Patrick West is a columnist for Spiked and author of Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche For Our Times (Societas, 2017)
Can the BBC ever be objective and unbiased? It’s a question many of us ask ourselves, sometimes in hope, often in exasperation. It’s also a question that the Corporation forever asks itself, but instead in the spirit of aspiration and ambition. So it’s ostensibly good news that it has announced plans to expand its Verify
Keir Starmer has finally realised that he needs to tackle rising immigration. The Prime Minister said yesterday that Britain risks becoming an ‘island of strangers’ if nothing is done. Predictably, his speech has gone down badly with the usual suspects. There may be a simple reason why some of Starmer’s critics will never see eye to
When hyper-liberal identity politics went into overdrive in that year of madness, 2020, one of the greatest casualties in this country was to be our police forces. This wasn’t obvious at the time, although officers ‘taking the knee’ at the foot of Black Lives Matters protestors hinted at things to come, as did their growing
We now live in a country where, once more, it appears to be a crime to commit blasphemy. This is the inevitable and justifiable conclusion many have made following the news yesterday that a man who burnt a copy of the Koran was charged with ‘harassment, alarm or distress’ against ‘the religious institution of Islam’.
A great exhortation of our times is the need to ‘be kind’. It manifests itself among those who cry ‘refugees welcome’, who urge for ‘compassion’ for the feelings of those deemed oppressed, and for those who regard Paddington Bear as the embodiment of everything good in the world. More sinisterly, however, this mentality still shows
Many people have been celebrating after the Supreme Court’s declaration that the definition of a woman will indeed be based on biological sex. Some have heralded it as signifying the end of radical trans ideology, or even the end of woke politics altogether. All this remains to be seen. What we certainly won’t see, however,
From today, ‘Stop Brexit Man’ is free. This character, whose real name is Steve Bray, the long-standing bane of broadcasters, politicians and pedestrians on account of his persistent and clamorous pro-EU protests, has been cleared of flouting a police ban after playing anti-Conservative and anti-Brexit songs outside Parliament. Bray was apprehended after blaring loud music
Barely a month seems to pass without a public exhortation to ‘raise awareness’ about the plight of some marginal section of society, or for some worthy cause on behalf of the vulnerable. If you find this trend tiresome, irritating or indeed stressful, then help is at hand: April has seen the arrival of Stress Awareness
In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s Eid. But of course you noticed. You’d have to be living in a cave not to be aware that today marked the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. That’s because nearly all public bodies, along with a plethora of private institutions, have been busy on social media
The heavy-handed conduct of the police these days often provokes accusations of ‘Orwellian’ behaviour – and with good reason. There has been a litany of reports in recent years of people being investigated and cautioned for remarks, often made in private, that have been adjudged ‘offensive’ or ‘hurtful’. In the eyes of many, we now
Complaints that ‘London isn’t what it used to be’ or ‘London is a hell-hole these days’ are hardly original or new, but reports keep giving succour to this perception. The news that the capital has recorded its highest-ever level of mobile theft will only confirm what nostalgics and those who regularly watch TV already know:
It seems to have become an unspoken requirement of recent that anyone in charge of promoting or putting on the plays of Shakespeare must first of all hate him and his works. We have long grown accustomed to the Royal Shakespeare Company prefacing his plays with trigger warnings reminding us of what a terrible man
Henry Kelly was a well-loved personality in Britain. The Irish television and radio presenter, who died this week, came to prominence in this country in the 1980s in the ITV show Game For A Laugh, consolidating his popularity on BBC’s Going For Gold and on the airwaves as a presenter on Classic FM. And intrinsic
It was inevitable that the announced cut to Britain’s international aid budget would cause a stir. The curtailment earlier this month of the USAID programme provoked outrage among progressive voices worldwide, despite the fact that scheme funded some dubious causes. Why, then, would our compassionate classes react any different? Yesterday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer explained
Teaching working-class young men that they benefit from ‘white privilege’ is having a detrimental effect on a generation of boys, leading to feelings of negativity and worthlessness, and driving them into the hands of dangerous influencers such as Andrew Tate. This is the claim made by Sam Fender, the best-selling, 30-year-old musician from North Shields.
Left-wing activists are less likely to understand or listen to people with conservative beliefs, compared to the rest of the population. They are more inclined to view them negatively, and to dismiss them as having ‘been misled’ in forming their opinions. This is the revelation on the front page of the Guardian today. Reporting on a study
We have long become accustomed to actors holding and sharing their progressive political views. So when David Tennant opened the Bafta awards on Sunday with a dig at Donald Trump, repeating the line that the American President is a dangerous moron, many people were annoyed, but few were surprised. Mechanically reciting fashionable mantras is what
It was only a matter of time before the rollback of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies in the workplace provoked a backlash. Following an ongoing reversal on the matter in recent months, seen on a global scale at Google, Facebook and Amazon, and here in Britain at BT and Deloitte UK, the head of
The front page of the Sun today pronounced that a star on the television show The Apprentice has quit for using ‘racist language’, specifically for employing a ‘highly offensive term’ to describe a black person. One can only recoil in imagining what a foul and obscene word the contestant must have used. But you needn’t be unduly
Nearly half of Generation Z believes that Britain is a racist country, and a similar proportion say that they aren’t proud to be British. This is the grim finding of a study published in the Times yesterday, based on a YouGov survey and research by the opinion consultancy Public First of 18- to 27-year-olds. The
