Predators Still Get Away With It. Politicians Still Pretend to Care

It’s been an extremely bad week for two male British comedians, and a tiring one for women on the internet.

Born-again MAGA grifter Russell Brand was sentenced to 10.5 years in prison on Monday for raping a female fan and sexually assaulting three other women. Brand is under investigation over two additional rape allegations, and a further six women have accused him of sexual misconduct and predatory behaviour.

On Tuesday, a joint Guardian and ITV investigation revealed former Britain’s Got Talent judge and best-selling children’s book author David Walliams has been accused of preying on teenagers and young women for sex. Walliams, who lost a court battle to prevent the investigation being published, denies the allegations.

Politicised recriminations followed Brand’s conviction and sentencing, with Reform UK’s Nigel Farage accusing Labour of “cosying up to” and “promoting” Brand because then-Labour leader Ed Miliband had been interviewed on his podcast in 2015. But then, Farage went on Brand’s US podcast in 2024, nine months after the police decided to open an investigation into the now-convicted rapist.

On Wednesday, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch didn’t miss an opportunity for political point-scoring, crowing at PMQs that Miliband “thought cosying up to Russell Brand would make him prime minister”. From across the Atlantic, Donald Trump Jnr called Brand a victim of “two tier justice” and compared his sentencing to those handed out to “Muslim grooming gangs”.

There has been too little thoughtful engagement with Brand’s trajectory across political landscapes in the UK and US – from positioning himself as a way for British politicians to reach disaffected young voters, to aligning himself with Trumpian power brokers, hooking a conspiratorial, post-truth audience and embracing Christianity to restyle himself as a persecuted messiah in a space where assault allegations are not deal-breakers.

There are also useful conversations to be had – particularly in light of the allegations against Walliams – about whether the UK should introduce a staggered age of consent, so men in their 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond can’t use 16-year-old kids for sex with legal impunity.

Noughties comedy culture does not adequately explain the crimes of Brand or the alleged behaviour of Walliams. There are undoubtedly men who feel entitled to the bodies of women and girls in every social and political movement, in every industry and in every walk of life. This entitlement is supercharged by fame, wealth and influence – by capital, if you will – insulating predators who feel they are too big to fail.

And I fear they are too often proved right.

Post-Me Too, material consequences still emerge painfully slowly – if they ever do – for powerful men who abuse women and girls. Remember that the vast majority of men named in the Epstein files have faced zero criminal charges, and Donald Trump still squats in the White House like a big orange toad addicted to AI slop-posting.

This week, four women in Brand’s case got justice in a courtroom. And Walliams’ accusers were able to tell their stories after his attempt to secure an injunction against publication failed. The victories of these women are real. Their courage in coming forward is real.

But consuming the internet this week, all I could feel was… tired.

Tired because abuse feels like a ubiquitous and even quotidian part of women’s experiences. Tired of existing in an ecosystem where politicians only seem to care about survivors when their stories can be weaponised; where the far right exploits violence against women and girls to serve a racist, supremacist agenda, despite the call coming from inside the house.

And where these deeply unfunny men won’t be the last powerful figures to abuse or allegedly abuse young women because they feel absolutely entitled to do so.