Sound the bugle! Prepare the horse! Don your armour! It’s time to go to culture war to distract from any practical policy solutions because your party’s been in government for over a decade!
It’s been that kind of afternoon for Nick Fletcher, the Tory MP for Don Valley, who has decided that so many young men are committing crime not because of 11 years of Conservative government cuts to youth services, police and the justice system, but because a make-believe time traveller on the telly happens to have boobs.
![](https://dl6pgk4f88hky.cloudfront.net/2021/11/23336316-high_res-doctor-who-s13-1-1-1024x683.jpg)
“Everywhere, not least within the cultural sphere, there seems to be a call from a tiny, yet very vocal, minority that ever male character or good role model must have a female replacement. One only needs to look at the discussions surrounding who will play the next James Bond,” he declared, building up to his devastating conclusion:
“And it’s not just James Bond. In recent years, we have seen Doctor Who, Ghostbusters, Luke Skywalker, the Equalizer, all replaced by women. And men are left with the Krays and Tommy Shelby. Is there any wonder we are seeing so many young men committing crime?”
Case closed, yes?
Well, first of all, James Bond is still a man.
And surely, following Fletcher’s “logic”, in the centuries on this Earth pre-Jodie Whittaker as the Time Lord, young men would have been innocent and young women rampaging around committing the vast majority of crime because they’d never seen themselves busting ghosts or ending the tyranny of the Sith.
The Chatterer doesn’t need to show you the crime stats to demonstrate that wasn’t quite the case…
[See also: The Tory crime strategy is either lock them up or lock them down − and neither one is working]