As someone who works for the BBC and knows how absurdly difficult it can be to get pieces commissioned for the website - the hoops, the meetings, the endless process - it’s genuinely staggering that something like this sails through. For starters, it isn’t news. Yet there it is on the BBC News website, complete with twaddle about how the way a woman does - or doesn’t do - her nails can apparently be linked to white supremacy. I was blissfully unaware of the supposed politicisation of nail polish, and I’m sure most people were. But by reporting claims like this, the BBC doesn’t simply observe a debate - it helps create one. It amplifies a narrative and gives prominence to voices that seem determined to detect white supremacy in the most mundane aspects of everyday life. There’s something deeply unhealthy about that. Imagine the BBC publishing an article suggesting some equally trivial cultural habit was evidence of a “black supremacist mindset”. You can’t really imagine it, because it would never happen. Yet the nation’s broadcaster apparently has no difficulty amplifying extraordinary claims about white supremacy. This is the sort of thing that makes me despair about the BBC. I’ve criticised it for years for being captured by progressive ideology, identity politics and gender woo-woo. Every so often I start to wonder whether things might finally be improving. Then an article like this appears and disabuses me of that notion pretty quickly. If anything, the problem seems to be getting worse. “How the bare nails trend became a class issue” bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpd7…

Running from 2 - 12 September is Next Generation RBSA 2026, an exhibition of work by 21 emerging artists hoping to be given the opportunity to receive a three-year free membership of the Society. Keep an eye on the blog on our website for news of the successful artists.