Gaby Hinsliff's Blog, page 11

It’s been 100 first days of woe but Keir Starmer should take heart, Tony Blair’s weren’t a picnic either | Gaby Hinsliff

Avoidable mistakes and now a brutal reshuffle have pushed Labour’s approval ratings off a cliff. Thankfully, it’s all fixable

And on the hundredth day, he rested. The prime minister marked the passing of this crucial milestone for his young government by jetting off to an Italian villa borrowed from a friendly millionaire, to relax and plan for the hundred days to come.

No, not this prime minister, and not the millionaire you’re thinking of, either. This was Tony Blair back in August 1997, chilling by the Tuscan swimming pool belonging to then paymaster general, Geoffrey Robinson. Keir Starmer on the other hand, having been forced by the riots to scrap his own Italian holiday this summer, could be forgiven for spending his hundredth day screaming into a pillow.

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The Care Dilemma by David Goodhart review – a flawed study of family life

The Road to Somewhere author argues that the liberating impact of feminism has harmed our children in a book shot through with claims that don’t stand up to scrutiny

It was mostly in the small hours that I first read David Goodhart’s new book on caring. By coincidence, it arrived as I was trying to look after my dying father at one end of the country and my own family at the other, while simultaneously attempting to work. Well, that’s life: there are millions of us in the same boat, which is why a deeper exploration of care feels so very overdue. But perhaps it hasn’t been Goodhart’s life, exactly. When it came to his own four children and elderly parents, he confesses, like many men of his generation he “played a subordinate role” to his now ex-wife and his sisters respectively. As a man tackling this topic now, he writes, he’s braced for some flak. Well, yes; and perhaps particularly as the kind of man who writes that while the early days of lockdown might have been tough on women, “the story in the UK was also one of people finding domestic life unexpectedly rewarding”, which may not be exactly how parents of stir-crazed toddlers remember it. But anyway, back to the book.

This is the third in a trilogy that began in 2017 with the thought-provoking The Road to Somewhere, which immortalised the two warring tribes of Brexit as Everywheres (liberal, cosmopolitan, faintly haughty urban elites) v Somewheres (socially conservative, anchored in provincial towns, annoyed at being condescended to). This time his focus is family life and fertility, a hot topic for British Tories obsessed with the idea that millennials aren’t having enough babies, but also for Trump-era Republicans and the European far right.

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Canada is showing that it’s possible to have universal, affordable childcare. Is the UK brave enough to follow? | Gaby Hinsliff

If we treated this service as vital state infrastructure, it could make a huge difference to parents – and to the economy

You can’t get much for £5.50 nowadays. A takeaway coffee and a muffin, maybe; a pint and a packet of crisps, outside London. But in parts of Canada, roughly that amount can buy you a day’s childcare. Or it can, at least, if you can find a nursery place.

The country is now three years into a post-pandemic social experiment, offering parents heavily (and expensively) subsidised childcare for what is by envious British standards a staggeringly cheap C$10 a day. The idea is that ultimately this multibillion-dollar state programme will pretty much pay for itself, thanks to the boost in GDP expected to be provided by more parents going out to work. But arguably, its biggest insight has been treating childcare less as some kind of perk the state sadly can’t afford right now and more as what Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s deputy prime minister, calls “social infrastructure”: an essential part of the national plumbing, like commuter trains or fast broadband or any other thrusting great multibillion-pound building project we are wearily prepared to believe will ultimately be worth it.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

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Yes, Andrew Tate is a misogynist, but his real game is exploiting men’s vulnerabilities for cash | Gaby Hinsliff

It is a con women know well, yet it is important to recognise that men can also be its victims

There is one scene in Demi Moore’s new film, The Substance, that made the actor cry, and it’s a scene about self-loathing. Getting ready for a date, her character looks in the mirror and is driven to violent despair. Nothing she tries looks right; everything about her suddenly seems wrong.

Moore, who plays a TV star driven to extreme measures after being fired for getting older, has said the film is about the shame women are conditioned to feel about their bodies and the punishment we are conned into inflicting on ourselves as a result, from expensive miracle creams we know won’t really work right up to the plastic surgeon’s knife. Swap the older woman in the film for a teenage girl, starving herself because she doesn’t meet some impossible physical ideal, and the message rings just as true. But what if you swapped her for a teenage boy?

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please .

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Rosie Duffield’s savage departure raises difficult questions for Keir Starmer. He’d be foolish to ignore them | Gaby Hinsliff

The MP isn’t alone in complaining about the PM’s inner circle, party donations or welfare reform. Labour should treat this as a warning

Rosie Duffield never dreamed, she insists, that she would end up leaving the Labour party. And how lucky for her, in some ways, if she genuinely didn’t see this near inevitable breach coming; not even, presumably, after she accused Keir Starmer dramatically in June of “gaslighting” her like an abusive partner. For who could have stood in good conscience on a Labour ticket, in the year of a widely predicted Labour landslide, if they had suspected that barely three months after winning they’d be off? “Sometimes I feel completely independent,” she told an interviewer in June. But if she’d guessed that by September she would be sitting as one, then surely the only honourable action would have been to fight (and almost certainly lose) her Canterbury seat as an independent candidate. Lucky for Duffield, then, that she seemingly realised only after securing another term in parliament that it was time to go.

But Starmer has arguably been lucky too. Her eye-wateringly savage resignation letter – accusing him of presiding over “sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice … off the scale”, as well as the “cruel and unnecessary” means testing of winter fuel payments – could have done far more damage had it come from someone less isolated within the party. On the left, many who share her doubts about welfare reform still don’t want to hear it from the MP famous for liking a tweet that stated only women can have a cervix. (Though Duffield swears she isn’t quitting over it, three years of being ostracised and attacked for her gender critical views, only to see Starmer eventually come around to something closer to her position, have clearly left their mark).

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please .

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Why are so many people in Britain off sick? The answer is far more complex than you think | Gaby Hinsliff

New research sets out a prescription – but the shadow of a fresh benefits crackdown hangs over everything

Jamie used to love his job. Working as a hospital porter, helping sick people in need, he probably never expected to become a patient himself: at 50, he was still fit and healthy. But then he strained his back at work, and so began a long, downhill slide. He was given physio exercises to follow online, but couldn’t access them, and before long he was in such pain he was signed off work for good. Unable to keep active, and putting on weight, Jamie was referred to a diabetes prevention programme; but by now his back hurt too much to drive to the clinic, and public transport was a struggle.

Overwhelmed and isolated, he ended up retreating inside his damp, mouldy council house. Five years on, Jamie still isn’t working, but his back is almost the least of his problems. He’s diabetic, asthmatic thanks to the mould, suffering from coronary heart disease, and if he isn’t depressed yet then he probably soon will be.

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A Woman Like Me: A Memoir by Diane Abbott review – rich and complex record of resilience

Though vague about her own achievements, Britain’s first Black female MP paints an absorbing picture of her remarkable life and sheer determination in a gossip-free but frank and, at times, funny autobiography

Nevertheless, she persisted. That old millennial feminist rallying cry springs to mind repeatedly on reading Diane Abbott’s absorbing new autobiography, which describes a life of astonishing resilience. Her teachers thought a working-class black girl wouldn’t get into Cambridge, but she persevered and proved them wrong – only to be mistaken at one college ball for the hired help. She battled through multiple rejections before finally landing the Hackney seat that made her Britain’s first (and for many years only) black female MP, and then through the impossible pressures of being a single mother in parliament in the days of endless late sittings and no childcare. (Once, in desperation, she voted with her two-week-old son strapped to her, only for a Tory MP to complain that it was bad enough having David Blunkett’s guide dog around, never mind babies.) Frozen out by Neil Kinnock, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown for her uncompromisingly leftwing views, she was sacked from her first frontbench job under Ed Miliband (which she secured by running unsuccessfully against him for the leadership) for publicly attacking his immigration policy.

But nevertheless, she persisted, staging a late comeback as shadow home secretary under Jeremy Corbyn only to be forcibly “stood down” from his 2017 election campaign after a fumbled radio interview. (She was ill at the time, she writes, and only learned of her unceremonious benching from the media.) Through it all she has endured decades of horrific racist and misogynistic abuse, only to lose the whip herself for a shockingly ill-judged letter sent to this newspaper implying that the “prejudice” suffered by Jews, Irish people and Travellers was not the same as the racism endured by black people. Yet here she still is, triumphantly re-elected aged 70, despite Keir Starmer’s best efforts. Whatever you make of Abbott, the story of what she overcame to get here offers fascinating insights into both the overtly racist Britain of her childhood – when young men would go door to door seeking black families to beat up – and the sometimes flawed but compelling politician it produced.

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The early release of prisoners was unavoidable, but too many women in the UK are now living in fear | Gaby Hinsliff

Despite government assurances on the release of prisoners across England and Wales, the coming days will be filled with a familiar dread for some survivors of domestic violence

When darkness falls, it’s time to bolt the doors. Check the windows, test the locks; circle the house, then anxiously check all over again. The phone must always be by the pillow, just in case. And the slightest noise, if you manage to sleep, will inevitably jolt you awake.

It’s a nightly routine that will be familiar to many survivors of domestic violence, for whom the initial sweet relief of seeing their attacker sent to jail may be swiftly followed by the fear of what might happen once he is released. He knows where you lived, but also where to look: where you work or where your children go to school, where your family and friends are. The dangerous intimacy of a once-shared life keeps survivors looking nervously over their shoulders for years. And that’s why this week’s early release of around 1,700 prisoners – a decision forced on this government, to its palpable fury, by years of Conservative governments recklessly failing to build enough prison places to hold them – has set so many survivors on edge.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

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Elle Macpherson’s junk 'cures' for cancer are only likely to cause women more agony | Gaby Hinsliff

How many are now second-guessing their own treatment after the model’s dangerous intervention?

Elle Macpherson believes, for some reason, that disease thrives in an acidic body. The Australian ex-supermodel swears by the benefits of limiting red meat, wheat, dairy, sugar and processed food, and by something she calls “alkalising greens” (no, me neither). Through her glossy wellness brand, WelleCo, she tirelessly promotes her Super Elixir – a blend of vitamins and minerals apparently devised by her naturopath when she was feeling rundown and menopausal – to women who want to look as incredible as she does at 60, and are willing to believe that has something to do with kale.

So far, so relatively benign, though admittedly things took a darker turn when Macpherson dated Andrew Wakefield between 2017 and 2019, the former doctor behind the now thoroughly debunked junk science linking the MMR jab to autism. But mostly Macpherson has occupied the safer side of the line between “crunchy moms” – devotees of organic food, herbal remedies and tech detoxes – and cranks. Or she had, until she started talking about “saying no to standard medical solutions” for cancer.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please .

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We wanted a serious government: now we have one. But a little Rayner-like joy wouldn’t go amiss | Gaby Hinsliff

There’s only so much doom and gloom the public can take – and with three uplifting announcements, Labour finally seems to realise this

Sometimes it’s the little things that matter. An unexpected kindness, a burst of late summer sunshine, a cheerful snippet of news; things that are never going to change the world, but lift the mood a bit. For teachers braced for the return to school this week, the news that Ofsted’s dreaded one-word grades – potentially career-ending labels, from “outstanding” to “inadequate”, which ended up being all anyone really remembered of an often more nuanced inspection report – will be scrapped with immediate effect may well fall into this category. It’s hardly a revolutionary change, since schools that would have been judged to be failing under the old regime will still face immediate intervention. But it gives teachers just a bit more room to breathe.

It’s a small, human way of recognising the pressures they’ve been under and the depth of feeling triggered last year by the suicide of headteacher Ruth Perry, after her primary school was abruptly downgraded to inadequate over errors in its safeguarding paperwork. (An inquest later ruled that the sometimes “rude and intimidating” inspection had played a part in Perry’s deteriorating mental health.) Better still, the announcement by the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, comes ahead of a more substantial longer-term review of what teachers are actually being asked to teach, which is expected to examine complaints that the Michael Gove-era curriculum had become impossibly overstuffed (do primary schoolchildren really need to know what a fronted adverbial is?) and badly in need of a little joy injected back into it.

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