Keir Starmer has demanded answers from the BBC over its Glastonbury coverage, which included live footage of the punk rapper Bobby Vylan leading crowds in a chant of “death, death to the IDF” – a reference to the Israel Defence Forces. Glastonbury boss Emily Eavis apologised, saying there was “no place” at the festival for “anti-Semitism, hate speech or incitement to violence”. The number of new entry-level jobs has fallen by around a third since the launch of ChatGPT. Research from jobs site Adzuna found that vacancies for graduate roles, apprenticeships, internships and junior positions with no degree requirement – so everything, basically – were down by 31.9% since November 2022. Dario Amodei, boss of AI firm Anthropic, says AI could eliminate 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within five years. It’s “Meltdown Monday”, says the Daily Star, as temperatures in Britain soar to the mid-30s, part of a continent-wide sunny spell that has seen highs of 46C in Spain and Portugal. “Dig yer trunks out, folks.”

Bob Vylan’s antics: vile and idiotic but not illegal

There can be little doubt, says Laurie Wastell in The Spectator, that the “idiotic antics” of Bob Vylan at Glastonbury constituted a “grotesque and deeply anti-Semitic display”. In leading a chant of “Death, death to the IDF”, the English punk duo were not just calling for a far-off military defeat. They were calling for the destruction, in effect, of the entire Jewish state, which survives in a hostile neighbourhood only by the muscle of its defenders. The BBC has been heavily criticised for airing the set, and the usual suspects – Kemi Badenoch, the front page of The Mail on Sunday – are calling for the performers to be arrested. I can see why many, especially British Jews, are furious. But the “censorious, knee-jerk response” that it’s a matter for the law is entirely wrongheaded.

Our “hypersensitivity to distasteful speech” is why the childminder Lucy Connolly was jailed for 31 months over an unwise and hastily deleted tweet which was deemed to have incited violence before last summer’s Southport riots. And it’s why 30 Brits a day are arrested for writing unpleasant things online. This is absurd – speech is not violence. Calling the police every time you hear something objectionable “erodes all our freedoms”. Bob Vylan’s chant was reprehensible, but it wasn’t incitement. “Did Glasto’s middle-class crusties proceed to put down the natural wine, pack up their tents and carry out a pogrom?” Certainly Hamas, “burning with a violent, genocidal hatred of Jews”, weren’t waiting for a band of “leftie gimps in a field in Somerset” to tell them how to feel about the IDF. Not prosecuting Bob Vylan would also deny the group the opportunity to pose as “anti-establishment martyrs”. Let’s not waste police time. “Sometimes, nasty words are just nasty words.”