One of my as yet unfulfilled ambitions is to get a new word into the Oxford English Dictionary. I have done pretty well on the phrase front, with “New Labour, New Britain” and “we don’t do God” possibly the most quoted. But so far as individual word invention is concerned, on which Shakespeare is the undisputed champion, I am failing.
I had high hopes for “persevilience”, a concept I outed in But What Can I Do?, but the OED was unmoved. “Rizz”, for heaven’s sake, beat me to it, while Collins’ 2024 word of the year was “brat”. Even dictionaries are going downmarket these days.
But I wonder if my partner, Fiona, may have a contender… “trollification”. The context was the resignation of Justin Welby as archbishop of Canterbury, alongside a pile-on – launched by JK Rowling – on me.
Fiona and I both know, and like, Justin Welby. I also know he has been in torment for some time about whether he could and should have done more to alert the world, and the authorities, to the activities of serial child abuser John Smyth. He certainly acknowledges that he could have done more, but it is hard to see exactly what he could have done that was not already the responsibility of others.
That he did ultimately resign reflected not just his sense of institutional responsibility, but also the build-up of pressure following an official report that, whilst not adding significantly to the facts as known, changed the tone of the debate around those facts. Media that had ignored the story when Channel 4 pursued it in the past, suddenly – with the sense of a scalp to be had – decided it was hugely newsworthy after all.
And of course Xitter acted as the hell-hole Elon Musk has decided it should be, and that old favourite “pressure is mounting as…” did the rest.
I wrote last week about how ludicrous it was that people who viewed Donald Trump as a lying, racist, sexist, corrupt, immoral narcissist should be expected to feel embarrassed about those views, or recant them, because he had been re-elected. To be clear, Donald Trump is a lying, racist, sexist, corrupt, immoral narcissist, currently naming a cabinet full of people whose main qualification is to have no objection to anything he is, says or does.
Similarly, with Welby gone, Xitter appeared to demand a monopoly view that he was a terrible man, a dreadful archbishop, Xitterers entitled to land any insult that came into their heads upon his.
But what if you happened still to think, as I do, that he is “a good man with a good heart, strong values and a commitment to public service”? Or, as Rory Stewart put it on X: “Very sorry to hear of the resignation of the archbishop of Canterbury – I have worked with him for a long time and have always been struck by his humility, openness, care and sense of public service.”
When likes are outnumbered by replies – 2,000 to 2,500 in my case – it is never a good sign. Perhaps because I included Welby’s acceptance he could have done better, and mentioned the horror of what Smyth had done, I was spared the extreme trollification that fell upon Rory.
Seven thousand angry replies later, he added: “What John Smyth did was beyond horrifying – cruel, controlling, perverse and had an appalling permanent impact on his victims. It is awful that he was not investigated, or prosecuted and that he was able to continue his abuse.”
But all that did was to inspire the same people to say it was too little too late, and why should anyone listen to him anyway, because he had put a bet on Kamala Harris to win the presidential election, the relevance of which was unclear. The trollification of the archbishop was off the scale already. But because he had dared simply to state what he thought of someone he has known for many years, based on his own experience, Rory got caught up in the trollification.
Not a nice feeling, but a great 2024 word. Perhaps Fiona will beat me into the OED.
JK Rowling has 14.2 million Twitter followers to my 1.1 million, so when she says something, traction is guaranteed. Someone had posted a short clip of me saying, à propos of Trump, that the woke debate had not yet infected our politics in the same way as it had America’s.
A tweet completely misrepresenting what I had said – “Imagine thinking that women’s safety and children being medically experimented on… didn’t actually matter” (something I have never thought let alone said) – was reposted by JKR with the message: “All it took was some men to explain to Alastair what women have been telling him for years.”
A further misrepresentation of a misrepresentation, likes for which went quickly into the tens of thousands.
When I replied that I listened to my partner and daughter more on these issues than any man, back she came with a whack at my daughter for having criticised her position on trans issues in the past.
The right wing ragosphere wasn’t slow to react. The Spectator and the Telegraph piled in, the latter several times, while JKR seemed particularly taken with an Unherd article suggesting I had been rebuked for “mansplaining” to her. This because I had suggested the debate could do with a little more tolerance and attempt to understand different viewpoints, and I invited her to come on The Rest Is Politics.
“Women like me,” she said above the Unherd article “are expected to accept and repeat a lie – that some men are women – to prove themselves ‘reasonable’. Well, no. Either the Earth is flat or it’s not.” Thirty thousand likes in no time, a mini-avalanche of comments coming my way – I think we can call that trollification.
I think I know what she thinks, because she has been speaking and campaigning on this for so long. I am the first to admit I haven’t focused on trans issues as much as she probably thinks I should. But I certainly don’t think the things she seems to think I do, and the invitation still stands.
Is it old-fashioned to think an hour’s chat might be a better idea than a few exchanges on Musk’s platform, which exists to fuel disagreement based on wilful misinformation?
Ahead of a speech in Bristol, I was told someone called Lauren would meet me at Temple Meads and walk me to the nearby venue. “Welcome to Bristol, it’s lovely to see you,” said a young woman as I walked through the ticket barrier, before adding in a whisper, “I’m a big fan, by the way.”
“Great,” I said, “so where are you taking me then?”
From the shocked look on her face, I realised she wasn’t Lauren, who was waving at me from the ticket office.
I had a bit of a health scare last week – all good now, relax – and ended up at the Royal Free hospital for a few hours. One or two of the medical staff I met told me how they all too often were abused or criticised by patients.
So can I thank everyone who looked after me so well, especially a young doctor called Denise, who kept checking in on me and making sure I was getting the tests I was supposed to, and explaining all the possibilities. Yes, I had to hang around a fair bit, but the doctors, nurses and porters were all terrific.
