Tanya Gold

Meet the Rees-Moggs, the reality TV show about Jacob Rees-Mogg and his family is here, and it will be fascinating, because he is. It is easy to take him at face value, which means his own terms: an old Etonian with a moldering manor house, a rich wife, mesmerizingly named children and a nanny who lives in and scolds him. He shares their lives, courtesy of the production company that made At Home With The Furys because he wants the world to understand him.

Yesterday Charles III was heckled in Parliament House in Canberra. He might consider it a happy milestone: he has only been on the throne two years. Lidia Thorpe, an Indigenous independent senator, shouted: “You committed genocide against our people. Give us our land back. Give us what you stole from us — our bones, our skulls, our babies, our people. You destroyed our land. Give us a treaty. You are a genocidalist. This is not your land. You are not my king. Fuck the colony”.

Change the language, change the reality: that’s the theory, because it’s cheaper. Thanet District Council, which administers a somewhat unlovely part of Kent, has imposed a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) which means you can be fined £100 for swearing in the street. So, if, for instance, you want to express the idea that Thanet is “&h75!” you won’t be able to say that within the hearing of a council officer without being fined the equivalent of half your monthly council tax.

I can only imagine Vladimir Putin’s laughter in Moscow. Last week, Ben Jamal, director of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, told protesters at Westminster he wanted a situation where “they will have to lock the doors of parliament itself”. Three MPs — all women, naturally — have been given police protection. MPs’ offices are surrounded and graffitied. The far-Right white nationalist Tommy Robinson will be allowed to visit London from May. He is threatening riots.

The weeks since October 7 have forever changed my relationship with my country.

How do you stand for Palestine without traducing British Jews — and Palestinians themselves? Righteous people want to know, and they should. You may have seen the video of the woman in Gaza weeping over the body of her son and calling Hamas dogs. She was silenced, though why would she care if she told the truth? What more does she have to lose? The Arab world has betrayed Palestine, and the mirroring between Palestinians and Jews, whom Europe betrayed, is obvious, which is partly why the conflict is so mesmerising: both peoples, as the novelist Amos Oz said, are right. A continent away, a crowd of Londoners stood for Palestine on Saturday. How will they ensure that their rhetoric does not translate into the demonisation of Jewish people in Britain? Do they even want to?

Britney Spears's memoir, The Woman in Me, is in two parts: the numb (part one) and the raging (part two). I wish I was surprised by her story, but it’s the story of female stars, particularly child ones. They are archetypes, devoured by expectation.

I researched a piece about culture wars a few years ago and learned that culture war in Britain doesn’t really exist. It is incited, it is dreamt of and exploited, but it is essentially a fiction. British people are a kaleidoscope of opinion, not two sides staring over an abyss. That is the US, not here.

London is a living city, and it is constantly remade. That is its nature and I revel in it: one in, one out. But some things are too precious to lose. The forced closure of Simpson’s Tavern — revealed by the Londoner’s Diary last week — the oldest and greatest chop house in the city, is a grotesque…