Ed Sheeran and Sally Rooney: opposing celebrity faces of the Palestine problem

'If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor' Desmond Tutu

 It's something of a standing joke amongst people who know me that I really do not like famous people. The reasons why I don't like famous people will probably one day be the subject of a different blog, or perhaps of a longer piece of writing (I'll probably write a book about it one day) but for now I'll just say that I think it is profoundly harmful to everyone that we consider well-known individuals to be role models. This attitude is a matter of great inequality, giving less respect to ourselves and our peers than we do to people whom we don't actually know, and whose public images are stage-managed to an extent that their true personality can't be seen (the recent headlines about Russell Brand and David Walliams are quite a good example of that).

The subject of whether celebrities should bring their political opinions into public life is another valid question, and another one for which my thoughts on the matter are far too complicated to really be summarised in a single blog. But in a nutshell: 1) Celebrities should bring their political opinions into public life, because everyone should; 2) Particularly if the celebrity is an artist, all art is inherently political, so that makes it additionally impossible not to; 3) (and this is an important one) A celebrity's opinion should not be considered any more relevant than the opinion of a regular member of the public. Celebrities are not experts, and whilst they have just as much responsibility to educate the public as we all do, they should not have any more platform to do that than anyone else does.

Bearing that in mind, we come on to the subject of two well-known people, English singer Ed Sheeran and Irish novelist Sally Rooney, the differing ways they've handled a situation regarding Palestine, and our media's reaction to it.

I will start with Ed Sheeran, because I actually don't believe the Sally Rooney instance would have happened in the same way were it not for that. Ed Sheeran removed the singer Macklemore from his 2026 tour after Macklemore's public statements of support for Palestine. The story seems to go that Sheeran was bullied and intimidated by the billionaire venue owner Robert Kraft, who threatened to cancel Sheeran's whole performance and influence other venues to do the same if Macklemore was allowed to perform. The decision to remove Macklemore led to profound levels of criticism for Ed Sheeran from a great number of cultural figures, as well as the general public. Many other support acts withdrew from the tour in solidarity with Macklemore, and for the most part the sales numbers for their music has gone up. The tour continued, but the Macklemore controversy continues to be the thing it's most remembered for.

It's important to make something clear. The amount of criticism Ed Sheeran courted for this is not just because people agreed with Macklemore about Palestine (although I hope many of his critics do). It's also because of a general indignation about artists being bullied in this way. As I said at the beginning, all art is inherently political - there is no such thing as apolitical art, art by its very nature is a reflection of the time and social culture that the artist exists in and the way they view that. Artists are, understandably, very nervous about the silencing of their own freedom of expression in the interests of kowtowing to the wealthy and powerful. Ed Sheeran has learned the hard way that you cannot be an apolitical artist, and particularly not when there's a genocide going on.

And that brings us onto the other major celebrity who's courted controversy recently, but in an entirely different way. Sally Rooney has been one of the most successful novelists over the last ten years. Her novels Conversations with Friends, Normal People, Intermezzo and Beautiful World, Where Are You? have all been critically acclaimed, and the first two of which have had incredibly successful television adaptations on the BBC. I've only myself read one of her books, Conversations with Friends, which I read during lockdown and I found quite interesting for being the only book I'd ever read that featured a main character with endometriosis, a very debilitating illness of the female reproductive system that isn't talked about nearly enough.

Last July, the direct action group Palestine Action was controversially proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK Government and the then Home Secretary Yvette Cooper. This proscription puts it in the same category as al-Qaida and National Action, and makes it a crime for any UK citizen to publicly express support for them. This proscription has been heavily contested ever since, with enormous numbers of protests in support of Palestine Action. Since June 2025, the number of arrests for terrorism in the UK jumped from 234 in 2024-25 to 3,867 in the following year - an increase of 1,553% according to the Government's own figures. There are also a lot of people who've protested in support of Palestine Action who haven't been arrested because there simply hasn't been sufficient police resources to do so. I've heard some commenters, apparently missing the point, saying, 'If they didn't want to be arrested, why not just protest for Palestine without mentioning Palestine Action?' But mentioning Palestine Action is the whole point - the purpose of these protests is to overwhelm the criminal justice system and make the proscription impossible to enforce, and it's working. Meanwhile, there is a process going through the courts to determine whether the proscription was legal in the first place. The Government has put itself into an impossible quandary on Israel's behalf, and any course of action it takes now will be highly embarrassing.

Since the proscription, Sally Rooney has been vocal about how she supports Palestine Action, and she is allowed to say that. A statement like this would be illegal if a UK citizen said it, but Sally Rooney is not a UK citizen; she is an Irish citizen and subject to Irish law, so she cannot face any legal action for a statement like this unless she says it in the UK. I've heard some Government ministers and media pundits speculating that she could be arrested for terrorism for making public statements like this, but it's an empty threat and they know it. The UK has no power to do any such thing.

Nevertheless, there was a discussion about a year ago speculating that possibly it may become illegal for Sally Rooney's books to be sold in the UK if she pledges to donate her royalties to Palestine Action. What the legal position is surrounding this, a publisher in the UK giving earned royalties to a foreign author who they know intends to spend the money on something that would be illegal in the UK but is not in their own country, is a very complex matter that I can't get to the bottom of without a great deal more legal knowledge than I have. Whatever the legal situation, Sally Rooney's books have been withdrawn from UK wholesalers, and can currently only be purchased in the UK from booksellers who already had them in stock. The official reason is that it would be illegal for her publishers, Faber and Faber, to pass on her royalty money knowing what she intends to do with it.

There are some things about this that I find very curious. The first, and most obvious one, is why has it taken until now for this to suddenly become the case? It was in July 2025 that Palestine Action was proscribed in the UK, and it was only quite soon afterwards that people started speculating about this with Sally Rooney (the earliest reference to it I could find was this BBC article from November 2025). Why has it suddenly become an issue now, a whole year later? If anything, the proscription against Palestine Action was a lot stronger a year ago than it is now; a year later, when it's become increasingly apparent that the police and the courts and the Government are all out of their depth, it feels very odd that suddenly now is the time that Sally Rooney and her publishers are facing legal difficulties over this. I've not seen anyone explain this in any of the media surrounding this situation - what has happened that has meant this has become illegal now, when it wasn't in the past?

There are a few other things that are a bit odd about this situation. The first is that Palestine Action does not have a bank account. Part of the proscription process involves freezing whatever bank account they did have, so it isn't possible for Sally Rooney, or for anyone else, to donate money to them. I should say that there is a 'Palestine Action Global', which does accept donations, so perhaps she donates to that. But at the bottom of the donation page is this disclaimer: 'Please see our statement on from September 2025, which explicitly states that ‘Palestine Action Global’ does not include the United Kingdom. The UK proscription covered Palestine Action in Britain, not its global groups. Any reporting which suggests otherwise, or implies Palestine Action Global contravenes the ban, is infactual and baseless.' So if Sally Rooney is donating to that, I don't understand how that would come under the UK proscription. And one other peculiar thing - the November 2025 BBC article speculates that the TV adaptations of Rooney's novels Normal People and Conversations with Friends may have to be removed from the iPlayer streaming service because Rooney also receives royalties from the BBC for that. So far, this has not happened. It is apparently not illegal for Rooney to receive royalties from the BBC. A lot of these things don't quite make sense to me.

But there is something that does make sense, which is how at ease Sally Rooney seems to be with the whole decision. From the comments she's made in her interviews, it doesn't sound as though she's at all upset about her books being withdrawn - I even have the impression that she's been quite a big part of the decision to withdraw them in the first place. And this creates quite an interesting comparison - this has been reported using very authoritarian language - there are words like 'ban', like 'censorship', all designed to suggest that this is something that has been imposed on Sally Rooney against her will. And her own position doesn't seem to be that. It feels to me as though this is actually a decision she has largely made herself.

And I think it is. I do not believe that the reason Sally Rooney's books have been withdrawn in the UK is because it's illegal for her publishers to pay her royalties - there are too many things about that explanation that don't quite stack up. What I think this is really about is what happened with Ed Sheeran. The world saw a spineless celebrity acquiescing to demands from powerful billionaires to silence his friends' and colleagues' freedom of expression. Sally Rooney, on the other hand, made a decision to not only speak positively about Palestine Action, but to put her money where her mouth was; to say, 'Fine, if you will continue to proscribe them as a terrorist organisation, I will take my business elsewhere.' And as a result, it's made the already hard-to-enforce proscription against Palestine Action even more of a headache for the UK Government. Just as with Ed Sheeran and Macklemore, people have been up in arms about this, particularly as Rooney is such a popular author. The most significant development is Rooney's fellow author Sarah Helm saying on social media, 'God help us authors who support Palestine and Palestine Action', a statement which the police subsequently said did not meet the threshold for arrest. But Sarah Helm isn't just an author; this is significant because of who she's married to. She's married to Jonathan Powell, who is the UK's National Security Advisor. Clearly, it would have been a highly explosive situation had the wife of the UK's National Security Advisor been arrested for terrorism, so I'm not surprised that this one conveniently went away. But as a result, protesters have been standing with placards saying the exact same words that Helm said, and they have been arrested. This creates an even worse situation, where the law apparently considers words said online, to a big audience, by the wife of the UK's National Security Advisor not to meet the criminal threshold, but the same words on a bit of cardboard by an ordinary person to do so. Sally Rooney caused this situation, and I believe she knew she was causing it. That's what all this is about.

I cannot say for certain that this was the case with Sally Rooney. Most of what I'm saying is speculative, I cannot find any source to clarify that this was the case. But I also can't find any source that explains all the various bits of confusion about the official statement, so it is the most clear explanation. And if I'm right, it really says such interesting things about the state of our media. They could not report a well-known person taking a strong and principled stand in support of Palestine - so instead, they reported it as though it was something that was forced on Sally Rooney, as though she'd done something wrong and was being punished for it.

It made me think how the media would have reported the situation with Ed Sheeran if Sheeran had been a little more defensive of his colleague. Much the same, I would imagine. Say Ed Sheeran had cancelled his tour to any venues who refused to host Macklemore - this would have been reported as though he had been banned from the venues for refusing to follow the rules, as opposed to making his own decision to stand against bullying and intimidation from someone powerful.

That version of history doesn't exist. But it does create some interesting thoughts about the way the media reports it when a high-profile figure does make a principled stand. Consequences for such things are not always forced by others against the recipients' will.

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Catherine Fookes MP's response to my email about transgender guidance

I have a confession to make. This summer, my head was a bit all over the place, I stopped thinking about my blog, and worse than that, I did not update it to reflect my MP Catherine Fookes' response to my letter on 4th June urging her to sign Early Day Motion 240, which proposed that the Draft Code of Practice for Services, public functions and associations be rejected for the harm it potentially would cause transgender people.

At the time I wrote that, I published it on my blog with the promise that any response I received from Catherine would be published as well. She replied to me on 16th June. From reading back through my diary, I was sick in bed that day and failed to notice Catherine's response, hence my failure to update it on the blog. When I eventually did notice, it became one of those things that you think you'll do 'all in good time', and I haven't got around to it until now. I think this is quite a flaw of mine... I really struggle to motivate myself to get on with writing if I don't do it at the time it first occurs to me.

Catherine's response to my letter (which I recommend reading beforehand if you haven't already) is as follows:

Dear George,

Thank you for your email. First of all, I want Monmouthshire’s trans community – and all LGBTQ+ people – to know that I stand in solidarity with them. Trans people deserve safety, dignity and respect. Everyone should be able to live their lives free from intimidation or abuse. I’ve heard first-hand how worried many of my constituents in Monmouthshire are about how changes could affect day-to-day life.

Last year the Supreme Court ruled that sex in the Equality Act 2010 refers to biological sex. Through engaging with Monmouthshire’s trans community about this and hearing their worries, I was able to raise their concerns directly with the Women and Equalities Minister at that time, and robustly question the EHRC Chair as at that time I was a member of the Women and Equalities Committee.

After consideration by Ministers, updated guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission was laid in Parliament on 21 May 2026 to reflect the ruling.

The guidance reflects the findings of the Supreme Court in terms of access to single-sex spaces, but it also emphasises that service providers should make sure that trans people have access to essential services, such as toilets. It says they should consider if and how trans people may be disadvantaged and suggests a holistic approach to service provision by providing a mix of services which may include both separate or single-sex services and mixed-sex services.

Parliament now has 40 days post-publication to consider the guidance. I will endeavour to make sure trans people’s voices are represented in this process.

Transgender people are protected by the Equality Act 2010, passed by the last Labour Government—not only against discrimination through the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, but also against direct discrimination, indirect discrimination and harassment in substance in their acquired gender. These protections are available to transgender people regardless of whether they possess a Gender Recognition Certificate or not.

Now more than ever, people in positions of authority, such as politicians, must speak out about the importance of our shared values of tolerance, respect and fair-mindedness, and I will continue to do so.

It is important that as a society we always try to move forwards, not backwards, in equality and inclusivity. I therefore welcome that the Government announced at the recent King’s Speech that the trans-inclusive ban on conversion therapy will be brought in this parliamentary session, as promised in our manifesto. The urgency of this was something I also raised with the Minister last year and am very pleased to see move forward.

As I am a PPS, I am not able to sign EDMs, but please be assured that as your MP I will continue to voice my support for dignity and safety of trans people in Monmouthshire and more widely, especially at this difficult time.

I hope that this is helpful in outlining my position and what will happen in the coming weeks. I will continue to listen, and to attend upcoming Parliamentary sessions and events on this important matter where I can.

My reaction to this email is interesting, because to be honest I wasn't all that impressed by it. I think the email just smacks of platitude, and doesn't reassure me at all that trans people are going to be protected. But to be fair to Catherine, I don't believe she's motivated by transphobia and what I have seen of her actions in Parliament and her constituency have been more impressive, so I'm going to start with that.

The first thing I should reference is the point about 'as a PPS I am not able to sign EDMs'. A PPS is a Parliamentary Private Secretary, and the first thing I should note is that whilst it's not the convention for them to sign Early Day Motions, they aren't banned from doing so and it does happen occasionally. That was my immediate reaction when I read this comment. But then I looked it up, and found out that in the long gap between her sending this email and my acknowledging it, she isn't actually a PPS anymore. Moreover, upon vacating this position she immediately signed Early Day Motion 240. So, credit where it's due: she did immediately do what I asked her to do.

I have also been impressed by the questions she has asked about this in Parliament, which are linked in the email. On the Women and Equalities debate, she questioned Baroness Kishwer Falkner for about ten minutes (it starts at around 14.53). I thought Falkner's responses were confusing, evasive and added more uncertainty to an increasingly polarised discussion. Truthfully as an LGBTQ+ person, I found it quite frightening that someone in a position as senior as Baroness Falkner's can be this confused on the subject of our rights. But I thought Catherine's questions were sensitive and appropriate, and particularly made the important interjection when Baroness Falkner made the very strange claim that 'trans people have not lost any rights.' Catherine responded that they have done, that transgender people who have been living their lives peacefully for years have suddenly found that the law is messing around with their own certainties about the facilities they can use and all sorts of things. I appreciate Catherine's attitude to LGBTQ+ issues, and generally do not believe there to be any bigotry whatsoever in her position. Thank you, Catherine.

It's important that I say that at the beginning, because there is also a fair bit about Catherine's email that I don't appreciate. Here it is:

1) 'Last year the Supreme Court ruled that sex in the Equality Act 2010 refers to biological sex.'

I suppose I have to give Catherine a bit of credit for this, because it is technically the truth. The Court did rule that, and that must be acknowledged. The reason I have to include it in the 'don't appreciate' category is that 'biological sex' is a nonsense phrase when used in this context. Biology is insanely complicated and doesn't work in black and white categories like this. The sex someone was assigned at birth was determined by a cursory look at their genitals. It doesn't take into account hormones, chromosomes, genetics, secondary sex characteristics and more besides. Just to reiterate, I am a cis man in the sense that I was assigned male at birth and have never doubted that about myself, and I naturally assume that like most cisgender men I produce XY chromosomes, but I don't know that for certain. In my 33 years on this planet, I have so far never encountered a situation in which I've had to have my chromosomes tested, and I think this is also true of the overwhelming majority of people. The Court judgment did not include any means of determining what constitutes 'biological sex', and any attempt to do so would be fraught with problems, not least of which is that there isn't any reliable way to prove one's biology to another person. There is not any characteristic that every single cis person has that not a single trans person has. It's impossible to enforce, and wasn't informed by the opinion of any actual biologist. Anyone who uses this phrase, you are quite within your rights to roll your eyes in contempt.

To be fair to Catherine, she doesn't use this phrase at any other point in her email, so it can absolutely be interpreted as just quoting what the court judgement said, and I believe that's how it was meant. But I think it is still necessary to make this point.

2) 'The guidance reflects the findings of the Supreme Court in terms of access to single-sex spaces, but it also emphasises that service providers should make sure that trans people have access to essential services, such as toilets. It says they should consider if and how trans people may be disadvantaged and suggests a holistic approach to service provision by providing a mix of services which may include both separate or single-sex services and mixed-sex services.'

There are a number of things wrong with this. Firstly, the judgment of the court was absolutely nothing to do with access to things like toilets and changing rooms. It was interpreting the wording of a very specific aspect of the Equality Act to refer to the sex one was assigned at birth (or, as they call it, 'biological sex'). What it meant in context was that, for example, if a transgender man was paid less money than a cisgender man for the same work, he could still make a complaint on the grounds of sexism. Nothing about this court case had anything to do with gendered public services. The Equality Act doesn't have anything to do with gendered public services, which anyone over the age of 16 will remember have actually been around since before 2010 when the Equality Act was passed. All of that came from anti-trans activists and the media constantly talking about that.

Secondly, the findings of the court were an interpretation. In the UK, courts do not make laws. Parliament makes laws, and the courts enforce them. Sometimes, as in this case, Parliament may have made a law that is worded in a confusing way, and then it falls to the court to decide what Parliament meant. If the court makes a judgment on this, Parliament is within its rights to amend the law as it stands to iron out that confusion. This happens all the time when Parliament doesn't like the verdict a court has reached. It does not happen that a court interprets a law in a certain way and then Parliament finds itself bound by that in perpetuity. Parliament can change the law, that's what Parliament is for. The increasing weakening of protections for trans people have nothing to do with this judgement, and everything to do with the Government and Parliament succumbing to increasing levels of transphobia within the establishment class.

Thirdly, whether the guidance makes clear that trans people have access to essential services is irrelevant, because they don't. For the life of me I don't understand why Catherine has said that, because she knows that they don't - she herself has raised these concerns in Parliament. Expecting trans people to use a third space is impractical (because not everywhere has a third space), dangerous (because it forces them to out themselves), unnecessary (because trans people pose no threat to cis people) and discriminatory, bearing some resemblance to apartheid South Africa. Within the last week, a story has come out about a woman named Joelle from Wolverhampton, who is alleged to have died from aggressive cancer at the age of 27 essentially because she was transgender, the staff at the NHS hospital were unsure what ward to put her in, and she ended up waiting around for a single room, which didn't become available until after her cancer was no longer treatable. This guidance kills people. It always had the potential to kill people, and it will kill more people unless we deal with it soon and drop this hateful moral panic around transgender people.

3) 'Transgender people are protected by the Equality Act 2010'

Indeed, they are. Gender dysphoria is amongst the characteristics that the Equality Act contains protections for. But clearly, these protections are not currently being followed. The interpretation of what the words 'woman' and 'man' mean in the Equality Act seems to have been understood by a very great number of people to eliminate all protections for transgender people. They are still in the act. It's a political choice not to acknowledge them.

--

I've met my MP Catherine Fookes a number of times, and I can truthfully say I like her. She's a kind woman, has been a lot more supportive of my partner Owen's disability rights campaigns than most of her Labour colleagues have, and as a constituent I would feel safe going to her with a problem. I don't necessarily agree with her on everything, but I can see that she is always motivated by wanting to do the right thing for the most vulnerable.

Unfortunately, I'm not particularly reassured that she has the strength or the charisma to defend the most vulnerable effectively enough. Her comments in Parliament about transgender people's rights are refreshing to hear, and demonstrate that she understands the seriousness of the problem. Her email to me, on the other hand, is filled with platitudes that don't actually cut to the nub of the problem, which is that for the last ten years or so trans women in particular have found themselves the target of an increasing amount of abuse from the establishment class. Talking about tolerance and fair-mindedness, like a benevolent teacher, isn't going to change that. It will only change if significant numbers of people have the courage and stamina to stand together and say, 'We will not accept this being done in our name.'

If you'd like to write to your own MP, you can at https://www.writetothem.com/

The Filton Four were sentenced for different charges than those they were convicted of

 Upon giving evidence in a court of law in the UK (and including Scotland, whose law is slightly different), you are compelled to solemnly swear (upon your Holy Book if you're religious, but also just in general) that the evidence you give will be 'the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth'.

This is such a famous oath that it is known verbatim the world over, and has been repeated in countless media shows. At the time I started this blog in 2010, I was an AS-level law student, and I attended criminal cases myself at Bristol Crown Court and heard that oath uttered in person. I heard it again in 2015 as a Creative Performance undergraduate at Ipswich Crown Court, when as research for a piece of theatre I was involved in devising I attended several days of the trial of Eric de Smith, a retired headteacher who was ultimately jailed for sexually abusing several boys in his care. I was an absolutely terrible law student and I gave it up very quickly in favour of something I was a lot better at, but I have always found the law, and legal cases, absolutely fascinating and compelling.

One thing that I remember being one of the first things I learned when I became a law student is that every single legal case changes the law in some way. Another is that it's impossible for the law to be 100% fair. This is a hard truth you have to acknowledge if you take an interest in this kind of thing, because human beings are complex, there is very often context to what someone does outside of purely what their actions were, and legal cases rely very much on precedent. However, we can use our increasing development as human beings to make it as fair as it possibly can be, and we should. Thankfully, there have been many amazing people working on this throughout history, and there still are today.

It's really important that there continue to be amazing people working on it, because Friday 12 June marked an incredibly concerning moment in UK legal history. For the first time ever, a group of four defendants were convicted by a jury of one charge and sentenced by a judge for a different one. The group - Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio and Fatema Rajwani - were convicted by a jury of criminal damage after they entered the weapons factory Elbit Systems and damaged some property which was intended to be used as part of Israel's ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people. We could debate at length whether a charge of criminal damage in this case is appropriate (these defendants had all previously been charged with, and subsequently found not guilty of, other charges, such as aggravated burglary and violent disorder). But subsequently to being found guilty of criminal damage, the judge in this case, Jeremy Johnson, added additional charges to the sentence so that the four could be found guilty of terrorism offences. Throughout the trial, that this was the judge's intention was explicitly kept from the jury during their deliberations, as was any means of being able to explain to the jury the reasons for their actions. Irrespective of what anyone thinks of what these protesters actually did, I think we should be able to agree that this is not in line with telling 'the whole truth', an essential part of the sworn testimony. It also cannot be considered a fair trial to extrapolate a jury's findings onto separate charges the jury was not made aware of. This could not be considered an appropriate use of the court's functions for any trial or any charge.

The terrorism charge means that each of them will serve more jail time than their actions otherwise would normally warrant (not including the jail time they've already served whilst awaiting trial, which is already a lot more than it's supposed to be). In addition, the terrorism charge will continue to stay with them upon release, which can significantly hinder their ability to gain paid employment and various other everyday necessities. I should reiterate, this is the outcome for a charge of criminal damage - something that has never warranted this kind of punishment before. One refrain that I've heard repeated quite a lot by people in social media comment threads is 'But they injured a police officer!', so I need to put this to bed. One of them did injure a police officer. That person was found by the jury guilty of GBH without intent - i.e. that he did not intend to cause the officer such a serious injury, as opposed to 'with intent', which is what the prosecution had charged him with. The sentencing guidelines for GBH without intent still do not resemble what he was actually sentenced for. The other three defendants were not involved in that incident at all, so it is irrelevant to their cases.

It's clear to me that the intent of this obscenely inappropriate sentence is highly political. The Government (both the current Labour administration and the previous Tory one) has been attempting to interfere in activism court cases for a number of years now, with varying degrees of success. These particular defendants have been in and out of court on quite a few attempts to convict them of various different charges; juries have consistently either found them not guilty or found them guilty of lesser charges than those they were in court for. This is proving quite inconvenient for the Government, to the extent that they're talking about scrapping jury trials (they say this is to clear the backlog, but the backlog doesn't actually have anything to do with juries).

To me though, the thing that's most concerning about this is the idea that it may deter others from taking the same sort of direct action. This kind of action should be taken. It saves lives. The weapons these individuals destroyed are weapons that would otherwise have been used to kill and maim innocent people, including children. They now will not be. There's countless petitions and vigils and marches and all sorts of other things that Governments do their utmost not to listen to, but damaging the equipment produces immediate results. I appreciate that not everyone feels comfortable doing that kind of thing. I appreciate that not everyone is able to put themselves in a position where they may be charged with a crime, particularly not if they may be charged as a terrorist (I think I'd have serious reservations about it myself). But the fact remains that I do think these kinds of things need doing, and I have the utmost respect for anyone who is prepared to do them. I have been absolutely in awe of some of the statements these activists have made (seriously, look them up if you haven't seen them). Ultimately, what they did saved innocent lives, which unfortunately in today's world is something that is considered more of a crime than the continual racial hate crimes, arson attacks and pogroms that have occurred in the UK over the last few weeks. This particular judge, Jeremy Johnson, released Tommy Robinson early from prison a few years ago. Clearly, Robinson's behaviour is considered to be less of a threat to public life than the actions of some incredibly brave individuals who concretely have saved lives. I'm really hopeful that their sentencing will be overturned on appeal.

And if you support the sentencing in this case even slightly, I ask you: can you justify, in any way, sentencing someone for a charge other than that which they were found guilty of? If you believe these individuals were terrorists, why was this information kept from the jury? If you want to have a conversation about that we can have that conversation - otherwise, any argument you can make in favour of this is a straw man.

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An open letter to Catherine Fookes MP regarding Early Day Motion 240

I wrote the following letter to my MP, Labour's Catherine Fookes.

Dear Catherine,

My name is George Harold Millman; I am a writer and social justice campaigner based in your constituency, and I write about politics under the blog name The Rebel Without A Clause. We have met a number of times, largely through my partner Owen's disability rights campaigns. I am writing to you concerning Early Day Motion 240, which has been put forward by your Labour colleague Nadia Whittome, and sponsored (amongst others) by your other Labour colleagues, Stella Creasy, Kate Osborne and Lorraine Beavers. The EDM proposes that the Draft Code of Practice for Services, public functions and associations, be disapproved.

As you probably know, the relevant code is highly contentious because it concerns access to public spaces, including gendered spaces, for transgender people. This is a subject that has become increasingly talked about in recent years. Your Labour colleague Samantha Niblett appeared on Politics Live this week to talk about compassion and respect for the trans community, and one thing she said that really stayed with me was that in 2017, there were only three organisations actively campaigning against trans rights. There are now 51 - for a group of people which makes up around half a percent of the UK population.

The new Code of Practice is both discriminatory and unenforceable. It states that gendered public services, such as toilets and changing rooms, must be used in accordance with biological sex rather than gender identity. One thing I need to make clear straight away is that 'biological sex' is not something that is all that quantifiable, because there are multiple different means of judging biology (chromosomes, hormones, genitalia, primary sex characteristics, secondary sex characteristics, and more besides) and they don't always fit into neat boxes. In fact, most of us don't know all of these things about ourselves. I am a cisgender man, in the sense I was assigned male at birth and have never doubted my gender identity, but I don't know if I produce XY chromosomes - as with most people, I've never had any reason to get my chromosomes tested and find out. We cannot quote an accurate figure as to how much of the population is intersex, because many people go through their whole lives without ever knowing this about themselves - all we can know is that it's likely to be far more than we're aware of. Although I'm not any kind of expert (and it certainly needs more research), it is my belief that being transgender is likely to be a form of being intersex - if you can be born with characteristics of more than one sex, it's not a great leap from there into being born seemingly with all the physical characteristics of one sex but to know inherently that you're the other. Being transgender is biological, and we cannot and should not use the phrase 'biological sex' to suggest that it isn't.

The Code of Practice does not make clear exactly what transgender people (who have been using spaces corresponding to their gender forever) should do in this situation and what facilities they should use. Transgender people, commonly fear-mongered about as potentially being perpetrators of sexual assault, are actually far more likely to be the victims of violent crime than the perpetrators. This is of course of particular concern for trans women, who if forced into male spaces are potentially putting themselves into an extremely dangerous place. The situation is even more confusing for trans men - technically, the new guidance says that they should use women's spaces, irrespective of how far through transition they are and how indistinguishable they are from a cisgender man (which also means a cisgender man could pretend to be a transgender man to gain access to women's spaces, the exact thing the guidance is supposedly to stop them doing). Unofficially, trans men have been advised not to do this - so what exactly is the advice? What are trans men meant to do in these situations? Trans men seem to have been mostly entirely ignored in the whole discussion, which only serves to highlight how flawed the discussion is and how it's focussed more on 'vibe' than on actual clear evidence and situational considerations.

The Code suggests that trans people should, ideally, use a third space. There are a very high number of problems with this. Firstly, not every facility has a third space, nor the resources to build one. Secondly, having a third space just for trans people would mean trans people would be forced to out themselves if they used it, which is discriminatory to any trans person who does not wish to be upfront about their trans status. Thirdly, it causes problems for disabled people - much of the time, a 'third space' will be the disabled facilities, which then increases demand for these facilities and means disabled people will have less access to them. Being trans is not a disability, and particularly as a disability rights campaigner, I have to make clear that we must not pit one vulnerable group against another. Fourthly, this is just immoral anyway, and bears some resemblance to apartheid South Africa. We must not have trans people in a separate moral category to cis people - doing that is completely at odds with a fair and just society.

Every year, the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) publishes the Rainbow Map - a map of all the countries in the world according to the quality of life for LGBTQ+ people living there. From being first in Europe in 2015, shortly after having legalised same-sex marriage, the UK is now 22nd out of 49 countries - just above halfway down. As someone in a same-sex relationship, I am dismayed to see us fall so far in such a short space of time. But looking just at the gender recognition category, we are doing even worse. In 2005, we were first in Europe, having just passed the Gender Recognition Act. Socially, public acceptance of trans people had been affirmed quite strongly by the victory of trans woman Nadia Almada on the TV programme Big Brother, which at the time was one of the most watched television programmes in the UK. From having given a trans woman a massive popularity boost 21 years ago and sent a strong message of acceptance to the trans community in the UK, we now place 43rd out of 49 on gender recognition. I think most people would struggle to name 42 European countries, let alone 42 European countries who are more accepting of their transgender communities than we are.

My opinion of your Parliamentary work since being elected in 2024 has, truthfully, been mixed. There have been some things I have approved of, and some I haven't. However, I have been generally quite optimistic about your position on trans rights. So far, I haven't seen anything from you on this that has given me cause for concern. I have been glad to see you speak up on behalf of the trans community in Monmouthshire in Parliament. Hence why I was hoping to see your name on Early Day Motion 240. At the time of writing, it has 75 signatories, 31 of whom are Labour MPs. I really hope to see your name on it before long. Together, we can defeat transphobia and stand up for an extremely vulnerable and increasingly marginalised community of people, a community that I know you have great compassion for.

Thank you for your attention,

Best wishes,

George Harold Millman

P.S. This is written as an open letter, so I will be publishing it on my blog, The Rebel Without A Clause. I will also publish any response I receive from you, if any.

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2026 Senedd elections: much friendlier with the public, much more hostile amongst the candidates

 For the last few weeks, most of my time has been spent campaigning for my boyfriend Owen in the Welsh Senedd elections on 7th May. I've temporarily given up my various jobs to focus on this. It's still early days at this point (Owen's candidacy hasn't even been formally registered yet) but on the whole the campaign is going really well.

Owen is an independent candidate focussing primarily on social care, disability rights and support for the most vulnerable. Regular readers will know about how he stood for Parliament in the 2024 General Election for the constituency of Monmouthshire, primarily because none of our local politicians, irrespective of what party platform they were standing on, were properly representing those with disabilities. Owen and I had spent a number of years campaigning to save Tudor Street Day Centre in Abergavenny, a campaign that was eventually successful in part because of Owen's election campaign (Owen was never really in danger of winning, but Monmouthshire was a tight marginal between Labour and the Conservatives, and his candidacy meant that Labour had to significantly improve their campaign to avoid getting the Tories back in).

As I discussed in my new year blog, Tudor Street Day Centre is now being run horrifically badly, there's been one of the most grotesque abuses of power there that I've ever seen in my life, and local politicians have been just as unhelpful as they were when we were trying to save it from being demolished. This is a big part of why Owen has decided to stand again, having previously never intended to do another venture into politics. It's two years later, and things for the most vulnerable people in our local area have not particularly improved - in fact, there's an argument that they've got even worse. Hence Owen deciding to stand for the Senedd, the constituency of Sir Fynwy Torfaen.

The logistics of standing in the Senedd are a little different to standing for Westminster. One of the major differences is that in the Senedd, the voting system is different. There's something of a strange version of proportional representation - everyone gets just one vote, there are six seats in the constituency to be won, and how many a party wins depends on how many votes they get. This makes things more democratic in one respect, but in another means that you cannot specifically choose which candidate to vote for - you vote for a party, and then the party decides who will fill the seat. I am personally not too keen on this, as I regularly champion voting for a person, not just a party - party leaders change, manifestos change, and who you felt like voting for at the time may in time turn out not to have been worth it. I always say that you should ask yourself when casting your vote, 'How much do I trust this candidate to represent my best interests?' With the Senedd elections, you can't do that, and that's a problem. However, it does give an independent candidate like Owen a slight advantage - if you vote for an independent, you do know where your vote is going. In our constituency this is also the case if you vote for the Green Party, because there is only one Green candidate - Ian Chandler.

Ian Chandler was also the Green Party candidate in 2024, and is the Cabinet Member for Social Care, Safeguarding and Accessible Health Services. You would think that with a job title like that, it would be extremely counter-productive to stand against them. Both Owen and myself would far rather be out campaigning for Ian, especially given the Green Party's recent phenomenal success at the Gorton and Denton by-election. Unfortunately, our personal experience of Ian has not filled us with confidence that they truly have an understanding of what the most vulnerable people need. They have consistently proven themselves difficult to contact, obstructive and lacking in empathy, to the extent that they once used the Nazi slogan 'final solution' at a public council meeting in the context of discussing where disabled people should go. I think this was more a slip of the tongue than an intentional dog-whistle, but I still think it demonstrates a distinct lack of recognition about how that might make vulnerable people feel, some of whom were actually in the room at the time. I like the Green Party, and have been impressed by Zack Polanski's leadership - but if I have a fault with the Green Party, it's that their candidates can be quite hit-or-miss, and whether they're worth voting for really depends on where you live. This actually is the opposite to the Labour Party's problem, where candidates are not allowed to stand if they are in slight disagreement with the leadership on anything. I hope the Green Party makes gains in the Senedd in general, and I think they have a good chance of doing so - but they do not deserve to gain a seat here.

The party that across the UK people are most concerned might make gains is Reform. What I can say is that at the time of writing, Reform have not actually announced any specific candidates intending to stand. I presume that Reform candidates will be announced soon, but it does seem quite odd given that every other major party, and even some minor parties, announced their candidacy a long time ago. I would suspect that they're struggling to find anyone - I recall in 2024, for about a week the Reform candidate on the website was constantly changing, before Richard Tice's office manager Max Windsor-Peplow was finally announced. Windsor-Peplow came to all of one hustings, before failing to show up for any others, or to the vote count, or to respond to any emails (he still came third out of nine). It's early days, but from personal experience I haven't really come across anyone on doorsteps who has expressed interest in voting Reform. Owen has come across a few, but not many. I haven't yet seen evidence that Reform has as much popularity in my area as the media would have us believe.

Of the other parties, none have really garnered much support on the doorsteps. The one that seems most popular is Plaid Cymru, in the sense that more people I've spoken to have expressed interest in them than in any other party (which still isn't a great deal of people). To be fair, I can't really criticise Plaid Cymru at the moment - when people express interest in them, I normally say something along the lines of, 'Well, I can tell you why an independent candidate is better, but to be fair they probably are the next best option.' I've had a few Tories, but more out of loyalty than because they're actually especially popular. But the really fascinating one is Labour.

To be clear, I can't immediately recall anyone I've spoken to on a doorstep who has definitively said they're going to vote Labour. This is a significant change from 2024, in which trying to battle the Labour surge sometimes felt like swimming against the tide. I don't believe this change is altogether unexpected though; polls consistently show Keir Starmer and his Government as one of the most unpopular administrations the country has ever had. In 2024, people wanted to get the Tories out by whatever means possible; in two years, Labour has absolutely squandered the good will people were willing to offer them. Labour is offering very little to the people of Sir Fynwy Torfaen, and what they're saying (if anything) simply isn't washing.

But it's not just people's reactions to the Labour Party that have been fascinating at this election. It's the Labour Party people's behaviour itself. In 2024, in spite of not really having faith in her as a politician, Owen and I ended up actually becoming quite friendly with our now MP Catherine Fookes. I haven't been desperately impressed by her in Parliament, she is an uncontroversial yes-woman who never does anything the leadership wouldn't want (this is evident from her page on TheyWorkForYou, which states that she's voted the same way as the majority of the rest of her party in 98% of instances). She still hasn't responded to my open letter about protecting juries, although she did vote to abolish them in Parliament. But I will say in her defence that she is a genuinely kind person, who has never been anything but polite and respectful to Owen, threatened to boycott a hustings that he wasn't invited to, and praised his campaign in her acceptance speech. Since she won the seat, she and Owen have somewhat stayed in touch, and she's always been encouraging of anything he's done in the community.

There has been very little encouragement like that from this cohort of Senedd candidates. On the contrary, none of them have responded to any emails Owen has sent them (in 2024 there was quite a friendly email thread between all the candidates, keeping one another aware of the different events and hustings and so on). Labour agent Peter Marsh-Jenks has actively been hostile to Owen, both in person and in public. He left a comment on an article about Owen's candidacy saying, 'Typical independent candidate, me me me me me' (which doesn't make sense anyway - aren't candidates meant to talk about who they are and what they'll do?) There was also a deeply unpleasant personal interaction between Peter and a canvasser, that I myself witnessed. We've done as much as we can to encourage disabled people to be part of our campaign and to fight for their own rights - too often, these kinds of people are completely disincentivised to take part and participate in the political process. One of our campaigners is an extremely dedicated young woman who we've become good friends with. On this occasion, she knocked on a door which turned out to be the home of Peter Marsh-Jenks. He very rudely and aggressively said to her, 'Do your research, love, I'm the Labour agent!' and slammed the door in her face. Both of us were quite taken aback by that. It is not the job of our canvassers to find out where the Labour agent lives, and it is rude and disrespectful to speak to someone on a doorstep like that, particularly if (as this canvasser was) they are visibly disabled. I was disgusted and appalled by this behaviour, and I think the fact that someone who behaves like that can hold a senior position on a Labour election campaign speaks volumes about what Labour's priorities actually are, and the fact that they do not have the best interests of the community's most vulnerable people at heart.

As unpleasant as that experience was, I am really hopeful that it's a reflection of how badly Labour is performing. More than support for any particular party, what I have had quite often on doorsteps is people saying 'I'm not voting because I don't trust any of them', and I've responded to that by nodding and saying, 'Yes, I completely understand why you feel that way. That's why my boyfriend is standing, because he didn't want to vote for any of this sorry lot either.' And I've had some really interesting conversations from that, some people who actually did seem to be considering voting independent after initially not planning on voting at all. A week is a long time in politics, and we still have six and a half weeks to go, so I'm certainly not predicting anything; but I am cautiously optimistic that it is possible for Owen to win. The increased warmth from members of the public, and substantially increased hostility from the other candidates (particularly Labour) demonstrate that something has shifted. People don't want shiny and dishonest centrism. They also, contrary to popular belief, don't want nationalism and fascism. People want ordinary folk who are prepared to listen and understand them, and I really hope we see that reflected in the result on 7th May.

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In defence of social media for kids

In recent weeks, there have been continual conversations about children’s internet use, and in particular whether it’s appropriate for children to use social media. Australia banned social media for kids in December, and there’s talk about the same thing happening in the UK. The Prime Minister Keir Starmer has vowed to implement a 'crackdown' this year. Exactly what such a crackdown will entail remains to be seen, but there’s been talk about a full Australian-style ban, as well as proof of identity required for VPN use (which would defeat the whole purpose of a VPN, the appeal of which is that it’s totally anonymous). It is, of course, also debatable whether Keir Starmer will still be Prime Minister long enough for this to even be implemented, but it seems a public enough conversation that the same may be pursued by any potential successor.

I’m admittedly extremely biased when it comes to this whole discussion. I’m 32 years old. I was part of the first generation to routinely use the Internet in primary school, have been using social media almost daily since I was 14, which is the majority of my life. I have been writing this blog since I was 17 and started becoming politically active (and my earliest blogs are so cringeworthy I can’t even bear to read them anymore - I leave them up for posterity and as a record of how far I’ve come, but like most people I am a little embarrassed by the sort of thing I used to say, even though my overall politics and views haven’t changed all that much). I can’t really imagine my life, including my childhood, without the Internet and social media. For that reason I have to be really cautious with expressing a view on this matter - I always have to ask myself, ‘Are you quite sure you aren’t looking at things through rose-tinted spectacles?’ Especially when we have multiple testimonies from teachers attesting to the fact that social media is ruining children’s lives.

Another thing that I have to acknowledge is the myriad of problems with social media. A few months back I was discussing the situation in Australia with one of my oldest friends, who is Australian and ironically whom I reconnected with on social media when I was 15 - I brought the situation up with that person largely because it felt strange to think that nowadays we may not have been able to do that. My friend had quite a nuanced view, and definitely gave me more understanding of how it is in Australia, but one specific thing they said stayed with me: 'Social media is not what it was fifteen years ago.' And it absolutely is not. Social media nowadays has suffered very much from what is called enshittification - the phenomenon by which online products steadily decline in quality after their initial push to get new users. The Wikipedia article has quite a detailed analysis of how and why this happens. We've had many social media scandals, most notably the Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2016, in which online dark ads influenced the outcome of the EU membership referendum. Personally, I rarely see much of what my friends actually post these days unless I actively seek it out - targeted adverts are shown to me instead, and there's no way to change your settings to stop that from happening. And more recently, social media is becoming increasingly infested with AI bots. Just today, I was reading something about how AI could be used to continue to post on behalf of a person who has died, which I think almost everyone would find quite sinister - I have doubts about whether that would be cost-effective for the social media companies in terms of server space, but I really hope this isn't something that's practically on the cards!

But there are quite important things about social media as well, that I don't think we always appreciate. For me as a political writer and campaigner, many of my most important campaigns are things I only learned of due to my social media accounts. Andrew Feinstein's election campaign against Keir Starmer in 2024, and the subsequent movement of independent candidates across the UK of which my partner Owen was part, came about because of a number of conversations on social media. I think social media gives us an opportunity to talk to people who have very different backgrounds and experiences to us, which in real life we don't always get. The Gaza war, for example - it's only been in the last couple of decades that we've been capable of talking in real-time to people who actually live in the war zone, to hear what they have to say without it going through journalists first. I've done that myself, although probably not as often as I should have done, and it's been illuminating in a way that just consuming media from the mainstream is not.

I also want to talk about how it feels to be a teenager. Picture this. You're fifteen years old. It's 11.30 at night. Your family have gone to bed. Because of your teenage hormones, you don't happen to be at all tired, so going to bed is a bit fruitless. All of a sudden, you're struck by crippling loneliness and depression. You want to talk to someone. You can't speak to your family - they're asleep, and you're increasingly of the opinion that they don't really understand you anyway. What you really want is a friend - but you can't call anyone at this time of night, that would be rude.

I think everyone who has ever been a teenager can relate to this feeling, especially since nightlife for teenagers, such as youth centres, were cut in the austerity drive of the early 2010s. And what I found really helpful at that age, and to an extent still do, is that there's a handy tool that tells you who is online, who might be free to talk. And I have had important instances of this not just facilitating my ability to talk to people who are already my friends, but to people who I only know vaguely. Sometimes this can result in more fulfilling conversations than you'll have face-to-face. There's no peer pressure, no one to question why you're talking to this person, no cliques - just two people, a computer screen and what organically occurs. I think that's something essential. I think that's something that previous generations lacked the ability to do, and that we should cherish.

I also want to talk about cyber-bullying. Cyber-bullying is a horrific thing, as all bullying is, and I don't want to downplay the seriousness of cyber-bullying. However, that doesn't change the fact that it is not quite as bad as other forms of bullying. There are two very specific reasons for this. The first is that it tends to be a little easier to escape from bullies online - you can block them, delete their messages and then that's that. The second, and this is quite an important one, is that if someone cyber-bullies you, you can prove that it's happening. You can keep screenshots of horrible messages, and show them to someone who will do something about it. This isn't something you can normally do with other forms of bullying, which very often don't happen in front of witnesses and therefore can't be proven. I don't think our constant obsession with cyber-bullying is really rooted in what will concretely keep children safe. I think what this is actually about is overprotective adults being concerned that children's experiences are not things that they can personally relate to, and therefore know how to deal with. In the past, bullying was often restricted to the school playground, so at least adults knew that it wasn't happening when their children were at home. But that doesn't necessarily make it better. I remember when I was about 17, my father (whose view on kids' social media use I don't believe I have ever asked) laughing and saying to me, 'George, I can't believe that you've never been in a fight!' This was my father's view of what teenage boys do to one another, and something that he presumably wouldn't consider to be a serious case of assault. Why is that a more healthy experience for a child to go through than a string of unkind messages online, which can at least then be shown to others so that something can be done about it? I see no reason that it is, apart from that it makes adults uncomfortable.

One thing that has struck me quite a lot in this whole conversation is the way both the media and the Government are taking advantage of Esther Ghey. Esther Ghey's 16-year-old daughter Brianna was murdered in 2023, in a deeply transphobic attack that originated online (and her murderers' online behaviour, and the text messages they'd sent to one another, was part of the prosecution case against them). Ghey is one of the top campaigners for kids to be more restricted on social media. To be clear, I have the utmost respect for Esther Ghey. In every interview I've seen with her, she has been far more restrained, composed and considered than I'm sure I would be if I'd been through what she has. I have no doubt that if I lost a child in such horrific circumstances, I'd be saying exactly the same thing as she is. But Brianna's tragic murder is not the reason we're having this discussion about social media. Brianna died not because of social media, but because of transphobia. There were transphobic murders, and murders because of other protected characteristics, before social media. The most high-profile case of a prejudiced murder of a teenager was of 18-year-old Stephen Lawrence in 1993, the year I was born, and people didn't have social media then. Social media doesn't cause racism and it doesn't cause transphobia. All social media does is amplify the feelings we already have and put them on a wider platform. If those feelings are racist or transphobic, then we need to do something about that. We need to have these conversations and amplify a different message about dark-skinned people, or about transgender people, or whatever the characteristic is. Banning social media for kids won't stop transphobic attacks - in fact, it may make them more common, because it will mean that trans people and trans allies will be less easily able to find one another and build supportive communities. I think most LGBTQ+ kids, one of which I was, will attest to the fact that when you're first coming to terms with who you are, it's often far easier to learn how to do that online than it is in a physical space. It is disgusting that the Prime Minister and the media are taking advantage of a grieving mother of a trans child to try to further an agenda they already have, and which might in itself harm trans kids, when they are also consistently spreading a transphobic narrative and bringing in guidance that actually furthers transphobia.

In regards to the various issues with social media that I spoke of earlier - I do not believe they are any safer for adults than they are for children. And this kind of approach by the Government says something about their relationship with social media companies and big AI tech - namely, that they are completely cowed by them. Their attitude is ultimately saying, 'We can't do anything about big tech. Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk can do whatever they like. We aren't strong enough to take on people with that amount of wealth. So we just have to protect children from getting caught up in it.' And this won't protect anyone. How are adults meant to have a healthy understanding of how to use social media appropriately if they didn't learn this when they were growing up? How can we have faith in our abilities not to get sucked into unhealthy AI use if our Government is more willing to restrict our own ability to use it than to restrict its engineers' abilities to use it for harm? Not to mention the complicated range of legal issues this could cause. If, for example, an underage child is groomed by an adult online, in most cases it is rightly assumed that the adult knows the age of the child, and therefore was committing a serious offence. But if children were banned from the platform, and a child who was using it undercover was groomed, what then? Could an abuser quite justifiably say, 'I didn't think they were underage, I thought everyone on this platform was an adult'? Could this actually get a predator off the hook?

I don't necessarily know the answers to all these questions - it's impossible to until we're confronted by the reality. But they are conversations we need to have, and a lot of the time they're conversations that we aren't having. A lot of the discourse comes back to, 'Social media is really dangerous, no one should be on it unless they're over 16', and that is far too basic a position to hold for such a complex issue.

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An open letter to my local MP, Labour's Catherine Fookes, on the importance of jury trials

Dear Catherine,

My name is George Harold Millman; I am a writer and social justice campaigner based in your constituency, and I write about politics under the blog name The Rebel Without A Clause. You probably remember me, as we have met a number of times, and my partner Owen was one of your fellow candidates in the 2024 General Election. Both of us have fond memories of your kindness and encouragement, so I hope very much that you'll be with me on the very important matter I'm going to write to you about.

As I expect you know, the group who in August 2024 infiltrated the Elbit Systems factory in my home town of Bristol, popularly known as the Filton Six, were within the last week acquitted by a jury at Woolwich Crown Court of most of the criminal acts they had been charged with. I think if we are not to beat around the bush, we must both acknowledge that this verdict is somewhat inconvenient for the Government, as its case for proscribing the campaign group Palestine Action in July last year was largely based on this particular case. Your Labour colleague Yvette Cooper, who at the time was Home Secretary and is now Foreign Secretary, commented at the time that the logic behind the proscription would become clear throughout this trial.

I myself am opposed to the Palestine Action proscription and have done my best to stand against it. I don't want to debate that with you just now because I know that there are ongoing legal challenges to it, as well as a number of hunger strikes taking place by people imprisoned as a result, and I wouldn't want to prejudice the outcome of that. However, one thing I really hope we can agree on is that the verdict reached by the jury at Woolwich Crown Court was legal, and taken after having seen far more of the detailed minutiae of the evidence than either you or I have. If there's any doubt about that, I very much recommend Jonathan Cook's analysis of the case (if you're more of a listener, the audio version is narrated by the journalist Matthew Alford), as well as the defence speech by barrister Rajiv Menon.

I wanted to start by referencing this case because it's a particularly interesting recent example of the role of juries in our criminal justice system, and how essential they are to a fair trial. A jury of our peers, that cannot be instructed by a judge or the state to reach any particular verdict over another one, is the only defence we have against misuse of our criminal justice system by the state, whichever Government is in power at any particular point. Juries are composed of our peers, which gives them something more in common with the defendant than judges, lawyers or politicians typically do. When I was a student (both as an A-level law student and as a Creative Performance undergraduate at the University of Essex) I attended a number of court cases for research purposes, and I witnessed first-hand the crucial work that juries do. I have often wondered what it would be like to serve on a jury; I obviously have no control over whether I ever am, but if it were to happen I would consider it an incredibly important responsibility, and one I would take extremely seriously.

This is why I have been dismayed by Justice Secretary David Lammy's proposals to scrap juries for all but the most serious of criminal trials. The justification given for this is that there is too much of a backlog of court cases that we need greater efficiency in getting through. There are two major concerns I have with this. The first is that I am gravely concerned about people's essential human rights, such as the right to a fair trial, being tossed to one side purely for matters of efficiency (there are many important instances as to why jury trials are necessary, but as you were once the chair of Women's Equality Network Wales, I thought you may be particularly interested in this one from Independent Domestic Abuse Services (IDAS), a charity that specialises in domestic violence cases). The other concern I have with this idea is that I do not believe it will actually concretely address the backlog at all. The backlog is caused not by the existence of juries, but by successive Conservative Governments failing to properly address a number of issues with our criminal justice system. In fact, abolishing juries may potentially lead to even more of a backlog, because there may be more miscarriages of justice and therefore more retrials. You may like to read this article by The Secret Barrister, which suggests a number of more effective measures to deal with the problems Lammy raises.

Our justice system certainly isn't perfect, and nor are juries. Juries, as a randomly selected sample of the public, are fallible. Miscarriages of justice have happened in the past, and will happen again. However, they are a necessary cornerstone of our criminal justice system. They do offer an opportunity for the evidence on offer to be examined by a number of people, and a number of people who could not possibly have any ulterior motive. At the very least, they're likely to represent a higher proportion of women, working-class, LGBTQ+, ethnic minorities and disabilities than judges, magistrates or lawyers are, something I think is highly important in a world where we're becoming increasingly aware of privilege divides within our society.

Please will you reassure me as your constituent that you are with me on the importance of jury trials, and that you will use your voice in Parliament to protect them, including from your own Labour colleagues if necessary?

Best wishes,
George Harold Millman

P.S. Please be aware that as a political writer and blogger, I will be making this an open letter, publishing it on my blog, The Rebel Without A Clause. I will do the same with any reply I receive from you, along with my comments on any such reply.

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I sent this letter on 8th February 2026. I will make public any reply, if any, I receive.

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