Emotional support plushes are pretty common among adults, and could be helpful for distressed animals

The therapist doesn’t think it’s that different to using meditation apps

Jerome Mayhew is Shadow Rail Minister and MP for Broadland and Fakenham.

Labour are botching the rollout of their Railways Bill, no matter whichever way you come at it.

Instead of siding with passengers to break down barriers to competition, they have backed their union paymasters with wholesale nationalisation. Labour should be reshaping rail to encourage private investment into improved infrastructure and rolling stock in order to refine competition and improve services for passengers.

Sadly for Labour, it doesn’t matter that there isn’t a single nationalised industry that is known for management dynamism (you try it); it doesn’t matter that privatisation has increased passenger numbers from 735m journeys a year to 1.75bn and counting; it doesn’t matter that privatisation has poured £6 billion since 2015 into upgraded rolling stock and improved services. What matters to this Labour government is the triumph of socialist dogma and union backscratching over passengers, and we will all pay the price.

The problems don’t stop with nationalisation. The Railways Bill creates Great British Railways, lumping Network Rail and nationalised train operating companies together. As a part of this Great British Railways will also take on much of the role of the independent regulator as well, marking its own homework and creating a massive conflict of interest.

GBR will be the decision maker for all applications for access to the network – from rail freight companies or other Open Access operators. In effect, GBR will be asked to decide if it wants competition. And get this, there will be no right of appeal against its decision. A blatant conflict of interest.

It’s the same with independent retailers, like Trainline, GBR is planning to go head-to-head with ticketing services, but Labour are set to prevent a level playing field for competition by restricting access to service data.

The wider rail industry is, rightly, deeply concerned about the government’s approach. Freight operators have stated, “We are really concerned about the scope and definition of the appeals function as proposed in the Bill”. Trainline has told the Government, “There is a need to be certain that the retail part of GBR will compete in the market in the same way as everybody else”.

And what about passengers? The government is making a song and dance about a new Passenger Council, which will monitor the performance of GBR. You might ask, so what? If it finds fault in GBR this Passenger Council has no enforcement powers. All it can do is provide a report to the, much diminished, Office of Rail and Road, which can ignore it or start another investigation of its own, creating confusion and delay – trademarks of this Government, this time by design. The Transport Select Committee has published a report listing its concerns about the Bill, recommending several amendments including increasing the bite of the Passenger Council.

Even disadvantaged groups are being ignored.

Whilst fare discounts for children, the elderly and the disabled are protected, Labour voted ten times against Conservative proposals for similar protection for Veterans’ and Armed Forces Family railcards as well as the Young Persons’ railcard. The minister said they have ‘no plans’ to reduce the discounts, and yet that is what they said about raising taxes before the general election. It’s what they said about the family farm tax and business property relief. It’s what they said about winter fuel payments.

Amendments to rectify these glaring errors? All voted down by Labour. In fact, the Conservative team tabled more than 180 amendments to the Bill to stand up for passengers, to give the Passenger Council proper enforcement powers, to protect the independence of the economic regulator, to give a genuine right of appeal against self-service GBR decisions, and many, many more.

The government is paralysed by chaos at the top, with a Prime Minister without the backbone to stand up to the rail unions and fight for consumers rather than the producer interest. Nationalisation is already making things worse, with discount fares already being removed in the name of “ticket simplification” and delay-repay compensation mooted to be reduced in the name of “standardisation”. Passengers get what they’re given with nationalisation, whilst train drivers get 15 per cent pay rises with no strings attached.

There is still time for genuine change to this bill, both in the Commons and then in the Lords. But the Government needs to stop and listen to the concerns of the industry. So far, we have seen no sign that they are listening at all.

Rochelle Blakeman is a public affairs professional, a writer and Conservative supporter.

In 2023, the global fertility rate (GFR) fell to 2.2 children per woman, below the replacement rate of 2.3. In England and Wales that same year, the TRF was at the lowest value on record – 1.44 children per woman.

In contrast to 20^th century scaremongering about there being “too many people” on the planet, demographers are now concerned about a population implosion. Whilst politicians of all colours are grappling with this, the populist-right has been particularly broody.

Notably, The Independent recently unearthed a 2023 Substack article by Reform’s Matt Goodwin in which he explored ideas influenced by demographer Paul Morland on how to solve Britain’s falling birth rates. These included a “negative child benefit tax” on “those without offspring”, removing personal income tax for women with two or more children and establishing a “pro-family culture” by having a national day to celebrate families and parenthood. The paper later spotlighted a YouTube video in which Matt Goodwin said that “many women in Britain are having children far too late in life” and called on young women to be given a “biological reality check.”

Social conservatives may agree with Matt Goodwin’s sentiment, but I believe that the Conservative Party must resist the temptation to emulate a top-down, state-knows-best approach to fertility in the UK. This impulse would not only be ineffective at increasing historically low birthrates, but at odds with everything the Conservative party should stand for. Whilst the ideas in Goodwin’s Substack piece are not official Reform policy, the ideas should be challenged for the sake of argument to reiterate the importance of limiting state involvement in anyone’s personal business.

Kemi Badenoch has been effective in highlighting the Labour Government’s overreach and overspend, and so too should Conservatives be wary of the overreach and economic fantasy flirted with by Goodwin.

The prospect of a tax on the childless and scrapping income tax for those with two or more children would be inherently unfair, as the childless already contribute more to the public purse than they take out. In addition to not claiming child benefits, childless households have fewer members to use public services such as the NHS and state education. The working childless do, however, pay taxes, thereby supporting the public services that those with children likely utilise to a greater extent.

Far from creating a “pro-family culture” in Britain, Goodwin’s proposals would breed justified resentment among those with the misfortune to have such a tax imposed on them. Hard working people would be less able to enjoy their childfree years, with less disposable income to spend on holidays, hobbies or whatever else they pleased. And those aspiring to have children would have less to save up to achieve this goal, whilst watching their hard-earned money enable people who happen to already be parents reap the benefits of a disproportionate tax cut.

Aside from indulging in economic fantasy, pro-natalist populists make moralistic assumptions about having offspring which have no bearing in the messy, unpredictable real world. They imply that having or not having a child is a “choice”, as if akin to deciding which route to take on a morning walk.

It may be convenient to caricature the childless as having made a series of deliberate “choices” that enable them to live a “carefree” life. But many singletons have not consciously “chosen” to be without a partner. Many young professionals have not “chosen” to be trapped in high-pressured corporate careers with limited work life balance. People are not “choosing” to struggle to get on the housing ladder. Most poignantly, nobody “chooses” to be afflicted with a medical condition or fertility problems which may prevent them from having children.

And conversely, common knowledge reminds us that many people with children will not necessarily have planned to become parents at all.

These complex and deeply human factors highlight how flawed a reward-and-punishment approach to encouraging more births would be. It reveals the clumsiness of the populist tendency to blame low birthrates on lifestyle “choices” – usually gunning for women’s “choices” – disregarding the sheer element of luck that is involved in the panning out of anyone’s personal, romantic or family life.

The state has no place in the most personal and visceral aspects of our lives. Whilst low fertility rates do pose social and demographic challenges, these problems are surmountable without dictating to the public how we should live, and without making moral judgements about anyone’s reproductive proclivity.

Indeed, an IEA paper by family economist Clara E. Piano presents research which indicates that government intervention through financial incentives makes little to no difference to birthrates. However, there is evidence to suggest, in the context of the United States, that in areas of lower regulatory burdens in labour and childcare markets, smaller “fertility gaps” exist (the gap between the number of children a woman has and the number she would like to have) implying that in more flexible market conditions, people are more likely to achieve their family goals. This may explain the cases of Italy and Japan – two countries with strictly regulated labour markets and historically low birthrates.

The cost of housing too is a significant factor pushing couples to have children later in life than would be ideal. The Conservative party has long been divided between liberalising the planning system and protecting our green and pleasant land. But if the party is serious about helping young people to gain more control over their aspirations, it needs to reject the populist-right’s impulse to deliver biology lectures and instead offer material solutions that would make acquiring a family home more achievable. Pledging to simplify the planning system and cut red tape would be a step in the right direction.

Anyone who believes in economic and personal freedom should be concerned with the growing populist obsession with childbearing. It demonstrates an instinct to lecture the public and entertain centralist measures that would significantly interfere in personal freedom.

Conservatives who still believe in a small state, in freedom under the law and in allowing for personal choice and aspiration should resist the populist approach; they should focus on improving economic outlooks and accept that overbearing political tools are often too blunt an instrument for the nuanced, sensitive matter of fertility, children and family life.

The Mitford sisters, 1935: (l-r) Jessica, Nancy, Diana, Unity and Pamela | Image by: Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy

4 min read1 hr

There were six Mitford sisters. Nancy achieved fame as a chronicler of the upper classes. Pamela lived for many years in Switzerland with her female partner. Diana married the most notorious British fascist, Oswald Mosley, and served time with him in prison. Unity was a dear friend of Adolf Hitler and tried to kill herself in despair as the war swung towards the allies. Deborah married into one of England’s most influential families, becoming Duchess of Devonshire. It was, however, Jessica – the subject of this book – who had the most adventurous life of them all.

It is said of the Mitford family that you couldn’t have made them up. They were beyond fiction. Carla Kaplan gives a real sense of this and helps the reader follow the confusions of the various names they used, both in their own secret language and in their dealings with others. Throughout the book, Jessica is Decca.

Out of the six, it was Decca who caused the most dismay. First by running away with her second cousin Esmond Romilly to fight in the Spanish civil war, returning to live in the Rotherhithe docks in London; and then going to the USA and becoming an active member of the Communist Party. Her antisemitic family could tolerate almost anything but her second marriage to a Jewish fellow-communist caused the greatest rift.

She had hoped her first marriage would be “terrific fun”. She and Esmond went to the USA with several letters of introduction and cadged off these acquaintances – borrowing their homes, their clothes and giving nothing back but delightful company.

Her closest friend in the US was probably Maya Angelou

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Their short married life had two tragedies: the death of their daughter due to measles, and the death of Esmond, who went missing-in-action in the Second World War after enlisting in the Canadian Royal Air Force. When Winston Churchill came to Washington to meet president Roosevelt, he sent for Decca so he could commiserate on her loss: she was a distant cousin and Esmond was his nephew. At the time she had no money and was struggling to keep herself and their second daughter, but was entertained at the White House. This was typical of the contradiction between her two worlds.

Decca had existed on the goodwill of her friends, but once America entered the war, she was able to find work in one of the wartime regulators – the Office of Price Administration – where she became an expert in exposing bad practice. She was an active trade unionist and member of the Communist Party. She moved to San Francisco where she married civil rights lawyer Bob Treuhaft and started the second part of her adventurous life.

After the awful death of their young son, she got to see the hideous side of the “death industry” in the US. Writing The American Way of Death allowed her to vent her anger about the way funeral homes used unscrupulous practices to take advantage of grieving families. This began her career as a “muckraking” writer. She and Bob survived the McCarthy period and stayed active in the Communist Party and campaigns for civil rights.

The list of Decca’s friends in both the UK and the USA reads like a Who’s Who of the best-known names in politics and culture. Her closest friend in the US was probably Maya Angelou. The two would sing a duet of her favourite song, Right Said Fred.

The biography is over 400 pages but with an additional 150 pages of acknowledgements, notes, bibliography, an index and many pages of delightful photographs, it is a weighty tome. But it is well worth the effort as Kaplan manages to immediately engage the reader in this gripping life story.

Baroness Bryan is a former Labour peer

Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford

By: Carla Kaplan

Publisher: Hurst & Co

In respect to John Davidson’s request to Variety, we have referred to Tourette’s as a ‘condition’ rather than a ‘disability’

Speaking to Variety, John Davidson has been able to speak to the recent controversy at the BAFTAs which was televised on the BBC. He’s done so in the hope it will foster more understanding and awareness about Tourette’s. The BBC’s apparent editorial choice to broadcast this involuntary racist slur has unsurprisingly resulted in widespread upset. Concerningly, it has sparked heated animosity between our Black and disabled communities in the UK.

We have since learned the BBC seemingly reassured executives from Warner Bros it would not broadcast the slur.

Now, Davidson’s own words have raised further questions around the BBC’s intentions. Going further, it sparks fresh concerns that the BBC may have deliberately left this offensive incident in the cut. This carries considerable weight given the absence of other inappropriate slurs that came as a result of Davidson’s tics.

As a result, the hole the BBC has dug for itself is getting deeper by the day.

The BBC has a lot to answer for. pic.twitter.com/0dNBGMkptj

— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) February 24, 2026

Davidson: “Please don’t judge me. Please understand this isn’t who I am.”

Scottish campaigner Davidson is the real-life inspiration for I Swear, a film highlighting the challenges for people with Tourette’s. Davidson had reached out to the Sinners team after the incident to offer his apology to Michael B. Jordan, Delroy Lindo, and production designer Hannah Beachler.

During his interview, he was asked how it feels to have Tourette’s. In response, Davidson gave a glimpse into how these involuntary tics have put his safety at risk as a result of the offence caused:

Very often, the media focuses on my particular type of Tourette’s, which is called coprolalia — the involuntary use of obscene or offensive language. This symptom affects 10% to 30% of people with the condition and is not a criterion for diagnosis. However, it is one of the hardest tics to manage and can be very distressing for those living with it. Many individuals report discrimination and isolation as a result.

I have been physically beaten to within an inch of my life with an iron bar after tic-ing a comment to a young woman whose boyfriend and accomplice ambushed me one evening.

Adding:

The real challenge isn’t the tics themselves, but the misconceptions surrounding them. Understanding the full range of Tourette’s helps reduce stigma and supports everyone living with the condition.

When socially unacceptable words come out, the guilt and shame on the part of the person with the condition is often unbearable and causes enormous distress. I can’t begin to explain how upset and distraught I have been as the impact from Sunday sinks in.

Davidson made clear that he has no forewarning of these tics, saying that whilst some can suppress them briefly, the very act of suppression resembles a coke bottle being shaken. Informing that the tics come like an explosion of fizzy pop, he added:

For me personally, my brain works so fast and the tics have always been so aggressive that I have no idea when they are coming or what they will be. I have almost no ability to suppress, and when the situation is stressful, I have absolutely no choice but to tic — it simply bursts out of me like a gunshot.

“I ticked perhaps 10 different offensive words on the night”

The awareness campaigner highlighted that those with the condition find these tics show up in ways that are deeply offensive for themselves. This makes the condition feel ‘spiteful’ for those living with it. Stating that it is the ‘last thing he believes’, Davidson gave examples of other tics on the night that didn’t make the BBC cut.

Of particular concern is the knowledge that apparently of 10 offensive outbursts on the night, the BBC kept just one:

For example, when the chair of BAFTA started speaking on Sunday, I shouted, “Boring.” On Sunday, Alan Cumming joked about his own sexuality and, when referencing Paddington Bear, said, “Maybe you would like to come home with me, Paddington. It wouldn’t be the first time I have taken a hairy Peruvian bear home with me.” This resulted in homophobic tics from me and led to a shout of “pedophile” that was likely triggered because Paddington Bear is a children’s character.

I would appreciate reports of the event explaining that I ticked perhaps 10 different offensive words on the night of the awards. The N-word was one of these, and I completely understand its significance in history and in the modern world, but most articles are giving the impression I shouted one single slur on Sunday.

Davidson also speaks about the poignant moment this should have been for the campaigner before effectively being sold out by the BBC. Despite all he had to overcome to be there, he positively referred to the acceptance he felt at the BAFTAs:

After living with Tourette’s for almost 40 years, I was aware of how physically and mentally difficult it would be for me to attend. I also had a serious heart operation only five weeks ago. I put every ounce of energy and concentration into being able to attend.

I was thrilled to see that on the night, everyone — including some of the most well-respected and famous people from the film world — cheered at my name and applauded. I stood and waved to show my appreciation and acknowledged that this was a significant moment in my life, finally being accepted. It started as one of the most memorable experiences of my life.

Serious questions for the BBC

This should have been a watershed moment where British society was able to learn more about the condition of Tourette’s, whilst finally reducing unwelcome stigma on those powerless to the harm it can cause. In reality, the BBC’s decision has directly worsened that deeply painful stigma. On top of the absence of other involuntary tics in the final cut, a quote from Davidson’s interview strengthens calls for intense scrutiny of the BBC. It also reinforces Labour MP Dawn Butler’s demands for transparency in its decision-making process.

Davidson stated:

StudioCanal were working closely with BAFTA, and BAFTA had made us all aware that any swearing would be edited out of the broadcast. I have made four documentaries with the BBC in the past, and feel that they should have been aware of what to expect from Tourette’s and worked harder to prevent anything that I said — which, after all, was some 40 rows back from the stage — from being included in the broadcast.

Arguably suggesting the BBC saw some advantageous content to come from someone living with such a debilitating condition, he added:

As I reflect on the auditorium, I remember there was a microphone just in front of me, and with hindsight I have to question whether this was wise, so close to where I was seated, knowing I would tic.

We wrote yesterday about Butler’s call for the BBC to explain itself, saying:

Labour MP Dawn Butler has written to the BBC following its recent decision to air an involuntary racist slur. Tourette’s campaigner John Davidson shouted the N-word at the BAFTAs, and both Black actors visibly shuddered when they heard it before composing themselves and continuing. Butler has now asked for an “urgent explanation” from the broadcaster. Their choice to air the slur led to widespread hurt against both the Black and disabled community.

The BBC successfully, and conveniently, cut any mention of Palestine from the broadcast. This demonstrates it’s ability to axe or censor content, so why the double standard? This BAFTA incident would suggest they simply didn’t want to, raising questions once again about whose interests the broadcaster serves.

Willful negligence?

Understanding that the lion’s share of Davidson’s tics had been removed signals the selective approach the BBC appears to have operated in. After all, it’s ironic that they chose to cut the reference to ‘paedophiles’ amidst a couple of high-profile arrests connected to a convicted paedo Jeffrey Epstein.

As Butler also reminded, they cut reference to Akinola Davies Jr’s call for achieving justice and recognition for the ongoing oppression of Palestinians, Sudanese and Congolese. Furthermore, those in charge can’t even deny awareness of the concern, with the request from Warner Bros to censor the n-word.

Therefore, arguments that bosses at the BBC saw value in its selective choice to keep the ‘n-word’ in the cut are harder to deny. Consequently, all responsible for such a scandalous decision must be held to account for the harm it has negligently caused.

Featured image via the Canary