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New Statesman
a day ago
- Politics
- New Statesman
The public doesn't like Brexit. Has anyone told the media?
Illustration by Michael Villegas / Ikon Images Such were the headlines that you'd imagine the EU reset to be the Suez Crisis, Munich Conference and loss of the Thirteen Colonies all rolled into one. 'STARMER'S SURRENDER' howled the Mail in all caps, like a furious text from your dad. 'DONE UP LIKE A KIPPER', agreed the Sun, which knows a good pun about fishing regulations when it sees it. The Telegraph instead used a picture of Starmer greeting Ursula von der Leyen to justify its more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger effort, 'Kiss goodbye to Brexit'. I'm not going to quote the Express. I just don't have the word count. Not everyone was quite so hysterical. The Guardian led with Starmer's claim that the deal 'puts Britain back on the world stage', and left suggestions of surrender from little-known opposition leader Kemi Badenoch to the subheading. The FT even flirted with positivity. But browsing the newsstands that morning, you could be forgiven for thinking that the only person who backed the deal – which would, among other things, make holidaying in Europe a whole lot less annoying – was Keir Starmer. You'd get the same impression from the BBC. One surprising group who might disagree with this rather downbeat assessment were the actual British electorate. According to YouGov, reported a visibly baffled Times, there was backing for the deal, including overwhelming support for the youth mobility scheme. ity scheme that everyone had confidently predicted would be its most controversial element. Another YouGov poll, just days earlier, had found that 66% of the public support, and just 14% oppose, a closer relationship with Europe so long as it didn't involve re-joining the EU, single market or customs union – pretty close to overwhelming support. Over half (53%) were in favour of undoing Brexit altogether. Remember when newspapers cared about the will of the people? How times change. The traditional explanation for why newspapers are so out of touch with their readers was that the press don't merely reflect public opinion but attempt to shape it. Owners and editors have, in every sense, different interests to the general public: it's not as if the range of press opinion in the 20th century reflected the range of public opinion either. There's also the problem that reliance on advertising – an industry inevitably keener on some bits of the public than on others – has pushed papers in certain directions, too. But there's another thing which has kicked in these last few years, which I'm not sure everyone has internalised: the general public and newspaper readers are not the same thing. They never perfectly aligned, of course; but now the group that reads newspapers is a fraction of the public as a whole. How small a fraction is surprisingly hard to pin down. Claimed national newspaper circulation slid by a third, from around 11 million copies a day in the early 1990s to around 7 million by 2020. Exactly what's happened since is hard to know, as a bunch of the main papers have since stopped reporting the figures – but sales of those which still do so have fallen by half. In five years. We can probably assume that those which keep the numbers to themselves don't do so because sales are surging. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe However many people are still buying papers, something we know about them is that they are not a representative slice of the country as a whole. According to a 2024 Ofcom report, just 10% of 16-24 year olds today get their news from newspapers (rising to 24% including online). Even among the 35-44 group, a distinctively generous definition of young, those numbers were just 19% and 32% respectively. Once you hit retirement age, though, things look much rosier for the subscriptions department. Among 65-74 year olds, it's 33% (45% including online); among the over 75s, it's 47% (53%). It's not a big leap to assume that the issues explored and positions taken by newspapers are likely to reflect this ageing readership. This is not to say younger people are not engaged with the news: but they get theirs from relatively new online or social media, sources which are by definition more fragmented. It's harder to tell what they're reading, what they're interested in or what they think. But the agenda of politics, the sense of what the nation cares about, still has to emerge from somewhere – and in the absence of an alternative, it's still set by the newspapers. Broadcast producers scan the front pages every morning. Ministerial teams use them to determine which stories they need a line on. Old fashioned print media is in decline everywhere but in the mind of the nation's political class. The result is that our leaders are getting a very warped sense of what the average voter thinks, reads and cares about. This may, if you squint, explain rather a lot. Not just why ministers are still being exhorted to defend a Brexit the nation no longer supports, but why benefits for older people are treated differently to ones for those of working age or children. Every day, MPs are told that these are the real issues facing the newspaper readers of Britain. The problem is that is not the same thing as 'the voters'. [See more: Robert Jenrick is embarrassing himself] Related
New Statesman
6 days ago
- Politics
- New Statesman
Lucy Connolly is not a political prisoner
Illustration by Bea Crespo / Ikon Images The more I read about Lucy Connolly's 31-month sentence for inciting racial hatred, the less I think it is a matter of freedom of speech at all. Ever since Connolly, then 41, was charged and received a lengthy prison sentence for posting a vile message on X in the hours after three young girls were murdered in Southport last July, the case has divided opinion. On the right, Connolly's imprisonment is taken as yet more evidence of a two-tier policing and justice system that disproportionately punishes white British people more harshly than others. Those on the left, meanwhile, say those supporting Connolly really want the 'right to be racist'. Neither are correct. Since losing an appeal to reduce her sentence on 20 May, the row has intensified (with Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick all demanding her release) and gone global. Donald Trump's White House is 'monitoring this matter', as it 'remains concerned about infringements on freedom of expression'. Yet, the case says far more about our criminal justice system than it does about our ability to speak freely. That one Labour MP, Mary Glindon, has publicly voiced her concerns is perhaps an indication that the case is not a culture wars issue but rather one of fairness, humanity and compassion. 'In my opinion, Lucy doesn't pose a threat to the public,' Glindon told the Telegraph – whose columnist Allison Pearson has consistently raised Connolly's case. 'She seems to be paying a heavy price for what she did.' That more from Labour's ranks have not spoken out is perhaps down to the official parliamentary call for Connolly's release coming from former Reform MP Rupert Lowe, rather than genuine belief she should remain in prison. In July 2024 Connolly vented her outrage on social media after three young girls were murdered at a dance class in Southport. Rumours had circulated that the perpetrator was an illegal immigrant, who had arrived by boat, and was most likely motivated by Islamism. 'Mass deportation now,' Connolly wrote. 'Set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care.' 'If that makes me racist, so be it,' she added. Make no mistake, these comments were criminal. As such, it is unsurprising that Connolly was arrested and charged under Section 19 of the Public Order Act 1986 for publishing material intending to stir up racial hatred. I am a staunch advocate of freedom of speech. Moreover, there are genuine threats to this freedom in Britain right now – in our universities, the arts, publishing and elsewhere. But freedom of speech does not, and legally in the UK never has, allowed for calling for harm to be done to others. This was not merely 'offensive'; it called for people to be attacked. As Glindon said, the post was 'vile in content'. Connolly herself appeared to recognise this. She apologised and deleted the post within four hours, during which it had been viewed 310,000 times. The finer details are contested. The Crown Prosecution Service said at the time of sentencing that, 'The prosecution case included evidence which showed that racist tweets were sent out from Mrs Connolly's X account both in the weeks and months before the Southport attacks – as well as in the days after.' Connolly has argued that she was enraged by the murder, having lost a child herself when he was just 19 months old. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Arguments, like those made by the former prime minister Boris Johnson, that British citizens are now lying 'awake in the small hours waiting for the police to knock on your door – just because you were so foolish as to say something a bit off colour online', are absurd. His invoking of the Gestapo, KGB, and the Stasi are beyond ridicule. He should know better than this. It was not 'spies and informers' who told 'the authorities' what Connolly had said – she posted it voluntarily to thousands of people. There is immense danger, too, in the suggestion that Connolly is some kind of 'political prisoner'. That those on the right, traditionally defenders of law and order and the independence of our judiciary, should invoke this argument, is worrying. It takes us back to where this whole story began: the spreading of misinformation that fuels civil unrest. There is no evidence that I can see that the government has personally intervened in the sentencing of Connolly – or anyone else during or after last summer's riots for that matter. But it is justified to ask whether something is going wrong with sentencing in our criminal justice system. On the one hand, there are certainly others charged last summer with incitement on social media, who received similar sentences to Connolly: 26 year-old Tyler Kay was sentenced to 38 months in prison for posting messages that called for mass deportation and for people to set fire to hotels housing asylum seekers; Jordan Parlour, 28, was jailed for 20 months after calling for an attack on a hotel in Leeds known to house asylum seekers. The comparisons being drawn with completely different crimes – most notably sexual offences – which have received lenient sentences, are not relevant. While it may be the case that the justice system is too lenient on many sex offenders, it does not follow that Connolly is therefore a free speech martyr, just that our sentencing of certain crimes is flawed. On the other hand, there are other (more relevant) examples which can and do lead one to question whether Connolly's treatment has been overly harsh. Philip Prescot received a lesser sentence – 28 months – for being involved in rioting outside a Southport mosque and throwing missiles at the police. Most notable, perhaps, is the former Labour councillor Ricky Jones, who was charged in the aftermath of the riots with encouraging violent disorder after being filmed, according to the CPS, of encouraging 'others to act violently towards far-right protestors'. Jones described other protestors as 'disgusting Nazi fascists', adding, 'We need to cut their throats and get rid of them.' While initially remanded in custody, Jones was later released on bail, and he is yet to stand trial. He has accepted he spoke the words, but denied knowing the offence of violent disorder would be committed. Compare this treatment to Connolly, who pleaded guilty, but was refused bail, and has now been imprisoned for seven months (she went to jail in October 2024). Her requests to be released on temporary licence have been turned down, despite it being highly unlikely she poses a risk to anyone. It is irresponsible to lurch to the suggestion, as some commentators have, that the difference in treatment can be explained by race. Connolly is white; Jones is Asian, while the 'throats' to be cut were those of white men. From interviews conducted with Lucy Connolly, it seems that prior to the summer of 2024 she had a normal life. She has a 12-year-old daughter who now longs to have her mum back home. She has no prior police record, and has suffered the loss of a child, resulting in chronic anxiety. On a personal level, I do feel some sympathy for her. I cannot imagine anything worse than losing a child, nor being away from the ones I have for such a long time. What Connolly wrote amounted to a crime. She is no 'hostage of the British state'. But sentencing is not just about punishment. Judges also consider what would be served by sending someone to prison – both personally, and for society more generally. It seems to me that Lucy Connolly has done her time. There is no merit to keeping her away from her family any longer. For those who have no sympathy with her, bear this in mind: the longer she remains imprisoned, the more her case will be used by those who wish to sow division and hatred in our country. [See more: Nigel Farage's political personality disorder] Related
New Statesman
7 days ago
- Politics
- New Statesman
How the weather changed on the 'cruel' two-child benefit cap
Illustration by Michael Villegas / Ikon Images Labour is in the middle of a slow-motion U-turn on the two-child benefit cap. Our political editor, Andrew Marr, revealed on last week's episode of the New Statesman podcast that it was Keir Starmer's 'priority' to reverse the George Osborne-era cut to benefits for third-born children, and there have been similar reports over the bank holiday weekend. The government's child poverty taskforce, which was supposed to report in the spring – ahead of the Spending Review and Spring Statement – has been postponed until autumn, supposedly to give the Treasury time to work out how to fund the reversal of the policy. Labour promised in its manifesto to reduce child poverty in this parliament. It had little chance of achieving this with the two-child limit still in place – it is responsible for hundreds of thousands of children living in poverty. Starmer's decision not to lift the cap ahead of the 2024 election was a blow to many within the Labour Party, civil society, and families claiming benefits. The issue emerged again once the party entered government, when Labour MPs voting against the cap had the whip removed. Pressure built yet again in May, when the former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown guest edited a special issue of the New Statesman on Britain's 'child poverty epidemic', setting out the bleak picture of life for nearly five million children in the UK today, and funding ideas to help them. In his strongest intervention yet, in a podcast and YouTube interview accompanying this issue, Brown told the New Statesman politics podcast that the two-child cap is 'cruel', turns third siblings into 'second-class citizens', and said it has 'got to change' – remarks picked up in the press and in the House of Commons. Much has been reported about the influence of Tony Blair and his policy institute on the current Labour administration, but less has been said of Gordon Brown's role. He is close to frontbenchers, such as the employment minister Alison McGovern, and was tasked with a commission on rebuilding Britain's economy when Labour was in opposition – when he was said to have a 'direct line' into Starmer's office. There are reports, for example, that the child poverty taskforce will recommend the return of Sure Start children's centres: another suggestion Brown made in his New Statesman podcast interview. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Reluctant to be seen as a backseat driver, Brown had avoided politically inconvenient interventions since Labour took power – most notably on the party's cut to winter fuel allowance, which he introduced as chancellor. As well as on the two-child cap, he has also now spoken out on that subject, suggesting there is 'a case for' excluding top-rate taxpayers from the once-universal payments. The question now is whether Chancellor Rachel Reeves adopts some of his revenue-raising ideas, including a gambling tax, commercial bank levy, and changes to Gift Aid, to help tackle child poverty. Brown told the New Statesman in the same interview that these funding proposals would be possible without 'breaking the government's tax commitments' or 'breaking the fiscal rules, which, of course, Rachel Reeves is obviously right to be concerned about'. [See more: Letter from Wigan] Related
New Statesman
21-05-2025
- General
- New Statesman
Britain is failing children in care
Illustration by Gary Waters / Ikon Images There is no denying that, for so many looked-after children, growing up in care can be brutal and traumatic. I should know. I was looked after for most of my childhood, shunted between a range of foster homes in south-east London, as well as doing a stint in a residential care home with pre-teen boys of a similar age. In my case, it was necessary. But what concerns me is children being placed into care when it's avoidable – when there's a better alternative. The number of looked-after children in England is high – more than 80,000. And although statistics from the Department for Education show that only a small proportion of children in care are there due to being in 'low income' homes, that doesn't disprove that poverty is a significant factor for children entering the system. The UK's most senior family court judge, Andrew McFarlane, cites poverty as a key reason. It's also the case that poverty is often the trigger behind some of the other reasons children are placed into care – issues such as neglect and abuse. It demands concern that poverty can play such a vicious role in upending the life of a vulnerable child. Shouldn't the levers of the state be robust enough to prevent a child from being ripped apart from loved family members? Just as concerning are the distances some of them are being sent to live, away from their homes and that which they hold dear. According to research from Become, a charity for care leavers, one in five children in care in England is placed more than 20 miles from their family, friends, school and wider community. When the care system works, it can save the life of a child and steer them on to a positive path. I had the fortune of being supported by some incredible foster carers, care-home workers and social workers, all of whom played a critical role in my development and self-esteem. The fact remains, however, that many children in care are being let down. At its worst, time spent in care can compound trauma, deepen a child's sense of abandonment and diminish their life chances. Placing a child into the care system should only ever be a last resort. A greater emphasis should be placed on preventative measures, keeping families together wherever it's safe and possible to do so. A few years ago, I presented a BBC3 documentary, Split Up in Care, about the frequency of siblings being separated in the care system; it was rooted in my experience of sibling estrangement. I explored how some local authorities were pioneering preventative strategies. During the pandemic, Derby City Council introduced a rapid-response team to support vulnerable families and prevent more children from entering the system. In 15 months, they helped 60 families to stay together and prevented 50 sibling groups from being split up. While such measures form part of the solution, we must also recognise the challenge that leaving care presents for thousands of young people. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Despite a string of school suspensions and one exclusion, I studied history at the University of Cambridge. It was something my local authority celebrated: a care-experienced student had been accepted into Oxbridge. To them, it was a case of social care having 'worked well'. Yet, despite me being on the receiving end of platitudes and adulation, the reality of leaving care was tumultuous. My foster family let me go when I was 18. As well as studying for my A-levels, I had to prepare for independent living and moving into a council flat. Alongside sorting out student bursaries and loans, I also had to bid for council properties and budget for home furnishings. I should have been able to focus solely on my education, but that 'luxury' was never afforded to me. Perhaps most challenging was that I wouldn't receive funding for both student accommodation and a London council flat. I could either stay in London and get a council flat, or go to Cambridge and lose my bidding priority for the flat. This was problematic because my Cambridge college didn't offer year-round accommodation. Only after I contacted my local MP did I receive the support to both attend my university of choice and have a home. Why should any teenager have to be so resilient? So overwhelming were the pressures of leaving care that I nearly declined my Cambridge offer. How many young people, on the cusp of leaving care, are giving up on their ambitions and potential because of the immediacy of survival? University and other forms of higher education are not being pursued by many leaving care. I'd suggest this is not due to a lack of interest or ability, but the suffocating demands care leavers face when it comes to independence. The chance to dream is a privilege that many leaving care aren't given. This stunted potential affects society deeply, including care-experienced people forming large proportions of the homeless, young offending and adult offending populations. In 2022, the Welsh government piloted a basic income scheme for those leaving care. While its success is yet to be determined, one must appreciate the effort made to ease the pressure on those confronting the brutality of adulthood and independence. So many in care have known poverty – we must offer them a route out of it. The case for better support for those leaving care is beyond clear. Hopefully, our authorities are prudent enough to ensure that the children's care system ends up doing what it says on the tin: caring. Ashley John-Baptiste is the author of 'Looked After: A Childhood in Care' (Hodder) [See also: The brain behind Labour's EU deal] Related
New Statesman
14-05-2025
- General
- New Statesman
Thought experiment 11: The Harmless Torturer
Illustration by Marie Montocchio / Ikon Images 'Do not walk on the grass,' requests the sign on an exquisite landscaped garden. If everyone ignored this sign, the garden would be ruined. But suppose, under the cover of darkness, I strolled across it. Nobody would ever know, and I would make no perceptible difference to the lawn. So what harm would I cause? The brilliant and eccentric Oxford ethicist Derek Parfit had as fertile an imagination for thought experiments as any philosopher of the past century. 'Derek specialised in discovering deep puzzles in philosophy – he produced problems that remain very difficult to resolve,' says the philosopher Jeff McMahan. One of those problems is the 'Harmless Torturer', from his 1984 masterpiece Reasons and Persons. It addresses the moral conundrum of actions with imperceptible effects. Imagine a torturer and a victim. The torturer turns a dial from one to 1,000 on the pain-o-meter, thus causing the victim immediate and agonising pain. Obviously wrong. Now imagine a variation. A thousand torturers have a thousand victims. At the start of each day, each of the victims is already feeling mild pain. Each of the thousand torturers turns a switch a thousand times, at ten-second intervals, on some instrument. Each turn of a torturer's switch affects that torturer's particular victim's pain in a way that is imperceptible. But, after each torturer has, in just under three hours, turned his switch a thousand times, he has inflicted severe pain on his victim. Let's call these 1,000 sadists 'Gradual Torturers'. Obviously, they have acted reprehensibly. But why? Suppose they're all arrested. At trial, the prosecuting barrister could put the case that each time the Gradual Torturers turned the dial they harmed their victims, because suffering can be made imperceptibly worse. The judge may be sceptical and think: how can pain be worse if the person in pain isn't aware that it's worse? The barrister might try another tack. Even though each turn of the dial wasn't bad, 1,000 turns of the dial was very bad indeed, because after 1,000 turns each victim certainly felt the change. That's why the behaviour of the Gradual Torturers is appalling. He inserts 'Harmless Torturers' who differ from the Gradual Torturers, as they don't each have one victim: Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Each of the thousand torturers presses a button, thereby turning the switch once on each of the thousand instruments. The victims suffer the same severe pain. But none of the torturers makes any victim's pain perceptibly worse. Don't we want to say that the Harmless Torturers have behaved as appallingly as the Gradual Torturers? The result has been identical: 1,000 victims ended up with the same unbearable degree of pain. But the prosecuting barrister can no longer argue that each torturer has made the life of one victim perceptibly worse. No Harmless Torturer has made any perceptible difference to any one victim. The issue of their actions must be explained in another way. As Parfit puts it: 'If we cannot appeal to the effects of what each torturer does, we must appeal to what the torturers together do.' An action is wrong, in other words, if it's part of a set of actions that together are wrong. 'Parfit's solution is not uncontentious,' says McMahan. Is the torturer who twists the dial from zero to 1,000 – thus causing excruciating pain to one victim – really not doing anything worse than the torturer who turns it from zero to one, with an undetectable impact, on 1,000 victims? Part of the problem is whether harms and benefits should be considered 'aggregative'. Do 1,000 mild headaches equate to one life-threatening illness? Do harms just add up? And can harms be balanced, on one side of a moral equation, with benefits on the other? Many philosophers have addressed the aggregative problem. In another example (not Parfit's), an engineer, whose job it is to transmit the World Cup to billions of football supporters, falls under the transmitter, experiencing regular, electric shocks. We could save him from the pain by cutting wires, causing a break in the TV broadcast for half an hour. Here, one man's suffering seems to outweigh the viewing pleasure of billions. Fun intellectual puzzles, but so what? Well, take an individual's contribution to climate change. It might be convenient for me to leave a light on, and the effect on climate change of my decision will be negligible. But is leaving lights on wrong? Or consider a vegetarian's approach to meat. Whether or not an individual chooses to eat meat won't lead to the maltreatment or killing of one less animal. So, although the Parfit thought experiments are wacky, says McMahan, 'they are ubiquitous in various forms in real life'. [See also: Thought experiment 10: The Trolley Problem] Related
