On Saturday evening, after a lovely walk along Regent’s Canal, I found myself at a loose end in Camden. Wonderful, I thought, I’m in one of the most vibrant parts of London. There’ll be loads happening – I can go to an impromptu gig or a comedy night. Let me just google what’s on tonight. A good 45 minutes later I was fed-up and despondent, and my phone battery was almost dead. Searching the internet for “live music in Camden tonight” had resulted in an overwhelming deluge of content: listicles on dodgy-looking websites that screamed with pop-ups when clicked on; maps listings that insisted on trying to download other apps before loading; ticket sites for major music venues whose gigs had ...

When Starmer first announced his mission for Britain to become a clean-energy superpower, there were some grumbles in the shadow cabinet that the pledge hadn’t fallen under the mission to grow the economy. The argument was clear: people care about jobs and not, in the infamous words of David Cameron, the “green crap”. This dilemma has dominated the Labour leader’s past few days after Gary Smith, the general secretary of GMB, one of the more moderate unions, condemned the clean-energy policy as “naive” and lacking “intellectual rigour and thinking”. Last September, he told Rachel that Labour should back fracking, hydrogen and nuclear rather than bowing to the “bourgeois environmental lobby”. Speaking at GMB’s conference yesterday (6 June), Starmer said, emphatically: "I want ...

Did Phillip Schofield groom his young lover? So far, the young man has not made that claim, despite, one assumes, reporters waving large cheque books in his face to try to get him to tell his story. ITV says he has told the broadcaster he has no “wish to be named or identified”. Did Schofield manoeuvre him into a job on ITV’s This Morning, which he presented? Again, ITV says the young man was appointed by proper process. Did Schofield lie to ITV about the fact that they’d had sex when rumours spread? Yes, but then so did his young lover, several times, apparently right up to the last moment. Has Schofield in any sense sought to minimise his guilt at having lied? ...

Will “stop the boats” soon become “fewer boats”? The Prime Minister delivered a speech yesterday (5 June) arguing progress had been made on stopping migrants crossing the Channel in small boats. He said crossings were down 20 per cent. The Times reports this elicited “several raised eyebrows” in the Home Office because most crossings occur between July and September, anyway. Meanwhile, the most important political fact remains that, as Ben’s chart below shows, the cost of living dominates voters’ priorities. But Sunak has placed his five priorities – halving inflation, growing the economy, reducing national debt, reducing NHS wait times, and stopping small-boat crossings – at the forefront of his pitch to the public. He trades in competence. And that depends ...

There is a plot afoot in Scotland which, if successful, would dent Keir Starmer’s bid to become the next prime minister. A letter from Alex Salmond, the former first minister and leader of the Alba Party, has been sent today to all SNP MPs, suggesting a pro-independence electoral pact between the two parties and the Scottish Greens to maximise the anti-Union vote. Alba is a small party compared to the SNP and the letter will inevitably be received with a certain amount of derisive huffing. But Salmond’s logic is not easy to refute and senior SNP figures, including the two candidates defeated by Humza Yousaf in the party leadership contest in March – Kate Forbes and Ash Regan – have privately ...

When I was growing up, the prospect of turning 30 seemed to loom over women as midnight did for Cinderella – when the carriage melted into a pumpkin and the fantasy of our twenties ended, we would have to embrace reality. I think particularly of the Friends episode “The One Where They All Turn 30”: Rachel bursts into tears at her own birthday party, bemoans how she hasn’t had three kids already, and dumps her boyfriend (it takes seeing him commandeer a scooter down their apartment block landing to see she has no future with a 24-year-old called Tag). In 1996 meanwhile, Bridget Jones saw life through the lens that “single women in their 30s” are “treated as freaks by society”. But now, everything happens later, if ...

Here comes the cavalry. Mayors Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram have condemned Labour’s treatment of Jamie Driscoll, the mayor of the North of Tyne, who has been blocked by the party from standing in the newly-formed position of mayor in the north-east. Labour itself won’t comment on “individual cases” but its governing National Executive Committee (NEC) seems to have taken the decision because Driscoll interviewed Ken Loach, who has been expelled from the party, about his films that were made in the north-east region. On the interview round yesterday (4 June), Jonathan Reynolds, the shadow business secretary and member of the NEC, justified the decision in terms of Labour’s zero-tolerance approach to anti-Semitism. However, Sharon Graham, the general secretary of Unite, ...

Earlier this week, the government named its long-awaited "free speech tsar" for higher education. It is Arif Ahmed, a professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge, who said he will defend "all views". He will be responsible for investigating breaches of the Freedom of Speech Act, which was passed last month.I do believe there are threats to freedom of speech in our universities. One reason is that our views and our identities appear to be more closely entwined – criticism of someone’s opinions is likely to be seen as an attack on who they are. Another is the emergence of the idea that language itself can be an instrument of oppression, so what you say matters even more. These ...