Reclaiming the Public Square
What happens in Britain's shared civic spaces tells a story about who we are
Towering Columns
In The Spectator, Shadow Justice Secretary Nick Timothy explains his objections to a mass Muslim prayer event being held in Trafalgar Square.
Opponents of Labour’s ‘Islamophobia’ definition warned it would stop us debating religious ideas. Ministers insisted we were wrong and dismissed concern about the confusion of racial identity with religious belief. Yet the week after the definition was announced, the Communities Secretary accused me of racism and Keir Starmer demanded my head. My crime was to call the ritual prayer by Muslim men in Trafalgar Square – and the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer – an ‘act of domination’. I did not question the freedom of Muslims to gather to break their Ramadan fast, nor their right to pray in mosques. But using public spaces to pray is a growing trend, and it makes a political statement. Islamists do this to achieve what the scholar Ed Husain calls the ‘total Islamisation of public space’. I saw Ed on Sunday, and we discussed how the Quran, like the Bible, warns against proud public displays of piety.
Politicians stick safely to the line that Islamism and Islam are entirely separate. But Islamism is inspired by Islamic teaching and Islamists pursue their goals in the name of the faith. More than other religions, Islamic theology promotes the application of religious principles to the political sphere. And it is far less open than Christianity to the separation of the spiritual and the secular. The people praying in Trafalgar Square were probably not Islamists. They were doing what they would have done had they broken their fast at home. But that does not make it appropriate in a shared public space, and certainly not one of national significance like Trafalgar Square. In public and in private, many Muslims agree with me. I regret that I offended at least a couple of Muslim friends. But many say there is no theological need for the adhan or for prayers before an iftar. Others I have attended have been held without them.
So I wonder why, if the event was supposed to be inclusive, the organisers felt it necessary. The adhan declares – very loudly – the unchallengeable truth of Islam. It asserts there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger. It rejects other beliefs, including the Christian belief in Jesus as the son of God. This – and the Muslim method of prayer when performed in public – is inevitably exclusionary. Indeed, barriers were erected to create a specific prayer area. Those who pretend there is no difference between the iftar and other celebrations in Trafalgar Square miss the point. Everyone is free to enjoy Sikhs and Hindus dancing for Vaisakhi or Diwali, and to watch the Passion Play at Easter. Chanukah events there do not require a special area for Jews to pray alone. There is no declaration of the supremacy of the Jewish faith. This is not a question of religious freedom: there is no automatic right to the exclusive occupation of shared civic space.
In The Times, Juliet Samuel says exploiting North Sea reserves could help Britain whether the Middle East oil and gas crisis.
North Sea gas is estimated to generate a sixth of the carbon emissions of imported liquefied natural gas (LNG), especially where it is close to existing infrastructure. But Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, insists that more drilling won’t make a difference to prices and has defeated a push from the Treasury to make Britain’s tax regime more attractive for oil exploration and to overturn a ban on new exploration.
While it is true that British North Sea production is unlikely to scale up to a level that could affect wholesale prices this year, there could still be market-changing volumes of oil or gas left in the ground. The North Sea Transition Authority estimates that the UK slice of the continental shelf contains up to 15.8 billion BOE (barrels of oil equivalent) of hydrocarbons, 15 years’ supply at current rates and equal to a third of all the oil and gas that has ever been extracted from it. The OEUK, an industry group, estimates that 7.5 billion barrels of oil could still be extracted, more than twice the government’s estimate.
Just under three billion of that is “proven and probable”, essentially just waiting to be tapped (versus about 3.5 billion for Norway), while the rest requires more investment to map out and may not all be accessible. Much of the total may not be extractable, with the Economist Intelligence Unit stating that even the industry’s optimistic estimates suggest 93 per cent of what can be used “has already been removed”. But in just the last year before new exploration contracts were banned, the industry added over one billion to the total, suggesting more investment and new technology could well make a difference.
For The Critic, Steve Loftus says the scale of economic disruption AI may cause could destroy capitalism as we know it.
If a large share of jobs disappears, so too does the income that sustains demand. Who, then, buys the products? Who keeps the system turning? The engines of capitalism will stall precisely when they should be accelerating. A system built on mass consumption cannot survive if the masses no longer have wages. The usual reassurance is that new forms of work will appear, as they always have. Perhaps we will all become artisan cheesemakers, therapists, or therapists for artisan cheesemakers. But this time the pattern breaks. The same technology that destroys existing jobs also competes directly with any new ones. Therapy itself can be delivered by an avatar that remembers every sigh since nursery school. There is no obvious new frontier of human labour left untouched.
Only then does the full economic consequence become clear. If machines perform most work, and labour and energy both trend towards near-zero cost, then prices begin to collapse. A nuclear reactor built by robots, maintained by drones and optimised by algorithms could deliver electricity for next to nothing. Vertical farms tended by machines that work 18 hours a day, 7 days a week could outproduce today’s best land with a fraction of the inputs. When a refrigerator can be printed, delivered and installed for little more than raw materials and energy, the cash register starts to look like a museum piece.
What comes after may, in theory, be better. This is the part many people struggle to imagine, because all our political languages were built for a world in which human labour remained central. Capitalism assumes scarcity, wages and mass consumption. Socialism assumes human production and political conflict over how its proceeds should be divided. AI unsettles both assumptions at once. If machines can produce abundance with minimal human input, then neither the free market nor the planned state, in their inherited forms, fully explains the world ahead. There may be some future system beyond both, a post-labour settlement for which we do not yet have a name. It may borrow from markets, public ownership, common governance, citizen dividends and new forms of distributed control. It may look, in places, familiar. But in the end, it will belong to a category we have not yet learned to describe. From inside a wage-based civilisation, it is hard to see clearly what a post wage one would look like.
In The Spectator, Douglas Murray criticises the BBC’s latest drama for depicting concerns about migration data as a conspiracy theory while demonising white men.
Which brings me to this week’s attempt at brainwashing the British public. It comes in the form of a BBC drama called The Capture. In this week’s episode our brave agents are on the trail of a dastardly villain – a white working-class man by the name of Whitlock. What is this villain guilty of? Well, one thing is that he has been found to have put in Freedom of Information (FoI) requests to the UK government in the belief (as one of the agents puts it) that it is ‘covering up the true stats on undocumented migrants’. When two of our agents learn this they immediately turn around their car and get on the chase. That’s great TV drama for you, right there. Not an FoI request!
As we can all agree, only a very perverted mind would ever suspect the UK government of covering up any such thing as migration stats. Everybody with a scintilla of common sense knows that consecutive governments have only ever been honest and open with the public over the levels of documented and undocumented immigration. It is one of the reasons why we have such up-to-date and detailed information on – for instance – the amount of money it costs to house the latest arrivals by boat across the channel. And it is why the government does not have to try to cover up which hotels they are putting illegal migrants in.
But the BBC’s dramatists are not content with a mere FoI-requesting wrong ’un as the chief villain of the story. No – this man must end up taking up a rifle, heading to Dover and trying to sharp-shoot a boatload of illegal migrants, including a young child of the type who almost never make the journey in question. I say ‘almost never’ based on the photographs and evidence I have seen. Most of the people who arrive in these boats are young males who you are also not allowed to describe as being of ‘fighting age’. If I am wrong on this question of age-demographics then I am happy to be corrected. Certainly I would rather be corrected than put in an FoI request and immediately make myself suspected of terrible far-right activity.
In the Financial Times, Gillian Tett says the Iran war has revealed the extent to which high-capex, capital-intensive industry matters.
Maverick economists such as Peter Navarro were often mocked in the past when they decried how the west was outsourcing cheap manufacturing to China. Metal-bashing seemed old-fashioned. So did industrial self-sufficiency. But now the cultural pendulum is swinging. Navarro is a key adviser to Trump, who shares his obsession with manufacturing. Meanwhile western graduates are starting to fear that AI will destroy many service sector jobs.
And now the Iran war has shown politicians why industrial self-sufficiency matters. In financial markets, so-called Halo trades (heavy-asset, low-obsolescence businesses that require significant tangible capital expenditure) are on a tear. “The landscape is reshaping the balance between physical assets and human or digital capital models,” says one Goldman Sachs note, pointing out that capital-intensive stocks have produced 35 per cent higher returns than capital-light ones since 2025. “Physical asset businesses have outperformed sharply, while software and other capital-light models have lagged.”
There is one crucial caveat here, which [Jeff] Currie [analyst at the US private capital group Carlyle] notes. Today’s AI sector cannot function without physical, capex-heavy businesses backing it. Just think of those data centres. That means that “hard” industries are now blending with services to a degree that was not as obvious when Fingleton wrote his book in 1999. Even AI obsessives know that molecules matter. So the big question that now hangs over the west is this: will the cultural attitudes towards “hard” industries also shift? Will elite students now fight for manufacturing jobs? Might industrial engineering command higher status than banking?
In Foreign Affairs, Hugo Bromley saysEurope can no longer be a military power and Britain remains America’s best military partner.
To renew the Euro-Atlantic settlement, European Union institutions must step back from defense issues and focus on fostering economic growth through existing competencies. In the short term, there is no alternative to the United States providing the expensive and technologically advanced capabilities needed to deter Russia. In the long term, new spending programmes should be developed through intergovernmental agreements, with NATO focusing on maintaining interoperability among its members. Washington should not expect increases in defense expenditure to be equal in percentage terms among EU member states. These commitments should instead vary, depending on fiscal space and voter appetite for increased expenditure. Fortunately, it is the states of northern Europe, and on NATO’s eastern flank, that are most able and willing to increase their defense budgets in response to the Russian threat.
European countries should also look beyond their borders for partners. Projects such as the GCAP fighter development program between Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom only strengthen European security. Similarly, Poland is right to look to South Korea to provide military equipment and gain expertise, since both rely on large conventional land forces. EU member states should commit to giving all U.S. treaty allies partner status in Brussels’s defense financing initiatives. This would encourage beneficial cooperation, and limit the Commission’s willingness to use rearmament as a vehicle for integration.
The United States’ most important partner in this rebalancing remains the United Kingdom. Through defenseindustrial and nuclear cooperation, as well as the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network, London and Washington maintain an unprecedented and deepening geopolitical friendship. The last Conservative government pioneered “mini-lateral” defense partnerships through AUKUS and the Joint Expeditionary Force— a vehicle for cooperation among Baltic and North Sea countries to counter Russian actions. That is not to say, however, that London is doing all it should. Despite strong bipartisan support for Ukraine, British defense spending is rising too slowly and is not scheduled to reach 3.5 percent until 2035. Washington should encourage the United Kingdom to spend three percent of GDP before the end of the current Parliament in 2029.
Wonky Thinking
Policy Exchange launched “Sickfluencers and AI How Technology is Changing the Health and Disability Benefits System” by Gareth Lyon and Ticiana Alencar. The report reveals how influencers and AI are driving bogus sickness claims in the benefits system.
The UK’s health and disability benefits system was designed for a very different era. Built around static assessments, binary judgements, and paperbased assumptions about illness, work, and support, it is now operating in a radically altered social and technological environment. The rigid and tick-box nature of the current regime has left it increasingly vulnerable to exploitation by online communities, so-called “sickfluencers”, and artificial intelligence tools. Together, these forces are reshaping how individuals understand eligibility, frame need, and interact with the welfare system, contributing to a sharp rise in successful claims and placing a growing and unsustainable strain on public finances.
This report focuses on the “grey area” within the health and disability benefits system, where entitlement, need, and support are most contested. To analyse interactions with the welfare system, we identify four broad groups:
Group 1: Clearly entitled and appropriately supported
The first group comprises individuals who clearly require support and receive it appropriately.
Group 2: Entitled but underserved
The second group comprises individuals who should be entitled to assistance but are unable to access it due to complexity, administrative barriers, or insufficient support, and who are often among the most vulnerable in society.
Group 3: Fraudulent abuse
The third group comprises individuals who deliberately abuse the system through fraud, for whom enforcement and prosecution are justified.
Group 4: The Grey Area
This fourth group is the most analytically challenging and occupies what we describe as a “grey area”. It comprises individuals with genuine functional challenges whose circumstances do not clearly warrant the level or type of ongoing state support currently available. In some cases, their challenges may be better addressed through short-term, targeted, or non-financial interventions rather than continued entitlement to disability benefits.
To understand what is driving the rapid growth in claims, particularly in the contested “grey area”, we carried out a deep-dive investigation into the online ecosystems that now shape claimant behaviour. This included analysis of large discussion groups and platform-based creators (“sickfluencers”), and observation of emerging use of generative AI tools to interpret eligibility criteria and draft applications.
This fourth group is characterised not by dishonesty but by uncertainty. Broader societal pressures — including shifting norms around health, work, and identity, amplified by social media — may shape how individuals understand their need for support. At the same time, detailed guidance on eligibility criteria is widely available online, making it easier for some claimants to adopt the language most likely to secure an award. Those without digital access — a disproportionately large share of disabled people — are less able to do so. If left unaddressed, this grey area risks expanding in ways that are difficult to justify, target, or sustain, further eroding trust in the health and disability benefits system.
While the size of this “grey area” group is difficult to quantify precisely, available evidence suggests that it is both real and growing. 16.8 million people, or roughly one quarter of the population, considered themselves disabled in 2023-24, up from about 11.9 million (19 per cent) in 2013- 14. The largest increase has happened amongst those aged 16-25 years old, where disability prevalence has more than doubled to 18% from 8%. In 1993, 15.5% of 16 to 64-year-olds had a common mental health condition, compared to 22.6% in 2023-2024. This is correlated with a rise in those who are now claiming incapacity and disability benefits. There are now over 4.2m people on Universal Credit with “no work requirements”, and it now makes up over half of those on UC. 1.5m people are now claiming PIP for mental health conditions, and that is an increase of over 100,000 in the space of a year. Economic inactivity due to ill-health costs £212 billion per year, equivalent to 7% of GDP.
The system operates within a technological landscape that has changed dramatically since its initial design. Fifteen years ago, people seeking support were mostly likely to approach established charities or welfare advisors. Today, many turn to online communities and sickfluencers to guide them through processes. Artificial intelligence is already beginning to assist claimants in understanding eligibility criteria, drafting applications, and pursuing appeals, and its influence is expected to grow quickly. While claimant behaviour and information ecosystems have evolved rapidly, the structure of the benefits system and its assessment frameworks have largely remained unchanged…
Podcast of the Week
The Shadow Justice Secretary, Nick Timothy, explained his views on the mass public Muslim prayer event in Trafalgar Square on the Telegraph podcast.
Quick Links
The Brent crude oil price went back up to $110.
The Bank of England now expects oil prices to drive inflation up to 3.5%.
An imam said the Shadow Justice Secretary was right about the Muslim prayer event in Trafalgar Square.
A North Sea energy company called on Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, to back Shetland gas fields that could power the UK for 5 years.
The social media platforms Instagram and YouTube were ruled to be addictive by an LA court.
The Government’s announced new investment in roads in fact amounts to a 15-20% real terms cut.
Britain could become a net importer of salt for the first time in history, if Inovyn - which produces half the UK salt supply - closes its plant in Cheshire.
The Islamic Centre of England, a registered charity, is due to hold a vigil to commemorate the Ayatolla Khamanei.
A man arrested on suspicion of spying for China accessed the parliamentary estate on multiple occasions and as recently as January.