“Civil servants have spent the past 15 years giving awards to other departments for allowing men who identify as women into women’s toilets, showers, sports and saying this was inclusion… none of those people have lost their jobs”.@MForstater joins @iancollinsuk on @talktv pic.twitter.com/Ep4r4yp9Tf
— Sex Matters (@SexMattersOrg) April 15, 2026
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Jenny Lindsay, at The Critic, on Scotland’s sorry literary scene, where a poet can be “disappeared” for expressing gender critical views. Novelist and poet Polly Clark’s latest collecion, Afterlife, was much praised. But – oh dear – she believes that sex is real, and it matters.
And so, to the craven behaviour of Gutter, who are funded by Creative Scotland to self-identify as “Scotland’s leading literary magazine.”
A few days before publication of Afterlife, they made it their Book of the Month, alongside publishing a stunning review.
The reviewer, poet Iona Lee, praised it as “a fine collection: funny, feminine, and violent; confessional yet mysterious.” Within 48 hours, however, both the online review and Book of the Month accolade disappeared from Gutter’s website.
The reason given, provided in writing to Clark’s publisher, was: “a reader drew our attention to social media posts by Polly Clark that they considered to be offensive.”
One gender puritan was offended. And that was that.
Clark put in a Subject Access Request to discover precisely what Gutter felt justified her treatment. The result is astonishing.
A barely literate complaint, clearly sent via social media, claimed it was “harmful” for Gutter to praise the work of “someone who has demonstrated TERF views and support for other out right (sic) TERFS”. This zealous reader provided screenshots they felt merited their complaint.
Nothing shows Clark saying anything “harmful”, which is subjective anyway. Included was a retweet of me, which read:
“There’s not a woman on earth born before 2002 or thereabouts who thought her life would be eaten up by having to argue men aren’t women and being punished for saying so. It is the most insane thing that has ever happened to a lot of us. That mustn’t ever be downplayed.“
The irony bypass of including this as a reason to punish yet another woman aside, it’s clear this person must be someone Gutter either fears or feels must be taken seriously. Attempts to discover their identity have proven fruitless, and neither reviewer Iona Lee nor Gutter’s editorial board have responded to repeated requests for comment by journalists.
There is absolutely no legal remedy for Polly Clark to take. Creative Scotland is missing in action; Gutter’s funding remains in place. Meanwhile, Scotland’s toothless literary class continue their near silence.
It’s a witch hunt. The cowardice is extraordinary.
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We met the lovely Saiqa Ali the other day – a proudly antisemitic Green Party candidate. And there’s more:
The Green Party is backing candidates with “no place in British politics”, the Board of Deputies of British Jews has said, after a social media post emerged that claimed “it takes serious effort” not to be an antisemite.
Other messages from Green candidates found by The Times spread pro-Putin conspiracy theories and implied the victims of the October 7 attack on Israel were “not ‘innocent’”.
Green officials have struggled to vet their more than 4,500 candidates for the May local elections. Last week the party said it was investing in tighter background checks after a councillor was found to have called cabinet ministers “coconuts” and defended “resistance to occupation” by Hamas.
Once again environmental concerns take something of a back seat to more, um, pressing issues. Perhaps they should rename. The Nasty Party? Has a certain ring to it…
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Lebanese journalist, Tony Bulus, via Orit Perlov:
Today’s Lebanon has changed. A large majority of the Lebanese public sees peace as a real opportunity for security stability, economic recovery, opening the gates of tourism and investment, and strengthening regional ties for the benefit of both peoples, the Lebanese and the Israeli.
So who is delaying the process?
First: The Hezbollah militia and the Iran-loyal network, since their decisions are made in Tehran, not in Beirut, and their overriding interest is to preserve Lebanon as a theater of confrontation, not as a sovereign and functioning state.
Second: Remnants of the radical left, stuck in slogans from the 1960s and 1970s, while ignoring the collapse of many communist and socialist conceptions and their frequent transformation into repressive and failed regimes.
Third: Corrupt sectarian leaders who benefit from a weak state and a shattered economy, and who collaborate openly or behind the scenes with Hezbollah in a framework of dividing spoils, power, and influence. For them, a strong state is a direct threat.
The bottom line: Whoever opposes peace today is not defending Lebanon, but rather its continued collapse.
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More on the Israel-Lebanon talks, from It’s Noon in Israel (via Jerry Coyne):
The highest-level direct talks between Israel and Lebanon in history have concluded with neither side getting what they wanted. Regardless, the summit was a resounding success.
Lebanon entered the negotiations hoping to achieve an immediate ceasefire, reportedly threatening to walk away from future talks unless this condition was met. Israel, meanwhile, came to the table demanding a concrete commitment and a clear timeline for the disarmament of Hezbollah north of the Litani River. While neither delegation walked away with their demands fulfilled, further talks are already confirmed. As U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio noted after the meetings, this will take time; the talks “are a process, not an event.”
In statecraft, as in life, you cannot expect others to treat you with respect if you do not first respect yourself. For the first time in decades, Lebanon’s government is asserting itself as a sovereign entity, and for the first time in decades, Washington is officially recognizing it as such. Prior to yesterday, whenever Washington needed something done in Beirut, it dialed Damascus, Tehran, Doha or Riyadh.
The question is whether the government is actually in charge.
The mere fact that the Lebanese government chose to engage in the negotiations is a good sign. Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem explicitly warned against the summit, labeling it “futile” and declaring it a “stab in the back to the resistance.” Had Hassan Nasrallah issued a similar warning in 2021, his word would have been an insurmountable veto. But two years of relentless Israeli military pressure, coupled with the succession of the significantly less imposing Qassem, has considerably defanged the organization.
Still, breaking the psychological hold Hezbollah maintains over the country requires the Lebanese government to treat it like the paper tiger it has become, rather than the actual tiger it once was.
Israeli Ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter addressed the media following the meeting, claiming that the officials on both sides discovered they are actually on the “same side of the equation” and are “united in liberating Lebanon.” Most intriguingly, Leiter suggested that once the security situation is resolved, the two nations “can embark on a harmonious relationship” akin to the Abraham Accords countries.
Yep. Hezbollah, “the paper tiger it has become, rather than the actual tiger it once was”. The liberation of Lebanon may be one of the most significant results of Israel’s post-Oct 7th aggression.
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We haven’t been hearing much recently about Chinese repression of the Uighurs in Xinjiang – cultural genocide bordering on actual genocide. Not surprising really, as Beijing goes to great lengths to keep it quiet and prevent any unwelcome publicity. Here’s Steerpike in the Spectator:
Of all Labour’s U-turns, none is perhaps more egregious than their stance on China. In opposition, they were happy to claim credit as a champion of the Uyghur Muslims, pushing in parliament for Beijing’s treatment of Xinjiang to be recognised as a genocide. But in office, a succession of ministers have traipsed out to the Far East, conveniently turning a blind eye to China’s treatment of minorities in the hope of gaining a few extra million here and there in trade deals.
But now new evidence has emerged which suggests that, far from ending their persecution in Xinjiang, the Chinese authorities simply have got better at hiding it. Zhang Yabo, a former police officer, has fled the region and is now giving testimony on what he saw in the torture prisons. In a rare insight into China’s repressive apparatus, Zhang reveals that under Ma Xingrui, Xinjiang’s Communist Party Secretary from 2021 to 2025, the previous approach of highly visible mass internment was dropped in favour of highly concealed coercion. Easier to get away it in private…
Zhang has told German anthropologist Adrian Zenz that around 25 per cent of the adult population in Hotan – the village where he was stationed – was interned in 2023 in re-education camps, excluding those separately transferred to formal prisons. Zenz writes that to ‘conceal the campaign from the outside world, the authorities issued strict orders to all local security forces to destroy every single file related to the re-education camps.’ This wave specifically targeted young Uyghurs swept up after widespread protests against pandemic lockdowns. Grim stuff. Zenz argues:
“To perpetuate the profound dread established during the mass internet era, Ma’s administration deployed pre-emptive, rotating short-term detentions to ensure enduring subjugation. By keeping the lockups brief but systematic, the state maintains pervasive fear while projecting an illusion of normalcy… programs actually operate as a vast mechanism for state-imposed forced labour and demographic engineering. Under Ma, labour transfers experienced massive quantitive growth, evolving from acute mobilisation into a normalised and inescapable state-mandated employment.”
Such coercive labour programmes have yielded grim dividends. Exports to the United States, European Union, Canada and the UK soared by 465 per cent between 2021 to 2025: a testament to how Beijing weaves demographic engineering into global supply chains. Sir Iain Duncan Smith, a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, told Mr S:
“For years we have been led to believe that the vicious persecution of Uyghurs has stopped. This powerful and rare account exposes this as a pernicious lie: far from having stopped, it is arguably more pervasive, but the CCP has become more sophisticated in concealing it. We must not allow the huge risk this man has taken to be in vain. We must not allow ourselves to profit from this inhuman trade.”
Over to you, Yvette Cooper. Given Labour’s much-vaunted China ‘reset’, don’t expect much.
A notable silence on the Uighurs has been that of the Islamic world, which remains entirely unconcerned about the genocidal repression of fellow Muslims. Turkey, with ethnic links, hosts some separatist East Turkestan movements and made some noise in the early days, but is now largely silent. All the animus is directed at the non-existent “Gaza genocide”, while a real genocide goes unremarked.
A concerned commenter wonders about sending a letter to the Muslim Council of Britian, asking if they have any concerns about the plight of the Uighurs, and if they’re planning a demonstration outside the Chinese embassy……
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We had rehearsed the answer to this question before. But Winston can’t lie, so he said yes. I gave him the dirty look. There goes our vacation!
“Well, you don’t have the stamp on your passports so just make sure you tell the officer in Beirut that you haven’t,” she intoned.
I was stressed out for the next 5 hours, and even more so when we had to face the border officer who, by the grace of God, did not ask us THE question (even though he took our passports to a secondary office for extra checks).
Spending time in Beirut, you realize that it’s the same Mediterranean light that bathes Tel Aviv; the sea is the same shade of shimmering blue because… well, it’s the same sea.
In both places, young people spill out of clubs at sunrise, the bass still thumping from rooftops that overlook the same ancient coastline. Both cities pulse with the same Levantine hunger for life: the clink of arak glasses, endless plates of hummus swirled with olive oil, the sudden eruption of dabke or house music that pulls strangers into a circle. Parties start on the rooftops of Gemmayze in Beirut and tumble down into Mar Mikhael’s narrow alleys; in Tel Aviv they begin on the sand at Gordon Beach and migrate to the warehouses of the Florentin district. These are both stylish people who love life, and who love to party. The energy is truly infectious. The accents may differ but something about this weird combination along with a deep sense of rootedness in community and the extended family really underscore how similar they were.
And yet, there’s been a wall between these two peoples. There are no flights stitching the 45 min hop across the water. No commercial trucks rumbling between the ports. Lebanese law forbids its citizens – inside the country or in the diaspora – from so much as speaking to an Israeli, a rule so absolute that some Lebanese friends of mine who live in Europe still glance over their shoulders before typing a reply to any Israeli even outside the country, whether for business or pleasure.
I spent evenings in Beirut listening to Lebanese friends speak of Israelis not as the enemy but as people caught in the same endless loop of fear and longing.
Decades of Hezbollah’s shadow have hollowed out parts of Lebanon, turning the south into a garrison and the economy into a ruin. Yet in the cafés of Achrafieh and the mountain villages above the city you hear it more and more: a quiet, exhausted recognition that the real hostage-takers are not across the border but inside it.
I keep imagining the day the question at Beirut airport changes. I keep picturing the first flight from Rafic Harari to Ben Gurion. One day the music will be louder than the fear. One day the Lebanese and the Israelis will throw the party the rest of the world has been waiting for.
I hope this is the first step:
A vision of what could be. There’s so much uniting Israel and Lebanon, Tel Aviv and Beirut. And a vision of what the Middle East might look like if the Iranian regime was overthrown.
More simply, a vision of what the Middle East might look like if political Islam – Islamism – was removed from the equation. If mutual self-interest replaced religious ideology.
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Sonia Sodha in the Times on Bridget Phillipson and single-sex guidance:
What could explain this dreadful mess? Phillipson’s ambitions are well known within her party. There are many Labour activists and union leaders who inexplicably cling to the minority belief that men should be able to identify into women’s spaces — from workplace changing rooms to women’s prisons to domestic abuse refuges — and who refuse to accept the obvious consequences for women’s dignity, safety and privacy.
They are people she undoubtedly wants to keep on side for any future run at the leadership. The moment she lays the code before parliament is the moment ministers must own the law as it stands, rather than cowardly hiding behind judges. This will put them in the firing line of angry gender activists from within their own party.
There are clues to suggest that even as the government claimed to back the Supreme Court judgment it may have been looking for ways to get around it. In November lawyers instructed by Phillipson argued in the High Court that a service provider could lawfully allow a man who identifies as a woman to use a female-only service without that service ceasing to be single sex. The judge was clear that the government had this wrong in light of the Supreme Court ruling. The Times has also reported that Phillipson told the EHRC to “tone down” its guidance and make it “more inclusive”, according to some close to the process (sources close to Phillipson have denied this). All this raises the question: was Phillipson behind the scenes trying to water down the clarity of the Supreme Court judgment? She owes us an answer.
The answer, surely, is yes.
The civil service is notoriously captured by gender ideology. The fact it refused to withdraw its own unlawful policy shows how high up that goes. I’m told there are civil servants actively working to undermine implementation of the law as clarified by the Supreme Court.
There is much at stake here for women, not least those still being denied access to female-only support groups for rape survivors and those still fighting employers who expect them to share changing rooms with male colleagues. However, I think ministers are yet to cotton on to what is at stake for them politically.
Some of them will no doubt be scratching their heads after the dreadful council losses Labour is expected to suffer next month. It’s not yet been two years, why have voters turned against us so very quickly?
An answer lies in this sorry saga. It is the perfect example of government by midwittery, helmed by ministers who fail to grasp that voters are sufficiently discerning to see through the inconsistencies and the excuses. It is high time they stopped underestimating them.
Mick Hartley 