Brendan O’Neill is Spiked's chief politics writer. His new book, After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation, is out now.
I see there’s much chortling over the fact that Rishi Sunak once said he had no working-class friends. It was in 2001, for a BBC series called Middle Classes: Their Rise and Sprawl. In a resurfaced clip, Sunak, who would have been 21 at the time, says: ‘I have friends who are aristocrats, I have
I know it’s the season of ‘dunking on Boris’, which is fine. He deserves a bit of dunking for the errors of judgement he made over Partygate and Pinchergate. But if only for the purposes of brief respite from all this Boris-bashing, I think we need to reflect on the one good thing he did. The
There’s a new heretic in town. It’s the great Macy Gray. Ms Gray has uttered that most blasphemous of beliefs – that a man can never become a woman, even if he has his bits lopped off. Cue the pointing of fingers and howls of ‘BIGOT!’. If this were the 15th century this is the
Here’s something I’ve learned over the past few days. The right loves the working classes when they’re voting for Brexit, but it hates them when they go out on strike. When they strike, they’re wreckers, a pox on the nation. They’ve clearly been led astray by their smooth-talking union bosses. So what if there was
Arron Banks, the pugnacious Brexiteer, has lost his claim for defamation against Carole Cadwalladr, the darling of the Brexit-loathing bourgeoisie. Banks brought the action in relation to two public utterances made by Ms Cadwalladr. First, her TED talk of 2019, in which she said: ‘And I’m not even going to go into the lies that Arron
Bradford was chosen last week as the UK’s City of Culture for 2025. This week, Bradford Cineworld – as well as a number of other cinemas around the country – announced that a new movie called The Lady of Heaven was being pulled from schedules following protests by angry Muslims. So is this what we can expect from a
I have long thought that if Life of Brian came out today, it wouldn’t be Christians kicking up a fuss about it — it would be trans activists. When Monty Python’s classic tale of a man mistaken for a Messiah came to cinemas in 1979, people of faith weren’t happy. They saw it as taking
There’s a meme that goes: ‘I, for one, welcome our new overlords.’ It’s a paraphrase of a comment made by Kent Brockman, the newsreader on The Simpsons, and it’s intended to signify submission to some crazy powerful force. I couldn’t help but think of that line when I saw the photo of Sinn Fein president
Is waving the Pride flag compulsory now? The Idrissa Gueye scandal suggests it might be. Footballer Gueye did not play for his team, Paris Saint-Germain, on Saturday because he declined to wear a new top on which the players’ numbers are emblazoned with the Pride colours. How dare he. Reject Pride, get shamed. Gueye is
Do you really care that Keir Starmer had a curry and a beer while working late in April last year? Be honest. Does the image of Sir Keir tucking into a masala with colleagues keep you up at night? Do you find yourself distracted from the cost-of-living crisis by visions of Starmer having a San
The attack on Dave Chappelle last night was chilling. Sure, Chappelle wasn’t hurt. His attacker, having encountered the ire of Chappelle’s quick-witted security team, seems to have come off a lot worse. But the fact that controversial comics are now being physically accosted is deeply concerning. It suggests that the new intolerance, the widespread distaste for
The meltdown over Elon Musk’s acquirement of Twitter is my favourite world event of 2022 so far. It is delicious. I could sustain myself for years on the sight of commentators and activists wringing their hands to the bone over the possibility that – wait for it – there might be a smidgen more freedom
So in Britain in 2022, you can get a jail sentence for making an offensive joke. Yesterday a man was handed a 10-week prison sentence – suspended – for engaging in an act of crude humour. This should give rise to some serious national self-reflection. A free, civilised country does not hand out jail time
I feel torn on partygate. Like most other people, I have flashes of rage over the vision of government ministers living it up with booze and birthday cakes while the rest of us risked arrest if we so much as popped round to our mum’s for a cup of tea. But there is something in
So on Twitter you can lie about war crimes but you cannot tell the truth about biology? That is the only conclusion one can draw from Twitter’s decision to leave up a vile, false tweet posted by Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The tweet says the massacres in Bucha are made up. They didn’t happen.
There was an explosion of masculinity on the stage at the Oscars last night. Male behaviour was on display for all to see. No, not from Will Smith, who behaved like a big, dumb baby, but from Chris Rock. It was Rock’s calmness and stoicism, his mastery of his emotions, that was truly manly. If
Boris was right to compare the vote for Brexit with the struggle for freedom in Ukraine. And here’s the thing: deep down, his fulminating critics know it. It’s why they’re so angry, why they’ve been lashing out so furiously against the PM. Because Boris has drawn attention to something that they would prefer to leave
So now you have to undergo a political purity test to play at Wimbledon? Judging from the pressure being put on Daniil Medvedev, that seems to be the case. Medvedev might have to publicly denounce Vladimir Putin in order to enjoy the privilege of competing at Wimbledon this year. As a headline in the Times
So, Facebook and Instagram users are now allowed to call for people to be killed. But only if the people they’re wishing death upon are Russian. If it’s Ruskies you hate so much that you feel the urge to go on social media and plead with someone to kill them, then Facebook and Instagram’s normally
McCarthyism is an overused word, I know. But really, what other word will do to describe the sacking of a conductor for refusing to publicly denounce the leader of Russia? This is the case of Valery Gergiev, who was sacked by the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra this week for failing to condemn Putin. Mr Gergiev was
