in recent weeks is the one that began in 1939. Almost every day brings another reference to a period that barely anyone in the Republic experienced first-hand.
The latest example was a radio interview on Tuesday morning between Marion Maréchal, Vice President of Eric Zemmour’s Reconquest party, and a journalist from France Inter, a radio station that describes itself as ‘progressive’. ‘What difference is there,’ the journalist asked Maréchal, ‘between the defence of the family that you propose and that proposed by Marshal Pétain?’ Maréchal did not appreciate the comparison to Pétain, the figurehead of the Vichy regime during the four years of Nazi occupation, calling it a ‘stupid, crazy and outrageous question’.
What preoccupies the majority of the French is not the complex past but the alarming present
The question was asked of Maréchal because a few days earlier she had criticised the Cannes film festival for awarding its best female actor accolade to the ensemble cast of a film that includes the transgender actress. ‘So it’s a man who is receiving the prize for… female interpretation,’ tweeted Maréchal. ‘Progress for the left is the erasure of women and mothers.’ Six LGBTQ+ associations have since filed legal complaints accusing her of a ‘transphobic insult’.
Pétain viewed the family in 1940 as integral to the spiritual revival of France, what he called his ‘National Revolution’. Maréchal, like Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, is a defender of the traditional family unit, and is opposed to those elements within radical progressivism that seeks to dehumanise and diminish women. The question put to Maréchal was facile, another attempt to smear the French right by linking them to Pétain and Vichy.
Twelve months ago, the then Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, described Marine Le Pen’s National Rally as the ‘heir to Pétain’, to the irritation of her boss, Emmanuel Macron. The President admonished Borne, telling her that ‘you won’t be able to make millions of French people who voted for the far right believe that they are fascists.’
That message doesn’t appear to have filtered down to Valérie Hayer, the lead candidate for Macron’s party in the European elections. ‘Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen lead a party founded by Pierre Bousquet, a corporal in the Waffen SS,’ she tweeted this week. Bousquet was one of the founders of the National Front in 1972, and not the only founder member to have fought for the Nazis. So did Léon Gaultier. On the other hand, several of the National Front pioneers fought for the Resistance, among them Rolande Birgy, honoured by Israel for helping save Jews during the war.
Hayer’s tweet was a reaction to a social media post from Le Pen. ‘National Resistance Day’ is on 27 May in France, a date to remember the brave men and women who actively opposed the Nazi occupation, and Le Pen had hailed their ‘commitment and sacrifice’. Le Pen’s declaration also incurred the contempt of the left-wing La France Insoumise (LFI). ‘Your party was founded by collaborators and Waffen SS,’ Antoine Léaument, one LFI member, tweeted. ‘You are the political descendants of the people the Resistance fought.’ Not to be left out, the Communist party’s lead candidate in the European elections, Léon Deffontaines, also accused the National Rally of being the successor to Pétain.
In the years immediately after the war, French communists aggressively pitched themselves as the principal force that had resisted the Nazis, overlooking their initial collaboration with the occupier in 1940. The Resistance, like the Vichy regime, attracted men and women of all ideologies. I know because I have interviewed numerous veterans. I met men who had been members of the Socialist party in 1944 and still were 60 years later; similarly, I was acquainted with three Resistants who had fought alongside the SAS in the Morvan in the summer of 1944, and decades later felt no shame in telling me they voted for Jean-Marie Le Pen because only he ‘stood up for France’.
These old men still loathed François Mitterrand, who was their MP in the late 1940s before eventually becoming the first Socialist president of the Fifth Republic in 1981. Mitterrand served the Vichy government before switching sides and joining the Resistance, but in the eyes of the men I interviewed, he was a Vichyiste first and a Resistant second. The Vichy regime was like the Resistance in that it pulled in people of all ideologies. While many were right-wing, Vichy’s anti-Semitic prime minister, Pierre Laval, was a Socialist before the war, as was the notorious chief of police, René Bousquet, responsible for organising the deportation of French Jews to the Nazi death camps.
Mitterrand and Bousquet became close after the war, and it was an embarrassment to the former when his friend was indicted in 1991 on charges of crimes against humanity. The man who was instrumental in bringing Bousquet to court was Serge Klarsfeld, the founder of ‘The Sons and Daughters of Jewish Deportees from France’. Late last year, Klarsfeld gave an interview in which he expressed his satisfaction that Marine Le Pen’s party had shed the anti-Semitism espoused by her father. He also spoke of his bitter regret that this bigotry was embedded within elements of the French left, although he added that there was a ‘tradition’ of left-wing anti-Semitism in France. On the same day that Maréchal was accused of pining for the days of Pétain, a far-left MP from LFI was suspended from the National Assembly after waving a Palestinian flag during a debate. Later, another member of LFI, Dabid Guiraud – accused of anti-Semitism earlier this year – manhandled a Jewish MP, Meyer Habib, with a cry of ‘this man is a pig’.
Habib, a centre-right MP, has said he intends to file an official complaint because ‘calling Jews pigs is the oldest anti-Semitic insult in the world’. The strategy of the left and their progressive allies to link the right to the dark days of the occupation is not working. Bardella, the National Rally’s lead candidate in the European elections, yesterday recorded his biggest approval rating yet among voters – 34 per cent, which is 18 per cent more than his closest rival, Hayer.
What preoccupies the majority of the French, though, is not the complex past but the alarming present. A cost-of-living crisis, spiralling crime and crippling debts. A new wave of anti-Semitism sweeping the country, one inspired not by Petain but by a the war in Gaza.
Diane Abbott has been treated abysmally
Diane Abbott should be allowed to stand as a Labour MP at this election. It is a relief that she has belatedly had the Labour whip returned to her after a ridiculously long ‘process’ involving the Labour party and the whips’ office. But to be reinstated the day before parliament is dissolved is an insult. To make things worse, she has been told that she will be banned from standing as a candidate on 4 July – although Keir Starmer has said it is ‘not true’ she is barred from running.
There are many problems with the Labour party’s approach here.
Firstly, the delay in dealing with her case is entirely down to the Labour party. It is clear that Diane was waiting to get the whip restored to her and then, after a sensible pause, planned to announce that she would be standing down at the next general election. By only dealing with this now, it seems like the party is punishing Diane for its own incompetence.
Secondly, the party has not taken this approach with any other MP who has been suspended and then had the whip restored. It is hard to avoid concluding that because Diane is a black woman she is being treated differently.
Finally, it is because of her record as an MP – fighting for women, for London and for people of colour – that she should be allowed a dignified retirement of her own choosing after a distinguished career of 37 years.
But no, the Labour party instead wrote to Diane restoring the whip and letting her back into the Parliamentary Labour party while at the same time briefing the Times that she would be barred from standing. This is an attempt to humiliate her. In the end, that’s utterly failed. The parliamentary party is stunned, unable to work out why she is being treated this way.
You may mutter that Abbott is ‘difficult’ but don’t tell me that the world is only changed by silent, reasonable women. We live in Diane Abbott and Harriet Harman’s world today – and if you doubt me, look at the makeup of the Tory cabinet. Women and people of colour are there because of the work of these Labour women who changed the way we thought about politics and how it should look.
In the end, this is the worst, most damaging, and most lasting aspect of how Diane Abbott is being treated by Labour. This is not just about the lack of respect for her as a politician – someone a study showed was receiving half of all abusive tweets sent to female MPs – but the party’s lack of a sense of progressive history.
Keir Starmer’s Labour had to be taken back from the Corbynites and, in particular, from the flotsam and jetsam of the Trotskyist far-left who joined under his leadership. The danger is that for Trotsykist witch-hunters everyone starts to look like a witch.
Political parties are internal coalitions, in Harold Wilson’s famous phrase a ‘broad church’. There is no victory for a party that says there is no room for Diane Abbott in its ranks. Those who argue that there is an upside to barring her from standing, because it shows voters that Labour has changed, are utterly deluded.
Election victories are built on creating coalitions of voters, too. Labour has attuned itself well to the needs of voters who might be tempted back to the Tories or Reform. The party has policies to maintain the support of the ‘Red Wall’. But this is an election in which two thirds of voters may well vote for progressive politics – whether they are choosing Labour or the Lib Dems, the Greens, or nationalist parties.
After this election, Labour will have to manoeuvre through an entirely new political landscape featuring these progressive parties. The crass and malevolent way that Diane Abbott is being treated may cost it much more than a day’s campaigning.
Matheson’s suspension has come at a terrible time for the SNP
The Scottish parliament has voted to suspend former SNP cabinet minister Michael Matheson for 27 sitting days and dock his salary for 54 calendar days. It comes after Matheson was found to have broken the MSP code of conduct on expenses and use of parliamentary resources. Matheson ran up an £11,000 mobile data bill during a family holiday in Morocco and tried to have the taxpayer pick up the tab. Despite initially claiming no knowledge of how such a large bill was incurred, he later said that his sons had run up the charges while using the device’s hotspotting function to stream Celtic football matches.
The vote broke down 64 in favour of sanctioning Matheson, with 63 abstaining. This reflects the decision by SNP leader John Swinney to oppose the recommended penalty and attack the standards committee process as tainted by a Tory member who had previously condemned Matheson. Matheson is, as Swinney freely admits, a personal friend and the First Minister has come in for criticism for appearing to put standing by his mate ahead of parliamentary standards. A no less pressing consideration is that, following the break up of the SNP-Green coalition, his government is a minority administration and losing even one MSP for 27 days will make life difficult for the First Minister and the party whip.
A bigger concern for SNP candidates, currently knocking on doors asking for votes, is whether the Matheson row and Swinney’s decision to back his pal will hurt their chances on polling day. The SNP is trailing Labour in Scotland by ten points in the most recent YouGov poll and voters express dissatisfaction with the nationalists’ handling of devolved matters like health and education north of the border. I wrote about some of these difficulties on Coffee House last week. There couldn’t be a worse time for the SNP to be seen as out of touch on MSP expenses on top of it all.
Labour can’t avoid questions about Diane Abbott forever
The Labour leadership has only itself to blame for becoming embroiled in a bitter and divisive row over the future of Dianne Abbott, the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington. She was suspended from the party in April last year after writing a letter to the Observer that appeared to play down racism against Jewish people. The party is now facing growing questions about how the disciplinary process around Abbott unfolded.
Abbott apologised for her remarks, but was placed under a months-long investigation and lost the Labour whip. She finally confirmed this morning that she would not be allowed to stand again as a Labour candidate, even though the party whip has now been restored to her following the investigation. The veteran MP, the first black woman to be elected to parliament, says she is ‘very dismayed’ by the developments but added that she will be ‘campaigning for a Labour victory’. Clear as mud then.
The investigation into Abbott for her alleged anti-Semitic remarks has been lengthy but less than transparent
Confusion about Abbott’s treatment reigns elsewhere, too. The shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, told a radio interviewer that he is ‘not particularly’ comfortable with what has happened to her. He stressed that he had not been personally involved in the process and had ‘no responsibility’ for it. He suggested that questions about what precisely had happened would be better directed at those involved. Asked in another interview whether he wanted Abbott to remain as a Labour MP, and whether she should be allowed to stand, Streeting would only say that this was a decision for the party’s national executive committee and ‘not my decision’.
Does Streeting support Abbott or not? If he does, why not make clear that he disagrees with the action taken against her? He is a senior member of the shadow cabinet, yet appears to be content with passing the buck.
Just as curious and troubling are the remarks about Abbott made by Keir Starmer, the Labour leader. This afternoon, Starmer claimed it was ‘not true’ that Abbott had been banned from standing. And just a few days ago he said that the investigation into Abbott was ongoing. But it has since emerged that it had concluded in December, with Abbott being told to complete an online anti-Semitism training course in February.
This is problematic for the Labour leader. Why would he say that the party’s process had yet to conclude, when in fact it was already over? It is a question to which, so far, no answer has been forthcoming. It has prompted the Conservative party chairman, Richard Holden, to write to Starmer, asking whether senior Labour MPs had been given ‘deliberately false lines’ about what to say on Abbott. Rishi Sunak has also piled in, calling on Starmer to be ‘transparent’ about Abbott’s position: ‘The Labour party has been telling everybody this investigation into Dianne Abbott is ongoing, it now appears it concluded months ago. So really it is a question for them to clear this all up, what happened when, be transparent about it.’
Why does the fate of one veteran left-winger matter so much? The Abbott debacle raises important and troubling questions for the Labour leadership. The investigation into the MP for her alleged anti-Semitic remarks has been lengthy but less than transparent. Her comments were made more than a year ago. The investigation concluded late last year but no decision appears to have been taken until now, when the announcement of a snap election seems to have forced the Labour hierarchy to rule on her status. It makes little sense to restore the whip to Abbott yet stop her from standing at the election.
The murkiness of this decision-making serves as an uncomfortable reminder of the fractious battles that often consume Labour, and prompt fresh questions about how much the party has really changed. Martin Forde KC, the barrister who conducted a major review into widespread allegations of sexism, racism and bullying within the party, was scathing this morning about the treatment of Abbott, describing it as ‘utterly shambolic’ and conducted with an ‘astonishing’ lack of transparency. Forde’s comments are pertinent. His original review concluded that Labour had problems with its culture and structures, and his latest intervention would appear to suggest that the party hasn’t made as much progress as it claims. That should worry Keir Starmer.
John Swinney’s wounds are self-inflicted
John Swinney has said that he will make sure the public sees enough of him over the election campaign. But do they want to? In the latest Survation poll, conducted for True North over the weekend he is now the third most popular leader in this race of also-rans, with an approval rating of -7. Sir Keir Starmer is top and the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, is second most popular at -3.
This fall from grace may not be unconnected with Mr Swinney’s much-criticised defence last week of his disgraced ‘friend and colleague’ Michael Matheson, of iPad fame. Mr Matheson had been censured by the Holyrood Standards Committee for trying to claim, under his parliamentary expenses, £11,000 in roaming charges run up by his sons while on a holiday in Morocco in December 2022. After he was exposed he paid the cash back.
However, he admitted lying and the Scottish Parliament Corporate Body said he had broken the ministerial code. The Standards Committee then ruled that he should be suspended for a month and lose pay for 54 weeks.
The scandal should have ended there and then. Matheson could have quietly served his sentence, a singularly lenient one in the eyes of many, and been back in Holyrood before polling day. However, John Swinney chose to attack the punishment as ‘excessive’ and accused the standards committee of being ‘prejudiced’ and ‘partisan’ and bringing the parliament into ‘disrepute’. This was because one Tory member of the committee, Annie Wells, had voiced criticism of Matheson before the committee met to consider his fate. Mind you, just about everyone from the then First Minister, Humza Yousaf, down had expressed views about Matheson, so this was perhaps unsurprising. The Standards Committee voted unanimously for docking Matheson’s pay for 54 days, meaning the SNP MSPs on the committee voted for it.
But if Mr Swinney had legitimate criticisms about the conduct of the cross party ethics committee, this was hardly the time to express them. The First Minister’s defence of the indefensible overshadowed the SNP general election launch and has gone on to dominate the first full week of campaigning. SNP candidates, pounding the payments, were gobsmacked. Why didn’t he just accept the ruling and move one? Matheson was surely lucky to keep his seat in parliament. Had he been an MP in Westminster he would likely have suffered a recall vote and been ejected from parliament, like the former SNP MP, Margaret Ferrier, who was caught breaking Covid lockdown rules.
Today’s vote on the Standard Committee’s sanctions should have been a formality, a mere footnote to the general election news coverage. Instead John Swinney effectively turned it into a vote of no confidence in himself.
Yesterday it was understood that the SNP group were going to back the sanctions and defy their leader. But in a late development journalists learned that they would not in fact vote for the punishment demanded by the committee today and would instead vote on an amendment criticising the conduct of the Standards watchdog. In the event, the SNP group abstained even on the motion as amended. Make of that what you will. The Conservative leader, Douglas Ross said Swinney had ‘U-turned on his own U-turn’. What the voting public will make of it is anyone’s guess – but it won’t be pretty. The story will dominate another news cycle and it has left the SNP on the wrong side of Holyrood’s accepted disciplinary process.
Matheson did survive the second vote today on a motion tabled by the Scottish Tory leader, Douglas Ross, calling for him to resign. Puzzlingly, the Scottish Green Party MSPs decided to vote against his defenestration. This is almost as incomprehensible as Swinney’s defence of his miscreant minister. If Matheson had been a Tory MSP caught fiddling his expenses the Greens would almost certainly have joined Labour in calling for him to resign. Twenty years ago, the Scottish Tory leader, David McLetchie, resigned as leader over a fistful of wrongly claimed taxi chits. Matheson tried to defraud taxpayers of the equivalent of a year’s state pension and lied about it afterwards.
But ‘Honest’ John Swinney is the real loser in this affair. The political damage from Swinney’s defence of the indefensible is clear from the latest shocking opinion polls. Survation for True North puts Labour now 4 points ahead of the SNP on 36 per cent. According to Professor John Curtice, this could deliver 48 seats for Anas Sarwar’s party, while the SNP would be reduced to 16 from the 43 they currently hold. Other polls predict an even worse result for the SNP on July 4th.
After John Swinney resigned as leader of the SNP 20 years ago, the party went on to win only six seats against Labour’s 41 in the 2005 general election. History may not be about to repeat itself, but John Swinney is certainly giving it his best shot.
A stand-off between Labour and the BMA is coming
Junior doctors will be staging yet another walkout in the week running up to the election: five days in total, from 27 June to 1 July. It is the 11th walkout since March last year, as the union insists they will not settle for less than a 35 per cent pay raise.
The dates are no coincidence: there is no moment more politically fueled than the run-up to polling day. This gives more weight to the government’s argument that these strikes have always been political in nature, and certainly resulting in political consequence: the NHS waiting list rose by roughly 500,000 after Rishi Sunak pledged to get the waitlist falling, due in part to hundreds of thousands of delayed appointments and operations thanks to the strikes.
This next strike will put at the front of the public’s mind how strained the relationship is between the Tory party and the British Medical Association (BMA) – one that polling suggests has garnered more sympathy for the doctors than for ministers. But this strike is not just aimed at the Tories. It is sending a message to Labour, too: with the expectation that Wes Streeting could be taking over in the Department for Health and Social Care rather soon, the union wants to make clear now that its pay expectations remain unchanged.
This is perhaps the greatest challenge for the shadow health secretary, were he to find himself in charge. And that’s saying something: Streeting has already had plenty of battles with the BMA (and GPs, and the left of his own party) as he has ramped up his rhetoric of ‘reform’ for the NHS, repeatedly promising to use more of the private and independent sector, while insisting that more money for the NHS will only come if efficiency and productivity improves, too.
But pay could prove the trickiest one yet, not least because Labour seems to have spent all the money it says it will raise with new taxes, and that doesn’t include a 35 per cent pay bump for doctors. Streeting isn’t pretending otherwise: ‘I want to be really upfront with junior doctors this side of the election,’ he said on ITV this morning, ‘the 35 per cent pay claim they’ve put in, I’m just not going to be able to afford that on day one of a Labour government.’
This is not going to be a popular view in the medical community, which is increasingly willing to admit that they understand the link between these strikes and patients waiting longer for care. Comments from Professor Philip Banfield, the chair of the BMA Council, were put to Streeting on the Today programme this morning. ‘It’s quite a challenge for Labour,’ the union representative said. ‘Remember the junior doctors remain in dispute with government. This needs to be sorted out before the waiting list can be progressed.’ Streeting’s response was not to offer up more cash right away, but insisted that the way to get more money for public services and pay is to go for growth. It’s consistent with Labour’s position right now – to be extremely cautious about its spending plans – but it is certainly not the answer the BMA is looking for.
The risk for Streeting is that these strikes continue under a Labour government – that he finds it just as hard to reduce the NHS waiting list as the Tories have done. Labour likes to claim that the wait list could rise further under the Tories – by calculating how much it has risen under Sunak already – to 10 million by 2029. But estimates from the Institute for Fiscal Studies show a drop is coming, one that is likely to benefit whoever is in charge, so long as that trajectory isn’t made intentionally worse by patients made unable to attend their appointments.
Streeting has a lot to accomplish. He and Starmer have given themselves five years to once again meet NHS waiting targets, to deliver 40,000 more GP appointments every week (offered out of hours and on the weekends, too) and to incorporate pragmatic use of the private and independent sectors to get patients faster access to high-quality care. There is a very real chance that were Labour to win power, most of its first term in parliament would be spent still missing targets, overseeing a sky-high waiting list. Reform would need to start on day one to create the change it hopes to see in five years’ time. That’s going to be a hard enough task, without the added (and increasingly likely) complication of a government still in dispute with its workforce.
The tragedy of Diane Abbott
Here’s the tragedy of Diane Abbott. She entered British politics as a trailblazer for black Britons and now she leaves public life on the sour note of insulting Jewish Britons. She started out as a warrior against racism but ended up seeming to minimise racism. She devoted her political career to standing up for beleaguered minorities and then made the grave moral error of playing down the beleaguering of Britain’s Jewish minority.
The moral fall of Diane Abbott tells a broader story about the moral decay of the left
How did this happen? How did our first black female MP end up in the eye of a racism storm? How did this consummate foe of racial hatred end up putting her name next to that now infamous letter to the Observer last year in which she said Jewish people do not experience racial hatred? Prejudice, yes, but not racism. Jews get similar flak to gingers, she said. I cringe even now when I think about it. (Abbott claims a wrong draft of the letter was sent to the paper and she withdrew from the remarks.)
The moral fall of Diane Abbott tells a broader story about the moral decay of the left. It was more than misjudgement that led her to write the letter that sealed her political fate. Rather, her odd missive spoke to the corruption of the left by the poison of identity politics; to the left’s shift from the ideals of solidarity to the dead end of competitive grievance. That a resolutely anti-racist MP should end up essentially saying ‘I experience worse racism than you’ tells you everything you need to know about the crisis of progressive politics.
According to reports, Ms Abbott has had the Labour whip restored but has been banned from standing for Labour in the election in July. It was the Observer letter, of course, that led to the veteran Corbynite getting the heave-ho. Her comments were ‘deeply offensive and wrong’, Labour said shortly after the letter was published in April last year. Then it launched an investigation into Abbott which was apparently wrapped up five months ago.
Whatever one thinks of the party’s decision to readmit Abbott while banning her from standing for re-election – it seems a tad harsh to me, but I’m a softie – it’s worth looking back at the letter that landed her in this mess. It really was nuts. She was responding to a comment piece that said Irish, Jewish and Traveller people, like people of colour, experience racism. No they don’t, Abbott essentially said. They ‘undoubtedly experience prejudice’, she wrote, but ‘they are not all their lives subject to racism’.
Let’s leave to one side Irish and Traveller people (my view is that anti-Irish racism has declined hugely in recent decades). The idea that Jews are not affected by racism is just morally and historically illiterate. Abbott’s reference to redhead prejudice in the same breath as anti-Jewish prejudice is one of the maddest, most tone-deaf things I’ve ever heard an elected representative say.
Anti-Semitism is the oldest racism. The destruction it has caused is incalculable. It’s the racism that refuses to die. Indeed, mere months after Abbott penned her career-ending letter, Jew hatred returned with a vengeance to western societies. In the aftermath of Hamas’s 7 October pogrom there has been an explosion in anti-Jewish racism in Europe.
Of course, Abbott could not have predicted the future. But it is unfortunate indeed that she seemed to minimise anti-Jewish racism just six months before we witnessed the worst act of anti-Jewish violence since the Holocaust, followed by a truly alarming spike in the persecution of Jews across the West. Show me one ginger who’s ever feared walking the streets of his own city because anti-redhead hate mobs are on the rampage.
The hypocrisy of the pro-Abbott left has been something to behold. These are the kind of activists who are hyper-sensitive to racism. Criticise the Koran and you’re ‘Islamophobic’. Ask someone where they’re really from and you’re ‘racist’. As for minimising the suffering of racial minorities, especially black Britons – that’s blasphemy in their circles. They’ll damn you as an excuse-maker for race hatred and cast you out of polite society.
And yet they were quick to forgive Ms Abbott for seemingly minimising anti-Jewish racism. In fact they rallied around her. They’re demanding she be allowed to stand for re-election in Hackney in July. Do you think they’d be so understanding if a Tory right-winger had said black people don’t experience racism? Of course not. Perhaps anti-Jewish racism just isn’t a big deal for these supposed anti-racists.
Beyond all this cant, the Abbott scandal shows what happens when anti-racism is replaced by identitarianism. When the old left that really did care for equality is superseded by a new left consumed by self-pity. When the noble goal of defeating racism is elbowed aside by the petty one-upmanship of victim politics, where every social group seems hell-bent on outdoing each other in the suffering stakes. You end up with an anti-racist MP saying the racism her people experience is worse than the racism other people experience. As if fighting racism were a competition rather than the moral duty of all good people.
The tragedy of Diane Abbott is the tragedy of the British left. Parliament may have lost an MP but British society has lost something infinitely more important: the principled anti-racism of yesteryear. Which is terrible because we need it now more than ever with everything that is happening to our Jewish citizens.
Why are white men being shamed as transport polluters?
Black women are the worst for carbon-intensive travelling habits, according to the Guardian, citing research by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). Oh, sorry, I must have misread that. What the Guardian headline actually says is: ‘Wealthy white men are Britain’s largest transport polluters.’
While is poses as scientific inquiry this is really just political activism dressed up in academic clothes
But it is worth quoting the other way around because the former is, of course, a headline you will never, ever read – either in the Guardian, an academic paper or anywhere. There are very simple rules for this kind of pseudo-scientific stuff: if you are going to bring race or gender into a study it must always present white men in a bad light, and no other group. White men, on the other hand, must never be presented as victims – that is the preserve of other groups. The only surprise is that the IPPR hasn’t also tried to dig down into the travelling habits of gay and straight people so that it can add ‘heterosexual’ to the list of attributes shown by the people who are condemning us to what the Guardian likes to call ‘climate breakdown’.
While is poses as scientific inquiry this is really just political activism dressed up in academic clothes. It starts with the assumption that white males are at the top of a hierarchy of privilege and works from there. If a study such as this chanced across a statistical finding which was at odds with that narrative you can be absolutely sure that it would not be reported. The glaring example of this was during the pandemic when many claims were made that women were suffering disproportionately from Covid when data clearly showed the opposite: that the disease was killing far more men than women.
Yet the IPPR report does inadvertently reveal something interesting: that most of the miles travelled by people earning under £10,000 a year are by air – much like people earning over £100,000 a year.
It is a sign of how budget airlines have democratised air travel for everyone. Even people who might be described as ‘poor’ are able to take foreign holidays by plane – if not as many as the better-off.
This matters because it will be the poor who will be proportionately most affected by carbon reduction targets. Carbon taxes, a move towards ‘sustainable’ airline fuel, cessation of new airport development; all either will or already are hiking up the cost of travel for the poor. It has become a common assertion that the poor will be affected by climate change much more than the rich. But this is more true of efforts to tackle climate change – which stand to have a greater detrimental effect on the lifestyles of the poor than the rich.
Daniel Kretinsky may come to regret buying Royal Mail
Foreigners are stripping the UK of its assets. Vulture capitalists are swooping down on our historic companies. We need a strategy to defend jobs and services. We will hear lots of arguments over the next few days about why the Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky should not be allowed to complete his agreed takeover of Royal Mail. And yet, the more interesting question is this: why on earth would he want it?
In reality, Royal Mail is a dog of a business, and one that is likely to be very difficult to turn around. Kretinsky may well come to regret his latest acquisition.
Royal Mail has been a poorly performing business for years, and it is not about to get any better
After months of negotiations, Kretinsky has today finally won control of Royal Mail. The board of the company has agreed to a £3.6 billion takeover, allowing Kretinsky to complete the acquisition of the business in which he had already built up a 27 per cent stake. To win it, he has made a series of concessions, including maintaining six-day-a-week first class mail deliveries, keeping the branding and maintaining the head office in the UK, as well as protections for its 150,000 employees.
Even so, the deal is already proving controversial. There have been calls for the historic business to be kept in British hands, and plenty of pressure on the Business Secretary Kemi Badendoch to block the takeover. With an eye on the Tory leadership contest in the autumn, Badendoch may well take action. After all, there are not many votes in selling anything with the word ‘Royal’ in its name, at least not in the Conservative party.
And yet, none of this addresses the question of why Kretinsky wants it. Royal Mail has been a poorly performing business for years, and it is not about to get any better. Its main product, letters, has been in freefall for years, as we have all made the switch to emails and WhatsApps. And while there is still a huge market in delivering parcels for all the stuff we buy online it is a fiercely competitive industry – one that may well have stalled as internet shopping stabilises at around 30 per cent of the retail market. The business has a massive workforce with powerful unions that resist modernisation and automation. With a Labour government about to take power, all the extra employment rights and beefed up union powers it is about to introduce will make it harder to achieve the cost savings the business needs. Perhaps worst of all, Kretinsky is being hustled into promises that make the company fundamentally unprofitable just to get the deal through.
True, Kretinsky is a very smart operator. In the Czech Republic, he came from nowhere to build up a fortune worth an estimated $7 billion (£5.5 billion). And yet, much of that money was made in the energy industry, snapping up assets on the cheap. It is possible that he has some clever idea for turning Royal Mail around and minting a fortune from it. And yet, it is far more likely that he is about to get bogged down in a business with little prospect of making any money, and subject to constant interference from British politicians and regulators who, with alarmingly little evidence, appear to have decided they know how businesses should be run. It is a good deal for shareholders – but Kretinsky may well have taken on more trouble than he bargained for.
Could the election be closer than you think?
Yesterday, the firm I work for, J.L. Partners, released a poll showing a 12-point lead for Labour over the Conservatives. This gap between the parties is much narrower than other polling companies are predicting – with several other polls showing a 20 point plus lead for Labour. Our poll still shows that Labour is heading for victory, but it has already been seized on by the Conservatives as a sign that they are still in contention in this election campaign.
What explains the difference in these polls? And could the election in fact be closer than many think?
To understand how we have arrived at this result, you also have to understand the more nuanced features of this election. I have heard from countless activists on the doorstep from every party that voter apathy and indecision is a significant issue in this election. For every staunch Labour supporter, or dedicated Conservative, there is a stubborn group of voters who simply haven’t decided how they’re going to vote. Statistically and mathematically, this group is a challenge for pollsters to deal with. To work out how they are likely to vote, pollsters often need to use some form of prediction.
Similarly, turnout is a huge problem in this election. In 2019 turnout was 67.3 per cent – the second highest figure since 1997. But that still leaves us with just under a third of the population which doesn’t tend to vote. So we have to adapt our models accordingly, in the knowledge that not everyone who claims they support a given political party will make it to the polling booth on election day or will send off a postal vote.
To start with modelling the ‘don’t knows’, our company has implemented a new methodology based on machine learning – essentially using an algorithm to predict the way people will behave. We use a variety of predictors such as previous voting habits and demographics, and we combine this with current assessments and perceptions of the leaders of the political parties. At the simplest level, we map undecided voters onto political parties, by seeing how they respond to certain policies. So if a voter says they like Sunak, thinks the Conservatives are better on cutting crime and voted Conservative at the last election, then we predict they will likely vote Conservative again – even if they claim they are unsure about who they are going to vote for this time.
Using this approach, these undecided voters end up being split largely between the Conservatives, Labour and Reform UK. Based on our latest analysis, when you factor in the undecideds, this gives an extra point in the polls to the Conservatives, removes two percentage points from Labour and adds two points to Reform.
Although we are still predicting a solid Labour victory, winning over undecided voters will be absolutely crucial for some of the key battleground seats the party is hoping to win for the first time ever – seats like Hexham in the north-east, and Basingstoke in the south-east. Undecided voters also pose a risk to the Conservatives, who should be very wary of the impact of Reform. Over the last few months, an estimated 25 per cent of undecided voters moved to Reform. Last year, we reported that 11 per cent of Conservative voters, around 1.1 million people, intended to vote for Richard Tice's party. Failing to convince these undecideds could be the difference between a bad loss and a total annihilation of the Conservative party.
When modelling turnout, we have a similar machine learning model. We ask our polling respondents how much attention they pay to politics, and combine this with demographic information and constituency level data. We then predict how likely various groups are to turn out on election day. For example: 79 per cent of over-65s will vote, whilst only 35 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds are likely to cast their ballot.
This is then factored into our voting intention calculations. The demographics that support the Conservatives are simply more likely to turn out than Labour voters – and so this reduces Labour’s lead in the polls. It also explains why the Get Out the Vote operation on polling day will be so crucial and could make all the difference for Labour.
It is worth stressing that it is not just our methodology that explains why the Labour lead is tightening. It seems the act of calling the election has shored up Conservative support with some key demographics, especially the over-65s. In April, the Tories had only an eight-point lead with this group. Now they are 20 points ahead. Given this, it is easy to understand why the Conservatives are focusing on policies like national service and the ‘pension triple lock plus’ aimed squarely at the ‘grey vote’. We have also found that fewer Tories are saying they would now consider voting for Reform than before the campaign got underway.
In polling, there are so many unknowns – piecing together predictions is often like creating a jigsaw with only half the pieces available. As well as tracking changes, we try to work out two of the most challenging unknowns – the undecideds, and who will turnout – in a robust and mathematically consistent way.
Our view is that if you do not control for these numbers in your polls, you are missing an important part of the picture. That is why our Labour lead looks so different to the other pollsters.
The Pope doesn’t just have a vulgar language problem
The Pope is only infallible when he speaks ‘ex cathedra’ – i.e. when pronouncing on doctrinal matters of faith as Pontifex Maximus. So, last week, when Francis privately told a gathering of bishops that he opposed the ordination of homosexual priests because there was too much ‘frociaggine’ – or ‘faggotry’ – in the priesthood already, he was not speaking formally as the Vicar of Christ. Francis’s remarks inevitably caused anger within the LGBQT communities. Fabrizio Marrazzo, leader of the Italian Gay party, accused the Pope of ‘backsliding on gay rights’.
The truth is that the Pope is a specialist when it comes to shooting off his mouth
The Vatican has duly apologised in a statement. It said: ‘The Pope never intended to offend or express himself in homophobic terms and he extends his apologies to those who felt offended by the use of a term, reported by others.’
You can almost hear the curial anxiety in that quote. But the truth is that the Pope is a specialist when it comes to shooting off his mouth. He’s famous in Roman Catholic circles for his ‘salty tongue’. The veteran Catholic reporter John Allen says that he has a reputation for ‘off-colour, occasionally vulgar language.’ He once offended fecund Catholics by saying they ought not to ‘breed like rabbits’. On another occasion, he said that ‘if a good friend speaks badly of my mother, he can expect to get punched’ – an impious remark, though no doubt his madre would have been proud.
But it probably won’t do to get too hung up about the Pope’s occasional verbal lapses. Even the successors to Peter are human. What is more disturbing for Catholics is the Pope’s apparent inconsistency on the matter of homosexuality and Church teaching. Last year he distressed traditionalists by opening the door to the Church’s blessing of same-sex unions. Yet at the same time he seems to be strongly opposed to gay men, even if they are not sexually active, joining the priesthood. Church teaching suggests that it ‘cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practise homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ‘gay culture’ – though they should be treated with ‘respect and sensitivity’.
These are difficult questions for a Church that has struggled to preserve its teachings on matters of sexuality in recent decades, especially following the widespread clerical child sex-abuse scandal. The Catholic faithful would benefit from a spiritual leader who provided a little more light and less heat.
Is Apsana Begum next to go from Labour?
It’s a busy day in Labour land, following the mishandling of the Diane Abbott disaster. But now Mr S hears of a fresh row brewing in another of Labour’s London safe seats. In 2019, the Corbynite candidate Apsana Begum was chosen to replace the moderate Jim Fitzpatrick for the Poplar and Limehouse constituency. Her first two years as an MP were dominated by her trial for housing fraud, of which she was cleared in court in July 2021.
She subsequently fell out with her constituency party to such an extent that in July 2022, the local branches and their affiliates voted for a full ‘recall’ process to determine who would contest the seat for Labour. Begum had been signed off sick the previous month, saying that she had been ‘subjected to a sustained campaign of misogynistic abuse and harassment’. Since then the situation has only continued to fester, much to the frustration of some within the local party.
With an election now called and polling day looming, some have decided to go public with their grievances. Steerpike has obtained correspondence sent earlier this month from members of Poplar and Limehouse to the NEC, urging them to ensure a selection vote for Begum’s seat. With regards to the 2022 recall process they say that:
The primary reasons for triggering this process were related to the MP’s lack of visibility and productivity during her three-year tenure. It was observed that she had not actively engaged in her role, including handling casework. Local representatives faced difficulties in establishing communication with her, as she did not have a dedicated constituency office. Following the vote, there was a period where the MP was unwell; however, we hope that she has now recovered and is capable of fulfilling her responsibilities effectively. We urge for a resolution on this matter that prioritizes the input of ordinary members. Disregarding the voices of members may lead to widespread resignations from the party, an outcome we wish to avoid.
Mr S even hears that concerned members have reached out to election chief Morgan McSweeney in their bid to block her from standing again. But with Labour MPs conscious of the so-called ‘Gaza effect’, will the party feel forced to stand by one of their few female Muslim parliamentarians? Watch this space…
Woman’s Hour has a diversity problem
On the bright side, Nuala McGovern isn’t Emma Barnett, she of the combative approach to broadcasting. The new presenter of Woman’s Hour is a bright, cheerful experienced broadcaster. She’s Irish, spent time in Italy and America, and has lived and worked in the UK for many years. She covered for Emma B when she was on maternity leave and did well. Mind you, I’ve been going out of my way to avoid Woman’s Hour for years now, with some success. The whole notion of a daily broadcast specially for the ladies seems downright odd, but since it’s now firmly embedded in the schedule, it’s not much use complaining.
All the energy and resources of the state are directed at those who want to farm out their children as early as possible to a childminder or nursery
There has been coverage of McGovern in the papers for saying that she feels there should be space on the programme for women like her who don’t have children. I can’t see the problem there. Most women do have children and some women don’t, though I do think that for a number of women, if not her, not having children is a problem and that should be talked about. About one in five women now doesn’t have a child by the age of 45 and for at least some, in my experience, it’s a matter of not being able to find a satisfactory father to settle down with. And, as McGovern herself says, it’s much more difficult raising children at a time when you can’t easily park a baby with your mother or your aunt to look after, because you live far, far away.
But the issue of diversity in the Woman’s Hour agenda goes beyond all this. Bluntly, the programme seems not always to take on board the perspective of those women – and some men – who would like to raise their own children. All the energy and resources of the state are directed at those who want to farm out their children as early as possible to a childminder or nursery – when the tot is nine months old, if you take up Rishi Sunak’s preferred option. Shouldn’t that be challenged?
For some women this works out fine; they want to return to work as soon as possible. But I shall never forget a conversation with a secretary I worked with who returned from London to her old home and gave up the job to bring up her two children. She was just so very happy spending time with her own daughters. Lots of parents would like to do that; they deserve attention and political space too.
Given we’re talking about half the population as the potential audience for this programme (plus quite a number of fascinated males) the diversity of approach should, I think, extend to notionally feminist subjects. There really wasn’t much doubt about where Emma Barnett stood on the vexed questions of abortion and IVF. How about including women who take a radically different approach? Just a thought.
Meanwhile, Today listeners are sucking their teeth at Emma Barnett’s feisty broadcasting style. In her first day or two she was already talking about putting a condom on a banana (her recollection of sex education). These are early days in a demanding post, but how about channelling, say, Sue MacGregor? Just a thought.
Victoria’s absurd new minister for men’s behaviour
Australian states like to advertise themselves on car number plates with a catchy slogan capturing what they see as their self-image. My home state of Victoria’s slogan is ‘The Place to Be’.
When it comes to identity politics and the state government’s obsession with progressive causes – to the point of being extremist – Victoria is very much Australia’s place to be.
To assume, as Allan has, that all men are toxic perpetrators-in-waiting is an insult to the overwhelming majority of men who deplore family violence of any sort
Cursed with a conservative opposition that can’t organise a knees-up in a brewery, Victoria is all but permanently governed by an Australian Labor party that, even compared to its national and other state counterparts, is striving to remake Victoria as a socially progressive paradise. It is dominated by MPs from the party’s hard-left faction, which leads to social policies that even Corbynites in Britain would applaud.
There are extremely permissive drug laws. The most radical policies on transgenderism, children’s gender dysphoria and euthanasia of any state in Australia. There is unquestioning acceptance and propagation of the left’s standard narrative that Australia is a racist society, and British colonialism an evil thing for which all Victorians must atone. Not to mention the fact that the state’s capital, Melbourne, was the most locked-down and curfewed city in the western world in the dark Covid years.
Since late last year, the Victorian government has been headed by a hard-left premier, Jacinta Allan. Lately, however, Labor been struggling in the opinion polls as voters are starting to tire of its big-spending and heavy-handed politics, and Allan has struggled to get out of the long shadow of her long-serving predecessor, a political control freak named Daniel Andrews.
But voila, this week Allan has put Victoria on the international map with one of the most bizarre pieces of identity politics yet seen from a western government.
On her Twitter account, Allan announced that ‘We have appointed the first Parliamentary Secretary [equivalent to a junior minister] for Men’s Behaviour in Australia’. She’s actually wrong: it appears this is the first appointment of its kind, anywhere.
On seeing Allan’s tweet, you could be forgiven for doing a double take, and thinking it was posted by a parody account. But it’s absolutely true.
The premier’s official statement confirming the appointment says:
Tim Richardson will become Parliamentary Secretary for Men’s Behaviour Change, continuing the Allan Labor Government’s priority to make Victoria a safer place for women and children and work to end the tragedy of deaths of Victorian women at the hands of men.
This is the first position of its kind in Australia – and will focus largely on the influence the internet and social media have on boys’ and men’s attitudes towards women and building respectful relationships.
Richardson is a decent bloke, a plodding local MP and devoted family man. But apparently his appointment is going to solve all Victoria’s problems caused by relationship and family violence.
There’s no denying such violence is a significant problem in Australia. Up until the end of April, 25 women – including five in Victoria – died from family or spousal violence this year, 11 more than for the same time in 2023. Individual stories that have emerged in recent months have been horrific. In one New South Wales case, a woman was murdered, allegedly by her ex-partner, who was released on bail having been charged with multiple counts of rape against her.
But to assume, as Allan has, that all men are toxic perpetrators-in-waiting is both lazy feminist and identity politics, and an insult to the overwhelming majority of men who deplore family violence of any sort as utterly repugnant, and who strive to be kind and loving husbands, partners and fathers.
That Allan’s sweeping generalisation about men as perpetrators is so unfair and wrong is highlighted by another court case making news in Australia today. A former beauty queen in Tasmania who became an MP for the Labor party, Kathryn Hay, is facing charges in Tasmania alleging a decade of emotional abuse, including alleged related incidents of physical assault, which did great harm to her former male partner and the father of her child. Yet like Queen Victoria’s apocryphal denial that lesbianism exists, the all but unchallenged feminist narrative embraced by the likes of Allan – in Britain as well as Australia – is that men are only to blame for family and relationship violence and abuse, and therefore only women and children warrant protection from such violence.
Will Allan, or her hard left political allies and social media fellow travellers, say anything about cases like Hay’s? Or otherwise acknowledge official statistics proving men are not solely to blame for such violence? Not on your nelly.
Instead of leading serious and respectful community conversations about relationship violence, and how best to confront and combat it, Allan is instead playing gesture politics with an untrue and judgmental generalisation about men in Australian society. This is an absurd clickbait gimmick that collectively has made her, her government, and the state of Victoria an international laughing stock.
Given that Keir Starmer’s party has been looking to Australia, and Australian Labor, for much of its policy inspiration as it eyes a stonking parliamentary majority, can Britain be assured that Jacinta Allan’s absurdist piece of identity and victimhood politics is not something Labour will pursue, should it be elected in five weeks’ time? Watch this space.
Iain Dale quits LBC to run as Tory candidate
It’s the end of an era for over 70 Tory MPs who will quit their seats at the next election – but one media veteran is making a rather interesting move in the opposite direction. Iain Dale, who has worked at LBC since 2010 and has presented a number of shows including Cross Question and All Talk, told listeners on Tuesday night that the show would be his last as he wants to stand for the Tory candidacy in Tunbridge Wells. After an extremely successful broadcast career, it’s quite the decision…
The seat is currently held by Greg Clark MP, who announced last week that he will be joining the Tory exodus and standing down at the election. The constituency has been Conservative-held since 2010 and the long-standing LBC presenter hopes that he could be its next Member of Parliament — after a previously unsuccessful attempt to contest the seat of North Norfolk in 2005. Dale admitted that his two ambitions in life were to be a presenter and an MP as he bid his loyalists an emotional farewell on last night’s show. Giving a heartfelt thanks to his colleagues and listeners, he went on:
Now, I’m putting my hat in the ring again to be a candidate at the general election. Whatever the result I feel I can play a role in restoring trust and honesty in politics. There are no guarantees that I’ll even be selected, let alone elected, but I know that I would forever kick myself if I didn’t at least have a go. Even if you don’t share my politics I hope at least that’s something you can respect.
Now under broadcast rules I could technically carry on presenting this show until Friday but I’m going to step aside now, it just feels the right thing to do. And I want to think everyone at LBC and Global for their support, friendship and love, and for their understanding — especially to all my producers over the years… Most of all, whoever you are, wherever you are in the world, however often you listen I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your loyalty, your calls, your messages and friendship over the last 15 years. This is the best job I’ve ever had.
Mind you, Dale’s campaign isn’t exactly off to the best start. It has been pointed out that, speaking on his podcast in 2022, he said of his new patch:
‘I’ve lived in Tunbridge Wells since 1997, slightly against my will, in that my partner comes from Tunbridge Wells… I’ve never liked the place, still don’t and would happily live somewhere else.’
One for the campaign leaflets, no doubt…
Netanyahu’s strategy in Rafah isn’t working
On 7 April, six months after the October massacres in southern Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the public that the country was just ‘one step away from victory’ in its war against Hamas in Gaza. Nearly two months later, Israel hasn’t taken that step yet. The war continues. No more hostages have been released alive. Hamas rockets still fall inside Israel, including a barrage earlier this week that rained down on the suburbs of Tel Aviv.
The two leaders of Israel’s war effort haven’t spoken to each other for a fortnight
In the meantime, international public opinion has hardened against Israel. Some countries, like Colombia, have broken diplomatic relations. Turkey has announced a trade embargo. Ireland, Norway and Spain recognised a Palestinian state in a move that seemed less about Palestinians and more about trying to send a message to Israel. As part of its ongoing investigation, the International Court of Justice issued an ambiguously-worded order that either places some limits on the Israeli military’s operation in the Gaza border city of Rafah or, perhaps, demands it be stopped altogether. Unsurprisingly, Israel has chosen to interpret it as merely a limitation.
More significant, though, was the decision of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Ahmad Khan KC, to seek arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, accusing them of deliberately starving the people of Gaza. If the Court does issue warrants, Mr Netanyahu’s foreign travel will be restricted to those countries, like the US and Russia, that are not state parties to the ICC. This backlash would be bad enough if Israel was winning its war against Hamas, but victory doesn’t seem quite as imminent as Netanyahu used to claim.
Israeli forces have operated in almost every town in Gaza, targeting Hamas battalions, tunnels and weapons. Huge arms caches and rocket factories have been uncovered, thousands of terrorists killed (alongside, of course, thousands of Gazan civilians). More than a million Gazans have been displaced. The only untouched Hamas stronghold is Rafah. For months, Netanyahu threatened, hyped and promised that the IDF would take the city. For months the world warned that an invasion would be a humanitarian crisis. For months, nothing happened.
Israeli forces are now operating in Rafah, but in a more limited operation than the full-scale attack originally planned. And even this approach can lead to terrible tragedies, like the deaths of 45 Gazans in a tent camp, when the Israeli air force targeted two Hamas leaders nearby. The IDF claims the civilian deaths were an accident, probably caused by a fuel tank catching fire.
When this Rafah operation is over, and Israel once again announces that it has destroyed tunnels, rockets and terror operatives — what then? That’s the question that’s exercising Gallant. As soon as Israeli troops leave an area in Gaza, Hamas comes back. Israel has had to go back into parts of northern Gaza multiple times to clear out Hamas, but the Islamists are still the government of Gaza and goes right back to policing the streets, collecting taxes, running municipal services, seizing and distributing food aid, and executing Gazans that it claims are traitors.
Gallant issued a public ultimatum to Netanyahu: under his watch, he said, Israel will not be a military occupying force in Gaza, administering the daily lives of two million Palestinians while facing the constant risk of terrorist attacks. He called for an alternative government to Hamas to be found, fostered and installed. Netanyahu loudly opposed this, saying that there should be no plan for the ‘day after’ the war until it is already won. These two leaders of Israel’s war effort haven’t spoken to each other for a fortnight now. Benny Gantz, a centrist former military chief of staff whose party joined the government after the 7 October attacks, has also had enough. He set out his own ultimatum demanding Netanyahu at least discuss a plan for the future of Gaza by early June, or he’d resign. Netanyahu refused, and the deadline is only days away.
Throughout this war, Netanyahu has promised ‘total victory’: the complete destruction of Hamas as both a terror organisation and a government. Dismantling the terror organisation has been hard enough (the US estimates that Hamas could still have nearly half of its fighting strength intact), but removing the government is even tougher. All the alternatives to Hamas rule in Gaza are unacceptable to the Israeli government. The obvious choice, the Palestinian Authority that already rules the West Bank, has been written off as just as bad as Hamas – or worse, actually, because they’d have international legitimacy. Other Palestinian leadership options have been rejected on principle by the far-right parties in Netanyahu’s coalition, which still dream of building Jewish settlements in Gaza. A full Israeli occupation is just as unacceptable to the wider Israeli public, who don’t want to send their kids to die and kill in Gaza for decades to come.
And so the devil we know remains. Nearly eight months into this war, Hamas is still in charge. If the aim of this war had been to degrade Hamas’s capabilities and destroy the terror infrastructure so that another 7 October style attack would be impossible in the near future, then Israel’s war could perhaps be judged a qualified success. But that is not the aim that Netanyahu publicly set for the war, and it is not an aim that most Israelis would accept as anything near sufficient. Warplanes, drones and soldiers can weaken Hamas. But the only way to destroy them, is to replace them. So far, Netanyahu doesn’t have a plan for that.
Has Starmer told the truth about Diane Abbott?
Sir Keir Starmer has made personal integrity front and centre of his election campaign. When asked about his multiple broken pledges two days ago, the Labour leader declared that ‘I think it’s more important to stand in front of the electorate and say, “I’m sorry, I can’t now afford what I said before”… I’m not going to tell you you can have everything and then break a promise’… I think that is basic honesty with the electorate.’ But has Starmer given that ‘basic honesty’ when it comes to the matter of one of his own party’s MPs?
On Friday, Sir Keir was asked by LBC’s Nick Ferrari about his party’s ongoing investigation into Diane Abbott, following her suspension in April 2023 over her letter to the Observer. Ferrari said:
NF: ‘Some Labour supporters have been speaking to me. They’re puzzled about the direction of the party. There seems to be room for Natalie Elphicke down in Dover, but not Diane Abbott up here in London. Can you welcome Diane Abbott back to your happy fold?’
KS: Well, look, Diane is, going through a process, Nick, because, you know, in relation to the, investigation of an issue relating to her that’s not finally resolved, yet, but, you know, this Labour Party is a changed Labour party.
However, it has since been confirmed that the Labour investigation into Diane Abbott actually concluded five months ago. The BBC reported that Abbott was given a formal warning back in December 2023 but was not told that the outcome meant she would be barred as an election candidate. In the meantime, Starmer and his Labour colleagues continued to insist that the investigation was ongoing – despite it having been wrapped up months ago.
In the words of Richard Holden, the Tory party chairman: ‘It’s inconceivable that Starmer wasn’t told the process had finished and a warning issued.’ Did Keir know and try to mislead the public? Or did he not know and allow himself to be kept in the dark? At best it was ignorant; at worst duplicitous. One thing’s for sure: it’s hardly forensic.
Shakespeare wasn’t a woman
The American novelist Jodi Picoult has revealed that she thinks that Shakespeare’s plays were written by a woman, telling the Hay Literary Festival, ‘I think that, back then, people in theatre knew that William Shakespeare was a catch-all name for a lot of different types of authors. I think they expected it to be a joke that everyone would get. And we’ve all lost the punchline over 400 years.’
Apparently, a male writer couldn’t have written the ‘proto-feminist’ characters in some of the plays
Apparently, a male writer couldn’t have written the ‘proto-feminist’ characters in some of the plays, which is a bit like saying that they must have been written by cruel, old-fashioned dukes because they sometimes have cruel, old-fashioned dukes in them. Picoult’s chosen candidate for the true author is poet Emilia Lanier (née Bassano), because, er… Desdemona’s maid is called Emilia, and other equally shaky reasons. (Lanier has been posited in the past as the ‘Dark Lady’ of Shakespeare’s sonnets, slightly more credibly.)
By Any Other Name, Picoult’s new book (tagline: ‘What if the greatest works of literature were a fraud?) uses this conceit to explore the general phenomenon of women writing under male names over the centuries.
That’s a great device, yes. And it’s certainly a potent attention-grabber. Virginia Woolf did almost the same thing 95 years ago. But does Picoult actually believe it? I hope not, because it’s quite, quite loopy.
Why do people – still – come out with this rubbish about Shakespeare? The obvious first answer is because Shakespeare remains a famous figure. He is a brand that everybody knows, at least by name. Nobody is claiming that the plays of Thomas Dekker were written by somebody other than Thomas Dekker.
There is also the nebulousness of Shakespeare the man as a personality. Unlike several of his contemporary writers, he didn’t write anything but plays and poetry, and nothing in the first person. The personality of Ben Jonson, for example, oozes out of everything he wrote. You can tell where Jonson stood on the characters and issues of the day.
But Shakespeare takes everybody’s side. He writes all characters and all viewpoints – high, low, male, female – with equal felicity and compassionate understanding. You cannot pin him down.
People tend therefore to see themselves – or an idealised vision of themselves – in Shakespeare. A one-eyed Armenian dairy farmer might imagine that Shakespeare was a one eyed Armenian dairy farmer, and assemble plentiful ‘evidence’ for it. So Picoult reads Shakespeare and sees a feminist author.
The accusation, frequently made, that questioning Shakespeare’s authorship is pure snobbery – because how could a rural lad who didn’t attend university be so clever – also holds true. And it’s odd how nobody ever suggests that because of the plays’ intimate familiarity with low life slang then they must’ve been written by a pub landlord or a stable lad. Nobody ever wants to claim those bits of Shakespeare, the stuff that is pure Carry On.
It is inevitable that in our culture – in which worth is bestowed to art from its origins in a ‘marginalised identity’ or its espousal of intersectionality – these crazy assertions would now come with 21st century protected characteristics attached. We can’t be far from Shakespeare was actually a Muslim/neurodiverse/non-binary.
But the daftest thing about all these claims – which go back centuries – is that, unlike Jack the Ripper or the Mary Celeste, they are attempts to create a historical mystery where there just isn’t one. There is a ton of documentary evidence that William Shakespeare wrote the works of William Shakespeare. His peers knew he was the best of the bunch, and they certainly knew who he was. They took steps to preserve his works in the First Folio, years after his death, which has a drawing of him that matches other portraits, refers in passing to his lack of formal education, and confirms his origins in Stratford. Most plays printed at the time didn’t have a name on them – Shakespeare’s did, as a selling point.
If this was all the jolly wheeze that Picoult suggests, it was a hell of an elaborate and time-consuming one. It also relies heavily on the ability of actors and writers to refrain from spilling the juiciest of gossip. Now a lot may have changed between the days of the doublet and Dua Lipa, but anybody who thinks members of these professions could keep a lid on the true identity of the hottest talent in town is either mad, or dissembling.
And yet writers like Picoult and actors like Mark Rylance or Derek Jacobi continue to lend credence to this cherry-picking, tenuous guff.
Is the West being hypocritical about Georgia’s foreign agents law?
The Georgian parliament has rammed through its new foreign agents law amid massive protests, overriding the veto of pro-western and pro-EU president Salome Zourabichvili. The new law essentially will require all non-commercial organisations operating in Georgia to register as foreign agents and publicise themselves as such if they receive over 20 per cent of their funding from abroad. Its aim is to counter the influence of pro-western NGOs in the country.
The Georgian government has a point when it defends the requirement of registration as a transparency measure
The proposal has already caused serious unrest, and this will undoubtedly now balloon. You can see why. The government led by ruling party Georgian Dream is not a pleasant grouping. It is far from libertarian and apt to suppressing dissent with some force. Also, even if not officially pro-Kremlin, it is certainly in favour of appeasing Moscow over Ukraine. Georgian Dream’s chairman and founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, an apparently paranoid billionaire with many Russian connections, alleges that there is a shadowy ‘global war party’ conspiring to force Georgia into war with Russia through influencing NGOs and other organisations within the country, and that something needs to be done.
Opposition to the law, and to the government as a whole, comes overwhelmingly from highly educated young people in Georgia who with good reason see the future of their country as European and west-facing rather than grimly and at times despotically Asiatic. The government also faces determined pressure from the EU, which has said it will endanger Georgia’s candidate status, and the US, which has gone as far as to impose personal sanctions on Georgian Dream leaders. And this is not to mention our own Foreign Office, where a couple of weeks ago the Minister of State Nusrat Ghani said the new law was ‘not in line with the democratic values of a Nato aspirant country.’
Before you join this chorus, you should nevertheless take a moment to think. You don’t have to like the Georgian regime to see that the arguments are by no means all one way.
To begin with, although the law is largely copied from a Russian template (it is nicknamed the ‘Russian law’ by opponents), and emanates from an authoritarian regime, it is difficult to see much wrong with the principle of it. To require pressure-groups and think-tanks operating in a state with substantial foreign funding to register and publicise their sources of support is not the same as preventing them operating. Nor is it particularly undemocratic to require such transparency: if anything, indeed, the reverse. True, the law is cack-handedly drafted, and strictly speaking would cover not only campaigning groups but artistic or scientific associations. But this is a relatively minor matter. The Georgian government has a point when it defends the requirement of registration as a transparency measure.
More to the point, demands from foreign governments and western commentators to scrap the new law leave the critics themselves worryingly open to charges of hypocrisy. This is for two reasons. One is that the objections are pretty obviously selective, and based on the fact that the NGOs and other organisations affected by the new legislation are all pro-European and pro-western. It is a racing certainty that none of this pressure would have been exerted had Russia, or China, set up front organisations in Tbilisi to call for alignment and co-operation with other authoritarian regimes in central and east Asia, and had then faced legislation from Tbilisi to curb those organisations’ activities.
Second, many of the western nations now seeking to tell Georgia how to run its affairs themselves have their own agent registration laws. The US, for example, passed its Foreign Agents Registration Act in 1938 to deal with Nazi and fascist propaganda, and it is still in force. Admittedly narrower than the Georgian one (for example, it excludes news organisations and a number of other bodies) its principle is similar. A number of European states such as Germany also have such provisions. Last year the UK introduced one fairly similar to the US model in Part 4 of the National Security Act 2023. And six months ago the EU, one of the most vociferous critics of the Georgian legislation, itself unveiled a wide-raging proposal for a directive, which if anything would be wider than the US provision (it would, for example, it seems include even foreign media organisations seeking to influence policy).
This is not to defend the Georgian government. Georgia is currently balanced on a knife-edge between western-style liberal democracy and authoritarianism. Indeed, the threat of the latter is strong, if only because Russian troops continue to occupy swathes of northern Georgia. This matters: it remains vital for the UK, the EU and the US to continue to put maximum pressure on the regime in Tbilisi and make it clear that they support those in Georgia who prefer a liberal western path to that chosen by Georgian Dream.
But the West needs to be honest about what it wants. There is no clear case against the foreign agents law: there is a very clear case indeed against the government that passed it. Continuing with an insistence that this law, approved by a government with at least some claim to democratic legitimacy, should be dumped, western governments are pressing a weak case instead of a strong one. By doing this they are not only being unwise: they are also arguably making a rod for their own backs in future, and inadvertently strengthening the hand of the would-be autocrats in Tbilisi.