I am going to tiptoe around my latest essay and hope to avoid the huge controversy surrounding it. When I mention that it is a commentary concerning the ‘Cornell Seven’ case, currently being prosecuted on Tik Toc, you will see what I mean. At this time my view is, strangely, somewhat in line with that of Sunny Hostin of The View fame. She warned against pre judging the case as it is still evolving. We can see a hurricane of judgements on the net, like AOC and Jameela Jamil, who have pronounced the seven guilty before bothering to read the facts that are currently in the public domain. I am not going to review the material available to the public to date, as it is changing by the minute. However, there are some interesting issues that have arisen, even at this early stage.
There is huge public interest in this case and it seems that every commentator, influencer, celebrity, politician and person with a keyboard has reached a verdict, even though there have been no charges laid against the seven male students. The vast majority seemed to be filled with hatred and venom directed against the seven, their families and anyone who raises the question about due process. For those who parade the First Amendment as the crowning glory of the Constitution, they might acknowledge that there are real consequences to allowing this volume of prejudicial misinformation to be unchallenged. One partial, solution may be to copy the Irish Criminal Law (Rape) Act, 1981 which gives anonymity to both parties until the case is decided.
The other thing Sunny referred to was, the Law in this case. A civil complaint was filed in New York State Supreme Court, which has an interesting take on agency and intoxication that AOC and Jameela might not be aware of. A very brief history recalls that after the Cornell hearings, the Tompkins County District Attorney, Matthew Van Houten declined to proceed with criminal charges. Sunny, who was a state prosecutor, agreed that with the information available to Van Houten, at the time, that she wouldn’t have proceeded either. NY Post 29/09/26 With the filing and subsequent public outpouring, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed the notorious New York Attorney General Letitia James as a special prosecutor. Not taking Sunny Hostin’s view that you should wait until all the evidence is available, James wrote that “what this young woman has been forced to endure is horrific and unacceptable”, pledging to stand by “survivors”. BBC 06/10/26. One defence lawyer has already demanded that James recuse herself. Good luck on that one. The other point that Sunny Hostin made, was the question of consent. I understand that this will be a key point in the forthcoming trial but she clarified one aspect in relation to the law when she said, “Under New York law, voluntary intoxication or drug use that merely impairs judgment does not legally constitute an inability to consent to sexual activity.” NY Post 29/09/26. You can see how this would play if an assailant claimed that he was under the influence of drink and drugs and therefore could not be prosecuted because he was temporally not of a sound mind.
The other thing that struck me was the continuous references to the 1 in 4 campus sexual assault statistic. I am not a statistician but I am very suspicious of this sort of unsourced number being bandied about by politicians, pundits and the NYT. I did some research into a similar, much quoted claim that ‘97% of all scientists agree that climate change is real.’ The question that immediately came to mind was, where was the other 3%? Giving a miniscule allowance for flat earthers, surely 99.99% of scientists agree that the climate has changed since the earth was molten rock, through the Ice Age and to the present day. You can read my essay on the following link (97% of Scientists agree) and I don’t intend to drill down any further with the climate change stat, other than to point out the similarities with the rape and sexual assault number. The first link is that both numbers were repeatedly used by President Obama, VP Biden and others to promote a political cause. PBS 15/12/14. I pointed out in my essay on climate, that President Obama truncated the full quote by cutting off the second part of the findings, that made sense of the first part. However, in each case the numbers fit comfortably on a students protest placard.
There are a number of problems in trying to get an accurate statistic of sexual assault on US college campuses, including those mentioned above. One source would be government and state records but even these are subject to political influence. In the 2024 Presidential election the FBI was forced to adjust the overall crime figures from a reported -2% decrease to an actual 4% increase y-on-y. There is also the understandable reluctance of victims not wanting to relive their horrifying experience in court. Equally as difficult, is the level of proof a criminal prosecution requires in a crime where, in a large number of cases, the issue of consent is disputed. This is probably why the Tompkins County District Attorney, Matthew Van Houten didn’t bring a criminal case to court originally. It is also why a civil action has been brought, with the lower burden of proof required. As a result of these impediments, we are left with a multitude of polls and surveys. If we take a step back to the origin of the ‘one in four’ or, ‘one in five’ stat, Jake New of PBS ascribes it to the 2007 Campus Sexual Assault Study. Brian D. Earp highlighted the AAU Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Sexual Misconduct (2015) report as a contributory source and Heather Mac Donald cites Ms. magazine as being the first to publish the stat in 1987. All of these studies attract some or, all of the criticisms levied at campus assault stats. So what are the most common criticisms of these surveys? Sample size and selection, methodology, replicability and conclusions supported by evidence. For example, the 2007 Campus Sexual Assault Study was criticised for the small sample size of it’s online survey but also because there was a self selection bias in that only those interested in the subject of the survey, completed it. Under methodology, Heather MacDonald tells the story of Mary Koss who was asked to construct a survey that explained why previous surveys had reported a low level of rape. Koss designed a survey where she interpreted the respondents answers by classifying various experiences as amounting to rape. Her interpreted numbers were reported, even though 73% of respondents said they had not been raped. City Journal 2008 The very definition of rape and sexual assault varies from State to State and survey to survey. This is especially relevant when the definition of sexual assault encompasses violent physical assault to unwanted advances. The use of the ‘One in Four’ or ‘Five’ statistic with its inherent weakness’s leaves it open to being binned in the ‘just another trick to disguise an ideological cause with bad science’ receptacle.
So where does that leave us? If we look at the following headlines, what do they have in common. I will give you a clue. They all omit one word.
Law Commentary Cornell 7 Rape Case Escalates as Judge Orders Response to Bid to Remove Letitia James
New York Post Hochul appoints AG Letitia James to take over ‘Cornell 7’ gang rape probe after losing faith in upstate DA’s investigation
BBC What we know about Cornell University frat house rape investigation
For those of us in the Sunny Hostin corner (the first and last time, I promise) the missing word is ALLEGED. For those of us who believe in due process and innocent until proved guilty, the huge wash of emotional, vitriolic, self-righteous, hypocritical and ideological commentary, in this case, is depressing. I do not condone or defend the activities of either party but as evidenced by the headlines above, in most cases, there is no pretense at being even handed. To add to the print media and the internet influencers clamour, we now have a Netflix “documentary” to add to the noise. I do not call for a news blackout or, a ban on commentary but can we at least recognise that we have only heard one side of the argument? Given the facts in the public domain there are many issues that need to be resolved and this is best done in a controlled environment with rules that protect both parties.
There’s always such a rush to judgment. It makes a fair trial hard to get.— John Grisham
Brandon Drenon, 06/10/26, BBC, Lawyer for one of Cornell Seven calls for special prosecutor to be removed over previous comments, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9p8gxygvpg6o
Alex Oliveira, 29/09/26, The New York Post, ‘The View’ host Sunny Hostin backs DA’s 2024 decision not to charge ‘Cornell 7’ accused of gang rape: ‘No way’, https://nypost.com/2026/09/29/us-news/sunny-hostin-backs-das-2024-decision-not-to-charge-cornell-7-accused-of-gang-rape-no-way/
Jake New, 15/12/14, PBS, What does the oft-cited ‘1 in 5’ campus sexual assault stat really mean? https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/critics-advocates-alike-doubt-oft-cited-1-5-campus-sexual-assault
heather-mac-donald, 2008, City Journal, The Campus Rape Myth, https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-campus-rape-myth
Brian D. Earp, 29/09/25, 1 in 4 women: How the latest sexual assault statistics were turned into click bait by the New York Times, https://blog.uehiro.ox.ac.uk/tag/1-in-4/
PC Tom Clough and PC Matthew Blades Killed by criminals driving the wrong way on the A66. Photo The Times 24/08/26
I wasn’t too sure how to handle the news of the three motorway crashes that involved young criminals driving the wrong way on the M50 and M9 in Ireland and the A66 in England. The current fatality and injury count is, fatalities =7 (A66) and 5 (M9) and injuries = 4 (M9) and 9 (M50). Amongst those killed in the A66 crash were the two officers pictured above. I will not reproduce pictures of the perpetrators as this glorifies their actions to a certain group. What drew my attention to this tragedy was a comment by a young woman at a lawless vigil for one of the teenagers, Jakub Matusiak, where she said, “Jakub was a lovely, caring lad and he’s somebody’s son and somebody’s brother. He’s not some scumbag who should just be written off and forgotten,” she [also] said. “It was an accident that those police officers died.” The Times 24/08/26. I had two thoughts on her remarks. The first was my exasperation at her use of the word accident in describing the death of the two officers, PC’s Clough and Blades. This was not an accident. This was entirely foreseeable and it does not matter whether they had intended to kill the officers, they chose to act in a way that made it only a matter of time before something similar happened. It is as though they blindly fired into a crowd and said anyone killed or, injured was unlucky in that they were not targeted and therefore suffered by accident. I noticed that the Telegraph closed the comments section under one of its articles but most of the others were equally divided between calling the criminals scumbags or similar, and criticizing the Government and Police for inaction. I have some sympathy with this view as in nearly every region in England and Ireland there is a developing underclass who don’t buy in to the norms that the rest of the country live by. In Middlesbrough this is facilitated by a defeated police who were characterised as, “directionless, rudderless and clueless” Telegraph 29/08/26. They were also underfunded and overwhelmed. As for successive governments, they hoped that no bad publicity would happen on their watch and when it did, they applied sticking plaster and platitudes to the problem and hoped that it would go away.
If we return to my second thought on the comments made by the young woman, it is that looking for vengeance, however natural, is not going to solve the problem long term. Of course, she needs to realise that 12 people died and 13 were injured as a direct result of the actions of people like the one she described as lovely and caring. There seems to be a a disconnect between the actions of criminals and the impact on the community. In the case of the A66 criminals, ” Cahill had no previous convictions but the four others in the Passat had amassed 37 between them. Their offences included assaults on police officers, aggravated vehicle taking, knife possession and driving offences. The Times 28/08/26. Almost equal to the outrage concerning the Police and the Governments acquiescence to the situation, was the attack on the parents of the criminals. Information on the parents involved is very limited at this stage but the consensus from the posts on line, seems to be that they bear some responsibility for the action of their sons. In my view there is some evidence to support this but I believe there shouldn’t be a kneejerk reaction to blame all parents in all circumstances, just to satisfy our thirst for retribution. How many times have we thought, “there but the grace of God go I” when hearing about a loving family torn apart by a child who, perhaps is on drugs and beyond the parents control. Having said that, there are some who conform to the stereotype, “Cahill’s mother had encouraged people with vehicles to attend the tribute. …… she called for “bikes, jeeps, cars [and] quads” to gather to “give him [the] send-off he deserves”. Sunday Times 28/08/26 Predictably, the final send off involved, cars being driven dangerously, crashed and set on fire and horses were terrified, despite pleas from locals to stop. Probably in the minority, the mother of one of those killed in the M9 crash had a different view, “Speaking before the mass began, Jack’s mother Sarah told mourners that five young boys “made a bad choice” and paid the “ultimate price”. “we all want to send our deepest, heartfelt apologies to the families who were injured. You are all in our thoughts and our prayers” RTE 25/08/26. There but for the grace of God.
There have been the usual calls for longer sentences for these offenses, which will result in long sighs of resignation from front line officers who have to deal with these young men. They have heard it all before, when a government has had to face up to unwelcome reality. We all know that laws, by themselves, do not change anything without resolute enforcement and resources to back them up.
Our first and most important challenge is to recognise whether we have a problem or not.
It sounds very simple but we all avoid the causes of crime and only treat the symptoms. I have never experienced real poverty but when I look at the pictures of the sink estates in Middlesborough and I assume there are similar examples in Ireland, I think we have a big problem. I hasten to add that I am not going full Guardian on this but we are sleepwalking into a dystopian future. One mother of three summed up the situation on the ground, as follows, “There are kids aged five or six who will stand there in the street and tell you to f*** off if you cross them, they don’t care, they have no rules or guidance and the problem is that once you’re here you can’t get out. So they grow up to be criminals.” Times 28/08/26 This is a neat summary of the situation. To no rules, no guidance and no social mobility, we can add, no hope, no expectations, no sense of purpose. We can point to many reasons for this. At the age of 12 I had a newspaper round, every day, in all weathers, I delivered newspapers before school. Later I took a Saturday job and worked during the summer holidays. I am not sure that this would be possible today, with all the administration and child protection rules in force. The point is, that in addition to the exercise, I learnt the value of money, how to integrate into a workforce and could see a way of improving my situation. These are skills that are not taught in school, they are a portal into the academy of real life. The sad point is that we have managed to block that seamless entry point with well meaning regulation and a benefits system that is “exacerbating inactivity” The Times 11/06/26. Of course there are many other factors, schools, technology, porn, video games, drugs and alcohol, the disparagement of masculinity and so on. One of the major impacts on the future of our five year old, mentioned above, is the effect the benefits system has in maintaining the depressing and failing status quo. In the UK a report was commissioned to see what the actual outcomes were on the current unemployment benefit policy. The report was to determine, “whether the system offers social insurance to contributors who temporarily fall foul of the labour market or a permanent subsidy to an entrenched underclass.” The Times 11/06/26. What has prompted the governments action is the realisation that the underclass is going to expand exponentially, unless the approaching NEET (not in education, employment or training) problem is solved. In Milburn’s interim report he cites some worrying numbers. He estimates that there are nearly one million NEETS in the UK in 2026 at an annual cumulative cost to taxpayers of £125 billion. The Times 28/05/26 In the first part of his report, Milburn finds that in the 16 – 24 age group of NEETS, 60% have never had a job in their lives! Starmer notes the failure of the Universities to provide courses suitable for post graduate employment by referencing that 1 in 10 NEETS are graduates. For the 2024/25 fiscal year, Milburn estimates that only £200m was spent on employment support programs for young people, out of a budget of £1.4 billion for total Job Centre spend for all ages. In Ireland and the UK there is one number that cannot be ignored, however much the respective governments try and that is the impact of immigration. In Ireland, for the period from January 2023 to March this year, only 26% of the 793,899 PPS numbers issued went to Irish nationals. There may be a number of reasons for this but I have not seen any discussion on the impact of immigrantion on the entry level job market.
The % of young people not in employment, education or training in the UK to March 2026. Office of National Statistics
I have spent some time looking at the context against which we should judge the recent crimes that destroyed so many lives. In summary, I think that there are two main approaches that need to be resolutely pursued. Yes, we should apply the rules and in my opinion, focus on the Rudy Giuliani ‘broken windows’ approach to policing. In certain areas the police have given up attending to what they describe as ‘minor offenses’. However, they are not ‘minor offenses’ to people, like the mother in Middlesbrough, who has to navigate them everyday. There are many people who live in dire conditions that are not criminals and we should not abandon them. Rightly or wrongly, there is a sense that the police have settled for an unwritten truce with the criminals that as long as they don’t make too much trouble, the guardians of the law will look the other way. If that seems unfair, how else do we explain the inactivity surrounding the grooming scandal? The second approach is far less focussed and the reason I touched on the Milburn report. The report illustrates the enormity of the cultural change that is necessary to prevent the same societal decline and decay that is evident in the sink estates in the UK and Ireland. For far too long the measure of success for a government is how much money is thrown at welfare recipients whilst presiding over a,” fragmented and hugely varied system for helping young people, with minimal monitoring or accountability.” The Guardian 28/05/26 The Milburn Report seems to be asking the right question, whether the billions poured into the welfare system, are producing an improved outcome. How is this related to the motorway deaths? This is as much a social, cultural and government problem as a criminal one. If we merely crack down on offenders, that just pushes them into more criminality and extremist action. The safety valve is to give our five year olds someone to look up to and something to strive for in a neighbourhood that has hope, expectations, and a sense of purpose. If we fail, the result is already with us. We can see a world where nihilism is the ruling culture. A resident at one of the ‘send offs’ for one of the criminals involved in the crashes made the case, “… they started crashing into each other, and I just thought, how stupid can you get? That’s how your friend died,” Sunday Times 28/08/26.
Sources
Sian Bradley and Kevin Donald, 24/08/26, The Times, A66 crash: hundreds gather at tense vigil as 12 are arrested, https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/a66-crash-mackay-saddington-bail-assaulting-police-officer-5kfbhpm9c
Marc O’Driscoll, 25/08/26, RTE, Mother of teenager killed in M9 crash apologises to victims at funeral, https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2026/0825/1589146-jack-kennedy-funeral/
Simon Heffer, 29/08/26, the Telegraph, Britain’s abandonment of the white working class is a recipe for anarchy, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/08/29/britain-abandoned-white-working-recipe-anarchy/
Sian Bradley, Ben Ellery, Eleanor Tait and Tash Mosheim, 28/08/26, The Sunday Times, Cars burn and 200 officers drafted to Middlesbrough as violence spreads, https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/middlesbrough-car-ramming-violence-fears-a66-crash-bmlr7cvtt
Sian Bradley, Ben Ellery, Eleanor Tait, 28/06/26, The Times, ‘It feels lawless’: inside Middlesbrough’s week of death and disorder, https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/it-feels-lawless-inside-middlesbroughs-week-of-death-and-disorder-kk86szp03
Cormac Lucey, 11/06/26,The Times, Neet solution to youth unemployment lies in welfare reform, https://www.thetimes.com/world/ireland-world/article/neet-solution-youth-unemployment-welfare-9x70sj87l
Ben Clatworthy and Daisy Eastlake, 28/05/26, The Times, Alan Milburn report: no Saturday jobs and job misery for ‘lost generation’, https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/alan-milburn-report-review-neets-key-takeaways-5k5t83wgt
Peter Walker, 28/05/26, The Gaurdian, A record of failure’: what’s in the first part of Alan Milburn’s Neet report https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/may/28/a-record-of-failure-whats-in-the-first-part-of-alan-milburns-neet-report
For this moment, just this moment only, the world is divided into those who know the story behind the headline and those who do not. For those who don’t know, Mr Mischief is Harry Sussex a.k.a. Prince Harry. The rather racy wording refers to messages exchanged between Harry and another which featured in the case brought by Harry and others, against Associated Newspapers (ANL) In summary, the Claimants, Harry, Sadie Frost, Liz Hurley, Baroness Lawrence, Sir Elton John. David Furnish and Sir Simon Hughes, all claim that articles published by the Daily Mail and sister news outlets’, were based on information obtained by illegal means. To put this in to context, the claim against The Mail was the third in Harry’s campaign against the British Press. As the BBC report of 7th. July states, ‘In previous legal battles with the press, Prince Harry won 15 claims in his case against Mirror Group Newspapers and separately received “substantial” damages and an apology in a settlement with the publisher of the Sun.’ Harry saw himself as the ‘Dragon Slayer’ fighting against the establishment British Press on behalf of ……….. well, the establishment. With the possible exception of Baroness Lawrence, all of the other claimants were either wealthy celebrities or, establishment figures, including Harry himself.
Mr Justice Nicklin dailymail.com
I would like to address two things before I go any further. The first is that I will limit this essay to Harry’s claims and not cover some of the issues mentioned by Mr Justice Nicklin’s 436 page judgement. (see link below) It makes very interesting reading but it is not within the scope of this essay. The second is to declare my bias against the main claimant. If you have suffered through any of my other blogs you will soon be aware that I consider Harry to be a spoilt child. I agree that this may be an over simplification but again, this is not the essay to debate that. If proof were needed for my opinion, then look no further than his actions in this case. For a person so protective of his right to privacy, it seems somewhat hypercritical for him to override the same rights of others when they can be exploited in interviews on Netflix, Oprah, Spotify, BBC, Vanity Fair et al. In Paul Dacre’s words,
“There isn’t a laundry in the cosmos big enough to wash all the dirty linen he has aired about his own family. For him to complain about HIS privacy being invaded takes not just the biscuit, but the whole tin.” Paul Dacre editor-in-chief of DMG Media. Daily Telegraph 10/07/26
To get back to the case. The claimant’s case rested on two legs. The first is that articles printed by the Mail contained information that could only have been obtained by illegal means. The second leg relates to a certified witness statement made by Gavin Burrows, the claimant witness, which, “alleged an array of lawbreaking on behalf of the publisher, including bugging, phone hacking, landline tapping and the “blagging” of private records and medical information.” The Guardian
Prince Harry’s flirty messages revealed in high-profile lawsuit. photo thenewdaily.com.au
If we take the first leg of Harry’s case, it is important to understand the elements required to win. As the BBC reported, “Because this was a civil case, the “burden lies on each claimant to prove the facts”, and establish each part of their claim “on the balance of probabilities”. In non-legal speak, this means the claimants had to show that an event was more likely to have occurred than not. BBC 07/07/26. When we apply the “balance of probabilities” test to Harry’s testimony we see an immediate weakness. “Giving evidence in court, he [Harry] insisted that his friendship group was not “leaky” and that personal information could only have come from hacking. But specific evidence was scarce.” The Daily Telegraph 07/07/26 The problem is that at this time (pre Megyn) Harry was part of a hard drinking, hard partying social class of the right sort of people. Just applying the probability test to a likely scenario. Is it probable that a ‘fuelled up’ young man would use his friendship with the Prince to impress an attractive woman at a party? Mr Sherbourne, invoked the balance of probabilities argument when Judge Nicklin questioned the lack of evidence to prove wrongdoing by the Mail. Sherbourne gave an example of when a valuable watch was stolen from a safe and subsequently found in another’s possession. He argued that, “It should then be up to the defendant, he said, to prove that the watch had been sourced legitimately.” The Guardian, 07/07/26. It seemed to argue an odd reversal of the roles where the accused has to prove his innocence. Judge Nicklin disagreed with Mr Sherbourne’s attempt to explain the lack of evidence supporting the claimants case. “Mr Justice Nicklin, who has questioned Sherborne’s approach throughout the trial, said the notion sounded “perilously close” to reversing the burden of proof on to the defendant.” The Guardian,31/03/26 As it turned out, we did not have to wait for Mr Shelbourne to make the connection between the Mail and the source of the stories. All along Katie Nicholls and other Mail journalists had claimed that their sources had mainly been loose-lipped friends, publicists and press offices. Harry denied any connection with the press but when his association with the Mail journalist, Charlotte Griffiths was revealed, his earlier assertions that he despised journalists and would have nothing to do with them was put into some doubt. It was here that we meet the flirtatious, Mr Mischief who carried on a correspondence with this Mail Journalist for sometime.
All the Mail had to do was to prove that it was more likely that information was obtained from Harry’s circle ,than by illegal means. This Harry managed to do by proving that his circle leaked from the top.
There were other sources for the stories, including Jack Straw, the Home Secretary at the time of the public inquiry over Stephen Lawrence’s murder. Harry believed that he only had to prove illegal information gathering for one of the 14 articles he submitted to the court. On the other hand the Mail had demonstrated that there were many sources available to them and that it was more likely that they obtained information from Mr Mischief and others, than not.
Gavin Burrows, claimed witness statement was forged. loiinvestigations.com
The second leg, on which Harry’s claim was built, was far more substantial. He had an affidavit, supported by a witness who would testify that he was, “… working with an “ex-army guy” to place devices in maintenance holes and junction boxes and bugging cars, as well as hacking celebrities and those close to them, including Elton John’s gardener.” The Guardian 07/07/26. The witness was a Private Investigator, named Gavin Burrows. He was crucial to the claimants case for two reasons. First, he was the only witness that could connect the Mail with the offenses claimed. The second, is that his statement was used to persuade the likes of Baroness Lawrence to join the case against the Mail. This was important as it gave gravitas to the otherwise celebrity heavy claimants. It is no accident that the case is listed as Baroness Lawrence and Others v Associated Newspapers Limited. A lot depended on Gavin Burrows testimony. The problem for Mr Sherbourne, Harry and the others came in an explosive statement from Mr Burrows before the trial began. He said that he never did any of the illegal acts specified in the witness statement produced by the claimants and that the statement itself, was a forgery! Mr Shelbourne must have felt the ground give way underneath him. He tried to block Burrows testimony via video but the Judge reminded the lawyer that Burrows was his witness. In the event the Judge found Burrows testimony, “argumentative, evasive, internally inconsistent and, at times, extraordinary”. The Guardian 07/07/26. The Judge had a special mention for the claimants lawyer, “ who signed off the disputed statement, the celebrity solicitor Anjlee Sangani, had not witnessed Burrows signing it, delegating that task to Johnson. Nicklin added that Sangani had shown a “serious error of professional judgment” in signing offthe statement. The Guardian 07/07/26
Lawyer David Sherborne is representing all the claimants. Prince Harry’s court case: What’s happening The Guardian 07/07/26
Having demolished Harry’s claim that his circle of friends would never associate with journalists, by associating with journalists himself, the first leg of his claim collapsed. The second leg, which was more critical to the claimant’s case, exploded in their faces, in an almost farcical way, when Burrows asserted that the affidavit was a forgery. At the closing of the trial, I believe that Mr Sherbourne and his clients still felt that they would get something from the Judge that might be claimed as a partial victory. This belief was bolstered by, not only the successes achieved by Harry in past cases but also by a lucrative culture of suing Newspapers over hacking. As Fraser Nelson wrote in the Times, claims against newspapers had reached almost industrial levels with £1.2 billion being paid out to 1300 claimants.Given the widespread practise of newspapers settling hacking claims out of court, all Mr Sherbourne had to do was to, ” … establish a culture of dark arts at the Mail” Times 07/07/26. In essence, claimants brought criminal acts of illegal information gathering to the civil courts, where there is a “lower evidence threshold.” They also expanded the concept of institutional guilt to mean that if one person, in an institution, is guilty of a criminal act, then in all probability, his colleagues could also be assumed to have offended. Mr Sherbourne relied on the Cardiff Newsagent Three case to support his argument. However, his argument was shot down by the Judge who ruled that there was no argument in law for contagious guilt. “This is what the judge finally rejected. If Reporter A hacked a phone, he said, it tells you precisely nothing about whether Reporter B did. No one — journalists or anyone else — can be found guilty by association. “Times 07/07/26 This belief was an important factor in bringing the case when, in retrospect, it seemed to have very little merit. To the claimants, however, they saw precedent in a tenuous link to the Cardiff case; they saw the Burrows affidavit; they believed that no one around them talked to the press and they believed that all journalist behaved in a deplorable manner.
Paul Dacre editor-in-chief of DMG Media.
In summary, we have seen the two legged support of the claimants case collapse. We have seen the guilty by contagion faux doctrine shattered. We have also seen Judge Nicklin, constantly bring the claimants back to the pleaded case. Sect 8 “They were not a public inquiry into the conduct of Associated generally. The Court therefore controlled the scope of the Claimants’ general case about Associate’s conduct and required the trial to focus on the pleaded issues.” Essentially, the case came down to one sentence, which the Judge addressed to Mr Sherbourne, “It is for you to demonstrate there has been a wrong.” Rosamund Urwin, 04/04/26, The Times In his judgement, Judge Nicklin found that none of the seven claimants had proved that, in any of the 97 documents submitted, the Mail had obtained the information illegally. He went to great lengths to say that suspicion was not enough but that the complaint had to be proved. Sect 7“But suspicion, even where understandable, was not enough. The Claimants had to prove that the information complained of had been obtained unlawfully.” He went through each of the 97 documents submitted, rejecting the idea that guilt can be inferred from generalised complaints Sect 11“The Court rejected the attempt to prove the claims by broad inference where there remained a legitimate and realistic possible lawful source pathway…” When weighing up the value of witness testimony he found the defendants believable but had some difficulties with the claimants team. We have already seen his comments concerning Anjlee Sanjana’s handling of Burrows alleged affidavit but he also had doubts about evidence gathering by Graham Johnson who’s testimony he described as, “shaped by reconstruction rather than reliable recollection”. the Telegraph 07/07/26 Johnson, who had previously been convicted of phone hacking, was connected to the Hacked Off lobby group that wanted to retry the Leveson enquiry with the aim of reducing Press freedom. The Judge had to constantly haul Mr Sherbourne back to the case in hand and dismissed any claims made in this respect. On a technicality, The Judged did not comment on, the apparent discrepancy in Harrys testimony about his relationship with the press, in particular Miss CG String. In general he rather mildly observed that Harry gave evidence that, “led him beyond giving factual evidence into advancing arguments on the issues” but in the end “has limited evidence to give on the contentious matters in dispute”. Guardian 07/07/26. There were questions about whether some of the claimants charges were time barred and the Judge referred to a “camouflage scheme” designed to falsely extend the six year time limit on bringing these complaints. There were questions concerning payments to the claimants witnesses, Gavin Burrows received £75k. And so on and so on and so on. There is enough content to make a good read at Christmas if anyone can rush a book out in time. The reason I have gone into this much detail is to give an idea of how much of this action was tied together with string and Sellotape. It was wrapped in scraps of paper sealed with, vindictiveness, revenge, spite, greed, narcissism, entitlement, stupidity and puppy dogs tails. The last word goes to Harry. “I’ve been told that slaying dragons will get you burned,” Caroline Davies, The Guardian 07/07/26. Well he got it half right. He was burned
Sources
Michael Savage, 07/07/26, The Guardian, An emphatic victory for the Mail: how a £50m privacy case unravelled in court, https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/jul/07/mail-victory-50m-privacy-case-unravelled-court-associated-newspapers
Michael Savage, 31/03/26, The Guardian, An angry prince and leaky friends: key moments in the Daily Mail hacking trial,https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/mar/31/key-moments-daily-mail-hacking-trial
Cachella Smith and Jamie Whitehead, 07/07/26, BBC News, Prince Harry loses High Court case against Mail publisher, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c932dy1p94wt?page=2 and https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c932dy1p94wt
Michael Savage,10/02/26, The Guardian, Lawyer did not see Gavin Burrows sign Mail phone-hacking confession, court hears, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/feb/10/gavin-burrows-phone-hacking-confession-solicitor-anjlee-sangani-high-court
Rosamund Urwin, 04/04/26, The Times, Prince Harry v the Mail: will ‘Mr Mischief’ regret this £38m gamble?, https://www.thetimes.com/uk/royal-family/article/prince-harry-associated-newspaper-wr53w3vgs
Caroline Davies, 07/07/26, The Guardian, Prince Harry gets burned in his mission to ‘slay dragons’ of British media, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/07/duke-of-sussex-calls-legal-battles-with-british-media-his-lifes-work-phone-hacking-daily-mail
Fraser Nelson, 07/07/26,The Times, The Prince Harry case failed the basic test of the newsroom, https://www.thetimes.com/uk/law/article/fraser-nelson-prince-harry-phone-hacking-case-qzprstmz8
Victoria Ward, 07/07/26 The Telegraph, Prince Harry loses £50m phone hacking case against Daily Mail, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2026/07/07/prince-harry-loses-50m-phone-hacking-case-daily-mail-uk/
At the risk of repeating myself …… actually, I don’t care if I do repeat myself. I keep raising the same subjects, because the same subjects keep coming up! A case in point is the Judicial Review of the Scottish National Party’s (SNP) guidance on trans prisoners being lodged in woman’s prisons. Thought that had been settled by the Supreme Courts decision that sex means biological sex in all matters that relate to equality? Well, you were wrong!!! The SNP had to be dragged back into court to hear the presiding Judge explain it to them in simple language,
Judge Lady Ross said, external sex segregation in prisons must be based on biological sex, based on a Supreme Court ruling on the definition of a woman in equality law in April last year. BBC 19/06/26
I have reproduced the Summary of the Judgement below and you can see the SNP’s Human Rights argument, especially under section 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, being considered and dismissed. Of course, they knew their argument was spurious but right from the beginning they have left no stone unturned to sneak this unpopular and ideologically driven policy on the public. I wrote about this in 2020 where I wondered whether I was the Last Feminist standing. In my essay we got to meet Stephen Terence Wood
Stephen Terence Wood, a.k.a. Karen White. Leaflet produced by Fair Play for Women.
who is a really nasty piece of work as you can see from the essay. He had a history of sex offenses against women and girls but was remanded to a women’s prison on claiming that he was a trans woman called Karen White. It turns out that no one checked his criminal record until he repeated sex offenses against two woman prisoners and only then was he sent to a male prison. You might say that Stephen Woods case was criminal neglect by the English authorities and would never happen under the SNP guided Scottish
Andrew Burns AKA Tiffany Scott (Munsnett)
Prison Service (SPS). Let me refer you to my essay on The Gender Recognition Reform Bill . In this essay I introduced the rapist and the paedophile, both 100% home grown Scots. Andrew Burns ,the Paedophile, became Tiffany, after having an Order for Lifelong Restriction (OLR) placed on him. He was once known as the most dangerous prisoner in Scotland. Unbelievably, his application to be moved to a women’s prison was approved in 2023. Woman prisoners were only saved from this violent man by the public uproar which
Adam Graham/Isla Bryson. (Picture The Sun)
resulted from the rapist, Adam Graham, being remanded to a woman’s prison whilst his case was being heard. The SPS only changed their trans policy after the backlash from the public. They were not helped by the Justice Minister and Nicola Sturgeon throwing them under the bus, over the debacle. However, you can see from my essay that the SNP were up to their neck in pushing Trans policy, despite their protestations.
Why drag up old cases where vulnerable women have been abused by the authorities. Should I not be celebrating yet another success of the formidable For Women Scotland? But isn’t that the point? This group of ordinary, yet extra ordinary women have had to battle an intransigent SNP every inch of the way to reach the Supreme Court. The current First Minister, John Swinney, is only the latest in a line of First Ministers, who promote the progressive agenda. We all thought that the Supreme Court decision was the final nail in the coffin of the Trans religion but it seems that we have to battle on until we have figuratively put a stake through their hearts. I will make a prediction that even though Scottish Justice Secretary, Neil Gray, has said that he will not appeal the findings, there are a number of minions looking at section 126, to see whether there is any wriggle room there. As the For Women Scotland said,
We hope that, in future, the Scottish Government will start to listen to us rather than the lobby groups who drafted these policies and have so egregiously misled MSPs and MPs. FWS
I wholeheartedly agree with them but do I trust the SNP and it’s cronies? Unfortunately, I think that the FWS and all good people need to be alert and ready for the next battle with the enemies of common sense and goodwill.
Note
Whilst writing on this subject, I am very conscious that I spend a lot of time focusing on the trans women’s argument. This is because, this is the battleground on which the trans army chooses to fight. There is very little said about trans men, mainly because they don’t represent a threat to men and therefore do not generate the column inches that the trans lobby are so desperate for.(See link from Congressional Hearings below) Whilst the pro trans SNP unsuccessfully argued their case, referencing section 8 of the ECHR rules, there was no argument for real women’s rights under the same rules. I absolutely support the argument that a man cannot become a women, even after high risk drug and surgical procedures. I further agree that most intersex violence is committed by men against women and that women deserve to have safe spaces. I have listed below a few sites that will argue my beliefs far more eloquently than I do in this space.
Appendix 1 – Summary of the Women Scotland for Judicial Review
Summary and conclusion
[177] In the present proceedings, the petitioner challenges the Prisons Guidance at a policy level. In order to advance this argument, based on the statutory scheme, comprising the EA 2010, the Prisons (Scotland) Act 1989 and the 2011 Prisons Rules, and with reference to sex discrimination, it is not necessary to consider evidence relating to the facts of individual cases. It is open to the petitioner to challenge the first respondents’ policy on the basis that
it mis-states the law. The respondents’ arguments in relation to relevancy are not well-founded.
[178] Sex segregation in prisons in Scotland is lawful. The statutory scheme, based on the EA 2010 and the 2011 Rules, requires separate prison accommodation for men and women. Following FWS 2, this means sex segregation in prisons according to biological sex.
[179] Insofar as the Prisons Guidance allows SPS to accommodate trans prisoners in prisons for the opposite biological sex, it is in conflict with the requirement that prison accommodation be provided separately for men and women. That constitutes a mis-statement of the law.
[180] Equal opportunities are a reserved matter in terms of section L2 of Schedule 5 to the Scotland Act 1998. Insofar as the Prisons Guidance allows the SPS to accommodate trans prisoners in prisons for the opposite biological sex, it is in conflict with the law for the time being relating to equal opportunities, within the meaning of section L2. Applying the Prisons Guidance would be outside the first respondents’ powers in terms of section 54(3) of the Scotland Act 1998.
[181] All prisoners have rights under the European Convention on Human Rights.
Trans prisoners have rights under Article 8, but this does not extend to a right to be accommodated in a prison for the opposite biological sex. Article 8 rights are qualified and there is a justification for maintaining sex segregation in prisons. The statutory scheme imposes a bright line rule and sex segregation in prisons does not admit of exceptions on the basis of Article 8 rights.
[182] There are obligations in terms of Article 2 to protect life and Article 3 not to subject prisoners to inhuman or degrading treatment. There is no positive obligation, in general terms, based on Article 2 or Article 3, to accommodate a trans prisoner in a prison for the opposite biological sex
[183] On the basis that the first respondents are exercising a public function and that section 29(6) and Schedule 22 apply, the question of disapplication of rule 126 may arise. It is possible that, in an exceptional individual case, in a situation where there is a threat to life through suicide, it may be necessary to consider an argument that accommodation in a prison for the opposite biological sex is necessary and that rule 126 should be disapplied. Whether that could be achieved compatibly with the requirements of the EA 2010 cannot be
determined in the abstract. In any event, disapplication or disregard of subordinate legislation cannot form part of a general policy.
[184] In all the circumstances, the Prisons Guidance is unlawful and the petitioner is entitled to orders for declarator and reduction. I will put the case out by order to allow for submissions on the appropriate terms of the interlocutor.
I was searching the papers for material for an essay I intended to write on the puberty blockers trial in the UK. What caught my eye was a headline in the Telegraph, entitled Koran burner wins landmark blasphemy case. Before I read the article I knew the facts of the case and was surprised that it had resurfaced. As you can see from my article entitled Free Speech , a Mr Hamit Coskun was convicted of a religiously aggravated public order office for burning a copy of the Koran outside the Turkish Consulate. He subsequently appealed the conviction before Mr Justice Bennathan at Southwark Crown Court in October. The hearing centered around Mr Coskun’s right of Freedom of Speech and the conviction was overturned by Justice Bennathan, who in summing up said, ”
“One of the precious rights that affords us is to express our own views and read, hear and consider ideas without the state intervening to stop us doing so.” ‘The price we pay for that is having to allow others to exercise the same rights, even if that upsets, offends or shocks us.” The Daily Mail 10/10/25
At this point I thought that the case had been settled and another blow for free speech had been struck! That is, until I saw the article in the Telegraph which reported that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had appealed the Crown Court decision to overturn Mr Coskun’s conviction.
Hamit Coskun with supporters at the Royal Courts Of Justice Ben Whitley/PA Wire
The Appeal was heard before Lord Justice Warby and Ms Justice Obi who heard the CPS claim that Judge Bennathan was in error in his decision. The CPS claimed that the original charge was not an attempt to reintroduce the Blasphemy Laws or, to infringe on his free speech rights. This is despite the original charge being, harassing the “religious institution of Islam”. This was subsequently changed to the “religiously aggravated” public order charge. The religious aspect of the alleged offense was emphasised by the magistrate’s findings that Mr Coskun’s actions were motivated by religious hatred. In response, the defense claimed that burning a book was not, in itself, proof of a public order offense and that Mr Coskun was exercising his right to protest his beliefs. The High Court found that there was no error in Mr Justice Bennathan’s finding and that the CPS had not offered anything new in Law or Fact to change it. Do we think that we have finally killed off this prosecution? I am not convinced. The CPS went to great lengths to pursue a simple public order offense and received a bloody nose in the Crown and High Courts as a result . The only difference between this case and any other Saturday night offense, ending up in the Magistrates Court, was the religious connection. To those who believe that this government operates a two tier justice system, under the direction of UK Attorney General, Richard Hermer, this looks like the CPS representing its Muslim clients, rather than the general public. I think that Mr Coskun is safe for now but who is going to be next?
Sources
Will Bolton, 27/02/26, The Telegraph, Koran burner wins landmark blasphemy case, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/02/27/koran-burner-wins-landmark-blasphemy-case/
OLIVIA CHRISTIE, 10/10/25, Daily Mail, Koran-burning protester wins appeal against conviction for a religiously aggravated public order offence after arguing his actions are protected under free speech, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15180897/Protester-Koran-conviction-appeal-win.html
I was in something of a dilemma when choosing a title for this essay. I could either go for the mundane Miller headline or, How to Boil A Frog, which is far more interesting but requires an explanation to ward off rent-a-protest animal rights activists. As you can see the Miller heading won but the Boiled Frog heading, used as a metaphor, may be closer to where I want to go.
So, who is Harry Miller? We met him briefly in my essay on The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 where he was instrumental in changing the guidelines laid down by The College of Policing in 2021, relating to Non Crime Hate Incidents (NCHI). He was a gender realist who believed that biology triumphs over ideology and suffered some 1200 abusive mails, from a trans colleague, for his pains. His accuser, Lynsay Watson, was eventually fired from Leicestershire Police as a result but continued the pursuit of gender realists, including the alleged complainant against Graham Linehan. (Free Speech Watson is also alleged to be the instigator of the more recent complaint, to the Leicestershire Police, over Harry Millers comments celebrating Watsons dismissal.
Lynsay Watson was sacked from Leicestershire Police for gross misconduct Credit: Daily Record /Ian Torrance
Our hero, Harry, was interviewed under caution, for offences under the Online Safety Act. The first difficulty for the police was that the Act did not become enforceable until one day after the claimed offense. In my opinion, the second reason Harry was released was because the Police realised they had no proof of intent that would satisfy the definitions of an offense under the Act. However, it didn’t end there. Harry, who set up the Fair Cop campaign to take politics out of policing, requested details of how the police recorded the interview. He was shocked to receive a reply to his request, stating that he had a NCHI record with the following commentary: “The occurrence … in which you were interviewed in relation to on 20 November 2024 has been recorded as a hate crime. The crime (stalking involving serious alarm or distress) has prejudice flags attached.” Telegraph 16/12/25. I will give Harry’s response to the Telegraph, as follows:
Harry Miller was sent over 1,200 messages from Lynsay Watson over an 18-month period Credit: PA/Victoria Jones
“This incident has revealed a whole new level of insanity. I was coerced into attending an interview under caution by Lincolnshire CID under threat of arrest, and questioned about breaking a law that did not exist.”
“Additionally, without charge, caution, referral to the CPS, or bothering to tell me, the police then gave me a criminal record for the imprisonable offence of stalking, adding for good measure the additional element of hate. Imagine that coming up in an enhanced DBS check.”
“Lincolnshire Police are criminally negligent. Every officer involved in this case needs bringing before a disciplinary tribunal, and the Chief Constable must personally apologise. It won’t stop me suing them, but it will be a start.” Telegraph 16/12/25
Harry has brought civil proceedings against the Home Secretary and sought a Judicial Review of the whole NCHI system
We will leave our hero for a moment and develop the rationale behind the alternative, Boiling Frog, headline. To do this we need to visit the august office of the Women and Equalities Secretary of State, Bridget Phillipson. Ms Phillipson has decided that the recent decision of the Supreme Court concerning the Equality Act, was “trans-exclusive”, and in error. She has been ‘slow walking’ publishing the guidelines recommended by the Equality and Human Rights Commission on the implementation of the Court’s decision. Her action is unconstitutional and factually incorrect and displays a common misunderstanding of her constitutional powers as a Secretary of State. As Suella Braverman says, in her article in the Telegraph, of Phillipson’s abuse of power:
“What Phillipson is doing amounts to an ideological attempt to rewrite the law. Eight months on from the ruling, the guidance should have been published. Instead, women are left in limbo, and public bodies are once again encouraged to guess, caveat and appease.” The Telegraph 21/12/25
Kathleen Stock’s former university fined record £585k for failing to uphold free speech. The Telegraph. tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com
We can see why Bridget Phillipson is reluctant to implement the Supreme Court’s decision as one of Labours biggest contributors consider the law as “dangerous”. ‘ Daniel Kebede, the National Education Union (NEU) general secretary, warned: “A toxic climate has been created in recent years in which trans people, a small community, are treated as if they are a risk or threat to others.” Telegraph 04/12/25. I would just comment that, in my opinion, any toxicity Mr Kebede has seen is almost entirely due to his and his fellow travellers, aggressive promotion of trans and progressive dogma. We need only to look at the organisations who train the teaching profession to see where this dogma is caught because it is a kind of progressive social contagion. The main catalyst in the spread of anti free speech social contagion has been the Universities. Those who are brave enough to stand up to these bullies are shouted down, ostracised, threatened with violence and sometimes loss of a job, as in the case of Kathleen Stock. In short, Kathleen Stock was forced out of her position as an expert in analytic philosophy, from the University of Sussex. The Office for Students (OfS) found that the Universities Transgender Policy had a chilling affect on free speech and academic freedom and was fined £585k as a result. The University is appealing the fine on the basis that if the fine is upheld, Universities will be unable to restrict free speech and academic freedom, unless it is unlawful.(The Telegraph, 24/06/25) If we untangle their position, it appears that they want to retain the right to stifle ‘lawful’ free speech. An odd position for a University to take. Just to show that this isn’t an isolated example of anti free speech activity by the Universities, we have the case of Almut Gadow who taught law at the Open University. She was dismissed for questioning the inclusion of gender ideology to a course where gender was not relevant. As she said, “The law does not recognise a third gender, so why should I, a trained lawyer, recognise a third gender.” (The Telegraph, 24/06/25) The University settled for an undisclosed sum. Next we can follow the trail of infection to the schools where The Times reports embedded partisans have a plan to defy the law:
According to whistleblowing parents, governors and staff, a pro-trans rearguard action is under way, with activists in schools, local authorities, unions, sex-education groups, charities and other external bodies determined to ensure schools stay “gender affirming”, teaching children they can change sex. The Telegraph, 04/12/25.
We can move on to local counsels, who represent a hot bed of progressive nonsense, ably demonstrated by Bristol City Council’s Green Party trying to newspeak its constituents into using non gendered speech. They describe woman as, “chest feeding”, “people with ovaries” and instead of ‘maternity’ substituting it with ‘Paternity’. (Free Speech) As I said in the Free Speech article, the last bit defies even the Green Parties excuse for logic! We cannot exclude the Judiciary from this madness and the Sandie Peggie case illustrates that their Worships can also compete in the race for the progressives 2025 Idiots of the Year trophy. Judge Alexander Kemp ruled that Sandie Peggie has been harassed by the NHS by allowing a trans Doctor to use the female toilets. However, he found against her claim of discrimination and victimisation and ruled that, “it was “not inherently unlawful” for a biological man to use women’s changing rooms.” The Telegraph, 23/12/25 Obviously, that is not the end of the story. Not only is the verdict to be challenged in the light of the Supreme Court ruling, which he described as contentious, but also to the fabricated refences to other cases he used to support his judgement.
All the above examples of progressive lunacy have been randomly taken from newspaper articles over the last six months. You can make the case that they are mainly sourced from centre right papers but that doesn’t make them untrue. If anyone would like to give me a subscription to the Guardian I would gladly search through their pages for similar stories and I would expect to find some targeting looney conservatives. However, as the stories above illustrate, I would not have expected them to uncover the extent of the ideological capture of the establishment that my casual trawl caught. Also, the nature of the craziness is different. Right wing loonies tend to centre around personalities like Andrew Tate, MTG and Nick Fuentes. What we have seen above is far more organised, widespread and targeted on traditional values and institutions. The very word ‘woman’ is being censored by a Green Council, teachers subvert the law in schools, the police act to chill speech and we are told that a man can become a woman! How prescient of The New Statesman, of all papers, who in 2024 predicted that Labour will not have, ” a coordinated and comprehensive programme” and as a result, “…. its lack of a political compass leaves a government liable to return to identity politics.” (see below) It is not surprising that the New Statesman should be proved right in such a short time, as the number of U turns made by Starmer would induce dizziness in the best of us. The lack of any common sense policies that resonate with the public are legion and it is quite obvious that Starmer is becoming more a hostage of the progressive left the more he loses public support. The problem for Starmer is that the Left wing of his party also don’t have answers to the every day issues of most of the voters in the UK.
Lucy Connolly sentenced to 31 months jail for a tweet which she took down the same day
Here we reintroduce our boiled frog metaphor. At this point I have to confirm that no frogs were harmed in this discussion. For those who haven’t come across this before, the idea is that if you figuratively drop a frog in boiling water, it will smartly jump out of the pot. However, if you put the frog in warm water and gently apply heat it will be lulled into a false sense of security until it is too late. Translated to modern Britain, this means that a broad coalition of educated elites gradually promoted the interests of minority groups, based on their identity, against the greater indigenous population and its culture. Supercharged by radicalised colleges, apostles of progressivism spread their gospel via non profits and public bodies such as those mentioned in the Times article on schools. Initially, these foot soldiers infiltrated a wide spread of activist groups and causes promoting grievances and victimhood amongst their clients , on the basis of ethnicity, race, nationality, religion, denomination, gender, sexual orientation, social background, political affiliation, caste, age, education, disability, opinion, intelligence, and social class. Wikipedia. These widely disparate movements were not recognised as a movement at first until a pattern began to appear. Soon we saw the erection of victim hierarchies, newspeak, DEI, critical race theory, claims of systemic oppression, et al. As the heat turned up we began to see the ideological capture of previously respected organisations such as the BBC ( Auntie ) and the RNLI. (RNLI). Zealots, patrolled the airways, school corridors, social media and university classes, determined to prove systematic oppression. Those that were deemed to offend were hunted down with the same enthusiasm and religious fervour as the Spanish Inquisition employed. The Frog has now been boiled!
Supreme Court finds for biological sex in deterring interpretation of 2010 Equality Act bbc.co.uk
Well perhaps not yet. We have seen some retreat from EDI by companies. The Supreme Court has woken up and decreed what 95% of the population always knew. The BBC has been caught bending the truth in a very public and embarrassing way ( BBC ). Stonewall is facing falling revenues and for some reason is being kept afloat by the taxpayer. The Police have realised that using Hate Speech legislation to control speech has backfired. The science based Cass Report has scuppered any claim by the apostles of Trans to any medical or science basis to their policy of gender affirming treatment of children. People are getting more confident about challenging the abuses of the elites. They are beginning to see that there is no substance to the movement and they have nothing to offer but more idiotic policies, as foreseen by the New Statesman. The Green Party leader, Zack Polanski, hasn’t read the room on immigration and wants even more uncontrolled immigrants in statements that even the hard left fear to applaud. We are entertained by a succession of highly qualified people who crumble after being asked whether men can become pregnant. They stare at the cameras like rabbits in the headlights as they try to reconcile their ideology to reality. And that is their weakness and their strength. There is no attempt to ground their new religion to reality. There is no humility or attempt to serve the community only hatred, envy and resentment. And there we have the boiled frog theory, in practise.
“The Technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more CONTROLLED society. Such a society would be dominated by ELITES, unrestrained by traditional values.” ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski
Labour must beware the lure of progressivism 3rd. June 2024
Labour will struggle to decide its priorities. And its lack of a political compass leaves a government liable to return to identity politics. Stalled by intractable economic problems and unable to enact economic reform, it could slip back into the balm of progressivism. Embroiling itself in performative constitutional tinkering, the student politics of votes for 16-year-olds or the pseudo-science of transgender politics will quickly shatter its coalition. Taking up identity politics will risk Labour becoming a party of the HR department, enforcing bureaucratic social engineering around issues such as race and gender or imposing speech codes on the population because it knows best. Jonathan Rutherford, The New Statesman, https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2024/06/labour-must-beware-the-siren-call-of-progressivism
Sources
Martin Evans, 16/12/25, The Telegraph, Gender-critical former police officer takes Mahmood to court, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12/16/gender-critical-former-police-officer-take-mahmood-to-court/
Daisy Eastlake, The Times, 12/12/25,
Zack Polanski: Allow small boat migrants in and let them work, https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/zack-polanski-interview-8653qhbn5
Ed Cumming, 24/06/25. The Telegraph, The academics cancelled at Britain’s ‘wokest’ campuses, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/06/24/academics-muzzled-by-cancel-culture/
Julie Henry, 04/12/25, The Telegraph, The schools still supporting trans ideology behind parents’ backs, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12/04/schools-trans-ideology-children-parents/
Suella Braverman, 21/12/25, The Telegraph, Bridget Phillipson’s blocking of trans guidance is a shameful betrayal of women, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12/21/bridget-phillipsons-rewriting-of-law-is-a-betrayal-of-women/
Simon Johnson, 23/12/25, The Telegraph, Sandie Peggie ruling rewritten again after series of errors found, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12/23/sandie-peggie-tribunal-rewrite-errors-scotland-trans/
I have already addressed the issue of free speech in the UK , and as an aside, made some comments on our US cousins views on the subject. ( Musk ) As I have said previously, there are benefits in writing a blog that no one reads and one of them is that I can revisit a subject as often as I wish. With that in mind, I notice that, what was a trickle of judgement from our cousins has recently become a torrent of self righteous commentary from the US on the issue of free speech in the UK. The initial catalyst for this essay was the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the fall of Jimmy Kimmel. Just to clarify for those sensible people who do not follow US politics, Jimmy Kimmel did not pull the trigger that killed Charlie Kirk. You wouldn’t know that from the reporting of the legacy press today who has, almost exclusively, focussed on Kimmel’s’ Late Night show being pulled because he made some characteristically ill informed and nasty comments about the assassination. So why have I started my essay with this story? I wanted to point out that although the UK has very serious individual freedom issues, those who criticise from across the Atlantic should look to their own failings before criticising others. You could instance JD Vance’s Munich speech where he singled out the UK for its anti freedom of speech actions or, the following advice from the State Department :
The US State Department has accused the UK of having “significant human rights issues”, including restrictions on free speech. The unflattering assessment comes via a new version of an annual Human Rights Practices report ……… On free speech, while “generally provided” for, the report cites “specific areas of concern” around limits on “political speech deemed ‘hateful’ or ‘offensive'”. Sky News, 13/08/25
To get back to Jimmy Kimmel. His program was pulled after, a not so veiled threat, from the Trump appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, that Kimmel should be fired or suspended for his comments. I hold no brief for Kimmel and agree with Jim Geraghty’s view that, “As a host, when the topic comes to politics, Kimmel is snide, mean, and spiteful.” National Review 19/09/25. However, I would suggest that if a similar situation played out in the UK, so called protectors of free speech and the First Amendment, Trump, Vance et al, would be up in arms decrying government intervention by suppressing free speech. The Democrats have ‘pounced’ on this opportunity to repeat their refrain that Trump is a threat to democracy because of this but their record is even worse. The difference is that they can mobilise their power base in the legacy media, Universities, Unions, Entertainment and bureaucracies to do their dirty work for them. In the political arena we have the great Russia Hoax which took two years to establish that there were no grounds to the claim that Trump colluded with the Russians to affect the 2016 election. During Covid the medical establishment circled the wagons and actively suppressed any view which challenged the official orthodoxy, such as the Great Barrington Declaration co authored by Jay Bhattacharya. ( 97% of Scientists ) We also have the coordinated Lawfare assaults, the attempt to take Trump off the ballet, which had to be resolved at the Supreme Court and various non profits taking aim at individuals who have transgressed progressives group think in some way. For example, Mike Lindell — The CEO of My Pillow said his company was ditched by nearly 20 retailers after he publicly questioned the electoral results of the 2020 presidential election Chris Harrison – The host of ABC’s “The Bachelor” franchise decided to “step aside” after defending current contestant Rachael Kirkconnell when old photos surfaced of her attending an Old South antebellum party. Adam Rubenstein — The former New York Times opinion editor and writer resigned from the paper in December, six months after its staff went into an uproar over a piece he edited by Sen. Tom Cotton. Matthew Yglesias — The liberal opinion writer resigned from Vox, a publication he co-founded, after many of his woke colleagues found his articles too right of centre 16/02/21, The Washington Times
So, from the above we can see that some Americans have a blind spot when it comes to Freedom of Speech issues in their own backyard, which seems to give them permission to highlight failings in others. Both sides of the political divide seem to exercise suppression of free speech but I would say that the Democrats seem to be better at it, perhaps because they have had more practice than their opponents. (More for another day) I would suggests that the First Amendment is increasingly under attack and is only held up by the Supreme Court, which is in danger of being dragged into partisan warfare. The other avenue for concern is the explosion of cancel culture which by passes all conventional safeguards and passes judgement in the court of public opinion, as some of the examples above illustrate.
Having said all of the above, when we come to the UK I am afraid much of the criticism I complain of, is justified. We can see the depth of the problem or, size of the swamp, whichever way you look at it, by the reaction to the Supreme Court’s definition of a woman as it applies the 2010 Equality Act . We can see embedded opposition slow walking observance to the law in the NHS and the SNP. We see the Liberal Party split on the issue and as a result not allowing the subject to be raised at their recent Party Conference. We can see Bristol City Council’s Green Party rejecting the Supreme Courts decision by wanting to force the introduction of non gendered speech such as, “chest feeding”, “people with ovaries” and instead of ‘maternity’ substituting it with ‘Paternity’. The last bit defies even Green Party logic! All of the above is for another day. I would like to focus on the specific area of the implementation of the Hate Speech Laws and the resulting erosion of individual rights in the UK. There are a large number of laws, excluding regulations, that are enacted to protect people from, amongst other things, hate speech. (A silent round of applause for anyone who can add to the list) Whilst the Equalities Act, amended by the Supreme Court, is mainly concerned with employment it is interesting to note the sheer volume of legislation which, in effect criminalises citizens speech and thought. The main Acts are as follows:
Public Order Act 1986, The Football Offences Act 1991, Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, 1998’s Crime and Disorder Act, The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006,The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, the Online Safety Act 2024,
2010 Equality Act updated protected characteristics dissimilarly Gender, Race, Disability, Religion or belief, Sexual orientation, Gender reassignment, Marriage or civil partnerships, Pregnancy and maternity
The difficulty is that much of this legislation is promoted by a belief that it will satisfy the most vocal wing of a party with little thought of how it will be enacted and the almost inevitable unintended consequences that follows any government attempt at social engineering.
Non Crime Hate Incident Interview. The Times 19/09/25
The picture on the left is a still from a video taken by Deborah Anderson, described as a Trump supported, of an interview by a Met Police officer concerning something she wrote on Facebook. She was told that if she didn’t agree to apologise she would have to attend a formal interview at the police station. Ms Anderson is a cancer sufferer and didn’t appreciate the police home visit and responded, “I’m not apologising to anybody.” Good for her. But can you see what the officer is saying here? He said, “Something that we believe you’ve written on Facebook has upset someone.” Not, we have received a complaint from X that we deem contravenes Sect X of the xxxx Act in relation to your Facebook post of YYYY. The, “we believe” bit looks as though they haven’t even done
Six Herts Police Officers arrest Couple over WhatsApp dispute with School. Maxie Allen/Times Radio
any basic investigation into the complaint but assumed that they could get a quick confession and close the file. This was the case with the six police officers arresting parents over a private WhatsApp posting about a dispute with a School Head Teacher. ( Dixon ) The police wanted to handcuff the mother as they arrested her but relented when the mother pleaded with them not to do it in front of her children. ( See Update ) The common factors between the above stories are that in neither cases was the complainant identified, nor evidence of the hate speech given but in both cases the police presence was oppressive and charges were subsequently dropped.
Sir Mark Rowley Photo MSM.com
As I have reported in other essays, the first casualty of criminalising speech and thought; is the police. Sending five armed officers to arrest Graham Linehan; six to arrest the law abiding parents described above, does nothing to enhance their reputation. This at a time when they complain that they are starved of resources and cannot respond to low level crime. As noted above, in most cases, the charges are dropped but a non-crime hate incident (NCHI) may be recorded. The police have received significant blowback for their involvement in attempting to enforce the myriad hate speech laws and have called for greater clarity from the government. Sir Mark Rowley, Head of the Met, is to meet the Home Secretary to try to get a better definition of what constitutes a hate crime. “Sir Mark Rowley wants to free police from investigating complaints with no evidence of intended real-world harm.” Telegraph 07/09/25 Some would say that he is a bit too late to the party but it was his police force that arrested Graham Linehan for posting the following advice to woman, on X, “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.” Is this really promoting “real world harm” ? Mention of the non-crime hate incident (NCHI) is another reason that the police are becoming more unpopular. The Times editorial, on the subject was quite blunt and to the point;
It is a legal abomination, attacking freedom of speech through the use of blacklisting and requiring almost nothing in the way of proof. The Times 14/11/24
Recording NCHIs is said to take up to 60,000 hours of police time each year PHIL OLDHAM/SHUTTERSTOCK The Times
The editorial went on to describe the introduction of NCHI’s as an invasive weed which grows until it permeated the whole legal system. In summary it is defined as , “A non-crime hate incident (NCHI) is where someone perceives hostility or prejudice based on characteristics such as race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or gender identity—but the incident does not meet the threshold of a criminal offence.” Legisia. What this means is that I can report my neighbour to the police after an argument over parking, framing it as a race issue, and if the police decide not to prosecute they can record it as a NCHI. We know that the police have some discretion in whether to investigate criminal cases, despite what Mark Rowley implies but it is obvious that this is not exercised on a common sense way. It does not explain why there are so many instances of petty claims that have been investigated and recorded as Hate Crimes. The other part of the example I gave was that it is my perception of an event which forms the basis of a police review. The Free Speech Union records the following extract from the College of Policing’s (CoP’s) 2014 Hate Crime Operation Guidance (HCOG)
“The victim does not have to justify or provide evidence of their belief, and police officers or staff should not directly challenge this perception. Evidence of the hostility is not required.” College of Policing 2014
Getting back to my complaint against my neighbour, he doesn’t know who the complainant is; the complaint is based on my perception of the facts; there is no trial where this can be challenged and he might not even be aware that he has a police record. What is the difference between the NCHI records and the normal criminal intelligence gathering by police? The difference, for example, is that my neighbour may be refused employment as a result of an enhanced record search by his potential employer. What we have seen is the inevitable outcome of an erosion of citizens rights, when governments give way to ideologically driven extremists within their party. Lord Hogan-Howe, formerly head of the Met, is leading a campaign in the House of Lords to abolish NCHIs. He made two key points in the Lords,
“Whether something is a crime is an objective statutory test. Whether something is a non-crime hate incident is a subjective test based on guidance — producing inconsistent outcomes.”
“the police should not be put in the invidious position of having to record what are often vexatious, politically motivated complaints, which inevitably undermines public confidence in them.” The Times 16/10/25
What of poor Jimmy Kimmel, was he consigned to the backwater of the Bakers Field news? Did he have to scrape by on less than his $16 million annual salary? Surprise, surprise, his show was reinstated after three days but all is not well in the late night format. According to the New York Post his show has been bleeding viewers for some time, ” Nielsen data showed sharp summer declines and a year-long slide.” 18/09/25, New York Post. However, as much as he betrayed his ‘snide, mean, and spiteful’ nature in describing Charlie Kirks assassination, did it rise the the level of hate speech. In the recent overturning of a case against a protestor who burnt a copy of the Koran, the UK Appeal Court Judge, Mr Justice Bennathan said on the right to free speech,
One of the precious rights that affords us is to express our own views and read, hear and consider ideas without the state intervening to stop us doing so.” ‘The price we pay for that is having to allow others to exercise the same rights, even if that upsets, offends or shocks us.’ The Daily Mail 10/10/25
Lucy Connolly sentenced to 31 months jail for a tweet which she took down the same day
If we apply this ruling to Kimmel, we can say that although he lied about the circumstances of the shooting and attempted to defame the victim, in my view his comments do not rise to the level of a crime. (May his show collapse under its own weight of partisan hackery! Me exercising my own free speech right) There seem to be two themes that come out of the discussion so far that may make speech a criminal matter or not. The first is mentioned by Mr Justice Bennathan in the Koran case, ‘Coskun’s actions were not directed at a person or people in particular.’ By this measure death threats made against JK Rowling would pass the test. The second is that the police should be taken out of the business of trying to assess criminality based on perception and subjectivity where they are not able to apply an “objective statutory test.” Perhaps a third theme is that all matters deemed to be criminal should be conducted to the same standards as any other prosecution for common law infringement. Therefore, the police should have to prove that the accused speech was a real threat to the complainant and that the accused should have the right to defend themselves in open court, with all the force of the law that protects the innocent until proven guilty. Let us run a couple of cases by the above principles and see where it leaves us. We can eliminate the Hertfordshire Parents on WhatsApp making fun of the Head Teacher of the School as being inconsequential. It is trivial, non threatening and the police should have immediately rejected it as not rising to the level of criminality. Include the Graham Linehan case under the same heading as being trivial and politically motivated. In the case of Lucy Connolly, it is interesting to look at her treatment for a post which she regretted and took down within three hours and the sentence imposed . She was sentenced to 31 months jail after reacting to the the horrific murders of three girls by Axel Rudakubana. She had no criminal record, pleaded guilty, received no bail, was refused early release and had an appeal against the sentence turned down. We will now see why she has become an symbol of a two tier justice system. Contrast her treatment with that of Salman Iftikhar, who threatened an air steward and her colleagues saying, “You will be dragged by your hair from your room and gang raped and set on fire.” He threatened to blow up the cabin crew’s floor in their hotel.” (The Telegraph 12/08/25) He was sentenced to 15 months jail, even though he had a criminal record and the threats that he made were an horrific example of Mr Justice Bennathans test of whether they were general or, personal. Lord Hermer, the Attorney General, is fighting a losing battle to convince the public that giving Lucy Connolly twice the sentence of Iftikhar is not an example of two tier justice.(See update)
I have described some of the background and outcomes related to those, “legal abominations” known as the Hate Speech laws. However, I have only scratched the surface and there are so many other problems associated with these very un British laws. I could do a whole essay on the crime statistics covering laws that both current and past Police Chiefs have described as subjective and ill defined. I could also highlight the ‘chilling effect’ on free speech of heavy handed policing which was the subject of an ECHR case in which the Court said, “that the very fact of imposing a criminal conviction was one of the most serious forms of interference with the right to freedom of expression, having regard to the existence of other means of intervention and rebuttal, particularly through civil remedies. ” ECHR Reichman v. France. Translated, this means that six policemen arriving at your door and taking you to the police station, in handcuffs, has the desired effect of sending a message. No matter that the investigation is often dropped, it is a clear warning to all that there is a consequence to voicing your opinion, whether it be in the village pub or, on campus in America. It is my opinion that Lucy Connolly’s sentence was such a warning, clearly intended to chill any discussion concerning crimes committed by illegal immigrants. The logic of the above discussion appears to be that we should keep officialdom out of controlling public thought and speech, as suggested by the ECHR, unless there are provable threats to public safety. That anyone accused of such behaviour should have the same basic rights as any other defendant; the process should be fully transparent and the law tightly defined to prevent any official overreach, as in the Connolly case. Failing that, as suggested by the ECHR, there is the option of suing your offender under civil law and obtaining a remedy whilst preserving the rights of both parties of ” intervention and rebuttal.” “In the year ending March 2024, there were 140,561 hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales” UK Gov 10/10/24 Given all that we have discussed, I do not believe these numbers. I do not believe they reflect actual criminality. I do not believe that the numbers are statistically robust enough to rely on. I do believe that freedom of speech is one of the foundations of Britishness, which has been eroded by weak governments.
There is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by the laws, or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality. — Alexis de Tocqueville
Update 1
After considerable backlash from the public over the Lucy Connolly sentence of 31 months in prison, the case of Salman Iftikhar was referred to the Court of Appeal to review his sentence. His sentence was increased from 15 months to four years and three months. The main target of his abuse said that she was “haunted and traumatised” and had to take14 months off work as a result. There was no explanation why the initial sentence was set so low.
N/K, 13/08/25, Sky News, US accuses UK of ‘significant human rights issues’ and restricting free speech, https://news.sky.com/story/us-accuses-uk-of-significant-human-rights-issues-and-restricting-free-speech-13410873
Ariel Zilber, 18/09/25, New York Post, Jimmy Kimmel’s ratings were plummeting before ABC suspended him for Charlie Kirk comments, https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/jimmy-kimmel-s-ratings-were-plummeting-before-abc-suspended-him-for-charlie-kirk-comments/ar-AA1MPOBv
Kelly Sadler, 16/02/21, The Washington Times, https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/feb/16/top-10-recent-examples-cancel-culture/
John Flatley, 10 October 2024, Hate crime, England and Wales, year ending March 2024, https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hate-crime-england-and-wales-year-ending-march-2024/hate-crime-england-and-wales-year-ending-march-2024
Leading article, 14/11/24, The Times, The Times view on non-crime hate incidents: Wasting Police Time, https://www.thetimes.com/comment/the-times-view/article/the-times-view-on-non-crime-hate-incidents-wasting-police-time-z520r7txk
Matt Dathan, 16/10/25, The Times, Ex-Met Police chief leads call to abolish non-crime hate incidents, https://www.thetimes.com/article/523326f1-56d3-450b-b84e-9348cd20c706
OLIVIA CHRISTIE, 10/10/25, Daily Mail, Koran-burning protester wins appeal against conviction for a religiously aggravated public order offence after arguing his actions are protected under free speech, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15180897/Protester-Koran-conviction-appeal-win.html
Genevieve Holl-Allen, 12/08/25, The Telegraph ,Rape threat passenger ‘should not have shorter sentence than Lucy Connolly’, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/08/12/rape-threat-passenger-shorter-sentence-lucy-connolly/
Tim Davie resigned as director-general of the BBC after a week of disclosures by The Telegraph of biased reporting Credit: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg
I have always thought that no one actually read my essays but is it too much to believe that I sent the following complaint to the BBC yesterday and todays resignation of the BBC’s director-general and its head of news are connected?
BBC bias
I was born in the fifties and grew up with Auntie providing programs such as Two Way Family Favourites, Hancock’s Half Hour and wonderful classical music concerts. On a more serious note I learned that oppressed people, whether under occupation by Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Malan, listened to the BBC to get the truth, often under threat of death. I understand that these times cannot be replicated and partly as a result of mass media we are bombarded by many versions of ‘the truth’ which makes the BBC’s position very difficult. However, this does not explain the many examples of bias that seem to have come to a head recently. To claim that the editing of Trumps speech was an accident suggests that the Editor had no knowledge of the US legacy News attempt to edit out the “peaceful and patriotic” part of the same speech. There can only be two reasons for this, those responsible are either incompetent or, partisan. This bias seems to go in only one direction, whether it be migration, climate change or gender issues there seems to be a systematic progressive approach to editing or suppressing material that challenges progressive ideology. Who knew that the BBC had a 2SLGBTQQIPAA desk? Of course, when we mention gender we must reference the latest BBC idiocy in it’s condemnation of it’s own newsreader who added the word ‘woman’ to explain the nonsense phrase ‘pregnant people’. This has been happening for many years and I am afraid that the ideological capture by a few has infected the whole organisation. The public is watching how it responds to the latest revelations and I think that the BBC’s future, in it’s current form, is at stake.
I usually try to read a ‘real’ newspaper every week, over a coffee. However, I am a reluctant subscriber to a couple of on line newspapers and I tend to skim over the headlines to see whether anything catches my eye. As I wrote in one of my earlier essays, occasionally I do this and as I move on to the next article I get the impression that I have missed something that warrants more attention. This happened a couple of days ago and the article I had bypassed was entitled, If there’s so much buyer’s remorse about Brexit, why is Nigel Farage the rising figure in UK politics? What caught my attention was the feeling that for such a complex question as Brexit, the focus on Farage promised a less than nuanced answer. I was not surprised to see that the author was Fintan O’Toole, with whom I have disagreed on many issues. His main argument seems to be that, Brexit failed, the majority would like a closer relationship with the EU but due to a rise in English Nationalism, the UK will fall apart with disastrous consequences for Irish Unity.
I will try not to revisit the Battle of Brexit but will endeavour to give some context to the fundamentals. In the beginning, Britain was sold on the idea that they were joining a super European Commonwealth known as the European Economic Community. At the time there were a large number of issues at play including, inter alia, regional differences, the South of England was pro joining and the North against. Political, Labour and the Unions against and Conservatives and Business for. Demographic, young people for, older against. In other words, in almost any way that you could slice and dice the vote, there was an opinion. Even so, on 28th October 1971 The House of Commons voted 356–244 in favour of the motion to join the EEC. However, there was a question as to whether the UK was a good fit for Europe. This view was encapsulated by Charles De Gaul who thought that the UK was culturally closer to the US than it’s European neighbours. He gave this as his reason for twice thwarting Britain’s accession hopes. (See History Matters – A Frenchmans View of Brexit) What I am trying to illustrate was that there were a large number of issues that made up the debate but none seemed to have an overtly English nationalistic base. You could make an argument that one of the main drivers was class and Fintan draws attention to the Remainers overconfidence by not seeing the neglected electorate, discovered by Dominic Cummings, that had such an impact on the 2016 Referendum.
Fintan’s article starts with the premise that there is extensive “buyers remorse” concerning Brexit and the only thing preventing a return to Europe is an intransigent group of English nationalists. He quotes some statistics showing the effects of the “bitter harvest” unfortunately not referencing his sources. He also uses quotes from the book by Ailsa Henderson and Richard Wyn Jones entitled Englishness The Political Force Transforming Britain. However, I find that some of his conclusions are not supported by the quotes. For example, he says, “over 40 per cent of people in England now say that “English” is a better fit for their sense of identity than “British”. Not surprisingly, these people are much more inclined to support Farage‘s Reform UK or the Conservatives than those who identifyprimarily as British.” I am not sure whether his statement on the political affiliations mentioned are his opinion, along the lines of, “everyone who has eyes can see that” or is it supported by data from the study. There also seems to be some conflict in tone between Fintan’s analysis and a report, also authored by Ailsa Henderson and Richard Wyn Jones who suggest that rather than a rampant and self destructive crowd of football hooligan Farage supporters, the divide in Britain is far more nuanced and ambivalent than suggested. (see Addendum and link below)
Five years is a short time to determine whether a complete transformation of an economy has been successful or not. Rather like turning an oil tanker around, it takes time. Certainly, you can find no shortage of polls which show unhappiness with the economy but I too can throw some numbers into the mix which show a different picture. Unemployment figures are more or less in line with G7, USA and Germany but well below France and the Eurozone, for example.
The UK harmonised unemployment rate for Q1 2025 was 4.5%. This was above Germany (3.5%) and the US (4.1%) but below France (7.3%).The Eurozone’s rate was 6.2% in Q1 2025, while in the G7 it was 4.3%. House of Commons Library,
Future growth projected by the OECD is positive, relative to the Eurozone.
Do I believe that the UK economy is stable and that we can take our foot of the accelerator? No but I wonder if Fintan has looked at similar surveys in France and Germany and drawn the same conclusions about nationalism in Europe. Of course, Brexit was never just about the economy. Fintan correctly identified the establishment figures who insisted that, “it is the economy, stupid.” They failed to see the shift in the concerns of the electorate towards sovereignty and resentment towards the arrogance of the elites. We should note that this is not a particularly English trait but can be seen in the 2016 and 2024 US elections, recent elections in Italy, France, Poland and Germany and even in Finton’s back yard with the crushing of the two Constitutional Amendments. Yes I agree with Finton that the British economy is in flux but I would suggest that polls reflect frustration that is usually aimed at the poor management of both major parties rather than an attempt to overthrow the system.
It is difficult to assess Finton’s claim of a new English Nationalistic movement because, even he has difficulty defining what it is. As he says, “English nationalism was and is ambiguous and largely unarticulated. For centuries, it was wrapped in a double layer of packaging – Britishness and Empire. But it never went away and Brexit was its moment to emerge. We didn’t really get to hear what it is in simple language, but we were left in no doubt about what it is not – European.” So, according to Finton, New English Nationalism is identified by what it disagrees with? You can select any national poll you like and cobble together a list of complaints and group them in a certain way but that doesn’t, in itself, a Nationalist movement make. I would question the usual reference to Empire in an England where I guess, 80% of people never experienced it. The problem for Finton is that he has the same view of England and englishness that the grandees and elites had in 2016. Finton gives an example of post Brexit English Nationalism by questioning their supposed indifference to the fate of the other regions in the UK. With a super progressive corrupt SNP running Scotland and a “19 per cent higher than the UK average” public spending in Northern Ireland, does anyone think it strange that English taxpayers are ambivalent about funding them? Finton is surprised by the this alleged ambivalence of English voters to a scenario where Scotland and Northern Ireland freely choose to “walk away” from the Union, given the above I am not sure what else he expects the English taxpayer to do. It is interesting that Finton refers to Irish Unification as a future outcome but according to a 2021 poll whilst 67% of people in the Republic are in favour of unification, only 22% are prepared to pay for it. (Irish Independent 01/05/21) I see no difference between the views of the 78% of Irish and 40%+ (Finton’s number [?]) English taxpayers on funding Northern Ireland.
So where are we with Finton’s article? I would agree that the economy is all over the place but look around. Look at where the poster boys and girls of the EU are today. Germany is really struggling with a three year decline after stagnation and France is not much better. Most western countries are facing high post Covid levels of debt and problems connected to immigration. Traditional political Parties are facing competition from the likes of Farage and brought to you from Finton’s back yard, the National Party, The Irish People, Ireland First and the Irish Freedom Party. Frustration with the political elites and bad management of the economy are not confined to England. Yes Brexit was a major event for England but more immediate is the aftermath of Covid and the migrant problem, for example. Farage is the result of a very poor selection of leaders offered to the electorate. I have grave doubts about his ability to galvanise the economy or to keep his promises. In thinking about most problems it is important to step back from the immediate issue and put it in context, so that it can be viewed in it’s entirety with all the variables visible. Fintan’s article has the feeling of a construction that starts with the answer and builds a question around it to prove the point. The Union is under pressure and Brexit may be one factor but it is only one of the many variables that constantly influences our daily lives. In the end, as it stands at the present time, I do not think that Fintan has proved his argument. I do not see a rise of English Nationalism fuelled by Brexit. I can see a situation where the Union disintegrates but it is far from certain and Brexit will not be the main cause.
Addendum
G K Chesterton quote from the 1908 poem ‘The Secret People’: ‘Smile at us, pay us, pass us, but do not quite forget, for we are the people of England that have never spoken yet’.
Britishness means different things – it values different things – in different parts of the state, and the variation is such that anyone tempted to insert a ‘British’ variable in any kind of modelling and expect it to operate in a similar way regardless of where a respondent lives should, quite simply, desist from doing so. Henderson A and Wyn Jones R (2023) The ambivalent union:
English nationalism is absent because there is no need for it. Nationalism flourishes when people feel thwarted. But what England wants, England gets. England, usually, prefers a Conservative government and so Britain, usually, has one. England wanted out of the eu, and Britain did leave. Having your own way is not a recipe for resentment. So on St George’s Day, do the most English thing of all: forget about England. It still has not spoken yet. Bagehot, The Economist, If English nationalism is on the rise, no one has told the English,
Sources
Fintan O’Toole, 27/05/25, The Irish Times, If there’s so much buyer’s remorse about Brexit, why is Nigel Farage the rising figure in UK politics?https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025/05/27/if-theres-so-much-buyers-remorse-about-brexit-why-is-nigel-farage-the-rising-figure-in-uk-politics/
Daniel Harari, 16/05/25, House of Commons Library, GDP international comparisons: Economic indicators,https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn02784/
Brian Mahon, 29 May 2025, Irish Daily Mail, Ireland ‘largely compliant’ with EU hate speech laws – Taoiseach, https://www.pressreader.com/ireland/irish-daily-mail/20250529/281668260904133
McCrone, D. (2023), The Rise and Rise of English Nationalism?. The Political Quarterly, 94: 604-612. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.13303
Henderson A and Wyn Jones R (2023) The ambivalent union: Findings from the State of the Union survey,
IPPR. http://www.ippr.org/research/publications/the-ambivalent-union and Englishness The Political Force Transforming Britain
Fionnán Sheahan, 01/05/21, Irish Independent, Majority favour a united Ireland, but just 22pc would pay for it
Bagehot, 19/04/23, The Economist, If English nationalism is on the rise, no one has told the English, https://www.economist.com/britain/2023/04/19/if-english-nationalism-is-on-the-rise-no-one-has-told-the-english
Police arrest parents who complained in school WhatsApp group. The Times 29/03/25
Quite a lot of pictures to kick off this article. Starting with the picture on the left which features six of Hertfordshire’s finest, arriving in two squad cars and a police van, to arrest Allen and Rosalind Levine for being “disparaging” about their local school management. I have a link to Fiona Hamilton’s Times article below and will leave it to you to get into the weeds of the story but it appears that Allen and Rosalind Levine had a less than harmonious relationship with Jackie Spriggs, the chair of governors at their child’s school. It seems that as a result the Levines were barred from the school, missing their 9 year olds Christmas play performance and the parent-teacher night. More seriously, the Levines daughter, Sasha, suffers from ‘ epilepsy and is neurodivergent and registered disabled’ and the parents were denied a meeting with her teacher to ensure she knew
how to administer medication in an emergency. A key element in this saga is that the Levines still don’t know what the offending communication was that triggered the arrest. The Times asked the school, the local council and police for information about the quantity of emails and for examples of what constituted malicious communications. All three declined to give details.(The Times, 29/03/25)
However, prior to the arrest, there was a communication from Chairperson Spriggs demanding that, “inflammatory and disparaging comments made on social media” should stop. The Levines assume that this refers to comments made on a private WhatsApp parents group and are astonished the school authorities should think that it had the power to censor free speech in this manner. The Levines supplied some examples of the messages on the WhatsApp platform (Excerpt above). In the absence of any evidence to the contrary from the authorities, you would have to say that those who called in the police must be very thin skinned to be offended by these rather mild messages.
Dixon of Dock Green. 1950’s TV Series. wikiwand.com
Hertfordshire police issued a statement saying, “The arrests were necessary to fully investigate the allegations as is routine in these types of matters. Following further investigations, officers deemed that no further action should be taken due to insufficient evidence.” (The Times, 29/03/25) Dixon of Dock Green would have been shocked at this description of modern police procedure. Surely the correct process is to first review the complaint, then if it has merit, the police would gather supporting evidence and finally arrest the offenders. In this case, six police officers arrested the parents, in front of their children, kept them in a cell late in to the night and five weeks later decided that there wasn’t enough evidence to proceed!! If this is how the police conduct investigations then there should be an urgent review of their powers of arrest. Aside from this and putting aside the issue of freedom of speech and the trauma that the family experienced, WHAT A MONUMENTAL WASTE OF TIME AND RESOURCES!
Graph showing Violent crime 10 year trend in Hertfordshire plumplot.co.uk
This action has rightly brought some bad press coverage for Herts police, not only for their heavy handed approach to free speech but also from angry citizens who have been constantly told that the police are under resourced and therefore unable to respond to minor offenses. In the face of rising crime, as shown by the graph above, ordinary citizens are angry over, what they see as wasting resources on policing gossip. Typical of the comments responding to Hamilton’s article is the one from S Clarke.
6 officers attending – 5 weeks of enquiries. Nothing more than simple criticism. No threats, profanities or racism. My burglary attempt ( door damaged window broken ) no attendance of an officer at all, scenes of crime civilian attended 5 days later No forensics. No further enquiries. How did we get here ? (The Times, 29/03/25)
They see a reluctance by the police, to bend the trend downwards by tackling crime head on but preferring to send a posse to arrest two law abiding people in a parent/school dispute. Even the new Chief Constable, whilst backing the posse, thought that it could have been handled differently.
The truth is that, with the exception of credible threats of violence, the police should not be involved in deciding what is or, isn’t free speech. In this case, the test is that neither the School, the Counsel or Police could give examples of the criminally offensive speech.
Jonathan Ash-Edwards, the police and crime commissioner for Hertfordshire, condemned the arrest of the parents. “While people should be courteous and go through the proper channels when raising concerns about a public service, the public should be able to express their views without worrying they’ll get a knock at the door,” Mr Ash-Edwards said. (The Times, 29/03/25)
There is already a plethora of laws restricting speech in the UK. The Public Order Act 1986 makes it an offence for a person to use “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviours that causes, or is likely to cause, another person harassment, alarm or distress” (CARE) The Terrorism Act of 2006; The Communications Act of 2003; the Human Rights Act of 1998 whilst granting universal free expression is restricted by, “the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary”. (HOPE, 14/08/20) Quite a lot of legislation and more is to come. Aside from terrorism and criminality the issue of name calling and hurt feelings should be settled at the lowest level by arbitration under the supervision of the civil courts. The Police have no business getting involved in non violent disputes between parents and School Boards. The Civil Courts have adequate, equitable powers to resolve this sort of issue. Perhaps if the government provided a low cost civil alternative and challenged the police to improve their clear up rates, I think everyone would be better served.
Update 18/11/25
“Police have paid out £20,000 in damages for unlawfully arresting a couple after they made complaints about their daughter’s primary school, including on a WhatsApp group chat.”
Callum May and Mariam Issimdar, 17/11/25, The BBC, Police admit WhatsApp arrest error with £20k payout ,https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gz1qy30v5o
Sources
Fiona Hamilton, 29/03/25, The Times, Police arrest parents who complained in school WhatsApp group, https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/police-arrest-parents-who-complained-in-school-whatsapp-group-6r6lb2fgn
Tim Sigsworth, 01/04/25, Police chief defends force that arrested WhatsApp row parents https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/01/police-chief-defends-arrest-whatsapp-school-row-parents/
how to administer medication in an emergency. A key element in this saga is that the Levines still don’t know what the offending communication was that triggered the arrest. The Times asked the school, the local council and police for information about the quantity of emails and for examples of what constituted malicious communications. All three declined to give details.(The Times, 29/03/25)
