I always knew there was a backlash coming. I could sense it when I was working on the Equality Act back in 2010 when I was an adviser for the Labour Party. “You’ve all gone too far this time, there’s gonna be pushback and it won’t be nice,” warned a male colleague. It felt ominous. The thing we were pushing for was transparency on the gender pay gap — not actually demanding to be paid equally but knowing by how much we women were getting shafted. It’s just nice to know these things.
Perhaps it’s because I am a woman and from an ethnic minority background that I’ve always felt anxious about banking “equality” wins because they were hard fought for and therefore felt eternally fragile.
We saw that with Barack Obama. I remember watching Jesse Jackson weeping on the night he won, and while all my friends were yelling “this is it!”, I was elated but also had a gnawing feeling that there would be some retaliation — sure enough, it came with a vengeance in the form of Donald Trump. Since then, everything has changed.
His arrival unleashed a rage which had been bubbling away under the surface of society. He gave people — including other politicians — the permission to let it all out. To say the things which, until then, would have been deemed impolite, rude or not socially acceptable. The war on woke began. Now we’re in the thick of it (literally) and anyone is fair game. Mexicans, Muslims, Pakistani men, Gary Lineker, the RNLI, the Brecon Beacons, Huw Edwards, Carole Vorderman, the markets, mortages, beer, tea, Disney, the Women’s Institute, William Hague — no one is safe.
The word ‘woke’ means different things to different people. Even though I’m regularly labelled woke (although sadly not yet on the list of the “new elite” but a girl can dream), I do actually understand why people got annoyed by the concept of it. Yes, it’s about being “awake” to injustices but a lot of people got a bit overly alert and there was some element of dogma and puritanical behaviour — the policing of what and who you liked on social media (this happened to me), the epic social media pile-ons and trying to sanction, punish or cancel people from events or their jobs. I can see why that kind of stuff put people off.
But the great irony is that the anti-woke warriors who pride themselves on being against this kind of censorious behaviour have not just aped it but are running global masterclasses in cancel culture. There’s a feeding frenzy from so-called ‘free-speech’ crusaders. They sound crackers. I watched a clip of a grown man threatening to cancel Elsa if she became a lesbian in Frozen Four.
And they’re not just going after made-up cartoon characters — these people are trying to bring down institutions like the BBC or Channel Four, campaigns which thankfully have failed. The war on wokery is becoming a ludicrous parody. Let the cancellation begin! Or, as Elsa would say, “let it goooo”.
Rebekah v Coleen is pure theatre
You’ll always remember where you were when that iconic tweet from Coleen Rooney dropped about who was leaking information about her. It’s ... Rebekah Vardy’s account.
It was box-office beef that gripped the nation. It was what Twitter was invented for. Vardy v Rooney: The Wagatha Christie Trial has since been made into a play — and it’s brilliant.
It reminds you of those moments of comedy gold, from the phone belonging to Vardy’s agent “accidentally” falling into the sea to the optic of poor old Wayne having to carry Coleen’s rather large handbag into court every day.
It also takes you beyond the mud-slinging and explains the points of law behind this complex case plus the cut-throat nature of fame and its relationship with the tabloids.
The audience is very much Team Coleen (and her moon-boot) but it does try to show both sides of the story. I hope both women see it — frenemies reunited?
