The Right Dishonourable

Among the humiliations for Paul Williams in his run to become Hartlepool MP was the revelation that he had asked Twitter who their “favourite Tory milf” was in 2011. Some went a tad overboard in their criticism of it, with Shami Chakrabarti, Baroness Whitewash, calling it “unacceptable misogynistic abuse”.

In the spirit of equality, Marchamont wonders if the high-brows would react similarly if a female politician was similarly lewd. It is therefore interesting to hear the recent remarks of Andrea Leadsom, Conservative MP and previous leadership hopeful.

It is often fairly said that battles over wokery are full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. But the World Health Organisation (WHO) has provided an example of political correctness gone mad and doing bad.

In the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, the media spent much time debating whether it was racist to call it the ‘Wuhan’ or ‘Chinese’ virus. Similar offence-seeking has prompted stories that British prime minister Boris Johnson called it ‘kung flu’.

The meritocracy is striking back. Responding to years of denouncement from Ivy League academics and leftish wonks, Adrian Wooldridge is about to publish The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World.

The Economist hack has taken to various newspapers to state his case that meritocracy is in fact good ahead of the book’s launch. Writing in the Times on Monday, he said modern societies are “outraged at the mere smell of nepotism or favouritism or discrimination.”

Last week the news snuck out that the classic first-person shooter TimeSplitters is being rebooted. What’s more, the game will be made by a revived Free Radical Design, staffed by two of the original studio’s founders, David Doak and Steve Ellis.

The entertainment industry is no stranger to reworking old intellectual property. Some would argue that it is rather too reliant on it, given the churn of Call of Duty and FIFA titles each year. But there is something special about Free Radical.