In David Baddiel’s new documentary, Jews Don’t Count, broadcast on Channel 4 on Monday 21 November, the comedian posits the idea that Jewish people are actively or inadvertently discriminated against because progressives don’t care about anti-Semitism.  Anti-Semitism is a real and present problem in British society. It is crucial to understand it and dismantle it. At its essence it is a conspiracy theory, one that claims that Jews have secret control and power, or that Jews are vermin, corrupting or “infesting” our society – sometimes both of these at the same time. Because of its conspiratorial nature, no one (on the left or right) is immune from anti-Semitism; across political affiliation we have to be vigilant about it. I imagine Baddiel ...

The first thing to say about the news that Rishi Sunak is registered with a private GP practice is that this might actually be the least shocking thing to happen in British politics this year. With a fortune, along with his wife, estimated at £730m, Sunak is one of the richest men ever to serve as prime minister. And for all the metropolitan liberal vibes that seem, strangely, to attach to the man, he’s been incredibly consistent in his support for right-wing economic ideas like a small state, individual responsibility and rich people being better than the rest of us. So what did you expect? Of course he’s not ringing his NHS GP practice at 8.01am on a Tuesday like the ...

Cop27 has ended. After more than two weeks of negotiations at the climate summit, there is a deal of sorts that keeps the climate negotiations ticking over, but it is weak and is covered with the fingerprints of petrostates. Everyone – many scientists, companies, NGOs and climate activists included – is terrified of calling time on the Cop process. Yet, for the sake of humanity we must ask what purpose the UN's yearly Cop conferences serve, question how these events are run and wonder whether we have all become clowns in the climate circus. I have attended ten Cops. Cop27, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, was the only time I have broken down in tears on stage and questioned ...

When Gary Lineker opened the BBC’s World Cup coverage with a sombre acknowledgement of the "controversial" nature of the Qatar event, he was bowing to the inevitable. Not only is a November-December tournament far from "normal" but to ignore the corruption claims, the deaths of construction workers and the oppressive nature of the Qatari state would be to ignore a debate that has caught fire in recent weeks. One might have expected both Fifa, football's governing body, and the Qatari hosts to adopt a conciliatory tone in the days preceding the event. Instead Gianni Infantino, the Fifa president, was belligerent in his denials that there was anything problematic about the tournament. The pressure on England and other teams to abandon their ...

Elon Musk is rapidly running out of things to break at Twitter – and soon he will get bored. First he fired its directors, then he laid off half of its 7,500 staff. Last week he let another 1,200 or so walk out of the door, and the last few senior managers remaining publicly broke ways with him. The databases are falling apart, and the service is fraying at the edges. So far, so good – it’s certainly triggering the libs. But by Friday, Musk was left putting on a show by making a few dozen of his remaining engineers sit with him until 1.30am doing a “code review”, in which they drew a basic diagram of how Twitter’s systems worked ...

Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement on 17 November was littered with euphemisms and cloying rhetoric. And in among the “efficiencies", "tough decisions" and "public service discipline", the “Brexit freedoms” and the “British compassion”, two key terms were sorely missing: early years and childcare. As has been widely, exhaustively reported, the early years sector is in crisis. The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated problems of staffing and retention. Nurseries and childminders say they are crippled by years of government underfunding. According to Ofsted 4,000 childcare providers in England closed between March 2021 and March this year – the largest drop since 2016. All this contributes to the exorbitant cost of childcare in this country. The UK shares the dubious honour of having nearly ...

Since Elon Musk fired the entire curation team responsible for contextualising the platform’s trends, Twitter’s trending tab has not been particularly useful for users. But a quick scroll through it today – even shorn of context – helps give some insight into the collective psyche of the Twitterverse. #RIPTwitter is trending, alongside the hashtag #TwitterMigration, where users are advising each other on how to escape the platform through digital lifeboats. There is also #SpaceKaren, a reference to the attitude of the new CEO. Twitter users have been on edge ever since Musk took over and gutted the company, first by firing half its staff, then most of its contractors, then anyone who dared to voice dissent. Each sloughing off of staff has ...

When determining the fiscal strategy for a Budget, one question Treasury officials will often ask the chancellor is “who are you trying to please?” Is it the electorate, is it Tory MPs or is it the markets? Today’s Autumn Statement was delivered in immensely difficult economic circumstances. Growth has been downgraded, borrowing increased. There is no good news to distribute, only pain. The question for Jeremy Hunt was who he could least afford to displease. The answer to that question was fairly simple, thanks to the actions of his predecessor. Kwasi Kwarteng’s disastrous “mini-Budget” created a run on the pound, an increase in gilt yields, international ridicule, his sacking and the subsequent resignation of the prime minister. Keeping the markets onside had ...