Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The Guardian’s shameful Roisin Murphy review

Roisin Murphy performs at Glastonbury (photo: Getty)

Of all the smug, bitter things the Guardian has published over the years, its review of Róisín Murphy’s new album has got to be one of the worst. Ms Murphy is a musical genius but a wicked woman, the review essentially says. Why? Because she committed the blasphemy of criticising puberty blockers. Switch off her music, ready the stake!

Murphy’s album Hit Parade is released today. It is being adorned with praise. Some are calling it the album of the year. Even the Guardian’s reviewer, through teeth so gritted I’m sure they got chipped, calls it ‘masterful’ and gives it five stars.

That such a perfectly normal and good moral instinct has been rebranded as ‘bigotry’ is all the proof we need that society’s self-styled moral guardians have lost the plot

But it’s a ‘compromised’ record, says the Guardian. It comes with an ‘ugly stain’. You see, it’s a record made by a woman who had the temerity, the sheer audacity, to express a prohibited point of view.

Brendan O’Neill
Written by
Brendan O’Neill

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.

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