Frances Ryan
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Guardian columnist and journalist. Commentator of the Year 2024. Author of Who Wants Normal? and Crippled. E: frances.ryan.freelance@guardian.co.uk
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Articles by Frances Ryan
How irrational are Labour’s plans for migrant workers? To find out, read the small print
Migrant workers protest outside parliament in London on 10 June 2026. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA If you want to see the senselessness of Britain’s immigration debate play out in real time, look no further than the crackdown on care workers’ visas that came to a head this week.
The Experiment review – easily the most disturbing thing on TV
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The Experiment review – easily the most disturbing thing on TV
Mat Fraser and Sophie Morgan watch events unfold on monitors. Photograph: Kalel Productions I have never had to pause a programme halfway through before to catch my breath. That is until The Experiment – Channel 4’s highly controversial social exercise designed to find out “how susceptible the British public are” to Nazi ideology about disabled people.
The Experiment review – easily the most disturbing thing on TV Original
I have never had to pause a programme halfway through before to catch my breath. That is until The Experiment – Channel 4's highly controversial social exercise designed to find out "how susceptible the British public are" to Nazi ideology about disabled people. This is a show so disturbing, timely and surreal that within 90 seconds of viewing it alone, I am looking around for confirmation from an empty room that any of this is happening. We start with a clip of Hitler.
The right’s scrounger rhetoric dominates the benefits debate. Labour must fight back – and win
People rallying against disability benefit cuts in Parliament Square last year. Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian Back in 2009, months before the coalition government unleashed sweeping austerity, the then Conservative backbencher Iain Duncan Smith produced a study that would go on to lay the foundations for the rollout of universal credit.
Time: David Tennant and Siobhan Finneran are stellar in this horrifying and exceptional TV drama
It takes a lot to drag me away from comfort TV in the autumn. Blame the shrinking hours of light or the apocalyptic news cycle but the closest thing I like to get to televisual trauma in October is watching comedians get into their own graves in The Celebrity Traitors. I doubt I'm alone.
I’m not buying into the ‘Keminaissance’. If the Tories lowered the bar any further, they’d be Reform UK
Kemi Badenoch visits an Oil States Industries site in Aberdeen, Scotland on 5 June 2026. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian Kemi Badenoch is considering doing her job. With her second Conservative party conference as leader looming on Sunday, and her rival Nigel Farage finally losing some ground, the provocateur with a reputation for dodging media rounds and being ill-prepared for briefs has seemingly cured her camera shyness.
An effective ban on disabled people leaving Britain? You read that right, and we will not settle for it
Disabled people are being barred from leaving the country. This isn't the first line of a dystopian novel but a scandal quietly happening across swathes of England. For the past six months, myself and my colleague Patrick Butler have spoken to disabled people who have effectively been blocked from going abroad on a holiday or to a work event by their local care provider.
Disabled people in UK need right to travel abroad, say MPs, after ‘ridiculous’ restrictions
Disabled people must have a guaranteed right to travel abroad, MPs and peers have said, as further cases emerged of individuals barred from taking holidays as a result of "ridiculous" rules imposed by local NHS care boards and local councils. Leading figures have called on the government to bring in clear national guidelines to ensure people who require full-time personal assistants (PAs) are not prevented from using funding for their 24/7 support team for breaks and work trips.
Martin & Roman’s Irish Road Trip: the choice of presenters for this travelogue is utterly baffling
If you’re someone who believes the celebrity travelogue genre has been pushed too far, Martin & Roman’s Irish Road Trip (Monday, 8pm, Channel 4) is here to push you to the edge. Then continue pushing until you’re falling off a cliff into the Irish Sea. It is unclear why exactly the producers chose Martin Kemp and his son, Roman, to take viewers on a tour of Ireland. Which to be fair, the two men address in the first three minutes.
Burnham is taking a bold risk by busting the big lie of politics – that change is impossible
This is the danger zone. The period when one prime minister leaves office and the next takes over can inspire either dread or delight: a few days in which the country forms a gut reaction to the new government.
Andy Burnham has made a bold start – but convincing people that change is possible will take much more
Andy Burnham holds his first No 10 North meeting in Manchester, 24 July 2026. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/PA This is the danger zone. The period when one prime minister leaves office and the next takes over can inspire either dread or delight: a few days in which the country forms a gut reaction to the new government. But listen closely, and what’s striking about Labour 2.0 isn’t how quickly change may come or even what it might entail – it’s the idea that change is possible at all.
Andy Burnham has made a bold start – but convincing people that change is possible will take much more
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Jesy Nelson: Life Changing review – you just want to reach through the screen and hug the Little Mix star
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Jesy Nelson: Life Changing review – you just want to reach through the screen and hug the Little Mix star
The fact that cameras were there to witness the worst moment of Jesy Nelson's life was seemingly a coincidence. Prime Video had been following the former Little Mix singer for a documentary on her life since leaving the band, as well as the birth of her premature twins.
Burnham has a chance to overhaul Pip. Here’s what a truly progressive system could look like
“Broken Britain” has become the favourite narrative of the right in recent months. The playbook goes like this: politicians and pundits alike exploit genuine concerns about squeezed services and living standards to propagate a sense of division and despair. Meanwhile, the parts of the state that actually need radical change are then either ignored or misrepresented, if only because their worst impact tends to be felt by the very marginalised communities the hard right scapegoats.
Pip review is an opportunity – and headache – for Andy Burnham
If Andy Burnham is keen to deliver "change" as prime minister, then the government's landmark review into disability benefits has just handed him a big opportunity – and a potentially even bigger headache. Stephen Timms, the disability minister tasked with reforming personal independence payments (Pip) after Labour MPs forced Keir Starmer to U-turn on cuts last summer, did not pull his punches in his interim report.
Want to know what Andy Burnham would do in government? Take a look at his past
One week on from Keir Starmer's resignation, Britain finds itself in a state of both certainty and ambiguity. It is almost guaranteed that Andy Burnham will be prime minister by the end of the summer, bar sudden scandal or meteorite.
The old ‘warfare v welfare’ arguments are back – but it’s Britain’s real duty to spend on both
Keir Starmer looks at a drone that is fired from a Vanta system as he visits defence contractor Stark in Swindon, 5 June 2026. Photograph: Alastair Grant/AFP/Getty Images As the row over the military budget grows, Keir Starmer has spent much of the past few days insisting he’s spending huge sums of taxpayer money on defence.
Disabled people with lifelong conditions facing ‘unnecessary’ Pip reassessments
Disabled people with lifelong conditions are repeatedly being put through "pointless" benefit reassessments, contrary to official guidance, new analysis suggests. A study by the anti-poverty charity Z2K has found that hundreds of thousands of disabled people are going through "unnecessary" personal independence payment (Pip) reviews, "wasting" public money and "significantly harming" the mental and physical health of claimants.
Air conditioning: the wealthy and well can afford it, but disabled people who need it most can’t
A girl cools herself in front of a fan. The UK experienced record-high temperatures for May this week. Photograph: Catherine Falls Commercial/Getty Images I used to love a heatwave. I was the sort of British person who acted like I was in the Mediterranean if the sun was slightly visible, coercing friends to take the outside restaurant table and eagerly working in the garden until my MacBook started to overheat rather than my internal organs.
Dear England: James Graham’s rousing, joyful football drama will make you cry and shout at the TV
Frances Ryan Sat, May 23, 2026 at 6:00 a.m. UTC 4 min read Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google.
The King's speech: did it deliver?
No mere president could have delivered such a speech, the taz emphasises: “Not just because no elected president can remind the US that his five-times great grandfather granted them independence 'just the other day', but also because an elected president cannot claim more legitimacy than another elected president. They have both merely been elected, and thus represent only a section of their respective populations.
King Charles’s White House visit was an exercise in full-throttle distraction and denial
King Charles and Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday. Photograph: FD/Francis Dias/Newspix International That the king’s arrival in the US was preceded by gunfire at the White House correspondents’ dinner set the tone for a visit that was built on the pretence that we were still living in normal times. Forget the Iran war, presidential rants about the British prime minister and growing political violence, it’s time for Charlie to smile for the camera.
‘People assume we’re grifters’: disabled Britons report rise in abuse over blue badges
Disabled people using accessible services have long faced harassment.Illustration: Guardian Design/Alamy Disabled people who use blue badges to go about their daily lives have said they are being harassed, questioned and even assaulted, as anti-benefits rhetoric becomes more mainstream in the UK. About 3 million people in the UK now have a blue badge, including 1 in 15 adults in England.
Queen Elizabeth II: Her Story, Our Century review – apparently she was very good at shaking hands
Whenever I see a headline about “the queen” cutting a ribbon for the Scouts or some hospital, I momentarily think Elizabeth II has risen from the dead. It takes me, on average, 45 seconds to realise they are talking about “Queen Camilla”. Have I fallen and bumped my head? Am I living in the past as a psychological response to our dystopian present?
Britain's shadow workforce is paid as little as 65p an hour. Who cares for the carers?
Imagine your house is on fire, and when you dial 999 the call handler suggests you try putting the blaze out yourself. Resources are tight, you see, and demand high, and the service increasingly relies on volunteers. Or perhaps your child's maths teacher is off sick. The headteacher texts and asks if you can leave work to explain algebra to the class. It's your family, after all, so shouldn't you be the one to help? The idea is ludicrous of course.
Next week’s disability cuts will make people destitute – and you might not understand how bad they are until it’s too late
Disabled people and their allies protest against cuts to welfare benefits, Parliament Square, London, 30 June 2025. Photograph: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing/Getty Images Look at the front pages or open a news app in the coming days and you’ll supposedly see the big events facing Britain. But here’s one that is likely to slip quietly under the radar: from next week, almost three-quarters of a million of the most severely ill and disabled people in the country could end up having a .
Disabled benefit claimants face lower payments if conditions not deemed lifelong, charities say
Frances Ryan Sun, March 29, 2026 at 10:39 a.m. UTC 5 min read Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google.
The hill I will die on: Streaming is rubbish – take me back to the golden era of DVDs
Streaming has many strengths: producing some of the best shows of recent years, convenience, the chance to spend hours of your life scrolling through algorithm-suggested content only to watch nothing and then pass out at 1am.
Labour’s Send reforms get this right: disabled children in mainstream schools is transformative for everyone
When I was 11, a woman at the hospital asked me what school I was starting in September. I still remember her surprise when I told her I would be going to the local girls grammar, as the hoist pulled my wet limbs out of the physio pool. I was a child but already familiar with those few seconds: the time between a person seeing my wheelchair and the flash across their face as they tried to recalibrate their expectations.
We Might Regret This review - brilliant disabled-led comedy continues to skewer its targets
Frances Ryan Wed, February 25, 2026 at 10:30 p.m. UTC 4 min read Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Abe (Darren Boyd), Freya (Kyla Harris) and Ty (Aasiya Shah) in We Might Regret This.Photograph: BBC/Roughcut TV/Adam Lawrence (Photograph: BBC/Roughcut TV/Adam Lawrence) As a rule, I don’t chat about the Equality Act when I’m watching TV.
Given the toxicity of social media, a moral question now faces all of us: is it still ethical to use it?
‘None of this would be as disturbing if the disgust wasn’t accompanied by a pull to keep posting.’ Photograph: Peter Dazeley/Getty Images In a week during which Keir Starmer has been under pressure to resign, cabinet ministers took to X to show their support. “We’ve all been made to tweet,” one Labour figure told a political journalist.
Finding Father Christmas review - Lenny Rush and James Buckley’s chemistry is just wonderful
In an era in which it is now an annual tradition for the US streaming giants to put out bland paint-by-algorithm holiday movies, there is something rather satisfying about the oddball British Christmas stand-alone special. The ingredients tend to be as follows: appearances by the year’s favourite comic actors; niche cultural references, with or without cameos; a wittily biting but heartwarming script that preferably leaves the viewer weeping into their Baileys.
Disabled people driving luxury cars on your dime? Just the latest rightwing lie peddled by Labour
A man in a wheelchair about to get into his car. Photograph: Andriy Popov/Alamy Months before the government used the budget to launch plans to tackle Motability – the scheme that leases subsidised vehicles with some disability benefits – a website started quietly spying on disabled drivers. Motability Check – run by an unknown third party and now offline – allowed members of the public to type in any number plate and (largely incorrectly) see if it was a car provided by the firm.
The two-child limit is abolished at last. Watch out for the narrative that will follow
‘The cap has become a key part of the ‘war on welfare’ narrative – and the key driver of worsening child poverty.’ Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA And just like that, the two-child benefit limit was finally abolished. “I don’t intend to preside over a status quo that punishes children for the circumstances of their birth,” the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, told the Commons, as she used the budget to scrap, from April 2026, one of Britain’s most controversial policies.
The two-child limit is abolished at last. Watch out for the narrative that will follow
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Chris McCausland: Seeing into the Future review - the comic just can’t hide his emotion in this mind-blowing show
If a celebrity wins Strictly Come Dancing, alongside the glitter ball trophy, they can expect the BBC to gift them a variety of vehicles for their newfound audience. Stacey Dooley rung in New Year’s Eve and presented a makeup challenge. Rose Ayling-Ellis got two documentaries and a guest spot on Doctor Who.
Labour’s rebuttal to the Green party this week sums up the double standard that dogs our politics
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Labour’s rebuttal to the Green party this week sums up the double standard that dogs our politics
The Green party leader, Zack Polanski, at the party’s conference in Bournemouth, 3 October 2025. Photograph: Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images Britain is broken and nothing can ever get better. It doesn’t sound like a winning election slogan, but the sentiment is increasingly taking hold in politics and the media.
Just beads in a glass jar: this is how the Tories dehumanise migrants and those in need
There is a video doing the rounds on social media in which Conservative MP Katie Lam pours beads into glass jars. Each bead represents 1,000 migrants and – we are led to assume – the containers they sit in, Britain. As Lam points to the number of people on indefinite leave to remain (ILR) and “all the welfare and services” they have access to, a jar ominously overflows. “State support should only be for citizens,” she says directly to the camera.
Nobody Wants This: we can’t get enough of Kristen Bell and Adam Brody’s heartstopping treat of a show
Frances Ryan Sat, October 18, 2025 at 6:00 a.m. UTC 4 min read For a while, it seemed as if the romcom as an art form died and had been replaced by Marvel sequels and issue-led dramedies. Rachel and Ross were a distant memory (and not just because it was 20 years ago). Luckily, the genre – and our collective broken hearts – has been given CPR by a flurry of new releases.
Who Wants Normal? by Frances Ryan
Receive 25% off the RRP of this title when you enter the code OCTOBER25 during checkout between 14th-17th October.
Witches of Essex: Rylan and Prof Alice’s look at one of history’s most shameful periods is unfailingly moving
Frances Ryan Sat, October 11, 2025 at 6:00 a.m. UTC 4 min read Witches of Essex is one of those television shows that could have been created working backwards from its title. “It sounds like Witches of Eastwick!” you can imagine a producer brainstorming. “Can we do anything with that?” Yes, yes we can. We can put together a three-part documentary about the Essex witch trials, which saw hundreds of people – the majority of them women – accused of witchcraft in the 16th and 17th centuries.
It’s Badenoch’s Tory show, 2025: like Britain seeing an old flame and remembering why we blocked their number
Kemi Badenoch delivers a speech at the Conservative party conference in Manchester, 5 October 2025. Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA If last year’s general election marked the death of the Conservative party, this week’s conference in Manchester is the wake. Based on the policies unveiled in recent days, one can only assume there’s an open bar.
Trump has gone home but Britain’s problems will remain. Starmer’s invitation was a big mistake
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Did Labour really think it was a good idea to let Farage hijack the summer headlines?
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Did Labour really think it was a good idea to let Farage hijack the summer headlines?
Nigel Farage announces plans for mass deportations of asylum seekers who come to the UK on small boats, 26 August 2025. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images When parliament returns from its summer recess on Monday, Keir Starmer should not be surprised to find Nigel Farage camped out at the dispatch box.
My favourite childhood outfit: ‘I am in classic British beachwear - a cardigan knitted by my nan’
‘I have the air of a queen looking over her kingdom’ … Frances Ryan on the beach in Cromer, Norfolk, circa 1990.Composite: Guardian Design; courtesy of Frances Ryan/Getty Images I inherited my hands from my nan. Long and slim with hard but feminine nails, we called them “piano fingers”, though neither of us ever learned to play. While I went on to use mine for writing, my maternal grandmother dedicated hers to knitting.
The immigration problem that really concerns me? US celebrities
Ellen Degeneres and her wife, Portia de Rossi, have just bought a new property in Gloucestershire. Photograph: Instagram/ellendegeneres With September around the corner, this feels the right time to admit how I’ve spent the summer: tracking the invasion of foreigners to Britain. Tempted by our culture and a stable democracy, swathes of immigrants are coming here for a new life.
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