You probably won’t agree with all of Mr Embery’s policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal

THE left really ought to love the traditional family unit. After all, it represents what one might call ‘socialism in action’.

It is within the tabernacle of the family that humans first learn the virtues of solidarity, mutual obligation, loyalty, respect, trust, compassion and sacrifice – qualities that many on the left would claim define their politics.

It is there, too, that the common good prevails over naked self-interest. Ancient trade union slogans such as ‘An injury to one is an injury to all’ and ‘United we stand, divided we fall’ could easily have been composed with the family in mind, for they go to the heart of the collective spirit and what it means to be part of something greater than oneself.

No family unit could thrive if ‘dog eat dog’ and ‘survival of the fittest’ were instead the guiding principles.

The left once understood all this. There was never a conflict between socialism and the family. The early Labour tradition was, in fact, rooted in respect for the family structure.

But then along came the 1960s and the battalions of university-educated cultural revolutionaries with their hatred of existing social norms and anything that smacked of tradition or order.

Suddenly, the nuclear family became a ‘right-wing’ concept. It was here that men were tyrants, and women were oppressed, and children were readied to become the next generation of wage slaves serving the capitalist beast. It was also here that conservative-minded people did tedious and petit bourgeois suburban things like washing their cars and tending their gardens.

These attitudes began to take hold across the left. And as those young graduate rebels of the 1960s came of age, their ideas started to dominate within the upper echelons of our institutions and across the liberal media.

They still hold sway today. And even though our society has, in the past half century, experienced the devastating social effects that go with industrial-scale family breakdown, few who pushed the anti-family agenda appear willing to rethink their position.

In fact, the entire subject of family is largely taboo on the left. As far as anyone is willing to enter into a debate about it, it is usually to trot out cliches about how the nuclear family is ‘obsolete’, and modern families come in ‘all shapes and sizes’, and it is ‘bigoted’ to show preference for a particular model, and single-parent families should not be ‘stigmatised’.

Every now and then, a hardy soul will break ranks. David Lammy, for example, before he went a bit dotty over Brexit, campaigned passionately and articulately in favour of fathers playing a more central role in their children’s lives, lamenting the often-devastating impact on families (and especially on young black boys) when male role models were absent from the family home.

The rest of the left cut Lammy some slack on that occasion – principally, I suspect, because of his own backstory and the unique insight it gave him. But usually the left’s foot soldiers will try to stop any debate on the topic in its tracks by painting their opponents’ views as beyond the parameters of civilised debate.

Thus, when Reform launched its recent policy prioritising married couples with children in the allocation of social housing, many on the left were aghast. Not just because they disagreed with the finer details of the policy – I don’t agree with every aspect of it myself – but in many cases because Reform had dared to devise a policy around the concept of the traditional family at all.

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Paul Embery is one of the most interesting, insightful and original voices to have emerged in British journalism for some time — Douglas Murray

AFTER the past few weeks, observers could be forgiven for assuming Britain had adopted a system of government by TikTok. For it seemed that every public utterance by our new prime minister – from announcements on policy to his favourite Greggs snack – was communicated by short-form video.

That was until this week. Because, with the parliamentary summer recess now over, normal business has resumed, and Andy Burnham finally found himself in the bear pit of the House of Commons and exposed to the scrutiny of his fellow MPs.

A major statement from the dispatch box on Tuesday was followed by his first prime minister’s questions the following day.

Burnham didn’t exactly set the world alight with his performances, and his delivery was at times Starmer-esque in its clunkiness. But he gave little hint of feeling out of place or overawed. Though that should hardly surprise us. After all, for all his folksy northern charm and anti-SW1 rhetoric, Burnham is every inch the classic Westminster politician, having worked in the orbit of parliament and policymaking since he was 24. And, as a former cabinet minister, statements and questions in the House are meat and drink to him.

Much of what Burnham said in parliament – with the exception of the standard Brexit-bashing – was music to the ears of an old-school socialist like me. He was certainly correct to identify several decades of neoliberalism as a major cause of Britain’s decline. It was this ideology, characterised by a belief in the infallibility of the market and hostility to state intervention, which ultimately led to power and wealth being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands in our country, as well as widespread deindustrialisation, the gutting of local government, a chronic shortage of affordable housing and, as national parliaments became increasingly subservient to global corporations, the slow erosion of our democracy.

Burnham was right, too, to recognise that the sell-off of public utilities – such as rail, water and energy – has proved disastrous. Surely only the most rabid free market ideologue could fail to see it.

But while he may have accurately diagnosed many of the problems, the PM offered precious little in the way of solutions. There were the usual references to his achievements in Manchester, talk of decentralising power from Whitehall, getting young people into work, buses (of course), and liberal deployment of his favourite buzzwords, ‘hope’ and ‘positivity’.

But with the exception of a pledge to follow the standard EU-Nato line on Ukraine, the big geopolitical and macroeconomic narrative was largely missing – meaning that on some of the most vital issues confronting our country, scarcely anyone knows where Burnham stands. Indeed, he may not even know it himself.

And that gaping void will need to be filled swiftly. For no prime minister can, particularly during such tumultuous times, run a country without an overarching strategic plan.

Burnham, it seems, remains locked in the mindset of a city mayor. Many of his policy announcements and media appearances so far have focused on issues – such as cracking down on fake discounts and building homes near railway stations – which, while not unimportant, are highly parochial and usually the sort of stuff that gets left to junior ministers.

He needs to remember that he is now prime minister and first lord of the Treasury, and that means confronting head-on the major touchstone issues that have the most profound effect on voters’ lives and will determine exactly what sort of country we will be a decade from now.

His appearances in the Commons this week represented the perfect opportunity to set out his stall. But after sitting through around four hours of it, I cannot say I am any of the wiser as to what his plan for the future might be. Does he even have one? Where is the crucial big-picture thinking?

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You probably won’t agree with all of Mr Embery’s policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal

SO it’s official. The least-friendly place in the whole of England is the London borough of Barking and Dagenham. This district, located in the borderlands of the metropolis and Essex, came bottom of the pile in a major new study looking into social division and disconnection across 296 local authority areas.

The study was published by the Independent Commission on Community and Cohesion – which is headed up by former MPs Sajid Javid and Jon Cruddas – and drew upon government data evaluating residents’ perceptions of loneliness, trust, belonging and pride in the place they call home.

On most measures, Barking and Dagenham scored lower than the national average. Startlingly, only one in five respondents in the borough felt that many of their neighbours could be trusted.

I find it difficult to express how dejected this sorry picture makes me feel. I grew up in Barking and Dagenham and lived there for 35 years. It was never a fashionable or affluent place. And it certainly wasn’t without its share of social problems. But the streets were, back then, filled with social solidarity and neighbourliness.

Traditional working-class in every sense, the borough was centred around a sprawling council estate – once the largest municipal housing project in the world – which, when it was constructed a century ago, attracted thousands of families escaping the slum clearances in the East End. Family members quickly found work in new and thriving local industries, such as the iconic Ford plant down at Dagenham Dock.

As a boy, I knew virtually everyone who lived on my stretch of the street. Residents shared common identities, backgrounds and interests. The area was largely a monoculture – but no less fulfilling for that.

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In fact, if a study on community cohesion had been carried out back then, I would wager that Barking and Dagenham would have found itself near the top of the list rather than at the bottom.

But in the first decade of this century, the borough underwent seismic social convulsions. This was the period when the new global market was beginning to take hold and working-class communities across Britain suddenly found themselves subjected to rapid and far-reaching economic and cultural change, such as in the way of grinding deindustrialisation and demographic upheaval.

Barking and Dagenham felt the pain more acutely than most areas. Between 2001–11, the foreign-born population rose by 205 per cent – the biggest percentage increase across London for that period. In those years, the borough also recorded the highest London-wide percentage rise, at 169 per cent, in the foreign-born share of all residents.

In 2001, 81% of all residents in the borough identified as ‘White British’. By 2011, they had become a minority at 49% – the largest decrease for any local authority in England and Wales. In 2021, the figure stood at 31%.

As this phenomenon was taking hold, the area’s well-established blue-collar industries were withering away, denying a new generation of workers secure and rewarding employment and forcing them into insecure jobs in the gig economy and suchlike.

Against this tumultuous background, the community, perhaps unsurprisingly, began to fracture. The new arrivals were, for the most part, decent, law-abiding folk who were simply trying to make better lives for themselves, but the huge influx of people from a myriad of different cultures had the inevitable effect of weakening cohesion and common bonds. Neighbours interacted less and less, local institutions were hollowed out, and many felt the place was no longer their home.

Many local citizens had voted Labour all their lives and saw it as their party. But they also knew that it was the Labour government which, during these years, was driving through these unwelcome changes. So, in what they saw as a desperate last stand, thousands of residents voted for the far-right British National Party in the 2006 council elections, giving that party its best-ever result in a local government poll.

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But the writing was already on the wall for Barking and Dagenham. A mass exodus took place in the borough in the decade to 2011, as around 40,000 residents upped sticks and departed. It was less ‘white flight’ than it was a flight to familiarity. The place in which they and their families had once been deeply rooted had changed fundamentally. For many, it was now less a home and more an international airport terminal.

So, sad though I was to read that Barking and Dagenham was now the least-friendly place in England, I wasn’t in the least bit surprised. The findings of the study represent, for the borough, the inevitable endpoint of a profound economic and cultural shift that brought little benefit to local citizens but was nonetheless foisted on them by their tin-eared political masters.

There is always a temptation to speak of the past, and especially of one’s younger years, as ‘the good old days’ and to see the present as something morally and spiritually inferior. But the people of Barking and Dagenham who found themselves in the eye of this social storm would be perfectly justified in viewing things this way.

What happened in the borough was a lesson in how wide social fissures are liable to break out when intense change is visited on a community and local residents are ignored. Globalisation, multiculturalism, permissive migration policies: all those things that the arrogant progressive elites told working-class people would be good for them, heralding a new age of economic and cultural enrichment, turned out instead to have set in train a deepening fragmentation and atomisation in our society.

Of course, no place can stay the same for ever. Change happens. But how that change is managed – in particular the pace and scale at which it is allowed to occur – can be the determining factor in whether a community remains cohesive or breaks apart.

In Barking and Dagenham, the change was overwhelming. And local people paid – and continue to pay – the heaviest price.

A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

An edited version of the above piece first appeared on the GB News website.

Paul Embery is one of the most interesting, insightful and original voices to have emerged in British journalism for some time — Douglas Murray

ONE of my favourite memories from my years as a trade union activist is the time I stood alongside thousands of my fellow Fire Brigades Union members at a rally, called ahead of a national strike ballot, inside London’s Trafalgar Square.

The atmosphere was electric as, under the watchful eye of Lord Nelson, heavyweight speakers made one tubthumping speech after another.

The square has, of course, long been known for this sort of thing. For almost two centuries, it has served as a crucible of our democratic and civic traditions, playing host to political demonstrations and cultural festivals, and symbolising our historical commitment as a nation to freedom, liberty, open debate and pluralism.

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You probably won’t agree with all of Mr Embery’s policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal

JASON Arday’s death is tragic. Nobody with any semblance of compassion could think otherwise.

But I do wish that we could be spared the complaints from various sanctimonious commentators that Arday was merely an ‘obscure’ academic who became the victim of a racist witch-hunt.

The probing and questioning and exposure of Arday were entirely legitimate. There is compelling evidence that he was guilty of plagiarism and had made a series of fantastical claims about his life and career. Even if he were a little-known academic at some low-ranking university, those facts alone would merit coverage and commentary.

But Arday somehow, and in spite of what some assert was the mediocre standard of his scholarly work, ended up being appointed as a professor at one of the world’s most august seats of learning – the University of Cambridge – where his students, who had doubtless worked extremely hard to get there, were paying large fees for the privilege of being taught by him. In that context, it would be perverse for the media to have not afforded the story any significance.

And far from being obscure, Arday had happily engaged with the media – often speaking about his fabricated backstory – over many years. He appeared on several TV shows – including as a panellist on the BBC’s Question Time – and guest edited Radio 4’s flagship Today programme. He even carried the Olympic torch.

Moreover, he had secured a major publishing deal for his autobiography, which was set to be released in Britain and the US just as the recent scandal broke. By no measure was this man ‘obscure’; he plainly had no wish to be obscure.

When a fellow academic – Dr David Harris, professor emeritus at Plymouth Marjon University – began to question his credentials, Arday accused him of harassment and set the police on him. When Jack Grove from Times Higher Education magazine started investigating, he was subjected to a police inquiry and received a threatening letter from the leading libel solicitors Carter Ruck. Groves’s story was duly spiked.

All of which goes to show that Arday was evidently not averse to hounding others when he felt like it.

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But let us be blunt: this scandal is not just about Arday’s fabulism. It is also about the increasingly controversial doctrine of ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ (DEI); the obsession of our political, corporate and educational institutions with pushing that doctrine; and how it might have led to someone with Arday’s subpar credentials being appointed in the first place.

Even for those of us on the political left, it should be clear that DEI has become a racket. What may have begun as a well-meaning crusade to overcome mindless prejudice and discrimination has patently mutated into a malignant social tumour, infecting every area of our society and dividing citizen from citizen.

For the leaders of our institutions, who appear heedless to both the damage it wreaks and the opposition it attracts among large parts of the populace, DEI serves as a new national religion, with adherence to its precepts regarded as a test of one’s virtue. Fail to preach the gospel, and be condemned as a reactionary and bigot.

These fundamentalists (for that is what they are) are supported in their mission by legislation, in the form of the Equality Act 2010, which (at Part 11) expressly permits differential treatment of citizens according to their ‘protected characteristics’, as well as sprawling and increasingly politicised HR departments which enforce, often ruthlessly and with no space for dissent, the creed of their masters.

Ever anxious to demonstrate their progressive credentials, the better to enhance their own reputations and careers, and to earn social kudos among their peers, institutional leaders make use of every lever available to embed this creed – and to let everyone know they have embedded it.

That all of this has resulted in the diminution of meritocracy and the elevation of some individuals to positions for which they are simply not suitable is, I would venture, undeniable. And that the perceived unfairness of it all has sown the seeds of wider social conflict and fragmentation across our society is similarly indisputable.

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The Arday case carries sad echoes of an affair involving a former work colleague of mine. Wayne Brown, who was black, served as a London firefighter. He rose through the ranks and was eventually installed as the chief officer of West Midlands fire service – the second largest brigade in England.

Brown’s appointment – he was the first black chief officer in British fire service history – was seen by his new employer as a coup. But it was quickly accompanied by chatter suggesting parts of his backstory had been fabricated and that he had been promoted above his ability. Questions were raised over what, if any, due diligence had taken place.

After credible evidence emerged that he had embellished his CV – falsely claiming to have secured a degree – Brown was (after a fashion) placed under formal investigation. Within days, he had taken his own life.

Brown, like Arday, should not have been given the job in the first place, for he did not hold the required qualifications. And it wouldn’t have taken much effort for his employer to have discovered that for itself. But for reasons we can probably guess, the employer appeared keen to nail down the appointment.

In the end, DEI, especially when applied so zealously, creates its own victims. And these victims are often the same individuals who supporters of the dogma claim be to assisting. It takes those with middling ability and presents them as paragons of excellence - and then, when things unravel, it demonises anyone who dares to level criticism or point out the obvious.

Thus, in the wake of the fall-out that followed Arday’s exposure, the DEI crusaders smeared as racist or hateful anyone who so much as questioned the veracity of the late professor’s version of events or suggested that his appointment had more to do with political expediency than it did academic and professional integrity. If the truth is likely to get in the way of their ideology, then the truth can take a hike, and anyone who speaks it must be besmirched and bullied into silence.

Such a mindset might also explain why, after it was presented with what appeared to be incontrovertible evidence that Arday had plagiarised someone else’s work while enrolled there, Liverpool’s John Moores University made a finding to the contrary. Would an academic institution – which might ordinarily be expected to pride itself on defending truth – really go to the extreme of denying the obvious in an effort to avoid exposing a high-profile poster boy for diversity? So it seemed.

One of the other disturbing aspects of the Arday affair is the manner in which some politically-motivated journalists have inveighed against anyone – including their professional colleagues – who has defended the investigations and coverage in the name of legitimate journalistic inquiry. To witness those who should be the first to defend the principle of a free press make arguments that run contrary to it is rather chilling.

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And for all the claims that it was right-wing media outlets and commentators who were driving the coverage, it should be noted that some of the most incisive and informed reporting on the scandal appeared in the pages of the left-wing Guardian.

Some have suggested that Arday would not have faced such fierce scrutiny if he had been white. I’m not sure that’s true at all. In fact, it could easily be argued that if he were white but had precisely the same ability and credentials, he would not have been appointed in the first place.

At any rate, where evidence has emerged that high-profile white people have engaged in fabrication and falsehood, they have often been subjected to robust interrogation. Witness, for example, the fall from grace of journalist Johann Hari, forced out of his job at the Independent and stripped of the Orwell prize on account of his plagiarism. Or the exposure – including by means of a major newspaper investigation and television documentary – of Raynor Winn, who appears to have made up key chunks of her best-selling memoir, The Salt Path. The reputations of both were – quite reasonably – dragged through the mud.

If the coverage of the Arday case was more intense, then it is probably attributable to the fact that people felt the story was not anchored only in his personal dishonesty but spoke to the wider public debate around DEI - and represented perhaps the most striking example we have yet seen of that dogma’s pernicious effects. The coverage was no less valid for that. In fact, it was a perfectly legitimate angle for journalists and commentators to explore.

It is very possible – and, if true, would be deeply regrettable – that Arday did not have sufficient support measures in place when he was finally exposed. But that’s on others. The investigation and coverage were demonstrably in the public interest and, in probing and scrutinising in the way it did, the media was simply doing its job.

There is, of course, always a balance to be struck in these things. In the coverage and commentary accompanying such scandals, we must not lose our humanity or the recognition that real people and their families lay at the heart of it. But neither should we retreat in the face of smears and moral blackmail. Jason Arday was a person who attracted widespread public attention and wielded not-insubstantial political, social and cultural influence. If he wasn’t what he claimed to be, he deserved to be exposed. And so do those who, in the face of all common sense, and for the purposes of their own militant ideology, elevated him to a role for which he was neither qualified nor suitable.

Arday’s death may well have occurred by his own hand. But the inescapable truth is that it took place at the altar of identity politics.

A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

You probably won’t agree with all of Mr Embery’s policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal

IN an unprecedented move, four trade unions have decided to boycott this year’s Labour party women’s conference, scheduled to take place in September. Their reason? The party has ruled that men may not take part in the proceedings.

That really is the long and short of it.

True enough, some men had expressed a desire to attend on the grounds that they identified as women. But the supreme court dealt with such scenarios when it ruled last year – entirely sensibly – that individuals are defined by their biological sex for the purposes of equality law.

That means that if an organisation holds a single-sex conference then – shock, horror! - it should not allow some delegate spaces to be filled by members of the opposite sex.

The Labour party is, at long last, beginning to adopt some common sense positions on the issue of transgenderism. It is just a shame that it took several years and a judgment from the highest court in the land for it to reach this point.

For a long time, the party was in the grip of the radical trans movement and preached its gospel with an evangelical fervour. Keir Starmer memorably argued that it was ‘not right’ to say only women had a cervix, and former frontbencher Dawn Butler went on national television and claimed that babies were not born with a biological sex.

Labour MPs got themselves into all sorts of tangles when asked to define the word ‘woman’, and some even supported demands for men to be granted access to women’s single-sex spaces and sporting competitions.

In 2019, I represented my union at a Labour regional conference. A speaker came to the rostrum and demanded that the chair of the conference refrain from using he/she pronouns when addressing delegates. The speaker promptly received an enthusiastic round of applause. It was a sign of how far down the rabbit hole the party had travelled, and I pondered how such antics might be perceived by ordinary people whose votes we were chasing.

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Those inside the party’s ranks – such as the MP Rosie Duffield and a small band of grassroots members and trade union activists – who were brave enough to push back against this unscientific and dangerous dogma were attacked and ostracised. But they stood firm, made their case calmly and thoughtfully, and eventually forced a shift in the public debate.

As the tide began to turn, individuals who had previously kept their heads down for the sake of a quiet life were suddenly willing to speak up. Some even scored victories in employment tribunals and the courts after being subjected to discrimination for their views. Gender ideology, with all its harmful consequences, was being exposed for what it was, and those who peddled it – across our political, educational and corporate institutions – were on the defensive. Logic and reason were, at long last, breaking out.

The debate is now going only one way. Though the battle is far from over, women are, slowly but surely, reasserting their hard-won sex-based rights and defanging the trans militants. I am convinced that in a few years’ time we will look back on the past decade as an aberration – a period when the progressive elites took leave of their senses and tried to impose on society an ideological snake oil which had little support among the masses and subordinated objective truth to subjective feelings.

That’s why the boycott of the women’s conference by four unions – Unison, Usdaw, Aslef and the Musicians’ Union – couldn’t be more ill-judged or ill-timed. These unions are angry that an event organised exclusively for the female class will not be open to members of the male class. Well, as a longtime trade unionist, my advice to them is: suck it up, comrades. This isn’t 2016 anymore; it’s 2026, and the debate has moved on.

Moreover, who are these unions actually speaking for? While their leaderships and activist bases may be in thrall to transmania, their rank and file members will often have little sympathy for the cause. Many of these members will be women. How can it be right that these women are denied the opportunity to influence a conference held by the party running the country, and at which matters affecting them in their daily lives will be debated, just because their union’s senior representatives are peeved that their personal fringe ideology isn’t being accommodated?

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Unison in particular should reflect on its decision not to attend. The union was rightly castigated over its lack of support for the Darlington nurses, who, after being forced to share a changing room with a trans-identifying male colleague, secured an employment tribunal victory against their employer.

But I’m sure none of the four unions will abandon the boycott. That’s because many of their leading officials are now fully signed-up members of the progressive lanyard class, obsessed with promoting ‘diversity, equality and inclusion’ at every turn and regardless of any impact on their memberships or the divisions that their chosen doctrine has created within wider society.

It is because of the embrace of such fringe and unrepresentative dogma that unions are becoming increasingly irrelevant in the workplace. And that in itself is a tragedy, for as the economy continues to flatline and employment remains, for millions, insecure and unrewarding, they are needed as much as ever.

By their petulant actions, these four unions are doing their female members, and workers in general, a grave disservice.

A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

An edited version of the above piece first appeared on the GB News website.

You probably won’t agree with all of Mr Embery’s policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal

ANDY Burnham’s premiership is already on borrowed time. That isn’t his fault, of course – not yet, at any rate – but such is the febrile nature of our politics, and so deeply unpopular is the Labour party throughout much of the country, that Burnham will almost certainly be denied the luxury of an extended honeymoon period with the electorate and will, if he isn’t to go the same way as his predecessor, be required to produce near-instant results.

Because that’s where we are at now. British voters are no longer willing to demonstrate patience with their political leaders. After two decades of economic stagnation, plunging living standards and calamitous state failure in a number of policy areas, they have no tolerance for mediocrity and drift. And why should they?

Many years ago, I spoke on a platform with Bob Crow, the late, great leader of the RMT union. Exasperated with repeated pleadings by Tony Blair, then the prime minister, for trade unionists to show patience while Labour slowly tried to fix the country, Crow thundered, ‘The problem is, sooner or later we’re all going to be dead.’

His point stands today. Great chunks of our lives are passing by while politicians attempt – largely unsuccessfully – to improve our country. And as the decline gathers pace, so the status quo becomes more discredited, public anger intensifies, and populist forces on both right and left sweep up support. That’s why Burnham does not have the luxury of time.

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As a Labour party member for over three decades, I want to see a social democratic government that delivers economic justice and gives us a country that is well-governed, safe, ordered, and cohesive. I imagine that Burnham wants those things, too. But whether or not he is imbued with the boldness and courage necessary to achieve them is the great unanswered question.

He invests much in good communications, and his social media output is slick and irreverent. ‘I’m an ordinary northern bloke,’ is the message he wants to convey. But a flashy comms strategy matters far less today than it did 20 years ago. And that’s because our problems as a country are more acute than they were then – and everyone knows it.

What matters now is delivery, pure and simple. It’s all very well pledging to ‘reindustrialise Britain’, but what will Burnham do to make our economy more productive and competitive? Will he abandon the net zero madness that is throttling our productive industries? Will he stand up to vested interests in the City and ensure that the demands of the real economy – and especially our long-suffering manufacturing sector – no longer play second fiddle to those of finance capital? Will he relax ex-chancellor Rachel Reeves’s ‘ironclad’ fiscal rules, which prevented the Starmer government from doing what was necessary to stimulate real economic growth?

If Burnham doesn’t do these things – and swiftly – the economy will remain in the doldrums and, notwithstanding the inevitable ‘new PM’ bounce, so will Labour’s poll ratings.

And salvation for the government and country won’t come only with an economic turnaround. If the small boats keep coming across the Channel, public disquiet at the constant penetration of our national borders by large groups of undocumented young foreign men will only deepen. Shabana Mahmood’s reform of asylum and immigration laws are a step in the right direction, but only genuinely radical measures – such as a Rwanda-style offshore processing system – are likely to provide a lasting solution. Burnham should consider such measures – even if it incurs the wrath of his party.

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Britons want to see speedy and tangible improvements in a host of other areas. Even those of us who support the concept of a generous welfare system know that the current model is broken, with the benefits bill having exploded in recent years and a dependency culture beginning to take hold in many families and communities. No serious prime minister should ignore such an obvious ticking timebomb.

People cannot get in to see their GP and linger for months on hospital waiting lists; violent offenders are released from prison prematurely because capacity has dried up; work is often insecure and wages low; hundreds of thousands of youngsters cannot find employment at all; and the chronic housing shortage now constitutes a national emergency. Meanwhile, state-sponsored multiculturalism, far from leading us to the sunlit uplands of cohesion and harmony, has caused a level of fragmentation and social disintegration never before seen in our country.

In other words, the ‘fundamentals’ are profoundly unsound, and only an intensive dose of shock therapy will remedy things. Andy Burnham must start to think the unthinkable and be willing to take his party into areas where for too long it has been afraid to set foot. Cheaper bus fares and ending rough sleeping are all very well, but it will take something far more radical than ‘Manchesterism’ and a few cliches about ‘hope’ and ‘positivity’ to turn Britain around.

Most crucially, there is little point in Burnham harping on about the damage caused by ‘40 years of neoliberalism’ (it’s actually 50) if he isn’t then prepared to break free of the economic straitjacket into which previous Labour leaders have locked themselves. Similarly, his talk of bringing the country together and building a ‘new national sense of unity’ and ‘common purpose’ will prove idle if he isn’t willing to challenge the hyper-progressive ideology that has captured our public institutions and caused so much division.

Burnham says he will ‘bring forward a 10-year plan, laying out a path from where we are now to where I believe we all want Britain to be’. In reality, he won’t have the luxury of a decade. He needs to understand that, after so much failure, millions of restless voters want results in much shorter order.

Their demands are justified. After all, sooner or later we’re all going to be dead.

A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

An edited version of the above piece first appeared on the GB News website.

You probably won’t agree with all of Mr Embery’s policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal

SOMETIMES the liberties and freedoms we enjoy as citizens are won and maintained through the efforts of people we will never meet and whose names we don’t even know.

When it comes to the ongoing struggle to defend women’s rights, for example, the name Lynne Pinches might not be uppermost in everyone’s mind.

Neither, I imagine, would most people think of the field in which she operates – she is a professional pool player – as an obvious combat zone in that particular battle.

But every woman owes a debt of gratitude to Lynne. For her sheer courage and determination in the face of injustice and hostility are rooted in the finest traditions of popular struggle and have helped to strike a blow for the rights of her sisters-in-arms everywhere.

Lynne, 53 and from Norwich, is a veteran competitor in her chosen sport. She created waves in 2023 when, having reached the final of a prestigious national tournament, she refused to participate against her opponent, a trans-identifying male. As the match was about to get under way, Lynne shook her opponent’s hand politely, packed away her cue and departed the arena.

It was a small but deeply principled act of resistance against the cult of gender ideology and all its gross injustices.

Lynne argued, as many female pool players do, that biological men enjoyed physical advantages in cue sports. (For example, men are able to make more powerful breaks through greater upper body strength, and they enjoy height and reach advantages at the table.)

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Lynne lambasted the sport’s governing body for refusing to defend the integrity of the female category. ‘I don’t care about the money or the title or the trophy,’ she said after forfeiting the match. ‘I care about fairness.’

The following year, and in protest at the situation, she turned down what would then have been her first professional playing contract.

After that, Lynne’s card was well and truly marked by the sport’s authorities, as well as by radical trans activists. She was subjected to a stream of abuse on social media and in person. On one occasion she was screamed at by the partner of a trans-identifying male competitor, and on another she had a bottle thrown at her.

Such was the level of intimidation that Lynne was advised by police to wear a bodycam at future pool events. She did so in April 2025 when attending a match organised by the sport’s main promoter, Ultimate Pool. But the bodycam was spotted by a trans activist who promptly informed security.

Even though she offered to remove the camera, Lynne was booted out of the venue. Worse, she was banned her from all the promoter’s future events, not only as a competitor but also as a mere spectator. This seemed especially cruel given that both Lynne’s sons played in tournaments and she watched them regularly.

Just days later, the supreme court ruled that women and men were defined by biological sex for the purposes of equality law. This forced pool’s governing body to change the rules so that trans-identifying males were prevented from competing in the female category. Lynne’s principled stance had been vindicated.

But even this didn’t persuade Ultimate Pool to lift the ban on Lynne. She remains blocked from attending all its events. So, in a further act of defiance, she is now suing the promoter for discrimination and victimisation, and has launched a crowdfunder to that effect.

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Lynne says she is taking the action ‘so that no-one else is put through this in the future, because if they can do it to me after a lifetime of playing, they can absolutely do it to anyone’.

For its part, the promoter strenuously denies that the ban had any connection with Lynne’s gender-critical stance and has vowed to fight the claim. Plainly the courts will have the final say on that.

In my view, Lynne is a heroine – one of a growing number of women who have put their head above the parapet because they are sick and tired of seeing extremist ideologues and realty deniers try to erode the very concept of womanhood and smash up their hard-won sex-based rights.

Events have shown that the supreme court judgment, welcome though it was, does not represent the final word in the battle to defend the freedoms and liberties of women and girls from attacks by the trans cultists. Across Britain, bodies and institutions captured by gender ideology are still trying to sidestep the judgment and appease the fanatics. So the fight goes on.

Lynne Pinches has played the game of pool for 35 years. It is truly a disgrace that women like her, who simply wish to compete on fair terms in the sport they love and have dedicated their lives to, are called upon to take part in these exhausting political and cultural battles.

But they do so because they want to do what is right and to express their solidarity with women and girls everywhere. For that, they deserve the solidarity of the rest of us.

A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

An edited version of the above piece first appeared on the GB News website.

Image: ‘X’

You probably won’t agree with all of Mr Embery’s policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal

I KNOW VERY little about artificial intelligence (AI). I can scarcely tell my Copilot from my ChatGPT, or whatever they’re called, because I never use these tools. Or I haven’t done so yet, at least.

People might find that a little difficult to believe in this day and age – especially coming from someone who writes for an (albeit small) public audience – but the truth is that I have never been quick to embrace new technology (I’d be too embarrassed to tell you which model of iPhone I’m currently using).

I did once download an AI-generated image to illustrate an opinion piece I had written, but that’s about the extent of my engagement with this new capability.

When I research stuff, I tend to stick to more tried and trusted methods, such as websites, books and magazines. I dip into Wikipedia occasionally (I have spent countless pleasurable hours just hitting the ‘Random’ button again and again) but never take it as the final word on anything.

I have a constant nagging fear that something I publish will contain an error so egregious that my credibility as a writer (such as it is) will forever be destroyed.

When I wrote my book Despised (still available from all good bookshops, by the way), I spent countless torturous hours, day after day, fact-checking my own text. (I’m pleased to say that, though plenty of opponents attacked the arguments I made in the book’s pages, nobody has ever identified a factual inaccuracy.)

All of which provides a bit of context for what follows.

I used to work with a guy. Like me, he was a senior trade union official. Let’s call him Martin.

Martin has run his own account on ‘X’ (formerly Twitter), a platform on which I am also active, for many years. We never interact these days.

When we worked together, Martin wasn’t exactly the greatest wordsmith. He had strong political opinions – most trade union officials do – but was, frankly, terrible at expressing anything in written prose. His emails and letters were generally a mess, and we rarely permitted him to draft communications intended for circulation among the membership (or, if we did, we would invariably need to spend a good deal of time redrafting them).

I don’t say any of this to be unkind; it’s just the way it was.

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At any rate, I recently spotted one of Martin’s posts on ‘X’. It was a reply to a politician. The post was comprehensive, grammatically sound, and the height of eloquence and fluency.

‘That can’t be him,’ I thought. But it clearly was.

So I had a nose through his other recent posts. They were pretty much all the same: expressive, articulate, and free from grammatical errors – the very opposite of the stuff he used to churn out for the union.

Now, even someone such as I, with a limited understanding of AI, could see what was going on: Martin was obviously using an AI tool to create the posts.

But what I also noticed was that, since he had been using AI – his old, clunky, pre-AI posts remain visible, so the precise point at which the change occurred is obvious – Martin’s interactions had spiralled. His posts used to attract a smattering of reposts and ‘likes’; now they were pulling in hundreds – sometimes thousands.

The whole experience got me thinking. What are the ethics here? Is it not wrong for someone to pass off commentary made in the public arena as their own, when in fact it is no such thing? Isn’t there even more of an obligation to be up front about this when the commentary begins to attract significant engagement? Aren’t readers entitled to know they are being served AI slop rather than a genuine piece of written prose? Would it be right to expose those who mislead in this way? Should I use my own reach on ‘X’ to draw attention to Martin’s deceit?

Or should we look at AI as a helpful tool for those who might otherwise struggle to articulate their thoughts and opinions in discussion – a sort of helping hand to provide them with a level playing field in the theatre of public debate?

Not having been born with the gift of wordsmithery, is Martin a bad person for enlisting some assistance in getting his opinions – which I know he holds dearly – across to a public audience? Perhaps not. (Though he was certainly dishonest when, after being challenged by an interlocutor who accused him of the very thing he had clearly done, namely asking AI to write his posts, he firmly denied it. He has also now started publishing full-length articles on ‘X’ under his own name – though again obviously drafted by AI. In my opinion, that, too, crosses a line.)

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But perhaps, in general terms, we should look upon the utilisation of AI writing tools by ineloquent individuals as a sort of ‘reasonable adjustment’ – an aid designed to ensure they aren’t placed at an undue disadvantage as they go about their lives. And don’t celebrities employ ghostwriters to pen their autobiographies, almost always without credit? Isn’t that practice deemed permissible by almost everyone?

Joe Weisenthal, a Bloomberg journalist, recently wrote:

Maybe he’s right. But if writers do succumb to such temptation, I feel they have a moral obligation to at least be open with their audience about it. Else they could hardly complain if, in the event their methods are uncovered, their readers end up feeling hoodwinked.

I don’t want to come across as sanctimonious, but I can’t ever imagine a time when I would be persuaded to allow an AI tool to write something on my behalf. The whole exercise would seem profoundly alien to me – no different from asking an artist friend to paint a beautiful watercolour and then mark my signature in the corner (I can’t paint for toffee, incidentally).

None of this is to dismiss the phenomenon of AI or deny its capacity to do good. Though I may be slow to embrace new technology, I am certainly no Luddite. AI is plainly here to stay and will, just as the internet did before it, doubtless enhance our lives in all sorts of ways. (I suspect, mind, that the forewarnings of its likely negative effects – laying waste to large swathes of white-collar industries, for example – may also, in the long run, prove to be accurate.)

But anyone who releases words into the public domain – especially those, such as Martin, who attract large numbers of readers – surely has a duty to be upfront about the origin of those words, including where they have chosen to rely on AI.

Whatever you think of the quality of my prose, dear reader, you may be assured that it is crafted by my own hand. I don’t know if that is anything worth boasting about. But the day it changes is the day I give up writing.

A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

You probably won’t agree with all of Mr Embery’s policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal

IF I WERE Nigel Farage, I wouldn’t have resigned my seat and forced a by-election. I can see why, having concluded that the allegations of impropriety being levelled against him were part of a Whitehall stitch up, he felt the need to do so. After all, for any politician under fire, no verdict is ultimately more convincing or legitimising than one cast by the electorate at the ballot box.

But there was always a risk that things might not pan out as intended, and the Reform leader has undoubtedly been thrown off balance by events since he made his big announcement.

I do not know if Farage is guilty of breaking parliamentary rules in relation to large donations intended, he says, for his private security arrangements. But I do know from personal experience, having co-hosted a show with him on GB News and been in his company in public spaces, that Farage’s security concerns are very real, and that he is forced to take the kind of precautions that would seem alien to most other MPs.

I also know that he is the latest in a growing list of populist politicians and parties across Europe who have found themselves on the end of serious allegations lobbed by opponents from within the establishment – often accompanied by the flimsiest evidence – which then seem to tie them up in lengthy legal or procedural wranglings and sometimes impede their route to power. Strange, that.

But back to Clacton.

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You probably won't agree with all of Mr Embery's policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal

BELOW IS THE full video of a discussion on migration, borders and belonging in which I took part at the Spiked Summit in central London on 27 June.

I was joined on the panel by the writer and journalist Dr Rakib Ehsan and the well-known educator - known as ‘Britain’s strictest headmistress’ - Katharine Birbalsingh.

My own speech begins on 13 minutes. There was a lively Q&A during the second half of the event.

Enjoy!

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A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

You probably won’t agree with all of Mr Embery’s policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal

WHAT IS IT about our national flag that brings out such hypocrisy in the metropolitan elites? Why do these people, who seem entirely relaxed about the display of virtually every other kind of flag, even politically contentious or divisive ones, exhibit such hostility towards the colours of their own nation?

In recent days, Oxfordshire county council became the first local authority to successfully impose a legal ban on the placement of flags on lampposts, after activists from the ‘Raise the Colours’ campaign had festooned some streets with the Union Jack and St George’s Cross.

The council is run by – no surprises here – the Liberal Democrats. In the high court, where it was seeking an injunction against the activists, the council claimed that the display of flags from roadside infrastructure gave rise to serious safety concerns.

But its leader, Tim Bearder, had already disclosed what appeared to be the real reason for the ban, telling the media before the court hearing that the flags were creating ‘fear and division’ in local communities.

Because that’s the true agenda here, isn’t it? It isn’t really about ‘safety’. This was a political manoeuvre by a council led by a group of cosmopolitan universalists who despise any expression of old-fashioned patriotism by working-class members of the majority culture. They see such sentiments as vulgar, reactionary and thoroughly at odds with a modern, diverse country that is obliged to feel permanent guilt for its imperial past.

Oxfordshire isn’t alone. Councillors in Bristol – Greens, this time – have been trying to prohibit public displays of the St George’s Cross on local streets during the World Cup. Justifying the council’s actions, leader Tony Dyer said that the city must remain ‘welcoming, respectful and safe for everyone during the tournament’.

Meanwhile, liberal politicians and commentators across the country can be found engaging in similar handwringing over the explosion of national flags on local streets. Like the Oxfordshire and Bristol councillors, they see the whole thing as intimidating towards minorities and want it stopped.

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But if what these people claim is true – that some communities are alarmed and offended by the presence of national flags in their neighbourhoods – then our problems as a country run deeper than we realise. There should be no part of Britain where the display of a national flag is unwelcome, or where a particular group of local citizens have a veto over whether it may be flown. The flag is the official standard of our nation and represents who we are collectively. If such places do exist, we are entitled to ask why.

After all, weren’t we told that multiculturalism would create a vibrant and harmonious melting pot in which people from all backgrounds could consider themselves British and become part of the fabric of our nation? Is diversity not our strength? Do some citizens actually consider themselves so un-British that they object to the appearance of the national flag in their community? Wasn’t it necessary to reclaim the flag from the far-right because ‘it belongs to all of us’? Was everything we were told about these things a big fat lie?

Some flags are, in the eyes of the metropolitan elites, perfectly fine, of course. The people who shout loudest about the ‘Raise the Colours’ campaign seem perfectly happy with the proliferation, including on our public buildings, of Ukrainian or Palestinian or Pride or EU flags. On social media, they will often have all these flags, and more, emblazoned across their profiles. But when Dave the brickie fixes the St George’s Cross to a lamppost in some northern post-industrial town – well, they go into total meltdown.

I do not know of any other country whose ruling classes are so heavily populated by people so keen to trash the history and traditions of their own homeland, or who bear such hostility towards basic expressions of patriotism by ordinary citizens.

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The great George Orwell had the liberal intelligentsia marked out eight decades ago, when he wrote: ‘England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles, it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman, and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings.’

At the weekend, I returned to my hometown of Dagenham to do some filming for a TV documentary. It is one of those ‘left behind’ areas that has experienced massive cultural transformation and voted overwhelmingly for Brexit. There were plenty of national flags flying from lampposts. Spotting me and the camera crew, a local shopkeeper called out: ‘We’re still here. We still exist.’

In those words, he summed up what ‘Raise the Colours’ is all about. It is not a crusade designed to intimidate or exclude. It is instead a campaign intended to alert a tin-eared political class to the fact that millions of proud native Britons are angry at changes inflicted on their country – economic, social and cultural – that they did not ask for and which have made their lives far more challenging.

They are still here. They do still exist. And no matter the attempts by that same political class to curtail their activities, neither they, nor their grievances, are going away.

A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

An edited version of the above piece first appeared on the GB News website.

Paul Embery is one of the most interesting, insightful and original voices to have emerged in British journalism for some time — Douglas Murray

AS NEWS CHANNELS cut to Euston railway station in London last week, just as the new MP for Makerfield, Andy Burnham, was embarking on the final leg of his journey to the House of Commons, I was half expecting to see the man of the moment sitting astride a donkey and being lauded by crowds waving palm branches and laying down their cloaks in front of him.

Burnham’s triumphal entry into Westminster certainly had a weird messianic feel about it, encapsulated most strikingly by a rather odd photo in which he posed before a phalanx of his fellow Labour MPs who seemed to be gazing upon him as some sort of saviour (though presumably of their jobs rather than their souls).

Say what you like about Jesus, he never shrunk from saying what he truly felt, even when doing so made him unpopular. Burnham, on the other hand, has a consistency problem, and the disciples now falling at his feet might like to think about that.

So far as Burnham has any guiding ideology, it is hard to decipher the nature of it. And where he has set out his stall on certain big or contentious issues – such as the bond markets, trans rights, the EU and immigration – he has revealed a tendency to backtrack when the pressure comes on or the public mood changes.

Pragmatism in politics is fine. But politicians who, on key topics, chop and change their stance with alacrity risk being seen as weathervanes rather than signposts.

To his advantage, Burnham does come across as a normal(ish) sort of bloke. Critics will say, with some justification, that, having spent most of his working life in politics – he started out as an MP’s researcher in his early twenties – Burnham is a classic establishment politician.

But he does at least seem to recognise that a world exists beyond the M25, and in a Britain that is fracturing politically and culturally – not least because voters in such places have for too long been ignored – that is an important quality.

Let us cut to the chase, though. Unless Burnham as prime minister is willing to take some of the bold steps necessary to put our nation back on the right path, all the northern mateyness and charm will swiftly prove worthless.

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Turning around Britain’s failing economy is a key task. Burnham has apparently said that he wants to prioritise growth while sticking rigidly to Rachel Reeves’s ‘ironclad’ fiscal rules. He needs to understand very quickly that it is those rules that are inhibiting growth and hastening a recession. He may as well say that he wants to grow a lush new lawn while issuing a drought order.

Reeves herself will be gone soon, and there is much speculation around who Burnham will appoint to replace her. Whoever it is, he or she must break with the Treasury orthodoxy – rooted in neoliberal ideology – that has strangled our economy over decades and instead be willing to use the massive fiscal capacity available to governments of sovereign, currency-issuing nations to deliver investment-led growth.

The financialisation of Britain’s economy has proved disastrous. A Burnham government should resolve to rebalance the economy away from the interests of finance capital and towards those of the real economy – the productive sector where goods are made and wealth is produced. A resurgence of vibrant productive industries providing solid well-paid jobs would go a long way to bringing a restored cohesion and ease to communities suffering the effects of decades of deindustrialisation and decline.

Burnham is scheduled to give a speech this morning in which he will apparently pledge to devolve power from Whitehall to the regions as part of a mission to boost living standards. Well, such measures might be fine as far as they go. But ‘Manchesterism’ alone won’t provide the solution to Britain’s longstanding growth problem. Instead, Burnham must apply a much greater emphasis on wider macroeconomic policy.

At any rate, success for a Labour government under Burnham will not begin and end with economic improvement. After all, our problems as a nation run far deeper than sluggish GDP figures.

Will Burnham be bold enough to get behind Shabana Mahmood’s attempts to repair our broken asylum and immigration system – the cause of so much public anger over recent years?

Will he abandon his party’s embrace of militant cosmopolitan liberalism that has alienated millions of traditional working-class voters and undermined social solidarity in their communities?

Will he ditch the net zero folly which is threatening our prosperity and security, as well as throttling Britain’s productive industries?

Will he honour Brexit and resist all attempts to usher Britain back into the arms of the European Union?

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If he doesn’t do these things, he will find that the Red Wall – whose votes he simply could not do without if Labour is to secure a second term – will be in no rush to return to the fold.

Burnham’s supporters may point to his victory in Makerfield as a sign that Red Wall electors can be persuaded to vote for ‘progressive’ politics over Reform’s populism. But Makerfield in a byelection – where local voters knew that the outcome would determine the fate of the most unpopular PM in history – is not the same as the entire Red Wall in a general election. In any case, we simply don’t know precisely how progressive (or indeed conservative) Burnham is on many issues on account of the fact that he has been either too vague or inconsistent in his statements.

Burnham is almost certainly heading to number 10; that much is clear. But if he is to refute the charge of being nothing more than ‘Keir Starmer in jeans’, he will need to set out in clear terms his guiding beliefs and core policies. And if these things are too far removed from the demands and desires of an impatient and resentful electorate which knows its country is in sharp decline, and whose communities are increasingly afflicted by economic stagnation and social disharmony, he will go the same way as his predecessor.

Will the real Andy Burnham please stand up?

A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

An edited version of the above piece first appeared on the GB News website.

You probably won’t agree with all of Mr Embery’s policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal

TEN YEARS AGO this very day, Britain voted to leave the European Union. It was, by any measure, a seismic political decision.

I had thrown my heart and soul into campaigning for Brexit. As the national organiser of an excellent little group called ‘Trade Unionists Against the EU’, I spoke in the media and debated at several public events. I even lost my position as a senior union official over my pro-Brexit activities.

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Paul Embery is one of the most interesting, insightful and original voices to have emerged in British journalism for some time — Douglas Murray

THE SPEED AT which the axis in British politics is shifting is startling.

I have spent over three decades as a foot soldier on the political left, much of it as an activist in the Fire Brigades Union (FBU).

While right-wing parties have always been able to attract the support of a layer of trade union members, it was the left, and usually the Labour party, which traditionally commanded their loyalty - especially those who, like me, worked in the public sector.

But I have recently begun to witness, via social media, a remarkable phenomenon. Growing numbers of my fellow FBU members and activists are openly stating that they will back Reform UK, a party of the populist right.

A former FBU official whom I served alongside for many years even stood as a Reform candidate in the May local elections. Another has become the chairman of his local Reform branch.

This anecdotal evidence chimes with a recent poll – conducted by JL Partners for the Times – which showed that support for Labour among public sector trade unionists has collapsed (down from 48% to 28% since the general election), while for Reform it has surged (up from 16% to 28% for the same period).

In that context, a recent internal communication circulated by senior managers within Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service (GMFRS), and which amounted to a direct attack on Reform, was as tone deaf as it was chilling.

An email dispatched to all staff by the joint heads of the service’s ‘race and faith network’ sought to provide ‘reassurance regarding some recent activity we’ve seen within the organisation’.

And what exactly was this ‘activity’? Well, some staff members had stood on a Reform ticket at the recent local elections. ‘We know this may cause concern within our network and wider,’ wrote the senior managers.

To which a legitimate response would, of course, be: ‘So what?’ After all, Reform is a lawful political party, and one that might very well form the next government. And, unlike the police, firefighters are perfectly entitled to stand for election to their local council. That’s democracy.

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But the GMFRS overlords plainly had no truck with such sentiments. ‘The individuals involved have been spoken to, to make it clear that as members of GMFRS, our core values and professional behaviours must be displayed at all times.’

That term: ‘spoken to’. It’s pretty obvious what it means. It certainly would not have been an open and relaxed discussion. More like a dressing down. What in the British army they call an ‘interview without coffee’.

But there was more. The senior managers went on to reveal that the service was obtaining ‘formal legal guidance’. This, they advised, was to ensure that employees were ‘protected from all perspectives and that our inclusive culture remains safe’.

Really? Running off to the lawyers at public expense because some employees exercised their right to represent Reform in a council ballot? Did these managers truly believe that firefighters – who, as I know from personal experience, are among the bravest and most resilient of folk – needed to be protected from political opinions they didn’t like?

Of course, most firefighters would laugh out loud at the suggestion that their wellbeing at work was threatened by colleagues who stood as Reform candidates. Such ideas invariably surface not as a result of demands arising from the shop floor, but because they have been dreamed up by woke-obsessed institutional leaders.

‘Our priority is and always will be ensuring that every member of this network feels supported, respected and safe at work,’ the authors of the email signed off, before imploring staff to ‘reach out’ if the felt ‘impacted’ by these events.

They also advised that they would be consulting the FBU over the matter.

Well, as a former senior official of the FBU, I would suggest the union tell these managers where to get off. Their internal communication is utterly Orwellian. I have never voted Reform and have no intention of doing so. But, like it or not, the party is now very much a part of the political landscape of Britain, with representation in our national parliaments and on local councils throughout the country.

If managers within Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service do not support the party, that’s their affair. But they have no business using the communication channels of their organisation – which, let us remind ourselves, is a public body – to impart their own political prejudices on their workforce.

The implication, of course, is that Reform is somehow an illegitimate outfit whose representatives and activists do not merit a place in civilised society. In the minds of worthy progressives, the party is ‘toxic’ and ‘hateful’, even ‘neofascist’.

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In reality, it is a party of Thatcherite economic libertarians and cultural traditionalists – the type of people who hold views that, until about five minutes ago, were considered by everyone, even those who opposed them, to be a valid part of mainstream political debate.

But so debased is our political discourse these days, and so captured the upper echelons of our national life by radical progressive ideology, that such views are now seen by those who run our public and corporate institutions as being akin to the sort of ideology once espoused by Mosley’s Blackshirts - and those who hold them as morally contaminated.

And this distorted worldview convinces these leaders that such standpoints are inherently harmful and must be suppressed. As my old pal Maurice Glasman, the founder of Blue Labour, observed, ‘There are none so intolerant as those who preach tolerance.’

The chiefs at Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service have done a grand job of illustrating precisely why faith in our public institutions has plunged. It’s because too often they are repositories for suffocating groupthink and rigid ideological orthodoxy.

If firefighters wish to stand for Reform in an election, they should be perfectly free to do so. We don’t have to vote for them, and we are entitled to oppose and challenge their ideas. But their bosses’ attempts to use their institutional powers to demonise and marginalise them constitutes an appalling abuse of authority. Those bosses deserve to have their feet held well and truly to the flames over it.

A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

An edited version of the above piece first appeared on the GB News website.

You probably won't agree with all of Mr Embery's policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal

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BELOW ARE TWO videos of recent media appearances by me. First is an interview on GB News’s State of the Nation, hosted by Jacob Rees-Mogg. Jacob and I discussed the very welcome criticism of the government’s net zero strategy by the GMB union, which represents thousands of workers in the oil and gas industries.

The second is an interview on Iain Dale’s show on LBC. This discussion centred on the reasons behind new polling data showing that many rank-and-file trade unionists had deserted Labour and thrown their support behind Reform UK.

Enjoy!

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A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

Paul Embery is one of the most interesting, insightful and original voices to have emerged in British journalism for some time — Douglas Murray

IT WAS ONE of the most troubling images I’d seen. Two Metropolitan police officers were manning the barriers at a protest in central London organised by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in the wake of the George Floyd killing. Only these officers were not focused on their duties. Instead, both had dropped to one knee – a deliberate gesture designed to show they were on the side of the protestors. The officers had become part of the demonstration they were there to police.

Anyone who believed that the thin blue line existed to uphold the law impartially – and particularly when policing high-profile political demonstrations – might, at that moment, have been disabused of such a notion.

Or perhaps that happened a few days later when police officers in Bristol purposely refused to intervene while BLM protestors vandalised a statue of Edward Colston and tossed it into a river.

Or maybe on the numerous occasions that officers had been filmed, in uniform, dancing and prancing at Pride parades. Or when a deputy chief constable released a video to mark ‘International Pronouns Day’. Or when any number of citizens were arrested for saying and doing things – reading from the Bible in public, for example – which were deemed to have offended against modern progressive ideology.

Such spectacles provided confirmation that, as well as being occasional defenders of law and order, police officers were now also political activists – and specifically for the most modish causes. Nowhere was this more evident than in the arena of racial politics, where the stance of the police was often scarcely different to that of some of Britain’s most radical race activist groups.

As it was for the police, so it was for most of the public sector, where a new ‘lanyard class’ of middle-class white liberal managers, armed with university degrees and guilt complexes, now ruled the roost, peddling hardline progressive dogma and professing to bring harmony and unity while increasingly doing the very opposite.

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As someone who has worked in an emergency service for nearly 30 years, I have seen this phenomenon up close. A well-intentioned and justified desire to eliminate prejudice began to mutate into something very different – namely a relentless political crusade which encouraged workers to see themselves as members of either a privileged or oppressed group, bombarded them with lectures promoting the new religion of ‘diversity, equality and inclusion’, and made career progression contingent upon being able to preach that particular gospel on demand.

And it was all buttressed by the Equality Act 2010, which – read Part 11 of the Act if you don’t believe this – made it perfectly legal for certain workers to be treated more favourably on account of their ‘protected characteristics’ (of which race is one).

For the police, the road to this new politicised world began with the appalling murder of Stephen Lawrence and the subsequent Macpherson report, which branded the force ‘institutionally racist’, and for which senior officers seem to have spent most of the years since desperately trying to atone. This has led them to some pretty dark places. It is, for example, the current position of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, as set out in its ‘race action plan’, that its desired goal of ‘racial equity’ means ‘responding to individuals and communities according to their specific needs’ and that ‘it does not mean treating everyone “the same” or being “colour blind”’. So much for equality before the law!

The same document also resolves to bring about ‘an end to racial disparities’ in policing outcomes, including ‘the likelihood of people being criminalised by the police’ – seemingly without concern for the differing rates of criminality among certain groups. The document reads as if it has been penned by the most militant BLM activist.

You can probably guess where I’m going with all this. It was against this whole backdrop of incessant race-based teaching and propaganda that police officers arrived at Belmont Road, Southampton, last December, having been mobilised to an altercation. Henry Nowak was bleeding out on a driveway. The man who had stabbed him five times, Vickrum Digwa, claimed to officers - falsely - that Henry had racially abused and assaulted him. A prostrate Henry, gasping for air, told the officers several times that he couldn’t breathe. He also said he’d been stabbed.

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But that didn’t matter. For the key accusation had already been made. The other man had alleged racism. That was enough for all the necessary warning lights and alarms to go off in the minds of the officers and for their intensive conditioning to kick in. Doubtless Digwa made the allegation in the full knowledge that that would be its effect.

Henry’s pleadings were ignored. He was placed in handcuffs and shortly thereafter departed this world. As the father of a boy, like Henry, in his first year at university in an ordinary English city, I cannot begin to explain how moved – and angered – I was when viewing footage of the incident.

I don’t know if the officers were motivated specifically by anti-white bias. But I think it highly likely their actions were in some way influenced by the ethnicity of the perpetrator and his claim of having been racially abused and assaulted.

In light of everything that police officers have been force-fed in the way of DEI dogma over the past quarter of a century, it is hard to see how it could have been otherwise. In fact, such is the intense focus on racial bias training in the constabulary concerned – Hampshire and Isle of Wight – a number of its officers have reported feeling ‘controlled and pressured’ by it. The same constabulary has publicly declared that ‘Being anti-racist, ethical and inclusive is top of our agenda.’ You might have thought that preventing and detecting crime would be the main priority for any police force. You’d be wrong.

It doesn’t take a lot, in this context, to see how police officers feel obliged to walk on eggshells when dealing with minority communities, or why they look the other way when, for example, evidence emerges that groups of Pakistani Muslim men are systematically raping young white girls in towns across England. Get it wrong, and bang goes the career. So best keep schtum.

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The reaction of the progressive elites to Henry Nowak’s murder is also highly instructive. When George Floyd was murdered, politicians and celebrities aplenty lined up to express their indignation and support the protests that swept the US and Britain. The ‘rage against the machine’ was, apparently, justified back then. But now all we get are appeals not to ‘politicise’ the murder of a young man or to ‘stir up tensions’.

Remember Rhiannon Whyte? She was the hotel worker brutally murdered in 2024 by an asylum seeker from Sudan. Her mother, Siobhan, has revealed on social media that political leaders have shown no interest in engaging with her, despite her having reached out to them several times. Are any of us truly surprised at that?

The elites are playing with fire. The public can see their two-tier approach, and they don’t like it. People recognise, too, that there has been a massive oversteer in the anti-racism crusade, and that it is leading to its own serious injustices and inconsistencies.

When even Jack Straw, home secretary when the Macpherson Report was published, argues that police anti-racism guidelines have gone too far, we are obliged to listen.

Ultimately, this isn’t just about the tragic last moments of a university student on a street in Southampton. It is about everything that goes with it, in particular the stark divergence in priorities between a liberal ruling class and a large chunk of the populace that increasingly feels as though the state machine is biased against it.

For that reason, I sense that the Henry Nowak murder will, in years to come, just like the Southport massacre, be seen as a pivotal moment causing a decisive shift in the public mood. I suspect that our politicians sense it, too. Which perhaps explains why they are so desperate to quell the growing backlash.

I fear they are too late. The anger and discord are here to stay.

A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

An edited version of the above piece first appeared on the GB News website.

Paul Embery is one of the most interesting, insightful and original voices to have emerged in British journalism for some time — Douglas Murray

IT WAS INEVITABLE, wasn’t it? The moment Robert Kenyon was announced as the Reform UK candidate for the Makerfield by-election, the social media archaeologists were on to him, digging meticulously through layer after layer of his past commentary in the hope of excavating some valuable gem – one they hoped might render his campaign dead in the water before it had even begun.

Because that’s the world in which we now live, right? A world in which full-time offendotrons go hunting for evidence of ‘wrongspeak’ by their political opponents, all with the purpose of suppressing views they don’t like and ejecting from the public square anyone who dares express them.

Less and less are contentious issues judged on the merits of competing arguments. Instead, they are tested according to whether a particular argument conflicts with what passes for fashionable opinion among a cohort of self-appointed liberal-left political and cultural gatekeepers. And, slowly but surely, this new authoritarianism has seeped into our state and corporate institutions, so that the commanding heights of our public life are now dominated by ‘progressive’ ideology, and we end up at a place where a major city council sees fit to offer ‘safe space conversations’ to anxious staff ahead of a visit by Nigel Farage, a man who may very possibly be our next prime minister.

The whole thing has had a suffocating effect. ‘I disagree with you,’ has increasingly been replaced by ‘You mustn’t say that.’ The causing of ‘offence’ through the expression of an unwoke political or moral opinion is seen as a grievous sin, with transgressors fair game for vilification or cancellation, particularly if they have any sort of public profile.

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So you could sense the new puritans positively salivating at the prospect of unearthing something incriminating from Kenyon’s past, all the more so when it emerged that his ‘X’ account had for some undefined reason been temporarily suspended.

And, sure enough, they turned up some mildly embarrassing artefacts, including a tasteless remark about Carol Voderman and some spicy comments about women drivers and immigration.

But, look, Kenyon is an ordinary working-class guy – a white-van-driving plumber and former army reservist – who, during many years of activity on social media, has, like millions of others, occasionally engaged in some off-colour banter.

Though he speaks well in front of a camera, I dare say he never imagined he would one day stand for parliament and, while I am no supporter of Reform, I think the party deserves credit for selecting a local man with no background in politics and who appears to be the sort of bloke you might find yourself standing next to in the pub or on a football terrace. Much rather that than someone who has taken the conventional route to Westminster: university, thinktank or charity, MP’s assistant, minister’s special advisor, and eventually a safe parliamentary seat.

I do not argue that those who stand in elections are entitled to expect a free pass for anything they have done in their lives until that point. On the contrary, scrutiny of those who seek to govern our country is a good thing, especially where it shines a light on flawed policy commitments or exposes lies, hypocrisy or corruption.

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But that plainly isn’t what is going on with Kenyon. Instead, what we are seeing is character assassination, an attempt to convince voters in Makerfield that the Reform candidate isn’t fit to represent them on the green benches, not because his arguments are defective or he has committed serious impropriety, but because he is morally a Very Bad Human Being.

The pitchfork-wielders pursuing Kenyon have an innate loathing for what they see as the reactionary working-classes. They view such people as low-IQ ‘gammon’ unworthy of holding political office. Their prejudice was laid bare after the Brexit vote and still lingers.

They see politics as the preserve of their own kind – morally-enlightened guardians of civilised society who hold the ‘correct’ opinions and are therefore uniquely qualified to run the country and control its institutions. There is no place in the corridors of power for members of the lower orders who dare to express un-PC views from time to time.

But here’s the thing. Cancel culture, and the general attempt to demonise anyone who has ever expressed an unfashionable opinion, is meeting with growing resistance. Voters are increasingly unmoved by it. In fact, many are sick of it.

So when the progressive elites launch an assault on a new target, they are finding less and less that the mud sticks. When a country is functioning effectively, the masses are less inclined to rock the boat – or to rally to the support of anyone so minded. But when the nation is going to the dogs, they are more willing to get behind dissenting voices, to defend those from ordinary backgrounds who are brave enough to speak unvarnished truth to power, to express themselves in plain language like the man on the street, and to challenge the status quo.

If Robert Kenyon had stood for a mainstream party a decade ago, his past comments, once uncovered, would have sounded the death knell for his candidature and reputation. And there would likely have been little public protest.

Not so now. Things are shifting. People don’t care about such things any longer. They look at where the progressive authoritarians have taken the country, and they feel no kinship with them, nor any desire to see their critics silenced.

Cancel culture is on the retreat. Heresy is in vogue. You don’t have to be a supporter of Robert Kenyon or his party to welcome that long-overdue reset.

A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

An edited version of the above piece first appeared on the GB News website.

You probably won’t agree with all of Mr Embery’s policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal

IF I WERE a Reform UK operative running a mole at the top of the Labour party, I would give him or her one simple instruction: restart the Brexit wars!

For nothing would be more likely to inflict electoral damage on Labour, and play right into the hands of Nigel Farage, than the reopening of the rancorous EU referendum debate.

Many will therefore be utterly perplexed that Labour appears to be embarking on that destructive course. After Wes Streeting told a Blairite thinktank that Brexit had been a ‘catastrophic mistake’, an under-pressure Andy Burnham quickly declared that he would not be advocating a return to the EU in the upcoming by-election in Leave-supporting Makerfield – only for footage of him doing exactly that at last year’s Labour conference to immediately resurface.

We’ve since seen other senior Labour figures pressed in interviews to reassure Leave voters that there would be no attempt in the future to reverse Brexit – and in some cases conspicuously failing to do so.

All of which means that, having previously proclaimed the debate dead, Labour is fighting the battle all over again – and is suspected by many of secretly organising to force Britain back into bed with Brussels. Reform UK must think all its Christmases have come at once.

I happen to be that rare thing in politics: a pro-Brexit Labour party member. People like me were once commonplace inside the party. But that was back in the days when a rich Eurosceptic seam ran through Labour, rooted in the principles of sovereignty and democracy, and articulated by titans such as Tony Benn, Michael Foot, Barbara Castle and Peter Shore. Nowadays, any Eurosceptic is about as welcome inside the party as a hedgehog would be at a nudist colony.

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Paul Embery is one of the most interesting, insightful and original voices to have emerged in British journalism for some time — Douglas Murray

WHAT DOES ‘CLASS’ mean in Britain today? Are the traditional markers of social class still relevant? As our material conditions have improved over the generations, do we still have a working class in any meaningful sense – and, if so, who belongs to it?

Well, an intriguing new study has found that many of us think of class in very different terms to how our forebears might have done.

The study, by research firm Attest, suggests that, for growing numbers of Britons, the old fixed class structures hold limited relevance and have been supplanted by perceptions of social status that are more fluid.

For example, more than a third of adult Britons regard themselves as belonging to a different class from that which they were born into, while one in seven are members of a new ‘polyclass’, meaning they identify across multiple classes.

Such sentiments are particularly prevalent among younger generations, with around half of Millennials and Gen Z declaring they have either moved class or hold more than one class identity. Similarly, those from privileged backgrounds are significantly more likely to identify across multiple class groups.

Perhaps none of this should come as a surprise. This is, after all, the era in which the political and cultural elites peddled the concept of gender self-identification, which advanced the principle that objective truth should be subordinated to our internal feelings. So, in that spirit, why shouldn’t, say, a person of high social status identify as a horny-handed working-class son of toil? Isn’t class fluidity as valid as gender fluidity? I jest only slightly.

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More seriously, the research does reveal something rather alarming – that class chameleonism of this kind comes with a price. Of the Gen Z polyclass, for example, just over a quarter say they feel they do not truly belong anywhere, and almost a fifth reveal that they experience ‘imposter syndrome’ as a consequence of their class identity.

It cannot be a coincidence – can it? – that this is the cohort of people in our society which has been most exposed to an ideological blitzkrieg that told them they were citizens of the world, that open borders were a good thing, that common identities were all a bit reactionary and intolerant (unless, of course, they were minority identities, in which case full-throated celebration was called for), and that being inclusive and welcoming, even to the extent that one’s own sense of belonging was compromised, was virtuous. And now these disorientated young men and women don’t quite know who they are or where they fit into society. Fancy.

When it comes to working-class Britons, however, the research tells a somewhat contrasting story. For this group, class remains a fixed feature of their lives, with around 70% saying they continue to identify with the class into which they were born.

Again, this isn’t surprising. After all, when one’s life chances – such as in the way of career progression and opportunities for travel and cultural exploration – are constrained by a lack of wealth, such sentiments as attachment to place, rootedness and a desire for social solidarity are heightened. Belonging often means something different – and more profound – to a person who is tied to a place as a result of the hand he or she has been dealt in life.

The Attest study also finds that, despite the blurring of class lines, classism and accentism are still alive and well, with 49% revealing they have been negatively judged because of their class background and 35% because of their accent. Such prejudice is a stain on our society. Nobody should be made to feel inferior on account of the circumstances of their upbringing or the way they naturally speak. Take Angela Rayner, for example. She may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but she surely deserves great credit for, in the face of constant petty snobbery, never attempting to soften her bluff northern accent.

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It is easy in this day and age to forget that working-class people continue to suffer this kind of discrimination. Or that the upper echelons of our society – across politics, media, industry, the law, and even some sports – are still heavily dominated by those born into wealth and privilege.

But, then, working-class people have never received sufficient credit for the efforts they make in ensuring that our society functions – the people who collect our bins and look after our sick and elderly and deliver our parcels, the brickies and plumbers and joiners.

But I digress. This latest research ultimately demonstrates that things are less clear cut on the issue of class than they once were. And that the traditional barometers for determining social status are in flux.

Some citizens will assume they’ve achieved such status in life that they have inevitably moved beyond their working-class roots – and, by the way, there is nothing wrong with such a sentiment. Why should anyone be condemned for wanting to earn more money, or to have the freedom to enjoy the finer things in life, or to advance in one’s chosen career? All of that is fine.

When all is said and done, however, even those who are doing well in life – those, for example, who earn a generous salary and own a nice home and car – are quite often just a month’s pay packet away from real grinding hardship. And it’s at such moments that, for all the attempts to divide us up into different class categories, those of us who are, in the end, required to sell our labour in order to survive suddenly realise that we perhaps aren’t so different from each other after all.

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A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

An edited version of the above piece first appeared on the GB News website.