Carry on Kafka: this is our Brave New World

An ex-copper who blogs as Dominic Adler – not his real name – came up with a good phrase this week to describe where Britain is heading under this increasingly authoritarian regime: ‘Like North Korea, but run by David Brent.’ It echoed my own attempts to sum up the atmosphere in Keir Starmer’s Britain in a WhatsApp exchange with Allison Pearson. I described Essex Police, who recently dispatched two hapless officers to the journalist’s door to question her about a year-old tweet, as ‘a cross between the Keystone Cops and the Stasi – Carry On Kafka’.

The tale of Allison’s persecution could have been written by Eugène Ionesco, but another good example of this burgeoning absurdism is the recent ‘trial’ of a 17-year-old girl by the Football Association. Her all-women team was about to play another club in a single-sex league when she noticed that one of the opposing players was a bearded man in his twenties. ‘Are you a man?’ she asked, genuinely puzzled that he should be warming up with the other team, particularly as he was wearing jewellery and wasn’t in a football kit. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I’m transgender.’

A better-drilled trans activist would have said ‘No, I’m a woman’, but the fact that he didn’t stick to the script gives the exchange a comic dimension. How can you be a transgender biological male who identifies as a man? But what followed was far from funny. The captain of his team complained to Kick It Out – originally set up to campaign against racism in football – and it in turn complained to the FA. The girl was charged with two counts of ‘improper conduct’ and, when she pleaded not guilty, was put on trial via Teams by a three-person tribunal.