James Kirkup is a partner at Apella Advisors and a senior fellow at the Social Market Foundation.
Wandsworth, London I’m writing this in Labour-controlled Wandsworth, my leafy bit of south London. More precisely, I’m writing it sitting outside the sort of coffee shop where the drinks come in jam jars and everyone has a beard. I’d also bet that every one of the 30-odd people here – staff and customers – has
Two things all journalists and all politicians should always remember. Britain is not Twitter. Britain is not America. The nasty division of social media is not reflective of the wider public. And the issues that are sometimes debated online are often on the agenda because of American, rather than British, concerns. There is good evidence
This is a short story about Mark Harper MP, who is making headlines. These days Harper is probably best known as a backbench critic of Covid restrictions, but he once had a promising career as a minister, including a spell in David Cameron’s cabinet between 2015 to 2016. But that career hit a bump in
Sir Keir Starmer doesn’t want to talk about penises. He’s going to have to do it anyway, and he’s not going to be alone. The Labour leader was interviewed by LBC’s Nick Ferrari on Monday, becoming the latest journalist to test Starmer on questions of sex and gender. Ferrari asked, can a woman have a
In the latest installment from the idiot age of Twitter, #ungratefulcow has been trending. The reason? Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe had expressed, mildly and politely, some unhappiness that it had taken Her Britannic Majesty’s Government six years to free her from Iranian captivity. Cue a handful of shallow trolls slagging her off, and a lot of other people slagging them off. I say
J.K. Rowling is talking about sex and gender again, which means a lot of people are getting angry. It’s striking how the prospect of a woman eloquently stating her opinions and refusing to stop stating them – even when she has been told to shut up – seems to make some people unhappy. Because Rowling
This is not a good time to be a girl. Research from Steer Education last month showed that far too many girls are sad and anxious and concealing their troubles from others. In 2019, the Lancet published research showing girls’ rates of self-harm had tripled since 2000. Other studies show girls are much more likely
Tony Blair used to joke that he could announce the start of a war during a speech on skills policy and no one would notice. Like all the best jokes, it contained more than a grain of truth. Britain — or rather educated Britain — has never been interested in the parts of our education
Immigration used to be the most-discussed issue in British politics. It gets less attention these days, for reasons too varied to go into here. But even though some voters have been focused on other things, there have been significant changes. Some have been good. Others bad. And the bad ones are about to collide with
Recently, a friend forwarded me a letter he’d received from his children’s school, an independent secondary in London, to mark National Apprenticeships Week. The letter set out to parents everything the school was doing to provide children with information, options and contacts to explore apprenticeships, either in combination with or as an alternative to a
It’s been an angry, tense few days around parliament. The Sue Gray report saw Boris Johnson accused of lying, and starting another fight about Keir Starmer and Jimmy Savile that led to more allegations of dishonesty and bad faith. Anyone glancing at news from the Commons might get confirmation that MPs are a worthless sack of
To an old Westminster lag like me, there is something slightly grating about MPs complaining about nasty whips and political intimidation. I’m thinking about William Wragg, who says the government is ‘blackmailing’ MPs to support Boris Johnson and suggested the police should get involved. Wragg says that MPs are facing threats over constituency funding and
A few years ago, there was some controversy about the facts relating to people in prison who identify as transgender, and the proportion of those people jailed for committing sexual offences. The controversy started in 2018 when Fair Play for Women, a feminist campaign group, analysed English prison service data and estimated that 41 per
Many of the thorniest problems of politics come down to the same thing: timeframes. Big problems generally require solutions that take a long time to develop and implement. But the decision to do this must be made by politicians who work to much shorter timetables: news cycles measured in days and weeks, ministerial appointments that
There are few good things to say about the public conversation around transgender issues, which all too often shows us — all of us — at our worst. But it also offers up a seemingly endless series of case studies illustrating wider problems with the way contemporary culture and institutions deal with difficult ideas. The
We’re closing the year by republishing our ten most popular articles in 2021. Here’s number five, James Kirkup on the Afghan doglift: Two stories on the Afghan evacuation today combine to leave me full of bewildered rage. The first, from the Times: Britain may have to leave 1,000 Afghan support staff behindUp to 1,100 Afghan
Almost three years ago, I spoke on the phone to a man called Harry Miller. A Lincolnshire businessman, he’d just been interviewed by the police because someone had complained about things he’d written, on Twitter, about sex and gender and transgenderism. He was angry, and rightly so. After all, he’d broken no law, and even
Boris Johnson is not short of troubles, or advice. Most of that advice, from colleagues and commentators alike, comes down to the same thing: he’s got to change. Change his team, change his approach. Change the way he does things. That argument is a familiar one at Westminster. When a Prime Minister hits trouble –
They seem like completely unrelated questions: ‘Is sex work real work?, and ‘Who will replace Yvette Cooper as chair of the Commons Home Affairs Committee?’ Yet the two are deeply linked. Sex work first. If you’re not familiar with the phrase ‘sex work is work’, get used to it, because you’re going to be hearing
The BBC has produced its annual 100 Women list, a showcase for women who have done interesting, important things. There’s a lot to like about this year’s list: half the women on it come from Afghanistan; some of them, tellingly, can’t be pictured for their own safety. Perhaps if fewer British resources had been deployed
