Tom Slater

That sound you hear is the penny finally dropping in Downing Street. Having spent the year since the horrific post-Southport riots blaming unrest over migration and asylum solely on misinformation and far-right groups, Labour appears to be realising the rot runs much deeper. Government officials, reports the Times, have warned the cabinet that Britain is ‘fraying at the edges’, after more protests outside of asylum hotels in Epping, Diss and now Canary Wharf (of all places). Angela Rayner is said to have told colleagues that immigration was having a ‘profound impact on society’, insisting the government needed to acknowledge ‘real concerns’ about rapid social change, twinned with a decaying economy.

You can tell the environmentalists are on the back foot. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband is issuing doomsday proclamations in parliament, branding Reform and the Tories ‘unpatriotic’ for refusing to go along with his deranged Net Zero policies. And now Labour donors are also calling for ‘climate denial’ to be criminalised. Because nothing says ‘we’re winning the argument’ like locking up your opponents. No wonder Dale Vince is rattled Green tycoon Dale Vince, a man whose woeful politics can be accurately inferred from his appearance, donated £5million to Labour ahead of the last General Election. Ever since, he’s been publicly dispensing increasingly crazed – and often totally self-serving – advice to the government he helped put into office.

Fair play to Draco Malfoy. (Now there are five words I never thought I’d write.) Tom Felton, who played Harry Potter’s platinum-blond nemesis in the films, has done what so many of his young co-stars have failed to do: he has defended the woman to whom he owes his career. Tom Felton, who played Harry Potter’s platinum-blond nemesis in the films, has done what so many of his young co-stars have failed to do Ever since JK Rowling dared to say that biological sex exists, the cast of the Potter flicks have routinely been called upon by trans activists and showbiz journalists to throw a match at the ‘transphobic’ witch. The one who played Harry, the one who played Hermione and the one who played Ron have all obliged at one point or another.

Calling someone Darth Vader. If that’s as bad as your workplace banter gets, I’d suggest you find a more entertaining place to work. Yet, incredibly, an NHS worker not only took enormous offence to being compared to the bucketheaded villain of the Star Wars franchise, she also took her employers to a tribunal. She’s just won £30,000 in compensation for her trouble. Snowflakery has become endemic among the British workforce Lorna Rooke claims she was prompted to leave the NHS Blood and Transplant service after an incident in 2021, when a team-building exercise turned to the dark side.

Are you angry about bin collections? Potty about potholes? Incandescent about the behaviour of your local council or councillors? Well whatever you do, don’t post disparaging things about them on the internet. Unless you want a visit from the police, that is.  Yes, saying critical things about your elected local representatives is the latest thing that can get you in trouble with Britain’s speech police, if the experience of Helen Jones in Stockport is anything to go by. She was paid a visit by Greater Manchester Police last week, after she called on a local councillor to resign.

The police are coming for your WhatsApp groups. And if that doesn’t strike terror into your heart, you’re not using WhatsApp properly.  The hapless former health minister and Labour MP for Gorton and Denton, Andrew Gwynne, hasn’t just been sacked by Keir Starmer for his offensive messages about pensioners, Mossad and Diane Abbott. He’s also been reported to the police by a local councillor, meaning that, right now, Greater Manchester’s finest are weighing up whether to open a file on ‘Trigger Me Timbers’ – the group in which Gwynne inflicted his off-colour, often racially charged jokes on some of his fellow Labourites. Personally, I think we need to draw a bright line between public and private here.

For years now, higher education has been convulsed by a never-ending hunt for racism. A certain type of academic or student activist sees it oozing out of every pore of campus life, from statues to ‘microaggressions’ to student bar fancy-dress nights. And yet, if you were looking for a clear-cut example of a racist university policy, you’d struggle to find one more outrageously racist than this: dumbing down exam practices so as to better accommodate ethnic-minority students. Welcome to 21st-century academia, where you can’t wear a sombrero but you can lowkey suggest black and brown people are stupid.

The vibe shift is real. Yes, all the chatter about the re-election of Donald Trump causing a cultural sea change in American life might just have something to it – if Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s shock announcement is anything to go by. In a five-minute video, Zuck – who also appears to have undergone a Gen Z makeover – has announced that Facebook and Instagram will be scaling back their censorship rules, especially when it comes to contentious topics like ‘immigration and gender’. Those who draw up their 'content policies' will now be based in Texas, rather than California, to allay conservatives’ concerns about political bias. 'Expert' fact-checkers will be swapped for X-style ‘community notes’, too.

Elon Musk is a man of tremendous gifts, to put it mildly. He recently caught a rocket between some chopsticks, for crying out loud. But insight into the mood of British politics is clearly not one of those gifts. Having only just learned about Britain’s shameful, grotesque, never-ending grooming-gangs scandal, declaring that Jess Phillips should be in prison for failing to back a full national inquiry into it, Musk has now turned his ire on his erstwhile ally, Reform leader Nigel Farage. This new disagreement seems to have escalated rather quickly.

Anti-fascism ain’t what it used to be. It used to mean signing up to go to fight Franco’s fascists in Spain, turning out against Oswald Mosley in the East End, or trading punches with National Front thugs. Now it means trying to get right-wing Tory MPs no platformed on elite university campuses – and occasionally punching elderly gender-critical women in the face. It’s by turns despicable and pathetic. The cancellation of Suella Braverman’s event at Cambridge last week – following threats of protest by assorted faux-radical groups, with ‘Cambridge for Palestine’ to the fore – was grimly predictable.

Socialism, wrote George Orwell, has often had a habit of attracting posh cranks. He witheringly described the ‘sandal-wearers and bearded fruit-juice drinkers who come knocking towards the smell of “progress” like bluebottles to a dead cat’.  Even though Starmer’s Labour has all but dropped the s-word, fully embracing its role as the party of the new elites, its electoral triumph certainly has been a boon to scolds and irritants. All the worst, most meddlesome factions in British public life appear to have been emboldened by this government. Woke censors? Tick. Nanny statists? Alarmingly so. And of course there’s the environmentalists, who clearly see in Labour their best chance for eco-immiseration in our lifetime.

It’s boom time at Ofcom. In the past few years, what was until recently the government-backed regulator for broadcasting, telecoms and postal industries (already an absurdly broad range of responsibilities) has seen its remit expanded beyond all recognition. Following the passage of the Online Safety Act 2023, Ofcom has been handed the famously straightforward task of regulating social-media companies – compelling them to clamp down on illegal speech and activity on their platforms. The Media Act 2024, which gained royal assent in May, has extended its reach to streaming services, too. Now, a think-tank has essentially suggested we should cut out the middleman and turn the Office of Communications into a full-blown Ministry of Truth.

It’s hard to keep up with what is racist these days. It used to be straightforward. You know, discriminating against, hating or depriving rights to certain groups for no other reason than the colour of their skin. But that quaint definition just won’t do anymore. Nowadays, the countryside is racist, maths is racist, telling a Japanese person you like sushi is racist, wearing a sombrero if you’re not Mexican is racist, compliments are racist, babies are racist. To that yawning list we can now add… buildings. Particularly those in Wales, it seems. The Welsh government has pledged to ‘eradicate’ systemic racism by 2030, and apparently it’s starting with those notorious bigots, the librarians.