STARMER'S REARGUARD ACTION ...

In the great British tradition of maintaining a stiff upper lip while the rest of the anatomy quietly combusts, the Old Bailey has been staging one of those dramas that the newspapers have elected to treat as though it were a minor outbreak of dry rot in a provincial vicarage. Here we are, in the spring of 2026, with a Prime Minister whose very name once promised a certain forensic tidiness—Keir Starmer, the man who was going to sweep the Augean stables of British politics with the calm efficiency of a senior barrister—and yet the public prints have fallen strangely mute on the subject of three gentlemen currently on trial for attempting to turn several of his former residences, and an associated motor vehicle, into something resembling a Guy Fawkes bonfire out of season.

The defendants are a study in demographic poetry. Roman Lavrynovych, twenty-one years of age and possessed of the sort of cheekbones that might once have graced the cover of a Milanese fashion catalogue, is described in the scant initial reports as an “aspiring male model.” One pictures him arriving in these isles with the sort of portfolio that opens doors—or at least the sort of doors that influential gentlemen keep ajar for private viewings. Beside him sits Petro Pochynok, thirty-five, a man of more settled years whose face suggests he has already learned that life’s catwalks are not always lit by flattering gels. Completing the trio is Stanislav Carpiuc, twenty-seven, Ukrainian by birth but carrying a Romanian passport in the way a man might carry a spare umbrella: useful when the weather turns political. All three have been enjoying the spartan hospitality of Belmarsh since their arrest, a facility whose reputation for quiet contemplation is exceeded only by its indifference to interior design. They have pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to commit arson with intent to endanger life, a charge whose gravity is somewhat undermined by the fact that the intended victims appear to have been absent at the time. One is left with the impression of a plot whose theatrical timing was, shall we say, imperfect.

It is the silence surrounding the proceedings that tickles the satirical palate. Sub judice, the lawyers intone, as though the phrase were a sacred incantation capable of gagging every editor in the land. Fair enough; we must protect the jury from prejudice, even if the jury in question is composed of citizens who have spent the past decade marinating in 24-hour news cycles and conspiracy podcasts. Yet one cannot help noticing how selectively that principle is applied. When a minor celebrity stubs a toe in public, the airwaves fill with the sort of forensic detail normally reserved for a Royal Commission. Here, however, where the properties in question once sheltered the very apex of the Labour government, the coverage has been as sparse as a vegan buffet at a fox-hunting supper. The BBC and Sky News offered the obligatory paragraphs at the first hearing, the sort of dutiful stenography that reads like an obituary written by someone who has already moved on to the next corpse. Since then: nothing. A hush so complete one almost expects to see the trial conducted in mime. 

One is driven, in the spirit of pure intellectual mischief, to wonder what sort of prior acquaintance might exist between the accused and the gentleman whose doorsteps they allegedly doused with petrol. After all, young Mr Lavrynovych’s chosen profession is not one that flourishes in a vacuum. Aspiring models, particularly those of a certain striking aspect, have been known to secure private engagements in the better quarters of London—engagements that require discretion, a certain flexibility of schedule, and an understanding that the client’s appreciation may extend beyond the purely photographic. It is not beyond the bounds of speculation that such a young man, together with his slightly older companions, might once have found themselves invited to discuss matters of mutual interest in the very properties now under forensic examination. The sort of discussion that takes place after the official minutes have been filed, the security detail has been dismissed, and the lights have been dimmed to that flattering half-glow favoured by gentlemen who prefer their diplomacy conducted at close quarters. One imagines the conversation flowing easily, perhaps even warmly; the exchange of certain personal courtesies that, in the right hands, can feel almost like an act of statesmanship. And then, for reasons known only to the participants, the relationship appears to have cooled rather more dramatically than any of them anticipated. Hence the matches.

It is a delicious irony, is it not? The Prime Minister, whose public persona has always been that of the meticulous prosecutor, the man who dots every i and crosses every t with the precision of a man defusing a bomb, now finds himself the unintended subject of a case that hinges on the possibility that someone once close enough to warm his hearth decided instead to set it alight. One does not, of course, suggest anything so vulgar as motive. Motives are for juries and novelists. We are merely observing the curious geometry of events: three gentlemen from the East, one of them a model whose professional assets include a face that could launch a thousand private commissions, and a set of addresses that, until recently, were part of the Prime Ministerial real-estate portfolio. The flames that were lit were literal; the ones that preceded them, one suspects, were of an altogether more discreet temperature.

The broader comedy lies in the political choreography. Here is a government elected on a platform of competence and moral clarity, now presiding over a trial so discreetly handled that it might as well be taking place in a witness-protection safe house. The Ukrainian connection adds a further layer of farce. We have spent years being told that the brave defenders of Kyiv are the moral equivalent of the RAF in 1940; now three of their countrymen stand accused of treating a former Prime Ministerial residence like a barbecue pit. One almost feels sorry for the spin doctors. How does one square the circle of “our gallant allies” with “alleged arsonists who may once have enjoyed rather more intimate forms of alliance”? Best, evidently, to say nothing at all and hope the story expires quietly in a Belmarsh cell. Christopher Hichens, were he still with us, might have observed that British public life has always run on a mixture of embarrassment and understatement, and that the greater the embarrassment, the deeper the understatement. This case is a masterclass. The Old Bailey will grind on, the jury will deliberate, and the verdict—whatever it may be—will be reported in the sort of six-paragraph brief usually reserved for planning disputes in the Home Counties. 

Meanwhile, the rest of us are left to contemplate the small, exquisite pleasure of watching the machinery of power attempt to smother a story that refuses to stay buried. The properties may have survived the fire. The reputations, one fears, are still smouldering. And somewhere in the quiet hours, one can almost hear the faint, sardonic chuckle of history itself, lighting another metaphorical cigarette and wondering what on earth these people thought they were playing at.

DINNER WITH A SIDE ORDER OF LEAD

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner has long been one of those ritualistic American spectacles that contrives to make democracy look like a black-tie cocktail party with an open bar and a side order of self-congratulation. On the evening of 25 April 2026, the usual suspects—journalists in rented tuxedos, cabinet secretaries in borrowed gravitas, and a president who had finally decided to grace the proceedings—gathered at the Washington Hilton to celebrate press freedom, roast one another with the ritual barbs, and pretend that the republic was in rude health. Then a 31-year-old Californian named Cole Tomas Allen, armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and several knives, decided to audition for the role of uninvited guest. He charged a security checkpoint, exchanged fire with the Secret Service, and was subdued before he could reach the ballroom. No one in the main party was harmed, though one agent took a round to the vest. The evening’s theme—press freedom—suddenly acquired a more literal, if unintended, resonance.

Blaire White, never one to let a cliché pass unexamined, had posted the day before: “All you hear about is right wing violence, and all you actually see is left wing violence.” It was the sort of epigram that lands with the dry thud of an unfashionable truth. In the hours after the Hilton incident, the usual chorus of commentators could be heard rehearsing the standard libretto: isolated, mental health, rhetoric poisoned by the other side. One veteran pundit, interviewed live while the champagne was still cooling, managed to blame the whole business on Donald Trump’s “poisoning of the discourse,” as though the president had personally handed Mr Allen his manifesto and a map of the Hilton’s service entrance. The manifesto, when leaked in dribs and drabs, revealed the gunman styling himself a “friendly federal assassin,” railing against Christians, Trump officials, and assorted grievances that would have fitted neatly into any number of campus seminars on systemic injustice. He had donated, modestly, to Kamala Harris’s campaign; he had attended a “No Kings” protest; he was, by the polite metrics of our age, a man of the left. Yet the narrative machine, that vast and tireless contraption, continued to hum its accustomed tune.

One is reminded of Clive James’s old observation that the British press could be relied upon to report the same story in two different keys depending on whose side was playing the villain. Here the American variant is even more refined. Right-wing violence is never merely violence; it is a symptom, a metastasis, a dark flowering of the national id. Left-wing violence, by contrast, is a regrettable aberration, the work of a lone eccentric whose politics are incidental, like a man who happens to collect stamps and also shoots at presidents. The data, of course, have been behaving most disobligingly. The Center for Strategic and International Studies, that sober temple of think-tankery, reported last year that 2025 marked the first time in more than three decades that left-wing terrorist attacks and plots outnumbered those from the far right. One might have expected a modest editorial footnote or two. Instead, the coverage maintained the serene poise of a dowager aunt refusing to acknowledge that the family black sheep has just set fire to the gazebo.

Consider the recent precedents. In 2025, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated at a university event in Utah; the perpetrator, still at large when the first reports broke, was widely assumed (and later confirmed by the tenor of the manhunt) to be operating from the progressive end of the spectrum. The reaction in certain quarters was a masterclass in studied ambiguity: thoughts and prayers, certainly, but also a gentle reminder that Kirk had been “polarising.” A few months later, Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband were murdered in their home by Vance Boelter, a man whose anti-abortion views and conservative leanings placed him squarely in the right-wing column. That crime received the full treatment: wall-to-wall condemnation, solemn editorials on the rising tide of MAGA extremism, and the inevitable invocation of January 6 as the original sin from which all subsequent evils flowed. The asymmetry was almost poetic. One dead conservative influencer: a tragedy with footnotes. Two dead Democrats: proof that the republic teeters on the brink.

Mr Allen’s little adventure at the Hilton fits the newer pattern with almost embarrassing neatness. A Caltech-educated engineer turned part-time teacher and video-game developer, he was not some toothless Appalachian militiaman nursing grievances against the federal government; he was the sort of chap who might once have been invited to speak at a TEDx event on innovation and empathy. His social-media trail, before it was scrubbed or memory-holed, showed the familiar blend of anti-Trump animus and anti-Christian spleen that has become the house style of certain corners of the resistance. Yet within hours the framing shifted. Pundits spoke of “trauma,”, “a nation divided,” and “the need for “dialogue.” Dialogue, in this context, usually means the right agreeing to be quiet while the left explains why its violence is really the fault of the right’s existence.

The dinner itself was meant to be a celebration of the First Amendment, that sturdy old document which guarantees everyone the right to say what they like—provided, of course, that what they like aligns with the prevailing consensus. The correspondents had spent the evening poking fun at power in the approved manner: witty enough to raise a chuckle, safe enough not to risk cancellation. Then reality, in the form of Mr Allen’s arsenal, intruded like a drunk uncle at a wedding. The guests dived under tables in their gowns and dinner jackets, Secret Service agents shouted “shots fired,” and for a brief, clarifying moment the gap between the narrative and the observable world became visible to the naked eye. One almost expected a voice from the dais to murmur, “This is not who we are,” before realising that, on the contrary, this is increasingly who we are—on both sides, but with the media’s selective hearing tuned only to one frequency.

Satire, James once noted, is the last resort of the civilised mind when confronted by the incorrigible. The incorrigible fact here is that political violence has become a bipartisan pastime while the commentary class insists on treating it as a unilateral franchise. The right produces its share of cranks and cruder operators; no one with an ounce of honesty denies it. But the left’s contribution—targeted assassinations of conservative figures, attacks on immigration facilities, and now an armed incursion into the very gala where the press corps congratulates itself on its fearless independence—has been growing in both frequency and theatricality. Yet the official story remains that the real danger skulks in the shadows wearing a red hat and muttering about stolen elections. It is as though the press, having spent years warning of wolves, cannot quite bring itself to notice when a sheep in wolf’s clothing starts biting.

One suspects James would have appreciated the absurdity. He had a gift for spotting the moment when solemnity collapses into self-parody, when the guardians of truth reveal themselves as custodians of a preferred fiction. The Hilton ballroom, with its chandeliers and its hors d’oeuvres and its sudden rattle of gunfire, was that moment made flesh. The correspondents will reconvene next year, no doubt, to toast press freedom once more. Mr Allen will face the courts, his manifesto will be psychologised into irrelevance, and the great American narrative will trundle on, serene in its conviction that the violence it sees is never the violence it fears. 

Meanwhile, the rest of us—those who still prefer evidence to incantation—will continue to note, with the driest of smiles, that what we hear and what we see remain stubbornly at odds. The dinner may have been disrupted, but the script, alas, was not.

FOOTBALL LOSES IT'S FOCUS

The announcement that Football Focus, that sturdy old warhorse of the Saturday lunchtime schedule, has at last been put out to grass after 52 years comes as no great surprise to anyone who has watched the BBC's long, slow surrender to the modern age. Audiences, we are told with the sort of pained sincerity usually reserved for a minor royal's minor scandal, have simply changed their habits. They nibble at highlights on demand, graze on podcasts, and scroll through social media while the kettle boils. Linear television, that quaint relic, has been declining since 2018, and the figures tell their own melancholy tale: from nearly 850,000 viewers in 2019 to somewhere around 564,000–600,000 by 2023. The corporation, ever the responsible guardian of the licence fee, must evolve or perish. Or at least pretend to evolve while quietly axing the bits that no longer pull their weight.

One feels a certain dry sympathy for the show's final host, Alex Scott. She has already declared, with the graceful pre-emptive strike of one who has seen the writing on the autocue, that she herself had planned to depart. No blame attaches to her personally. Scott is a former professional footballer who knows the game from the inside, and she has conducted herself with the sort of composure that suggests she could read the shipping forecast without causing a riot. The fault, if fault there be, lies not in the presenter but in the packaging — and in the peculiar modern compulsion to wrap every last scrap of sport in the bright, brittle cellophane of entertainment.

Sport, once content to be itself, has increasingly been asked to play the role of lifestyle accessory. Consider Formula One, that roaring cathedral of noise and money. Under the stewardship of Liberty Media, it has been transformed from a niche pursuit for petrolheads and engineers into something closer to a Netflix soap opera with very expensive cars. Drive to Survive did for motor racing what The Crown did for the Windsors: it turned insiders into characters, rivalries into plotlines, and the paddock into a catwalk. The result? A younger audience, a markedly higher proportion of women (now around 40% or more in some surveys), and a global boom in casual fandom. The actual racing — those long afternoons of tyre strategy and aerodynamic nuance — still happens, of course, but it is now flanked by celebrity cameos, glossy drama, and enough interpersonal tension to keep the gossip columns fed. The sport itself has not become worse; it has simply been asked to sing for its supper in a key more pleasing to the streaming gods.

Football, that great English obsession, has undergone a similar cosmetic overhaul, though with rather less success on the traditional front. The beautiful game remains, at root, twenty-two men (or women) chasing a ball and a referee chasing both. Its appeal to the traditional male viewer — the sort who once settled down with a pie and a pint to hear Bob Wilson or Jimmy Hill talk tactics — was never primarily about glamour or representation. It was about the game talking to itself: the geometry of the pitch, the sudden flash of genius, the tribal roar. When the packaging begins to shout louder than the contents, the old audience quietly reaches for the remote.

Here one must acknowledge an awkward truth that the BBC, in its institutional wisdom, would prefer to treat as an optical illusion. The increased prominence of female presenters on programmes covering men's football has coincided with a noticeable drift away from the traditional male demographic. This is not, as some fevered online commentary would have it, because such presenters are inherently incapable — many are perfectly competent professionals. It is because a large slice of the core audience experiences a subtle but persistent sense of cultural displacement. They switch on expecting the familiar rhythms of the Saturday ritual and instead encounter a tone that feels, to them, imported from another conversation altogether: one heavy with the vocabulary of inclusion, equity, and the quiet implication that the old way of watching was somehow problematic. The result is not rage so much as indifference. They simply stop watching. Numbers fall. The show is quietly retired. And everyone involved expresses polite bafflement.

Yet one must not fall into the opposite error of imagining that women's sport requires artificial life support. Quite the contrary. Women's football, women's rugby, women's cricket — these have been enjoying genuine growth in popularity, including among male viewers. The Lionesses' triumphs, the rising attendances at Women's Super League matches, the record audiences for major tournaments: these are not figments of a diversity report. Men watch because the sport itself is worth watching — the skill, the commitment, the narrative arc of underdogs and breakthroughs. No amount of political correctness or virtue signalling is required to achieve this. Indeed, the heavy-handed application of such things often proves counterproductive, breeding resentment where organic interest might have flourished. The lesson is as old as entertainment itself: let the thing be good on its own terms. The audience will find it, or it will not. Forced admiration is the surest way to kill affection.

Ultimately, sport should do the talking. The ball, the bat, the engine, the athlete's body in motion — these are eloquent enough without endless overlay of messaging. When Football Focus began in 1974, it understood this. It was a simple programme about the weekend's football, presented by people steeped in the culture. That it has now been deemed surplus to requirements is less a comment on Alex Scott than on the broader confusion of our age: the belief that every institution must be remodelled in the image of the moment's approved sensibilities, even if that means alienating the very people who once sustained it.

The BBC will doubtless replace the old slot with something shinier, more digital, more inclusive. One wishes them luck. But one also suspects that the game, in all its stubborn, unscripted glory, will continue to outlast the packaging. Sport, like literature or music at its best, has a way of surviving the people who try too hard to improve it. The audience may fragment, the formats may shift, but the ball keeps rolling. And in the end, that is all that ever really mattered.