Nothing good has ever followed the words ‘we need to talk’, ‘terms of service update’, or ‘by Jonathan Liew’, and the evidence is really piling up on the third one. The Guardian columnist has written a piece about Gail’s, the bougie coffee shop and bakery chain, and it vents hostility from every sentence like steam from an espresso machine. If you’re wondering how anyone – even a Guardian columnist – could get worked up over pricey lattes, Liew makes sure to tell us Gail’s was ‘founded by an Israeli baker in the 1990s’.

Had Gail’s been a Pakistani-owned business targeted by white Britons aggrieved by the grooming gangs, the Guardian would not soft-pedal it as a symbolic act in a disenfranchised age

Had Gail’s been a Pakistani-owned business targeted by white Britons aggrieved by the grooming gangs, the Guardian would not soft-pedal it as a symbolic act in a disenfranchised age

Yeah, it’s exactly what you think. Actually, it’s worse.

Gail’s has become a target for people The Spectator’s lawyers would probably prefer me to call ‘anti-Zionists’. People who have called for boycotts of the bakery over Palestine and what its opponents (because bakeries have opponents now) claim is its role in ‘gentrification’. The rationale for the Palestine-related boycott is that Bain Capital, Gail’s parent company, invests in cybersecurity firms based in Israel. As for the gentrification business, the vilification of Gail’s as a symbol of affluent outsiders who don’t belong here certainly seems to dovetail with the anti…Zionism.

But back to Liew. His concern with Gail’s is about Cafe Metro, a nearby Palestinian business........

© The Spectator