'The centrist frenemies won't lessen political polarisation'

1. The Centrist Dads won’t save Britain

Kathleen Stock Unherd

"The Centrists are back, baby," writes Kathleen Stock for UnHerd, "and this time they are bringing with them the solution for our polarised times."  Unlikely "frenemy" pairings ranging from Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell to Ed Balls and George Osborne have launched podcasts "framed as bringing sensible, well-informed discussion to the masses from rather different political perspectives, modelling reasonable disagreement along the way". But former philosophy professor Stock argues that "to genuinely lessen political polarisation", we need "robust, reasoned disagreement between people" whose views and values "differ radically".  The slew of podcasts from pin-ups for so-called Centrist Dads suggests "we have no shortage of former politicians who think they are clever and interesting", she adds. "But what we really could do with is a few wiser ones."  

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2. Roisin Murphy was silenced. Was it for not singing to the BBC's tune?

Rod Liddle in The Sun

A five-hour celebration of Roisin Murphy's music has been "pulled" from BBC Radio 6 at "very short notice" after the Irish singer "made a few eminently sensible comments about puberty blocking drugs", says Rod Liddle in The Sun. The trans lobby has gone "bananas" over her views and "demanded she be banned from everywhere, immediately". These "hysterical woke nutjobs" shriek "so loudly" that "concert promoters and record companies tend to listen". And while the BBC has denied "censoring a musician for political grounds", Liddle reckons this is "a porkie pie". If Murphy's "scheduled" music slot isn't "put back on very soon", he adds, "she should sue".

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3. The Standard View: Putin, Kim and the pursuit of human misery

London Evening Standard editorial board

Vladimir Putin's meeting with Kim Jong Un in Russia today is a "measure of how desperate" the Russian leader has become, says the London Evening Standard's editorial board. The "two pariahs" are "trading deadly technologies in the pursuit of human misery" as Putin goes "scrounging" for arms for his assault on Ukraine. In return, Moscow "could help to develop North Korea’s military satellite technology" and also offer economic aid to the hermit kingdom's regime, "perhaps the most brutal and repressive in the world", the paper adds. "Like any distressed dictator", the Russian president "seeks to portray strength" but this meeting "speaks to a man isolated, scratching around for support from anywhere he can find it".

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4. Prisons aren't working

Stephen Daisly in The Spectator

"Will we learn the lessons of Daniel Khalife?" asks Stephen Daisly in The Spectator. The terror suspect's escape "was not down to any tactical genius on his part but a result of our outdated, outmoded, overcrowded prison system". Wandsworth jail "is currently operating at 163 per cent capacity, making it the third most overcrowded prison in England and Wales". Daisly argues that "we need to rethink what prisons are, why we have them, who should be in them, and how much we should be investing in them." Narrowing the "parameters of incarceration" would "not only reduce the prison population but potentially make prison more effective and prisoners and the public safer".

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5. The right to data ownership is the only way to take on Big Tech

Andrew Orlowski for The Telegraph

Tech giants are now “more powerful than any nation state”, writes Andrew Orlowski for The Telegraph. Their “whims set the political agenda”, which “does not seem healthy for either the economy or our democracy ”, but “can anything on Earth stop Big Tech”? The answer, he suggests, “may be a very old one”. Google is “no more about web search or maps than those American candy shops on Oxford Street are in the business of selling sweets”. Instead, tech firms are “giant personal data processing companies”. And if we could assert ownership of our data, we could “demand its destruction”, or opt to “trade it”. So let us “try the one thing we have not actually tried online yet – capitalism”.

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