DISPATCHES FROM THE GRAUNIAD’S FATWAH ON A LONDON BAKERY: The real reason the Guardian is so hostile to Gail’s.
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’.
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.
Exit quote: “Jonathan Liew writes like someone who wants to be liked, keen to hit all the right notes so that people he regards as high-status regard him as one of them. It’s hardly the gravest sin. Most people want to be liked. The error of judgement here is on the part of the Guardian. A good editor would have read this and refused to let Liew embarrass himself or the paper.”
How it started:
Guardian columnist describes the mere existence of a bakery chain run by Jews as “aggression” in order to justify kristallnacht-style attacks on it. Cannot believe they printed this pic.twitter.com/6APOvPU3Jy
— Peter Hague (@peterrhague) March 15, 2026
How it’s going:
Gail’s bags – emblazoned with the words ‘a small act of petty symbolism’ (what Guardian writer Jonathan Liew called a Gail’s having its windows smashed in) are left outside the Guardian’s office.
How very ‘heavy handed high street aggression’. pic.twitter.com/YpZFz3X4UB— Nicole Lampert (@nicolelampert) March 18, 2026