The Battle of Ideas festival takes place this weekend, on Saturday 17 & Sunday 18 October at Church House in Westminster. Tickets are still available with substantial discounts for students and concessions.

We’re back in parliament and back inside the Lords. The atmosphere is interesting: the parties have just had their conferences and both Conservatives and Labour are convinced that they’ve pulled off some good speeches, meaning things just might go back to normal. But do they really think that politics can simply settle down, that there isn’t a major political realignment happening?

Perhaps a sign of that naivety – the idea that we can just turn back the clock and forget all the change that’s taking place – was the fact that Andy Burnham has used questions in the House of Commons and his appearance on Remaniac podcast The Rest is Politics to reopen the Brexit wars. Talk about rewinding time. Burnham admitted that one of the first things he asked about when he reached No.10 was whether or not there was Russian influence in the Brexit vote. Really? A country in major crisis and that’s his priority? The only solution that the Labour Party has to everything – from our economic woes to immigration to the physical defence of the realm – is to rejoin the EU in some shape or form. Never mind dealing with the huge waste in the welfare system or investing in industry and confronting the barriers that Net Zero politics has put in place…

But what is perhaps worse than Burnham’s ‘Russia did it’ ideas is the fact that a few days after his pronouncements in the chamber and with Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart, he tried to pretend that he hadn’t said any of that at all – or, at least, he didn’t mean it like that. Ministers were falling over themselves to brief the press that their boss hadn’t just unleashed conspiracy theories about the most important vote in recent British political history. But he did. Burnham has gone back on his Makerfield promise: to not reopen the Brexit issue.

All of this made a mockery of what we were doing in the Lords this week which was discussing the ‘Hillsborough Law’ – the Public Office (Accountability) Bill – a piece of legislation which seeks to compel government bodies, authorities and officials to have a duty of candour – to tell the truth, in essence. That government thinks you need to legislate to compel public officials to be honest – well you couldn’t make it up. Up the corridor you had people doing anything but telling the truth about what the country’s leader thinks about Brexit and the EU, while we were demanding that people in the public sphere should be straight and honest with the public.

Lots of people have criticised Burnham for ‘shooting from the hip’ or ‘speaking off the cuff’ on issues like Manchester City or Brexit. But I don’t mind him speaking freely – in fact, I welcome it. Burnham can be as loose lipped as he likes and we should judge him for it. We need to know what politicians actually think, not just what their speech writers deem to be acceptable. We have been given a real insight with this Brexit chat and clarity on suspicions many of us had about the Labour Party’s desire to reverse the Brexit vote. Now we can discuss what to do about that.

And where should you discuss this? With me and thousands of others at the Battle of Ideas festival, which is taking place this weekend on Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 October at Church House in Westminster. We’ll be discussing everything from the EU to the rights and wrongs of surrogacy, censorship and free speech to the hype around the Bayeux Tapestry, angry young women and why they’re voting Green to what China is up to in the Middle East… and so much more. Come along and emulate Burnham – speak your mind, try ideas out and join us for two days of public debate and discussion.

Speaking of trying ideas out, I was on Cross Question with Iain Dale the other night and we ended up having an exchange about Reform’s plans to halt asylum claims. After I suggested that it was an idea to at least consider, two of my panel members jumped on me as though even taking the proposal seriously was ‘beyond the pale’. But the thing about politics is that you’ve got to let yourself think the unthinkable, to experiment and to consider all angles so that when you come to your position, you know you’ve got a strong sense of why you think what you think. Our festival is a place to do this in person, in the flesh: conversations for the public, with the public, in public. See you there.

Claire

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It’s been a tough week.

While England’s loss in the World Cup semi-final has received wall-to-wall coverage (and you can listen to the views of the AoI’s football fans about it here) many of us have suffered a loss that is much more profound: the death of Ann Widdecombe in horrendous circumstances has shaken many of us. It’s been devastating. It has also revealed an ugly underbelly in politics today: we’ve witnessed some sectarian nastiness aimed at Reform UK because, apparently, laying wreathes in memory of a friend and colleague is an example of opportunistically politicising her murder and/or distracting from talking about that £5million. Wherever you stand on Reform, this mean-spirited cynicism leaves a sour taste.

Meantime, it’s been disturbing that a fringe group of despicable #bekind progressive activists decided to either caricature Ann unkindly as some sort of batty spinster/battle-axe – or worse, celebrate her death, denouncing her as a bigot, along with ‘she had it coming’ vibes. This echo of the monstrous reaction of some to Charlie Kirk’s assassination expresses a new type of visceral hatred of political opponents that is a real problem for those of us committed to political debate. The shameful lack of empathy and just sheer unpleasantness is sadly far too commonplace in today’s polarised society. It’s a mood that the Battle of Ideas festival hopes to be an antidote to.

And there is hope: Ironically, to Ann Widdecombe’s credit, we can get a glimpse of how political disagreements can be played out in an ideal way: you can stand firm, be robust and uncompromising, and still inspire an outpouring of grief, love, admiration and respect from all sides of the political divide.

I was asked to write my own tribute by spiked, in which I stressed her ability to work with people despite political differences and without betraying her principles. You can read it here: Ann Widdecombe was formidable, generous and wonderful company. I also noted our shared commitment to free speech, which is why we should resist those calling for yet more clampdowns on social media in response to even the most brutal offline violence. Lucy Powell, deputy leader of the Labour Party – yes, she who characterised discussing rape grooming gangs as a ‘dog whistle’ – led the pack in parliament called for more civility in political debate (oh the irony) and for further action ‘to tackle hate propagated online’. I took this on in a brief House of Lords discussion on Ann.

On Talk TV earlier in the week, I discussed the whole issue of security for politicians and warned that we need to consider unintended consequences. Of course, we need reasonable measures for those assessed to be at greatest risk. Those sneering at Nigel Farage for taking the issue seriously should pause and take a reality check. However, in general, politicians are public servants, and the public need access to them, so I worry more broadly about a retreat from the public sphere driven by fear.

You’ll gather from the clip why Ann Widdecombe was far more complicated than any caricature. One issue that I never dreamt Ann and I would agree on was prison policy. As a former Conservative Party prisons minister, she was notoriously hardline. No early releases for Ann. My liberal attitude means I am more a prison-reform type, so I assumed we’d clash on that.

However, I was surprised when we discussed the issue just how committed she was to prison education and purposeful activity for prisoners, even if she believed more people should be locked up in the name of law and order. She was firmly supportive of rehabilitation, redemption and human dignity. She wanted a justice system that worked but that was humane not cruel. But that meant that she was also scrupulously fair and agreed with me that those imprisoned on the now discredited and abolished IPP sentence should be reprieved by the state. For those unfamiliar with the IPP scandal, this Substack has covered it a number of times. Here’s an explainer: Britain’s Forgotten Prisoners.

I spoke to families of IPP prisoners at a protest at the Ministry of Justice earlier this week:

I followed up the protest with a question on IPP to Lord Timpson, in which I managed to utter the statement ‘ANDY BURNHAM IS PERFECT’ – hardly! Burnham has just appointed Matthew McGregor as his new head of political strategy in No.10, a former head of one-sided Hope Not Hate, an organisation whose main aim seems to be to promiscuously label anyone critical of Labour or EDI-style identity politics as hate-mongers. That bodes badly for free speech. But here’s hoping Burnham may – just may – take on the cause of justice for IPPers at least:

More Inside The Lords next week. I’m hoping ‘Things can only get better…’

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This the first Inside the Lords for a while. The reason is that there is nobody running the country. Most of us are delighted to see the back of Keir Starmer, but the fact is that ministers simply don’t know what is going to happen next. So, we have a weird interregnum until the seemingly inevitable coronation of Andy Burnham. While Labour politicians in Parliament seem terribly excited about replacing Starmer with Burnham, there is a worrying lack of detail on what he would do differently or what he even believes in.

Burnham’s big idea is more devolution. But I’m extremely sceptical about whether this is really taking power from Whitehall and handing it over to local people. The claims about Manchesterism are overblown, so how it could solve the fundamental problems of the economy and everything else is beyond me.

Moreover, ‘local’ is not a synonym for ‘better’. This week, we’ve had the report on the Nottingham maternity scandal, hearing about how women and babies are dying in childbirth because of the failure to listen to them, imposing the ideology of ‘natural’ birth over the best that medical science can offer. From the horrifying death of toddler Preston Davey to the grooming gangs, some of the worst scandals of recent years have been because of the failures and corruption of local government and services.

You also have to ask whether Burnham will be quite so keen on handing over power to councils run by Reform, the Green Party or the Islamist-leaning so-called ‘Independents’. And as power moves to local areas, the ability of Parliament to scrutinise will be reduced. So much for democracy.

The failings of the state are the central theme of this year’s edition of The Academy, the residential summer school run by Ideas Matter. It’s taking place on 22 & 23 August at Wyboston Lakes in Bedfordshire and I would everyone to come along. Find out more here.

In better news, I’ve won a ballot to have a debate of my choice in the House of Lords soon. I’ve chosen artistic boycotts as my theme: the way that the arts establishment closes ranks against anyone who is, for example, gender critical or in any way supportive of Israel. I will be delighted to highlight the report by Rosie Kay and Denise Fahmy.

Below, you can watch two of my recent speeches. One is on the Conversion Practices Bill, which has sadly turned up again like a bad penny. A ban would only act to prevent people caring for trans-leaning young people from helping them to explore why they feel a desire to transition, making affirmation the only show in town. The other speech looks at Brexit and disinformation, something often used as an excuse for our vote to leave – rather than voters coming to a rational judgement on the issues.

On this issue, one of Starmer’s legacies will be to foist mainstream media outlets like the BBC on to social-media companies as ‘trusted sources’, we need more questioning of official attempts to ‘control the narrative’. We’re now programming the Battle of Ideas festival on 17 & 18 October in Westminster and it’s the best place to be if you feel like doing some serious questioning, too. Get your tickets here.

Videos from The Lords

Question on the Conversion Practices Bill, 1 July 2026

Question on disinformation and Brexit, 25 June 2026

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We’re back with a new parliamentary session inside the Lords. A lot has happened, from the kicking Labour and the Tories got in the local elections at the hands of Reform and the Greens to wins for the SNP in Scotland and Plaid Cymru in Wales - a mixed bag, shall we say. The Lords feels demoralised, not least because we’ve got to discuss the 35 bills coming up in this parliamentary session following the King’s Speech, many of which are dull if not dire, but also without the full backing of a fragmenting government. We’re in this odd situation where many ministers are expected to push a programme that they’re not entirely sure will exist in a few weeks or months, depending on when the Labour leadership election will eventually run.

So what are these new pieces of legislation? The government is pushing digital ID, abolishing jury trials, a new conversion-therapy bill to criminalise parents and those who work with young people who question transitioning and - you guessed it - running back to the EU. The pro-EU position is the government’s safe space, and Labour politicians have completely gone against the red lines they set out in their own manifesto about not going back on Brexit. You get five days of debate on the King’s Speech - and just four minutes each(!) - so I chose to take on the issue of national security. I used the example of the two demos on the weekend and the fact that our Prime Minister decided to target just one of those (the Unite the Kingdom march), because it’s much safer to opine about the far right than it is to tackle the vicious anti-Semitism present among some members of the pro-Palestine marches.

There are two recent events that I think really indicate where parliament is at at the moment. The first is the video published by the Department for Education featuring Bridget Phillipson and TOWIE’s reality-TV star Gemma Collins discussing how to ‘transform post-16 education’. I’ve no doubt Collins might have some ideas about skills and training, but the Labour Party has got her in for one reason only - they think her Essex charm is what will convince ‘ordinary people’. You can see the cogs whirring: ‘What will the working class relate to? Gemma Collins’.

The second event is the government’s shock decision to water down sanctions on Russian oil and gas. It initially looked like an obvious sell out of our solidarity with Ukranians and many British voters are rightly outraged. Since it hit the headlines (and I recorded this film), ministers have been scrambling to deny that that was their aim; that it’s been misrepresented (while admitting poor government communication). But no amount of gaslighting will cover up their back-pedalling from the boastful commitment it made months ago to Ukraine. And I can’t help but suspect it reveals yet again an underestimation of the electorate. The government has clearly had a panic about the price of flights with the summer holidays coming up, imagining voters will not tolerate any disruption to getting off on holidays for any noble cause, and so concluded that they should try to curry favour by getting a bit of jet fuel in at the expense of defending Ukrainian sovereignty. Of course, they can’t open up oil and gas fields because that would upset their net-zero targets.

Behind both the education video and the change in foreign policy is the Labour Party’s caricatured version of the working class, who they believe only switch on for influencers and only care about their summer holidays. This is what’s rotten at the heart of Labour.

We’re off again for Whitsun recess - I know, you couldn’t make it up - but what is really going to preoccupy everyone is the Makerfield by-election. Whether Andy Burnham’s Manchesterism will work to stop Reform from what would be a historic victory or not, he certainly believes his own hype. The arrogance of Burnham’s campaign is based on the idea that he is the change everyone wants, and yet his politics are pretty indiscernible from his potential leadership rivals. Just take Brexit - we all know that Burnham, Streeting, Starmer, Rayner - the lot of them - are all in favour of re-joining or re-aligning with the EU in one form or another. Let’s see what the Makerfield voters (65% of whom went for Leave in 2016 let’s remember) make of the return of the anti-Brexit campaign.

It can all feel a bit depressing at the moment, but if you like a laugh and are free on the 30 June, get a ticket to Stand-Up For Jews!: A night of laughter in the face of anti-Semitism. Our friend Andy Shaw from the Comedy Unleashed team and others have set up a one-off event at the Leicester Square Theatre, and all profits go towards supporting jewish volunteer services in London and campaigns against anti-Semitism like Stop The Hate and Our Fight. There has been war over whether or not the naff jokes at the Unite the Kingdom march where people took off hijabs should be allowed or not - there’s even a question on it in parliament. But what’s great about Comedy Unleashed is that they’re one of the only comedy outlets that defends the idea that satire should come without strings. No religion should be safe from ridicule, so I look forward to a night of laughter for a very important political cause. Book now.

The last thing I’d like to mention is a reminder of Living Freedom, a three-day residential school taking place in central London on 9-11 July, open to anyone aged 18 to 30, based in the UK or beyond. Are you keen to defend free speech? To challenge Big Tech and the growth of online censorship? Want to understand historic ideals of tolerance and moral autonomy? Do you have concerns about attacks on civil liberties or artists being cancelled for their views? Are you interested in exploring the arguments for and against single-sex spaces in an open and tolerant way? Then Living Freedom Summer School is for you. And, if you’re too old to attend like me, get your kids, grandkids, students and friends to sign up - the deadline for applications is 26 May.

Currently, there is a mad dash to shove through as many laws as possible before parliament is prorogued. Seeing the amount of horse trading and backroom deals involved – all resulting in worse laws being passed – would be enough to disillusion even the most earnest legislator. If only the public knew, I keep reflecting (while trying to reveal what I can).

But this corruption of law-making pales into insignificance compared to the never-ending scandal created by the Prime Minister’s appointment of Peter Mandelson. It really reveals not just the shadiness of the SW1 machine, but at the same time the total emptiness of the politics of Keir Starmer. Even discounting what Starmer knew and when, one really thinks he brought this whole thing on himself; the arch technocrat undone by the most technocratic of scandals.

What an unedifying and dispiriting backdrop to the local elections. This important democratic exercise – which, to remind ourselves, the government tried to cancel a large part of – puts the power to shape politics in the hands of voters. Sir Keir’s sanctimonious managerialism – lashing out and blaming anyone but himself for the mess – seems to represent the antithesis of this kind of democratically accountable power. Indeed, Starmer’s evasiveness calls into question the very purpose of Government: the responsibility to steer and shape society, look out for its security, and ensure its public services are well-provisioned.

It is easy to become preoccupied with internal regime change. Calls for Keir Starmer to resign, demands for no-confidence votes and so on, were reinforced by the incompetence and cowardice on display in that excruciating two-hour Starmer-grilling in the Commons. The more we hear about the internal workings of Number 10, the worse it gets. There was the mind-boggling revelation that someone in Number 10 thought any comms guy (let alone a dodgy Comms guy like Matthew Doyle, recently suspended from Labour over links to ANOTHER paedophile) could be shoehorned into a senior diplomatic post. And let us not forget the utterly stupid decision to summarily sack Olly Robbins (rather ironic coming from a political party that has hectored employers about the importance of employment rights). The examples all point to a mammoth lack of judgement by Starmer.

Apart from anything else, this has turned a leading member of ‘The Blob’, into a martyred, hard-done-by victim. It has also lifted a lid on the intricacies of procedure: watching the forensic questioning of Sir Olly by (to her credit) Emily Thornberry MP, one might believe that all we need is to become better informed about the minutiae of vetting procedures.

But let us not get drawn into the technocratic weeds. In the first place, it risks painting the civil service (who we know are all-too-often a brake on democratic decision-making) as the victims of a political psychodrama.

But more fundamentally, a ‘Starmer-is-the-problem’ narrative misses the point of a deeper crisis of the state. How telling that ministers are so indignantly furious at the leak to The Guardian – the only reason the public now know that the Prince of Darkness failed a security vetting procedure – that they’ve set up an urgent Inquiry.

These are the same Ministers who endlessly and disgracefully prevaricated before setting up the rape grooming gangs inquiry in relation to one of the greatest state cover-ups of sexual abuse in modern history. The same Ministers who glibly tell us ‘Lessons will be learned’ in response to the shocking confirmation by the Southport Inquiry that the massacre of those three little girls by Axel Rudakabana was “PREVENTABLE” but state agencies ignored the evil hiding in plain sight.

And if you want a vivid, horrifying example of the state’s contempt and indifference to citizens’ safety, follow the Nottingham Inquiry into Valdo Calocane’s brutal murder of 19-year-old students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, and caretaker Ian Coates. Also preventable. And as Labour peer Lord George Robertson framed it, calling out his own Government over their failure to rearm the UK at speed in the face of growing threats (while welfare spending rises exponentially), we have a political elite dominated by“corrosive complacency” about the state of the state. Something must be done.

Such examples – and there are so many more – remind us that while the state’s legitimacy can only be conferred by the people – the demos – it often appears the contemporary state is set explicitly against ordinary people, who are seen as a problem to be managed, a source of danger, as something for the state to be protected from. That’s one reason that I will be attending Ideas Matter’s Academy this year, aptly titled HOLLOW LEVIATHAN: THE STATE AGAINST THE DEMOS (August 22-23). Tickets and more here: Hollow Leviathan: the state against the demos - The Academy 2026 - Ideas Matter

And, as ever, some of my recent speeches below:

On the social media ban for young people

On the Southport Inquiry

On GB News discussing our zombie parliament:

This week, the spotlight has been on Peter Mandelson and Keir Starmer’s wilful neglect of his history with Epstein. Yet, even with the foundations of Starmer’s premiership looking ever shakier, should we allow Mandelson to be the cause of his downfall? His popularity has been in steep decline almost since the beginning of his time as prime minister. His government has neglected many Labour voters, failed to stand up for women in the implementation of the Supreme Court ruling, destroyed high streets through its shallow economic policy and failed to listen to the demands for a new approach to immigration and integration.

These important discussions are continually neglected and shunned by Labour’s government. I believe we need far more public debate about these issues, and a good place to start is Battle of Ideas North, in Manchester on Saturday 7 March.

A lack of respect for democracy

Wherever you stand on assisted dying, for example, the shenanigans from Labour parliamentarians in the Lords and the Commons – including threatening to use the Parliament Acts (which I try and explain here) to try and shove a Bill through without scrutiny – needs to be called out. Similarly, the lack of time debating the decriminalisation of abortion amendment, attached inappropriately to the Police Crime and Sentence Bill in the Commons, led to a public backlash about a lack of democracy.

I spoke about the shameful neglect of public interests, scrutiny and vetting in my interview with Julie Hartley-Brewer on Talk TV.

Assisted dying

Politics can be a morally difficult business. And sometimes I am torn. Last Friday, I spoke in support of the amendment to ensure that face-to-face consultations are necessary in relation to assisted dying.

Face-to-face consultations must be a requirement, unless in exceptional circumstances. Assessing someone with complex healthcare needs without a face-to-face meeting cannot possibly adequately fulfil the needs of this highly emotional and existential medical decision. Online assessments can often distort communication between healthcare professionals and patients, separating patients from these moments of personal relatedness and push them down a dehumanising path, where their decision can seem to be nothing more than another appointment on a screen.

A further concern presented by the Assisted Dying Bill last week was that we, in the Lords, were presented with the Private members’ bills and the Parliament Acts briefing. This briefing outlines the circumstances in which private members’ bills can be passed without the consent of the House of Lords. This only highlighted the willingness of the Labour government to push through legislation while bypassing the proper democratic procedure.

Decriminalising abortion

This week, the Lords debated amendment 191 to the Police Crime and Sentencing Bill, which would prevent women from being prosecuted for having an abortion beyond the current legal limit. The amendment has caused widespread public concern. There was anger at the notion of legalising abortion up to birth without any true public debate or discussion, compounded by how little time was spent discussing this amendment in the House of Commons.

Abortion may be a settled right in the UK, but it is a morally charged issue – evoking individual consciousness and red lines, especially around the 24-week limit. The lack of adequate time and debate has sparked a dangerous emotional backlash, bringing to the fore growing moral debates around abortion – despite the fact the rules around the provision of abortion are not changed by this amendment.

One of the rising debates is that around sex-selective abortion, which while covered heavily in the media and an issue that needs thinking about, is not changed by the amendment to this Bill. If you want to read more about the issue of sex-selective abortion in the UK, read my colleague Emma Gilland’s Substack on the issue here.

To be clear: amendment 191 simply disapplies the existing criminal law for women in relation to their own abortion. It doesn’t change law in relation to the provision of abortion, the time limit or the requirement for medical professionals. The debates thrown up by this amendment show the prevailing discomfort and moral differences felt towards abortion despite the widespread acceptance of it as a reproductive right. I agreed with the sentiment behind the amendment, but it needs to be properly discussed. At least in the Lords there was a long and ferocious debate on a highly contentious issue.

I will report back on the contentions, debates and amendments inside the Lords again soon. If you’d like to catch up on any of my speeches or questions in parliament, you can find them all on my YouTube here. And, as always, hit subscribe below to never miss one of our Academy of Ideas Substacks.

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Parliament has finished for the year on an undemocratic tone - asking people to take the Christmas period to consider whether they want to cancel council elections in May. This last Inside The Lords of 2025 is a bit of a fed-up one – but I’m not the only one feeling this way.

The government is compensating for its inability to lead – to be subtle or organised or inspiring – by introducing ever more laws. By being hyperactively busy, they want to look like they’re achieving something, but this is dangerous. Everywhere you look, more behaviour is being criminalised, more speech being censored.

How to respond to these laws? There has been a fair amount of controversy relating to Lords activity when it comes to the Assisted Dying Bill – with accusations that the Lords are thwarting the will of the people by introducing huge numbers of amendments. The nature of this Bill – introduced as a private members’ bill – means that the Lords can constitutionally take as long as it needs to scrutinise it. It is a shoddy Bill, with too many loopholes in which the state is granting itself permission to poison its own citizens. Even if you’re in favour of assisted dying in principle, it’s so obvious that there are dangerous areas of this Bill. Yet advocates like Charlie Faulkner argue that everyone needs equal access to this wonderful new service, even those who we might consider vulnerable.

For example: what about people who have been sectioned under the Mental Health Act and live under lock and key? The idea that the state is both responsible for their care, food and accommodation – and at the same time offering them the option of death – is deeply worrying. Should doctors be allowed to raise the issue of the right to die if one of these people suddenly find out that they have cancer, for example?

I know this isn’t the cheeriest subject to finish my Inside The Lords on for Christmas, but this is one of the most important and dangerous pieces of legislation we’ve dealt with in a long time. What should have been treated with the utmost care, and gone through with a fine-toothed comb, has been rushed through and protected from scrutiny.

We had a different health-related protest outside parliament this week, against the secretary of state for health, Wes Streeting, giving the go-ahead for a clinical trial into puberty blockers, which by its nature will need to involve children with no lower age limit. It’s extremely rare to complete clinical trials with drugs on children who cannot consent. But Streeting could have taken a different path to find out information on puberty blockers: he could have unlocked the data from people who have already taken them, detransitioners and others, and find out what has happened with them.

On a more positive note, it was brilliant to compare an event organised by Venice Allan and other campaigners with the mess that’s taking place in the Lords. The protest was a cross-party event; we had Rupert Lowe on the same platform as Rosie Duffield with the Lib Dems, Conservatives, Reform, Independents and even Labour (well, a Blue Labour MP) as well as lots of grassroots organisations like Sex Matters, Transgender Trend, the LGB Alliance and others. It had both a sense of anger and solidarity. There needs to be more public pressure on the government and all parliamentarians to listen to what people think outside of the palaces of Westminster. You can watch a video report on the protest from Stephen Knight’s Substack here.

My last observation for this year relates to the Victim and Courts Bill, the debate on which was intensely grouchy and snappy when we discussed it this week. People have come to the end of their tether, and after some frosty exchanges in the chamber we apologised to each other and agreed we all needed a break. In the new year, it’s relentless – bill after bill after bill. Sectarianism won’t get us anywhere, we need to work together to make sure that the government is both held to account and that the liberties and responsibilities of a free society are protected and fought for.

So have a great Christmas and I’ll see you in 2026. If you want to catch up with my work in parliament, you can follow my YouTube channel with all my speeches here. And if you’ve got a few spare bob this Christmas, the Academy of Ideas needs your help to continue our work for freedom. Anything helps, no matter how big or small - sign up to our Substack with a paid subscription or just give what you can. We really appreciate it. Join our fight for free speech.

Donate to the AOI here:

It’s my first Inside The Lords for a while – mainly because inside the Lords is so hectic at the moment as the Labour government is trying to cram through huge amounts of legislation. I filmed this video in the wake of Shabana Mahmood’s dramatic statement on the government’s new asylum policy – and, I have to say, I was very impressed, despite how much I dislike the Labour Party. She seemed to get what a crisis we’re in, and how we’ve lost control of our borders. I even liked that she told people to ‘sod off’ and spoke plainly to her critics in the Commons who tried to claim that this was all a far-right storm in a teacup. A bit of straight talking is a welcome step after so much obfuscating and finger pointing when it comes to discussions about immigration.

The reactions have been interesting, if unsurprising, including one Labour MP telling a breakfast radio show that Mahmood was ‘pandering to the electorate’. Heaven forbid a politician pander – or, more accurately, listen – to the public will. Others have claimed that she won’t get anywhere because of bias in the civil service, activist lawyers and the like. That may be true – and the detail of some of proposal isn’t quite right, including allowing NGOs to sponsor people or the strange 20-year time limit for applications for the right to remain. But the spirit and authority with which she addressed parliament was rare and praiseworthy.

The reason I can’t abide the government at the moment is because of the way they’re pushing through legislation, using lawmaking as a cover for their lack of political leadership. We’ve just finished the Borders Bill – on the day that Mahmood’s statement changed the entire Overton window on immigration. It is an incredibly petty bill which has wasted too many hours of parliamentary time.

I’m also involved in the Crime and Policing Bill, which is bringing in draconian powers to criminalise all kinds of behaviour – like the invention of ‘respect orders’ which, you’ve guessed it, have nothing to do with eliciting respect.

At the same time, the government is bringing in the Sentencing Bill, which the government claims will mean fewer people put in jail for small-time crimes. So, one Bill will criminalise more, and one Bill will send fewer to jail? This is a contradiction that the government seems unaware of…

Two other Bills I’m involved in have an interesting crossover – the Tobacco and Vapes Bill and the Assisted Dying Bill. The Tobacco and Vapes Bill is stuffed full of public-health experts asserting that it’s the state’s duty to stop people from potentially harming or killing themselves from smoking, yet these same people in a different piece of legislation argue that the state should, quite easily, prematurely end your life. The same health minister has to go to both these debates and argue different positions of the sanctity of life. Make it make sense.

There are almost 1,000 amendments to the Bill tabled by Lords, reflecting the poor drafting of a Private Members’ Bill, which Keir Starmer has backed, even if the government remains neutral. Charlie Faulkner (Labour peer and sponsor of the Bill) claims this attempt to patch up the Bill with necessary safeguards is an affront to democracy. The Lords are obliged to pass a Commons Bill, we’re told. Oh please, the day that arch Remainers - who tried to use the Lords to block Brexit - become the defenders of democratic accountability is the day that hell freezes over.

Despite Mahmood’s impressive intervention earlier this year, we are in many ways watching the Labour Party implode - from changing their minds every minute on the Budget to the mutinous atmosphere within the Party itself. In fact, it seems the only thing they feel they can have control over is the parliamentary calendar, and are using it to keep us in until the small hours of the morning and push through as much legislation as possible.

I’ll report again soon from inside the Lords - and if you’d like to catch up on any of my speeches or questions in parliament, you can find them all on my YouTube here. And, as always, hit subscribe below to never miss one of our Academy of Ideas Substacks.

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It seems an age ago since Rachel Reeves cried in parliament, it was only a week ago (Ella Whelan describes the incident brilliantly here) – but it, alongside the debacle around the welfare Bill – is symptomatic of the mood in parliament, with a government seeming to mishandle everything from U-turns on cuts to their own internal squabbles and rebellions. Such is the drive to save money, we now hear cuts in the courts may lead to a reduction in jury trials - a serious attack on civil liberties and an insult to a very important part of democratic trust in the people.

But for all the dour mood, there was a bit of glamour and excitement - Emmanuel Macron was in the House of Lords. We were asked if we wanted to apply for tickets - I didn’t bother - but there was something of a buzz about his visit, not least because of the thorny issue of resolving small boats arriving daily from Calais. Ironically, across the corridor from the state visit, at exactly the same time, the government tried to push through its Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill. It was interesting being in the chamber discussing this feeble and technocratic Bill, with Lib Dem Lords and Labour backbenchers calling on international conventions and laws to further water it down, at the same time as the Prime Minister is making a show of trying to Do Something about immigration with his talks with Macron. But what was most disconcerting was that the minister was keen to assure everyone that everyone who gets in a small boat is a victim - it’s the gangs who really are the problem. What that really means is that there can be no criticism of anyone trying to enter the country illegally. (You can see two of my speeches from the Bill discussion below.)

There is a danger when international law is used to undermine national priorities (a serious threat with UK Attorney General Lord Hermer, who has handed himself an ‘effective veto’ over government policy, adding 23 references to international law to guidance that will be issued to lawyers on how they should advise elected politicians). More generally, the government’s inadequacies seem to know no bounds. It’s come to light that the Home Office doesn’t check that people who have come on perfectly legal work visas have gone home again when their paperwork runs out. However grand the meeting with Macron was, there is obviously something seriously wrong with government’s approach to this issue.

I’ve been involved in some quite controversial issues this week - including debates on the proscription of Palestine Action. I don’t think that they should be proscribed, and I know that some of you will disagree with me. On the statute books there are plenty of laws to deal with their actions - and I have no sympathy whatsoever either with their motives or tactics. Two things happened this week; Baroness Jones put in a regret motion to say that we shouldn’t proscribe Palestine Action, and there were various attempts at interrupting, heckling and intimidating her. Despite disagreeing with Jenny on almost everything in other areas of politics, I got up and defended her right to speak.

I then spoke in defence of her regret motion - because proscription is a major threat to free speech, meaning you could have up to 14 years in jail for merely voicing support for PA. Proscribing the organisation might make the government feel good, but their actions in relation to Israel reveal their real allegiances. We need to tackle the politics of groups like PA, who present Hamas as merely a group of victimised freedom fighters - as such, something like the October 7 attacks are seen as liberatory action rather than barbarism. The problem with proscription is that we have now strengthened this victim status. Not only that, we are weakening the specificity of what terrorism is.

On a more internal note, debates continue on the government’s plans to reform the House of Lords. But what the government has actually done is cheated - getting rid of the hereditary peers, the low-hanging fruit, backing off from further reform. Indeed, they’re even stuffing the House with Labour lords. The idea that a hereditary appointment is far more egregious than a political one is a fantasy - both are bad for democracy.

Hours of parliamentary time has been taken up with this navel gazing in the Lords. One suggestion was to give power to the House of Lords Appointment Committee to decide who would be given a peerage, rather than the prime minister. But this is even less democratic - at least the prime minister is an elected politician. I argued against this quangocracy in the speech below.

Talk about disingenuous debates - at one point this week we had a Question Time debate on Index on Censorship’s report which claims that LGBTQ books are being removed from children’s libraries, and that this amounts to terrible censorship. As a big free speecher I was keen to look into it. But I found that the report entirely focused on the concerns of parents about age-inappropriate books being available in libraries, with books on chest binders or transitioning. Isn’t there something different about banning books and being concerned that young kids don’t read things that are too old for them? When I pointed out that things weren’t quite what they appeared to be, there was lots of tutting.

Next week we’ll be voting on amendments to the Employment Rights Bill, which is a very important piece of legislation. There are some key issues for employees relating to fire and rehire policies, for example. But this Bill is not for workers - it is a regulatory, bureaucratic nightmare written by every TUC and quango available. It could mean huge job losses, as well as strangling workplaces with pages and pages of new regulation. The report stage has been rushed through and the feeling is that we have to get it done. Why? So that Angela Rayner can hand it as a gift to the Trade Union Congress. Not only that, the government has committed to doing consultations on the Bill after it has been passed. What’s the point of that?

That’s it for this week - the only last thing to tell you about is to catch up with Iain Dale’s Cross Question on LBC, where I ranted on about the economy, small boats and other issues. See you next week.

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A weekend is a long time in politics. When I filmed Inside the Lords on Friday, one issue I reflected on was the fallout of Zia Yusuf’s shock resignation. Now, within days, he’s back. But my main theme remains true: the political class is unravelling, reflected by an establishment - many who sit on the Red Benches in the Lords - in denial about why Reform is cutting through.

At the end of last week, Labour pulled off a surprise win in the Scottish by-election. The commentariat cheered, the SNP mourned, but Labour's ‘victory lap’ was more likely to fuel the very revolt it pretends doesn't exist - most of them entirely missed the real story. Reform UK came within touching distance of the top spot. In Scotland - the land where Farage is supposed to be kryptonite. That’s not a footnote, it’s the headline.

We need to push through the smoke and mirrors and see a Party gaining ground despite relentless media hostility and internal disruption. Why? Because ordinary people - many lifelong Labour voters - have had enough. They feel despised, sneered at and written off by the very Parties that claim to speak for them.

Labour’s response to this populist surge? They’re reacting with all the political nous of a rabbit in the headlights. Starmer held a special press conference just to attack Reform - in a glass factory, of all places, surrounded by visibly mortified workers. It backfired, as even the mainstream media asked critical questions. Meanwhile, Rachel Reeves pops up in a bus depot promising the moon (or better transport links), eyes darting nervously while workers behind her look like they’re being held hostage. Some of those eye rolls will be forever memes. Apparently a tram here, and a train on time there, will be enough to win back disillusioned voters.

The belated slow U-turn on Labour’s disastrous cancellation of the winter-fuel allowance, and the fanfare about more free school dinners reveals that Labour think people can be bought off with hand-outs. It’s very much a ‘let them eat cake’ mentality. Meanwhile, real concerns about wasteful, politicised public spending (that Zia Yusuf aims to expose) or the erosion of free speech, everyday liberties and two-tier justice, are brushed off as ‘Trumpism’ or ‘culture-war nonsense’. I witnessed this when I was on the panel of Politics Live last week, discussing blasphemy law by the backdoor. People have had enough of such lazy slurs. And, judging by my inbox of wholly positive emails after my BBC appearance on the Quran-burning case, so have many voters. Take a look here:

Another example of the mismatch between rhetoric and reality is the Employment Rights Bill, slowly trundling through the House of Lords. Angela Rayner et al boast that this is all about improving workers’ rights. It will get the voters back, they conclude. But while perhaps 25 per cent of this huge Bill focuses on protecting employee rights and is worth supporting, it largely comprises a bloated wish list from trade-union bureaucrats – not rank-and-file workers. It is packed full of micro-managing regulations that are likely to lead to the unintended consequences of job losses, unemployment, low growth and SMEs going under, unable to survive the costly and largely pointless regulatory demands of crossing the t-s and dotting the i-s forced on them by the state. This includes the now-infamous Banter Ban Clause 20, which will effectively force all employers to have legislative responsibility for any third parties using alleged harassing words or conversations that their staff encounter and may complain about. Litigation hell beckons. I explained my concerns in one of my contributions. It’s worth noting that the response was to write off concerns as a confected outrage. Nothing to see here gaslighting as usual.

If the government really care about discrimination against workers, you’d assume it would enthusiastically embrace an amendment arguing against people being sacked or disciplined for their political views or party affiliation. Historically the labour movement rightly fought against blacklists and such demonisation. But when I supported Lord Toby Young’s amendment on the topic, using the example of Academy of Ideas volunteer Saba Poursaeedi, who lost his job with a ‘progressive’ Housing Association because he was intending to stand for Reform UK in the election, Labour’s front bench tut tutted and refused to engage. Meanwhile, the serried rank of now ennobled TU leaders denied that any political bias exists in any workplace (if aimed at anyone who they assume to be a wrong‘un).

The message is clear - this is workers’ rights according to a prescriptive script, written by policy wonks. Here is my attempt at probing whether it’s anything beyond bureaucratic virtue signalling to force workplaces to produce Equality Action Plans on the alleged gender pay-gap, and to make special arrangements for menopausal women at work.

Regardless of what you think of my views on women’s equal rights at work, it was a modest, good faith intervention, so I was taken aback by an extraordinarily vicious verbal attack from one Labour peer, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, who to mass ‘hear hears’ from the government benches, proclaimed: ‘I am utterly appalled by the proposition and speech from the noble Baroness Lady Fox, who lest there were any doubt, has given the clearest possible indication of her political journey from the extreme Left to the extreme Right…it is an absolute disgrace …[and]…will be cheered from the rafters by Nigel Farage and Donald Trump…a very dangerous line for members of this House to push”. Bloody hell, it had it all - too dangerous to say out loud, must be far right if it upsets the orthodoxy, appalling, disgraceful. As Lord Stewart Jackson noted, all a bit rich from a Party who until the Supreme Court ruling, didn’t even know what woman was and which has betrayed gender-critical women at work and in its own Party for years. I was fuming as you can see from my summation speech:

The truth is, me getting my head bitten off for daring to challenge the received opinion - on the menopause of all things - is only a taster of what millions face daily for asking awkward questions or disagreeing with Labour’s brittle narrative. We now know that the government’s Prevent strategy thinks anyone who questions mass immigration and lack of cultural integration should be considered as a positional terrorist threat. This is what we’re up against: a political elite terrified of dissent, addicted to performance and hostile to perfectly reasonable common-sense views. Hopefully, these Inside the Lords videos shine a light on such shenanigans as they play out inside parliament’s gilded bubble. And for some real debates on the issues that matter, sign up to our Battle of Ideas YouTube channel here:

MEDIA AND INTERVIEWS:

• CATCH UP: Is Wokeness Really Over? The Andrew Doyle interview with Claire Fox on the Podcast of Ideas:

• CATCH UP: Claire Fox interview with Philip Davies on Amazing Academics:

• DON’T MISS: Claire Fox will be a panellist on Any Questions, BBC Radio4 on Friday 13 June at 8pm

  ---

  FORTHCOMING EVENTS:

• Birmingham Salon: From Equal Pay to Banter Bans: have employee rights gone too far?

  1 – 3 PM, SATURDAY 14 JUNE

  Venue: Map Room, Cherry Red’s café bar, 88-92 John Bright St, B1 1BN

  Speaker: Rosie Cuckston and Daniel Dieppe

  Tickets: Birmingham Salon forthcoming events

• Leeds Salon: Dune - Science Fiction and the end of the future

  3PM, SATURDAY 14 JUNE

  Venue: Mill Hill Chapel, City Square, Leeds

  Speaker: JJ Charlesworth

  Tickets: Welcome to The Leeds Salon : The Leeds Salon

• Academy of Ideas Education Forum: What future for history in the National Curriculum for England?

  7PM, MONDAY 16 JUNE

  Via zoom. Registration here

  Speakers: Louise Burton, Zongyi Deng and Robert Tombs.

• Classical Philosophy Reading Group

  SUNDAY 22 JUNE

  6pm via Zoom

  Theaetetus - Fourth in series of discussions looking at Plato's Socratic dialogues.

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• East Midlands Salon: The Fear of Overtourism

  7PM, THURSDAY 26 JUNE

  Venue: The Brunswick Inn, Station Road, Derby, DE1 2RU

  Speaker: Dr Jim Butcher

  Tickets here

• The Academy 2025 – organised by Ideas Matter: Upheaval - Why politics needs a new language

  FRIDAY 4 – SUNDAY 6 JULY 2025

  Wyboston Lakes Conference Centre

  Tickets and information here

• Battle of Ideas festival 2025

  SATURDAY 18 AND SUNDAY 19 OCTOBER

  Church House, Great Smith St, Westminster, London, SW1P 3BN

  Buy tickets here Eventbrite

There’s been a lot going on in Westminster this week, so it was busy inside the Lords. I managed to secure a question about the Darlington nurses who have been treated abysmally by their employers - all because they complained about a man, who identifies as a woman, using their single-sex changing rooms. Treating them as the problem, the Trust has treated these female front-line NHS staff with contempt, even saying they needed to be educated in inclusivity; all of this leading them to take legal action to fight their corner. My question related to Wes Streeting’s promise to do something about their situation – but, despite saying initially he was horrified by their treatment, they’re still waiting for concrete action and guidance to be put in place as requested. In Fife, another Trust told one of their nurses with a similar complaint to change in a cupboard. As you might expect, my question did not go down well - prompting heckling and contributions following me which pretty much told the nurses to put up and shut up. Sadly, the minister fudged!

Later on, I spoke when a ministerial statement in the Commons, repeated in the Lords, was followed by a 40-minute debate. This particular statement was on the scandals of grooming gangs - and so I expected the chamber to be packed with people who would want to speak on this serious issue. It was almost empty, and the minister took a calm tone attempting a ‘don’t make a fuss’ line, advising us to wait for the inquiry. I rather lost my rag, as the question is why state agencies and public servants looked the other way in terms of these specific, organised rape gangs, not just about child sexual abuse per se. Even now, the government and many in the media refuse to confront how a fear of being labelled racist is still concealing the truth.

In the Commons, the Schools Bill was being used by the Conservatives to attempt an amendment to include a specific inquiry on the grooming gangs. While many have been sceptical about the Labour Party’s claims that this will derail proceedings, they might be right - parliamentary rules are odd and this might not be the best vehicle for an inquiry that needs serious attention. But the Bill is worth watching for many reasons, not least because of what it would do to home schooling and parental authority over children’s education. The basis for all of these changes is the notion that parents can’t be trusted. But when you consider that so much of the abuse these poor girls who were caught up in the grooming gangs cases suffered was in state-run care homes, or down to failings in state institutions from social services to police or health workers, the idea that the government knows better than parents doesn’t wash.

Elsewhere, the government has brought forward a Bill that the Conservatives created called the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill. This argues that we urgently need to bring in a national regulator to have the powers to fine all sorts of venues - or anyone who can host large numbers of people - unless they go along with one-size-fits-all rules and regulations. As it happens, it was appropriate that we discussed it on on the anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. I worry that the Bill is a technical, bureaucratic approach to public safety, likely to undermine community self-organising and small venues - ie, it will over-regulate the public square.

This matters for organisations like the Academy of Ideas - we host live public debates such as the Battle of Ideas, so we could be stung by this overbearing and costly regulation. And the consequences for village halls, community groups and all sorts of venues where the public socialise and organise could be stifling. What’s more, it all feels like a distraction from the deeper challenges - like the growth of radical Islamism. The Bill uses the Manchester Arena bombing as its key example, but fails to properly represent what were the issues in that case. It wasn’t mundane and general tick-boxing, but a specific failure of security.

We at the Academy of Ideas are committed to the re-invigorating the public square, both on and off-line; so the issue of free speech online is of special interest to us. I debated Owen Jones on Sky News this week on Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to scrap fact checkers on Meta. I was a fan of the announcement, Owen not so much. And it was also one of the more fiery exchange on BBC’s Politics Live. Check out both below:

Finally, I made another rather angry contribution on a debate about aid to Gaza, after no one mentioned either the hostages or the fact that it is not Israel alone causing problems - no mention of Hamas whatsoever. So I will continue in my mission to say Emily Damari’s name, and remind my fellow parliamentarians of her plight.

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Here are some forthcoming events at the Academy of Ideas that you might be interested in joining:

• Classical Philosophy Reading Group

  Plato’s Apology and Crito

  SUNDAY 12 JANUARY

  6pm via Zoom

  Second in series of discussions looking at Plato's Socratic dialogues.

  Register here.

• Living Freedom Forum (for 18-30 year olds)

  Tyranny: A 21^st century threat to freedom?

  THURSDAY 16 JANUARY

  7pm – central London

  Speakers: Edmund Stewart and Alastair Donald.

  Register here.

• Bookshop Barnie

  David Spiegelhalter on The Art of Uncertainty

  THURSDAY 23 JANUARY

  7pm via Zoom

  FREE - register for tickets via Eventbrite

• Independent virtual events

  Will the Brexit headache ever end?

  THURSDAY 23 JANUARY

  7pm ONLINE

  Speakers include Claire Fox, Anand Menon and Mark Francois

  Free tickets here

• East Midlands Salon

  Defending Christ and the Prophet: free speech versus blasphemy

  7PM, THURSDAY 30 JANUARY

  Venue: The Brunswick Inn, Station Road, Derby, DE1 2RU

  Speaker: Don Milligan

  Buy tickets via Eventbrite

• The Academy 2025 – organised by Ideas Matter

  Upheaval: Why politics needs a new language

  FRIDAY 4 – SUNDAY 6 JULY 2025

  Wyboston Lakes Conference Centre

  Tickets and information here

• Battle of Ideas festival 2025

  SATURDAY 18 AND SUNDAY 19 OCTOBER

  Church House, Great Smith St, Westminster, London, SW1P 3BN

  Buy tickets via Eventbrite.

  Academy of Ideas is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

It’s Parliament’s last day today. Despite Christmas being round the corner, it’s been a bit hard to feel festive inside the Lords, as the Labour Party seems hellbent on rushing through lots of things before we break up. I don’t say this to be sectarian - but it really feels like this government doesn’t quite know how to govern.

One example was a debate initiated on family farming - a really wonderful discussion, but there was only one Labour backbencher there and that was the head of the Countryside Alliance who has come out against Labour’s plans for farms and inheritance tax. The minister was all alone, and despite many explanations from peers about how the figures on inheritance tax were wrong and that this move would target the wrong people, he simply read out the ‘computer says no’ speech. In fact, he even suggested there was a moral panic being created around it. See my speech on the issue below:

We then had another discussion on abolishing hereditary peers, this time with a packed chamber. There’s nothing justifiable about the hereditary principle - but neither is there a democratic justification for those of us who have been appointed, or law Lords, or bishops. When Blair was elected, Labour promised that no hereditary peers would be removed until there was a general reform of the House of Lords, a promise which this government has now broken. It’s a cheap move - and an indictment of their lack of ambition that they’re not able to tackle the real issues with an unelected chamber. And - would you believe it - Keir Starmer is rumoured to be nominating a whole new slew of peers, including his erstwhile chief of staff, Sue Gray. You couldn’t make it up.

I spent a long time this week discussing the Football Governance Bill, which is a problem for many reasons. Most egregiously, the Labour Party wishes to set up a state-appointed regulator that could strip a club of its licence if it failed to meet any of the requirements of this Bill. That is outrageous. The reason why I got involved is because Labour has boasted about its desire to make one of those requirements an EDI policy. There are already rules outlining that the state should not get involved in football - doing so can risk being kicked out of the European leagues. And yet, here we have our government explicitly trying to make football political. The government have even had the nerve to accuse those of us trying to scrutinise this Bill of ‘filibustering’. To punish us, they ensured that the House was sitting until midnight! They won’t accept anything other than cheerleading.

Here is a link to a thread of my speeches, which you can watch on X/Twitter, including my amendment below, which was to remove the mandatory requirement for EDI in all football teams and threats of losing their license should they not comply:

The question of politics and football is tricky. On the one hand, I hate the forced wearing of rainbow laces, taking the knee and so on. But football fans themselves can bring moments of clarity, in spontaneous political expression. Spurs fans did that this week, cheering for Emily Damari, the British hostage left rotting under Hamas kidnap. Her uncle Robin also drew attention to the fact that his team, Crystal Palace, has released a statement in solidarity with the hostages after the news of the pogrom last October.

This kind of grassroots support matter - because Emily’s name should be mentioned every day in parliament. In years past, parliamentarians campaigned for British hostages, but David Lammy and others, while they might talk about ceasefires, fail to champion her. I will mention Emily every moment I can, and demand, as we all should, that we bring her and her fellow hostages home.

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Inside the Lords this week is coming to you from the madness of Battle of Ideas festival prep - surrounded by boxes and excited team members looking forward to this weekend. I hope you’ll join us, tickets are still available and will be available on the door - so don’t miss it.

This week, people have been discussing Labour’s investment summit and their economic plans. I don’t want to disregard their announcements - we need economic growth and we should encourage anything that looks like it’s moving in that direction. But the government’s focus on simply getting money in, with no substantial plans for a vision for economic change, is a little disheartening. For example, the announcements around workers’ rights are lukewarm - the kind of tweaks to zero-hours contracts or flexible working that make sense, but aren’t about to set the world alight.

One thing that is worrying is Labour’s plans to update the Equality Law, requiring employers to protect their staff against ‘harassment’ from third-parties. In essence, that means pubs or clubs or event organisers would be liable if a staff member complained that they’d been harassed by a punter - and we all know that harassment can mean anything we want it to these days. This could really get in the way of any organisation operating - from students unions to political event organisers to hospitality.

Speaking of harassment, we’ve been discussing updating the Lords’ code of conduct - I gave a speech in which I pulled apart the code, showing that what it was really all about was policing the way parliamentarians could speak in a censorious fashion.

We also had a Lords question on the rise of religious hatred, so I stressed the need to avoid introducing censorious blasphemy laws by the back door. And, on the third anniversary of the brutal murder of Sir David Amess by an Islamist fanatic, I asked whether we can we stop conflating Islamism with a hatred of Muslims.

The Labour Party has had its first 100 days in office - and I keep thinking that they’re just not interested in having conversations for the public, with the public, in public. Instead, the public are treated like a stage army. You can see this in the way in which they responded to the cronyism charges. When the public complain about anything, be it winter-fuel allowance cuts or the passes for glasses scandal, Keir Starmer looks outraged that anyone would have the temerity to criticise him. There is no openness to debate or discussion - I don’t need to tell you that that’s not our style at the Academy of Ideas.

I just want to finish on a tribute to two people who have passed away in the last week - Alex Salmond and Kevin Bean. Alex Salmond and I have been on panels on opposite sides of many debates, but he was also a speaker at the Battle of Ideas festival. And unlike many of his colleagues and fellow politicians, he was a man who took debate seriously - always respecting free speech and determined to argue his point rather than shut down his opponents. His death is a terrible tragedy and a loss. In a different realm of politics, we also lost Dr Kevin Bean - a brilliant academic and political organiser in Liverpool. Like Salmond, me and Kevin often didn’t agree but he was an excellent thinker and speaker, also joining us at the Battle of Ideas festival, and a friend. His students in Liverpool paid the best tribute to him - that he always made them think, and challenged them to go beyond themselves. We will miss him.

If you want to talk about anything that’s going on - from immigration issues to the latest in arts and culture, from free-speech wars to the state of the economy, join me on Saturday and Sunday at the Battle of Ideas festival. Come up and say hello to me and the rest of the team, we’ll see you there.

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Many people mentioned the ‘relief’ they felt that the ‘adults were back in the room’, that we could use a cosy, soft language with each other, that we were all friends and this period of parliament was going to take a different ‘tone’. That bubble mentality would be fine, if it wasn’t a bubble - totally out of touch with reality. I was the only person in a discussion on law and order that mentioned the Harehills riots in Leeds - which the ministers didn’t reply to. I also mentioned some of the Islamist bullying that took place during the General Election, again, to no reply. So yes, there’s a nice cosy consensus as long as you don’t upset that consensus.

Elsewhere in the House of Lords, there is a very weird atmosphere among the hereditary peers, who are set to be kicked out soon under new Labour plans. Some of them are quite independent, and contribute well to discussions. I find it very irritating when they get turned into scapegoats, as if those of us who were appointed rather than inheriting it by bloodline have some kind of greater democratic claim on our position in the chamber. But now the hereditary peers have turned their ire on the Bishops, asking why they get to stay. It would all be rather amusing if it wasn’t such a mess - and a pretence at democratic change.

Finishing on a funny note, you’ll be all delighted to know that the burning issue in the House of Lords in the first few weeks of a new parliament is where everyone sits - the Great Reseat, if you like. And having been surrounded by Tories in the opposition benches I used to call home, I’ve begun to feel uncomfortable. So, after a bit of musical chairs, I’ve found my place in between Plaid Cymru, Lib Dems and other independents right up on the back benches. I’ll still be making the same points, but from a different geographical vantage point.

The palaces of Westminster might be off on their holidays, but politics continues - and at the Academy of Ideas we’re in full swing of preparations for our Battle of Ideas festival. Make sure you join us on the 19 & 20 October at Church House, Westminster, for a weekend of public debate. See you there.

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Here is my speech from yesterday in response to King's Speech on criminal justice. I had a dig about IPPs, the worrying Conversion Therapy legislation and the daft generation smoking ban. Also, Keir Starmer promises to take back control of our streets. Sounds good, but how? Giving police more bloody powers. Does anyone really believe the riots in Harehills would have been stopped by police waving around one of those proposed new Respect Orders (just ASBOs rebranded)? In the build-up to the election, the streets were out of control with intimidation of parliamentary candidates by gangs of radical Islamists bullies. Labour's response is ‘shh, don't discuss these trends’. Instead, they seem content to hide behind performative law-making.

Listen to the new Arts First Podcast, in which artist Rachel Jordan talks to fellow artists about their expectations and anxieties under the new government and art critic JJ Charlesworth leads a conversation with special guests about the Labour Party policies outlined in their document Creating Growth, which asserts that ‘people make art, policies don’t’. Is this just a cop out from giving the arts needed support?

Arts First is available on Spotify, Podbean, Soundcloud or wherever you get your podcasts.

It was such sad news to hear about the death of Frank Field. In the first weeks I joined the House of Lords, I bumped into Frank as we were both getting lost as new peers. I didn’t recognise him (it was the height of Lockdown and masks indoors were mandatory). He unmasked and we did a social distance hug. With a twinkle in his eye, he said ‘I look forward to us both being the bad boys on the back bench’. He got seriously ill shortly after that, but I try and honour his maverick spirit of political independence. And yes, I literally sit on the back bench…

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the only thing happening in the Lords at the moment is the Rwanda Bill - which is now passed, despite antidemocratic delays from the Lords. Not so, but before I move on to what I’ve been up to this week I just want to say that it is a small, nasty, performative bill - but the opposition to it was performative as we all knew it would get through in the end and I performatively abstained until someone said Claire you can go home now. So I’m glad it’s over.

Despite Rwanda dominating the headlines, there has actually been a lot happening in the Lords in the last two weeks. I’m still banging the drum for single-sex provision for women, not anyone who calls themself a woman, in the Victims bill. I had two amendments, on accurate data collection based on sex not gender, and also to ensure that ‘woman’ really means woman:

Sadly, bucking their usual heckling form, both Labour and Lib Dems refused to speak - effectively giving me the silent treatment. This refusal to debate what I and many others consider to be a very serious and pressing issue is disgraceful. I now know what the real meaning of being ‘stonewalled’ is. This is despite the fact that I was hopeful after hearing Labour’s Shabana Mahmood’s great speech defending the fact that sex is immutable - and that many Labour politicians had filled out a packed room when the wonderful Dr Hilary Cass came for a special visit to parliament.

In fact, one Labour Lord, Lord Bach, had an amendment to simplify record keeping in relation to crime victims; widely supported and is definitely worth considering if it makes data collection more accurate and consistent. I backed that amendment, but, guess what, when I used similar arguments on the need to use sex across all statistics in criminal justice, it fell on deaf ears. This proves the objection to my proposals is more an ideological hostility than a policy one:

Later on in the week I snatched about 40 seconds to take my second bite at securing accurate crime data, based on sex not gender. This time Lib Dems and Labour did speak. Sadly, in the former case, it was to say that it would be a waste of resources; in the latter, to say that other data issues like parentage of sperms donors (what?) were more important. The government position is not satisfactory, but, to be fair to them, it was detailed:

The other issue I continue to work on is leaseholds - there are 5million leaseholders and the government doesn’t seem to grasp how many people are being stung by the current system. I put in an amendment arguing for a sunset clause on leasehold which, to my absolute shock, both Labour and Lib Dems declared support for - Lord Kennedy even got up in the House and said so. So there you go, sectarianism can sometimes be put to one side. Watch this space.

Sometimes you have to laugh. Only in the Lords would an Earl complain that using the word 'feudal' when discussing leasehold is pejorative and an insult. In a short clarification, I declared my interest as a liberated serf - and made a more serious point arguing that this debate on leasehold doesn’t have to hamper a very necessary drive to build more houses:

After a Bishop tried to suggest some freeholders (ie the Church of England) are saint-like builders of community life, I pointed out that leasehold scamming is systemic. It doesn’t matter how nice patrician overlords are, it still undermines ordinary leaseholders’ autonomy and the ability to have control over their own homes.

Later on in the week I hadn’t planned to speak in a discussion on housing until mass ranks of the landed gentry and friends tried to present big freeholders as victims, treated with limitless expropriation by rich(!) leaseholders. Give over. Inevitably they forgot to mention the extortion of limitless service charges and other issues. So, I had a bit of an unstructured but passionate rant.

The last thing to say is that, during a question on safety for UK Jews, I alerted the Lords that Columbia University encampment is coming to UCL (announced as starting on Friday). This is surely grim for Jewish students if it brings the kind of anti-Semitic bile and threats we have seen in US. And yet, calls to shut down free speech on campus - including the arrest of a professor - should not be supported, no matter how disgusted we might be with some of the behaviour. We need freedom of speech to fight anti-Semitism, to challenge these students - and staff - and win the argument. See you next week.

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UPCOMING EVENTS…

Dido Powell’s London Gallery Tours 2024: The Ideal Turns Sour

• When: 11am, Sunday 28 April, Tate Britain

• Tickets: each tour costs £12 or you can book the whole series for £45. You can book by contacting Wendy Earle: wendyearle@talktalk.net

Future Cities Project. Housing: where will we all live?

• When: 7-8:30pm, Tuesday 30 April, via zoom

• Speakers include: Shaun Bailey, Simon Cooke, Helen MacNeil, Calvin Po and Austin Williams (chair)

• Tickets: free and reservable via Eventbrite.

The Academy 2024: Civilisation Under Siege?

• Barbarism and terror abroad seem to have reared their head at the same time that civilisation seems to face fundamental challenges at home. Activists and academics question the very essence of Western civilisation, and politicians seem clueless to respond beyond empty invocations of “extremism”. Can anyone stand up for the legacy of Western civilisation today?

• When: Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 August, Wyboston Lakes Resort

• Tickets: available here.

• Sessions and speakers include: Frank Furedi on From Decolonisation to Islamism: Civilisation under siege?; Tim Black on The Clash of Civilisations Revisited and Jacob Reynolds on Can you rebuild civilisation? Dystopia in fiction.

Battle of Ideas Festival 2024

• When: Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 October, Church House, Great Smith St, Westminster, London, SW1P 3BN

• Tickets: Early–Bird ticket offer available here

  Academy of Ideas is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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Inside the Lords this week, I began by giving a speech on the incestuous paedophile who changed his name to Claire Fox. I was made aware of the case by his daughter and victim - Ceri-Lee Galvin, a very brave young woman who broke her own anonymity to campaign against sex offenders being able to change their gender and identity. Labour MP Sarah Champion has won an amendment blocking sex offenders from changing their name via deed poll - but this didn’t cover individuals who changed their gender.

Ceri-Lee made me aware that her father Claire Fox - real name Clive Bundy - had the potential to disappear from sex-offenders registers and avoid safeguarding checks like DBS after leaving prison, simply by changing his gender and therefore his name. By the way, Ceri-Lee spoke at the Battle of Ideas festival last year on a discussion called GENDER IDEOLOGY AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE, which you should listen to if you have time.

There have been many victims’ stories given during discussion of the Victim and Crime Bill - always given respect and support. But my speech was treated differently. The Labour and Lib Dem benches - usually the first to champion victims’ rights and protecting women and children from sexual predators - told me that my amendment closing this loophole was too difficult, that there weren’t many people who were affected and that it wasn’t a big deal. I was outraged. As I pointed out last week in relation to data collection, it seems bizarre that all these parliamentarians who claim to care about proper reporting and protection to combat violence against women don’t care about knowing who has actually committed crimes.

An ugly example of this playing out in practice was the bizarre reporting of Scarlet Blake, the trans woman who murdered Jorge Martin Carreno and tortured a cat. Across the press, Blake was referred to as a woman, causing confusion and upset when it was revealed that ‘she’ was being sent to a man’s prison. What is much worse is that the police admitted that they had recorded Scarlet Blake as a woman who had committed a crime - this is dangerous for truth-telling in justice. A shout out to BBC Radio 4 Today programme’s Justin Webb, who is perhaps one of the few journalists brave enough to tell it how it is when he described trans women as ‘in other words, males’. Unfortunately, the BBC doesn’t agree with presenters telling the truth, and has upheld a complaint made against him.

Life in the Lords can be odd. Straight after the discussion of gender and crime reporting, in which Lib Dem Baroness Brinton opposed my amendment, I found myself supporting her motion of regret about physician associates (PAs) and anaesthetist associates (AAs). The allegation goes that these PAs and AAs are being used to fill doctor slots, despite not being qualified enough, with patients unaware that they are not seeing proper doctors. We ended up having a really good debate on NHS workforce organisation and what constitutes proper care. It goes to show that agreement can come from unexpected places in the Lords.

Finally - the big news is, of course, the election of George Galloway in Rochdale. When I recorded Inside The Lords on Thursday, we were awaiting news of the by-election and everyone was still obsessed with the ridiculous Lee Anderson comments. There is an inability to talk about Islamism, and the reaction to Anderson’s claims - however stupidly boorish - has revealed the cowardice among our political elite.

It should be possible to oppose prejudice and be able to talk about the very real issue of Islamist intimidation and threat. Indeed, the spotlight on the issue of anti-Semitism within the pro-Gaza movement has been made clearer by the election in Rochdale. We cannot let accusations of Islamophobia silence criticism and scrutiny of Islamism. The cowardice and incompetency of the mainstream political parties left a void for Galloway and others to fill - a pattern that might repeat itself in the General Election if we don’t get serious about openly debating these concerns.

While I may despise Galloway’s views - on Israel, in particular - we need to resist a mainstream moral panic about extremists in Westminster. Sadly, the powers that be will label any challenge extreme. The status quo is not worthy of defence. The cowardly, lacklustre technocrats need to be shaken up, and that won’t always happen in the ways we would choose.

A lot went on inside the Lords this week. It's four years since Brexit day (almost eight since the vote!) and it’s worth remembering how important it was that democracy did prevail, that we did win a victory in getting the vote realised against all the odds. The tools for sovereignty are now well and truly in UK politicians’ hands. It might be true that our politicians have not taken the opportunity to build on the demand for that democratic realignment of politics, but the potential is nevertheless always there now that we are out of the EU.

One example of a failure to use these sovereign powers has to be in relation to controlling our borders, so the week started with the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill which came to the Lords for a second reading on Monday. I was one of the many whose speech was critical of the proposed legislation, but less like my fellow Lords who focused endlessly on international laws and treaties and more because the Bill just misses the bigger picture. The government has decided to use this plan to try to show that it is doing something about immigration, despite everyone knowing that that something is ridiculous. Things could be different - from leaving the ECHR to a thorough shakeup of our asylum process - but the Conservatives have instead become stuck in a row over whether one particular  African country is safe or has a good or bad human-rights record. And anyway, the Lords have promised to gut the Bill through endless amendments, ensuring that there is little hope that anyone will get on one of those flights.

One thing is for sure, the success or failure of that Bill will certainly not be the last word on immigration. In fact, the discussion has moved on to much more than simply the small-boats issue. So often, the public feel migration is out of control because of decisions taken above our heads; that all sorts of lawyery decisions and policies mean voters are being deceived and taken for a ride. Details of how the ‘Christian’ Clapham corrosive attacker was eventually given asylum status, despite being a convicted sex offender, are understandably causing anger. Or, using another example, I asked a question this week about universities pretty much selling visas alongside university places for international students at eye-watering prices. Not only is this unfair on foreign students essentially funding the ludicrous expansions of universities, it shows how unorganised and undemocratic our current immigration system is.

Though very hard to listen to, it was a privilege to hear the harrowing and terrible testimony of people who were involved in gathering evidence of the 7 October pogrom - emergency workers, family of hostages and people who worked with victims. I won’t ever forget it - the room was packed and silent as we listened to women like Ashley Waxman Bakshi, whose cousin Agam Berger is still being held as a hostage.

If the testimony was heartbreaking, the reason for it was even more so - these women were there to make sure that the rape and brutalisation of women during that attack was known and believed. They had toured other governments and politicians, giving their story.

Looking at the forensic focus and attention that was given to Pestminster or MeToo, it is striking to think how little belief these dead girls and their advocates who spoke to us have been given. The day after, I made a speech on Holocaust Memorial Day which I dedicated to the 136 hostages still being held.

Next week will all be about tackling gender ideology. I have amendments on Monday evening relating to women’s only services and accurate sex-based data collection (see here). Friday will be the debate on a proposed new Conversion Therapy Bill - stay tuned and make sure to subscribe to this Substack for all Inside The Lords and Academy of Ideas updates.

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Upcoming Events…

• Living Freedom University Salon - What can we learn from… Hannah Arendt?

  6.00pm, Tuesday 6 February; Oriel College, University of Oxford

  Speaker: Jacob Reynolds

  Open to all and free to attend. Reserve a place here.

• Living Freedom University Salon - Why social media is not the problem

  6:00 pm, Thursday 15 February; Selwyn College, University of Cambridge

  Speaker: Timandra Harkness

  Open to all and free to attend. Reserve a place here.

• Living Freedom University Salon - What can we learn from… Frederick Douglass?

  4:00 pm, Friday 16 February; South College, University of Durham

  Speaker: Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert

  Open to all and free to attend. Reserve a place here.

Full Living Freedom series details available here. Organised by Ideas Matter.

• Birmingham Salon - AI – Separating Man From Machine

  1pm, Saturday 10 February; Map Room, Cherry Reds, 88-92 John Bright Street, B1 1BN

  Speaker: Sandy Starr

  Tickets here.

• Dido Powell’s London Gallery Tour 2024. Tour 1: Ugly Art

  Sunday 11 February at 11am; Tate Modern

  Tickets here.

• East Midlands Salon - Self-Censorship: what daren’t I say?

  7pm, Thursday 29 February; The Brunswick Inn, Station Road, Derby, DE1 2RU

  Tickets here.

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In the spring The Hannah Arendt Study Group will be hosting a two-part discussion on Hannah Arendt’s 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. The discussions will take place via Zoom, as usual. If you want to take part, and you are not already a member, please join the Group on Facebook.

• The Hannah Arendt Study Group: Eichmann in Jerusalem: Session 1

  Tuesday, 20 February 2024, 19:00–20:30

  Introduction: Stefanie Borkum

  Sign up here

• The Hannah Arendt Study Group: Eichmann in Jerusalem: Session 2

  Tuesday, 12 March 2024, 19:00–20:30

  Introduction: TBC 

  Sign up here.

  

  Is civilisation itself under attack? From wars in Ukraine or Israel to a culture war against foundational western values, some commentators suggest that we face not just a political battle over which direction to take, but a fundamental battle over civilisation as such.

  But what is civilisation? How does it emerge? At the origin of the Western tradition, the distinction between civilised and barbarian formed a crucial part of our self-understanding. Yet today, the achievements of Western history are more likely to be regarded as tainted by colonisation than celebrated by elites. Is civilisation itself is seen as a dirty word?

  As ever, The Academy will bring together people from all walks of life who are committed to rethinking some of the basic building blocks of political life. This year, we will look at what civilisation is, whether it is under threat, why it might be worth defending.

  Tickets and more information: https://ideasmatter.org.uk/civilisation-under-siege-the-academy-2024

  Academy of Ideas is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Elsewhere, there is a lot of concern about the controversy of banks cutting people off. While Nigel Farage’s claims have raised some awareness about this, it would be wrong to think that his is the only case. In fact, back in January I raised the problem of banks picking and choosing which ‘values’ their customers have to embrace in order to be allowed access to services:

Indeed, the government knows that this is an issue, we talked about it at length in relation to the Financial Services and Markets Bill:

If you ever needed an example of banks being inappropriately politicised, take the Bank of England who made a series of announcements for pride month about, for example, their stance on ‘birthing people’. (As it happens, I made a mistake in this week’s Inside The Lords and refer to the bank as the Church of England - perhaps that is telling.) It’s utterly ridiculous that this institution, which had no problem with creating money, or maintaining artificially low interest rates leading to inflation, but seems to consider its priority being an adequate trans ally to fit Stonewall’s demands. I mentioned this lack of ambition to grow the economy in the Lords last week:

Then there is the Online Safety Bill, which is ongoing - and while I’m one of the very few peers willing to speak out in favour of free speech, I will continue to do so. Twenty per cent of the Bill is related to harms to children, but the other 80 per cent is all about controlling what adults can and cannot say online. This is a dangerous piece of legislation - encryption is on the line, privacy, free speech and the ability of the public to debate and discuss political ideas. We need a public outcry against this assault on our freedom and agency, because it will never happen in the Lords.

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Here are some clips of speeches I made in relation to the Online Safety Bill from last week:

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While discussing the Levelling Up Bill, we looked at pedestrianised areas and what changes they make to high streets - something that many of my fellow Lords agreed is a tricky issue with pros and cons. But once I raised the question of LTNs - particularly the one in Oxford which has allegedly resulted in the closure of several restaurants and cafes - there was silence in the chamber. When licensing came up, with cafes being able to host customers out on the street, an amendment cropped up attempting to ban people from smoking alongside their coffees. Like the LTNs, once I spoke up in favour of smoking, I was met with silence.

We recorded Inside The Lords this week following an in-depth meeting at the Academy of Ideas on what issues we’ll cover in this year’s festival - including how to handle the question of immigration. If only the discussion in the Lords was so nuanced. During a debate on the Illegal Migration Bill, we talked about whether international treaties were being breached by the government’s plans on stopping small boats. When I raised the question of whether international law was being used to stymy democratic lawmaking by the government, it didn’t go down well. But I also wanted to point out the hypocrisy in this objection on treaties - the Online Safety Bill breaches a variety of treaties on freedom of conscience, privacy and even free speech. None of the members of the House of Lords ever cites these when we’re discussing the issues of that Bill.

Speaking of the Online Safety Bill, we had a rather unfortunate event in the chamber. While discussing some of the issues related to pornographic content available to children, some of my fellow Lords went into rather graphic detail. What we hadn’t realised is that a group of 10-year-olds had been visiting, and listening, in the viewing balcony above. After they were hurriedly ushered out, another round of discussion ensued with even more detailed horrors (this time discussing avatars abusing each other) upon which we found out an even younger group of kids had been having their turn visiting the chamber. Oops - but on a serious note, the most depressing part of the day’s discussion was that Lords seemed to be unable to view AI and virtual innovation as anything other than a threat and a danger, rather than thinking about what we might do to harness it for good.

Some good news. After we filmed Inside The Lords this week, my phone pinged and I found out that the EHRC had suspended its investigation into Baroness Falkner - something I mentioned in one of my speeches this week. For the crime of clarifying the law on the basis of facts about sex and gender, Falkner received an onslaught of accusations of bullying and harassment. I was involved in a letter of support, signed by 54 cross-party peers, claiming that Falkner was being attacked wrongfully, and that the ability to speak freely about biological reality was being threatened. It seems it worked. So perhaps that is proof that there is space for some pushback on the toxicity of the trans debate, even in the House of Lords.

Outside the Lords, as I said, we’re full steam ahead for the Battle of Ideas festival. If you haven’t booked your tickets yet, do so soon to take advantage of our Super Earlybird rates. But we’d also like to press you to subscribe to our Substack if you’re reading this as a stranger to us - and get your friends to do the same. We need you in the fight for freedom, in order to reshape the challenges we face to change politics for good.

JOIN THE BATTLE OF IDEAS

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I will be speaking at this event organised by the Free Speech Union on the 7 June, get your tickets here.

Some updates on my interventions during the Online Safety Bill this week…

My defence of press freedom against a Lib Dem attempt at bringing in state licensing through the back door. But also, descriptions from Lords of comments sections in newspapers betrayed a contemptuous view of the public as mainly hate-fuelled bigots. My counter response was to use an example of Stop Funding Hate, who arguably whipped up hate against gender-critical female athletes while organising a censorious press boycott.

One worry about the Online Safety Bill beyond free speech is the danger it poses to innovation in technology. The Bill only sees the worst on - for example - AI / VR / Metaverse, and can sound as though we should treat all online users as though they are dangerous deviants. So I argued for some balance and proportionality, please.

In the Online Safety Bill, I raised the issue of Mizzy - is Tik Tok the problem, or a failure of police and adults intervening? But also, we need to think about the danger of encouraging platforms to call police for what others label hate speech/harassment (but is often more complicated). For example, Kishwer Falkner, head of EHRC, has been accused of harassment - but these are more likely malicious and vexatious accusations due to her clarification of Equality Law, making clear it refers to biological not any self-described identity.

Agreeing with those calling for more transparency in the online world. If Big Tech have a policy of de-boosting, removal etc, we want to know how and why it happens (ie - set it out clearly, with no gobbledegook).

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