It is easy to believe, in the 21st century, that all online discourse is simply big Nazis screaming at people who are slightly lesser Nazis while all the liberals hide in a cupboard, chiding each other for using the wrong pronouns for Lassie.
But this belief would be wrong. Because there is an enduring, globally critical debate raging on both sides of the Atlantic about something far more important that Nazis — or Lassie, as hard as that might be to believe. Is Brooklyn Beckham, the firstborn son of Posh and Becks, being held hostage by his American billionaire heiress wife, Nicola Peltz? And will Posh and Becks eventually have to fly to America and free their son in order to reunite him with their other children: Malvolio Beckham, Vegas Beckham and The Girl Beckham?
For those on a tight schedule, I can cut straight to my eventual conclusion: no. Leave now to catch that bus, safe in the knowledge that you are fully informed of the basic situation. Everyone’s fine — primarily because they’re all incredibly rich, and it’s all none of our beeswax anyway.
For those desperate to fanny away ten minutes, however—have I got tea for you. The story so far? In 2019 Brooklyn Beckham (then aged 20; parents’ net worth now: $675 million) met Nicola Peltz (then aged 24; parents’ net worth now: $1.3 billion) at Leonardo DiCaprio’s Halloween party. For the women and gays who are able to decode fashion information, I inform you that Nicola was dressed as a Sexy Cat. She’s that girl. Obviously no one cares what men wear, but Brooklyn was in jeans. Of course.
By January the couple were Insta Official. When the pandemic lockdown kicked in, in March 2020, Brooklyn made a sudden and controversial decision: he left his parents’ Cotswolds mansion and took the last flight to New York to isolate with Peltz’s family rather than his own.
This has set the tone ever since: that Brooklyn has consistently chosen to hang with the Peltzes over the Beckhams, thus not only causing a schism within his own family but, more important, offending national pride. Nicola and Brooklyn’s wedding took place at the Peltzes’ Palm Beach mansion rather than at any of the Beckham properties in our beautiful British countryside. Nicola did not wear a dress designed by her new mother-in-law, which would have been classier than any of your Yankee or French shit.
If Brooklyn had wanted to cut to the quick every devout Anglo-Saxon heart, he could not have done it more effectively than on the day he unveiled a tattoo honoring Nicola’s American grandmother yet honored no British grandparents at all, despite them being, categorically, the best grandparents in the world. Fully seduced by the glamour of transatlantic nannas — with their strong teeth and private health care — Brooklyn now has “Gina” inked on his left arm, although unfortunately placed in such a way as to arouse suspicions that the letters “VA” are hidden just under his sleeve. The signaling is clear: Britain has lost its Showbiz Dynastic Prince to the land of Extra Large Cokes and grandmothers called Vagina.
And so we come to the most recent outrage: David Beckham’s 50th birthday. Golden Balls’ golden birthday. All the Beckham crew turned up for it, of course — except Nicola and Brooklyn. Was it simply that it was too arduous to fly over from America to the UK for a party? No. For, a week later, Brooklyn flew to the UK for a photo shoot with the fashion company Moncler, after pointedly making no mention of his father’s birthday on his social media accounts. Given that in the past month Brooklyn has used Instagram to post a picture of himself eating a sandwich; a picture of himself holding a poodle soundtracked by Simply Red’s “Holding Back the Years”; and a video in which he talks about how much he likes sweet corn — “I like corn!” — the snub is clear. Judging by the Insta account, David Beckham is currently less important to his son than poodles, sandwiches or sweet corn.
Last weekend Brooklyn upped the stakes. Posting a clip with his wife on his motorbike, back in the US, he wrote: “My whole world x I will love you forever x I always choose you baby x you’re the most amazing person i know xx me and you forever baby.” It does not take an expert in Internet Language — ie a 14-year-old girl — to decode this one. “My whole world”? “I always choose you baby”? That is aimed directly at the Beckhams.
And so the Internet theories rage. The primary one is that Brooklyn is “being controlled” by his wife. “He’s Nicola’s puppet,” one “source” told the Mirror. “He’s now being referred to as ‘the hostage’. He’s soppy and romantic, but that video just isn’t him. You have to wonder if Nicola was behind it.”
In discussions about how Peltz has “stolen” Beckham from his family, there’s a continual sense that everyone is waiting for the moment when this whole thing will come to its inevitable head: Posh and Becks flying out to America, and then the women duking it out in a lily pond, Alexis v Krystle-style, for the eventual ownership of Brooklyn. In the event of Posh’s certain victory — you don’t spend five years being a Spice Girl without learning how to slap another woman’s hair extensions off — Ma Beckham will bring her soppy but simple son back home to good old England. And peace will reign, once more, in our kingdom.
I only have one thing to point out here. In all the stories about how Brooklyn is being “controlled” and “puppeted” by Nicola Peltz — well, this is what everyone used to say about Victoria and David, isn’t it? Back in the Nineties, wasn’t the narrative that Posh was the savvy, publicity-hungry trouser-wearer and Becks but an amiable, dim hunk? And so, in 2025, with Brooklyn and Nicola v Posh and Becks, we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
Caitlin Moran is a journalist and the author of More than a Woman, How to Build a Girl, and Moranthology
