Brendan O’Neill

Brendan O’Neill

Brendan O’Neill is Spiked's chief politics writer

The plight of Hatun Tash shames Britain

There is a Christian preacher, a woman, who has suffered the most heinous persecutions. She has been chased by mobs, arrested, unlawfully jailed and even stabbed. Where did this hellish hounding of a follower of Christ occur? Afghanistan, perhaps? Somalia maybe? Actually it was right here, in Britain. An angry mob formed around her Her

The EU’s Apple tax ruling is a bleak day for Ireland

For those of us who grew up singing songs about Irish nationhood, today is a depressing day. As youths we crooned about how Ireland, ‘long a province’, will one day be ‘a nation once again’. We stood in stiff attention to the Irish national anthem with its promise that Ireland will never again ‘shelter the

‘Paddy-bashing’ and the blind spot of progressives

There’s a new book out that depicts Irish people as gurning ginger-haired imbeciles who do Irish jigs in the garden and eat bacon and cabbage every day. Who produced this offensive tome? Must have been some Neanderthal bigots, right, who wish it was still the 1970s and still acceptable to Paddy-bash? Actually, it was a

Jess Phillips must explain her two-tier NHS Gaza claim

Forget two-tier policing – we need to talk about two-tier healthcare. Jess Phillips, Labour MP and Home Office minister, has reportedly said she was whizzed through an overcrowded A&E unit on account of her pro-Gaza campaigning. If this is true, it raises some truly troubling questions about the NHS.  ‘The doctor who saw me was

Calm down about the Notting Hill Carnival

There was recently a mass public party at which all sorts of offences were committed. As innocent attendees cut loose and jived, shadier actors took advantage. There was a burglary, a robbery, 19 drug offences, 26 acts of theft and no fewer than 30 acts of violence against individuals. There were also two sexual offences

Is Starmer’s response to the riots enough?

24 min listen

Police are bracing themselves for more violent disorder this weekend. This is in the aftermath of the tragic stabbings in Southport and unrest in London, Hartlepool and Southport. Keir Starmer made a statement yesterday condemning the protests and the involvement of far right actors for stoking up the violence and spreading disinformation online. Is there

Condemning the Southport riot is not enough

Will Southport’s suffering never end? First, the Merseyside town was rocked by the barbarism of a frenzied knife attack that left three girls dead and others critically injured. Then it was beset by unrest. Just hours after yesterday’s vigil for the slain girls, thugs clashed with cops. They set a police van on fire and

When did Trump supporters become fans of cancel culture?

A rock band’s tour cancelled after one of the band members made a tasteless joke. A working-class cashier sacked from her job at the behest of an online mob who were horrified by something she said on Facebook. A schoolteacher suspended after being dogpiled for a daft remark she made online. Has the left-wing digital

This election is a pale imitation of democracy

Does anyone else feel like they’re living through a simulation of democracy? All the apparatus of democracy has been laid out before us today. The polling booths, the ballot papers, the boxes to stuff them in. But the stuff of democracy, the substance of it, feels oddly, sadly absent. We’re being canvassed, but not engaged.

The BBC’s Miriam Cates hit job doesn’t add up

This morning we witnessed BBC cant at its finest. It came in the form of an exposé of the Tory candidate Miriam Cates. This self-styled voice of conservative reason was once a trustee of a church that promoted ‘conversion therapy’ for gay people, the Beeb reports. It spares no detail. Ms Cates’ old church carried

Why do some anti-fascists have a problem with Jews?

Is it still okay to ‘Punch a Nazi’? I’m asking for a friend. In fact, I’m asking for many friends who watched those violent protests outside a synagogue in Los Angeles over the weekend and wondered to themselves if that old left-wing slogan about walloping bigots still holds. If it was acceptable to punch alt-right

Just Stop Oil’s Stonehenge attack is unforgivable

So now we know: nowhere is safe from the entitled fury of the Just Stop Oil mob. Not even Stonehenge. That prehistoric wonder, one of the oldest monuments of humankind, has been showered with orange powder paint by JSO’s loons. They say they want to ‘raise awareness’ of the climate crisis. All they’ve really raised