Tom Slater is the editor of Spiked.
28 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Tom Slater says that Britain is having its own gilet jaunes moment; Justin Marozzi reads his historian’s notebook; Iben Thranholm explains how Denmark’s ‘spiritual rearmament’ is a lesson for the West; Angus Colwell praises BBC Alba; and, Philip Womack provides his notes on flatmates. Produced and presented by Patrick
45 min listen
First: an economic reckoning is looming ‘Britain’s numbers… don’t add up’, says economics editor Michael Simmons. We are ‘an ageing population with too few taxpayers’. ‘If the picture looks bad now,’ he warns, ‘the next few years will be disastrous.’ Governments have consistently spent more than they raised; Britain’s debt costs ‘are the worst in
‘I heard you want your country back. Ha, shut the fuck up!’ So yelped rap-punk duo Bob Vylan on stage at Glastonbury in June. That televised set became notorious for other reasons – for Vylan’s chant of ‘Death, death to the IDF’, which cost the group their agent, a string of shows and, presumably, another
‘Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care, while you’re at it take the treacherous government & politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist, so be it.’ Britain’s free-speech wars are
Protest works. That will be the take-home message to activists across the country, now that Epping Forest District Council has been granted a temporary High Court injunction blocking asylum seekers from being housed at the Bell Hotel in the leafy Essex market town. Thousands have demonstrated outside the Bell in recent weeks, sparked by the charging
39 min listen
First: the new era of censorship A year ago, John Power notes, the UK was consumed by race riots precipitated by online rumours about the perpetrator of the Southport atrocity. This summer, there have been protests, but ‘something is different’. With the introduction of the Online Safety Act, ‘the government is exerting far greater control
That sound you hear is the penny finally dropping in Downing Street. Having spent the year since the horrific post-Southport riots blaming unrest over migration and asylum solely on misinformation and far-right groups, Labour appears to be realising the rot runs much deeper. Government officials, reports the Times, have warned the cabinet that Britain is ‘fraying
You can tell the environmentalists are on the back foot. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband is issuing doomsday proclamations in parliament, branding Reform and the Tories ‘unpatriotic’ for refusing to go along with his deranged Net Zero policies. And now Labour donors are also calling for ‘climate denial’ to be criminalised. Because nothing says ‘we’re winning the
Fair play to Draco Malfoy. (Now there are five words I never thought I’d write.) Tom Felton, who played Harry Potter’s platinum-blond nemesis in the films, has done what so many of his young co-stars have failed to do: he has defended the woman to whom he owes his career. Tom Felton, who played Harry
Thom Yorke has done us all a great service by exposing how unhinged, intolerant and, frankly, bigoted much of the supposedly ‘pro-Palestine’ set is. The Radiohead frontman and bandmate Jonny Greenwood have for years now been locked in a bitter beef with Israelophobic fans and fellow musicians, due to their dogged refusal to treat Israelis
Andrew Lawrence has some claim to being Britain’s most-cancelled comedian. For more than a decade now, the 37-year-old stand-up has been losing himself work, friends and representation due to his wilfully offensive style of comedy / commentary. In a 2014 Facebook post, he took aim at BBC panel shows on which ‘aging, balding, fat men,
Calling someone Darth Vader. If that’s as bad as your workplace banter gets, I’d suggest you find a more entertaining place to work. Yet, incredibly, an NHS worker not only took enormous offence to being compared to the bucketheaded villain of the Star Wars franchise, she also took her employers to a tribunal. She’s just
So it’s a not-so-fond farewell to Just Stop Oil, the soup-throwing, hand-gluing environmentalist troupe. According to JSO activist Hannah Hunt, who helped kick off the group’s campaign of infamy back in 2022, she and her comrades are calling it a day. The reason? They’ve just been too successful. ‘Just Stop Oil’s demand to end new oil
Are you angry about bin collections? Potty about potholes? Incandescent about the behaviour of your local council or councillors? Well whatever you do, don’t post disparaging things about them on the internet. Unless you want a visit from the police, that is. Yes, saying critical things about your elected local representatives is the latest thing that
The bonfire of DEI cobblers continues. Disney is reportedly removing its patronising trigger warnings from many of the films on its streaming service, presumably having finally realised that audiences do not like being talked down to, and that Peter Pan, Dumbo and The Aristocats are not actually engines of racist radicalisation, as its more insufferable execs
The police are coming for your WhatsApp groups. And if that doesn’t strike terror into your heart, you’re not using WhatsApp properly. The hapless former health minister and Labour MP for Gorton and Denton, Andrew Gwynne, hasn’t just been sacked by Keir Starmer for his offensive messages about pensioners, Mossad and Diane Abbott. He’s also been reported to
For years now, higher education has been convulsed by a never-ending hunt for racism. A certain type of academic or student activist sees it oozing out of every pore of campus life, from statues to ‘microaggressions’ to student bar fancy-dress nights. And yet, if you were looking for a clear-cut example of a racist university
Just when you thought it was safe to go to a museum, art gallery or World Heritage Site, Just Stop Oil has struck again. Having already defaced Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, Stonehenge and Magna Carta, the eco-activist group has decided to really hit the fossil-fuel industry where it hurts this time… by defacing Charles Darwin’s grave at Westminster Abbey. Take that, BP! Today,
The vibe shift is real. Yes, all the chatter about the re-election of Donald Trump causing a cultural sea change in American life might just have something to it – if Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s shock announcement is anything to go by. In a five-minute video, Zuck – who also appears to have undergone a Gen
Elon Musk is a man of tremendous gifts, to put it mildly. He recently caught a rocket between some chopsticks, for crying out loud. But insight into the mood of British politics is clearly not one of those gifts. Having only just learned about Britain’s shameful, grotesque, never-ending grooming-gangs scandal, declaring that Jess Phillips should
