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.
There was an extraordinary moment in the government’s Covid-19 news briefing yesterday. Boris Johnson was asked: ‘Prime Minister, people aren’t acting responsibly, so when are you going to bring in the police?’ Boris was aghast. ‘Bring in the police?!’, he said, looking, as one would hope he would, horrified by the prospect of the UK
For surreal moments, this will take some beating: I’m in a pub watching the prime minister announce the closure of pubs. It was my first instinct when I saw an online news report saying all pubs would be forced to close as of this evening: to leave my office and get into a pub. I
We’re all worried about older people right now. But I’m worried about the young too. I fear they lack the social nous and moral muscle to deal with a crisis as profound as the Covid-19 pandemic. I fear that the cult of fragility is so widespread among the youth that some will struggle to rise
Many of us suspected the Labour party was on a suicide mission. Now we know for sure. The party’s suspension of Trevor Phillips over allegations of Islamophobia feels like a turning point. It is surely one of the final nails in the coffin of irrelevance that has been enveloping this party for a few years now.
Isn’t it amazing how all the woke rules for how to talk about women and people of colour go flying out the window when it comes to Priti Patel? You can say anything you like about Patel and the PC set won’t bat an eyelid. In fact they will cheer you on. Patel is possibly
Imagine if a politician went on TV and said ‘The Earth is flat’. Or ‘Man didn’t really land on the Moon, you know’. We would worry about that politician’s fitness for public life. Well, Dawn Butler has just done the trans equivalent of that. She appeared on Good Morning Britain yesterday and said babies are
There has been a revolt in Ireland. Not a huge one. It isn’t a Brexit-sized rebellion. It isn’t an all-out populist protest against the establishment of the kind we have seen in the US and various European countries in recent years. But still, the result of Saturday’s general election is a brilliant blow against the
Friday was Brexit day. The day that the largest act of democracy in the history of this country was finally enacted. The day when the wishes of 17.4m people finally became a reality. And how did the BBC, the national broadcaster, mark this extraordinary democratic day? With a sneer, of course. A smug, aloof, bitter
Don’t gloat. Don’t be too triumphalist. Don’t wave your flags too boisterously. Don’t say or do anything that might offend sad, pained Remainers, who will be huddled in their homes, looking with bemusement and concern upon the terrible new world that will be born at 11pm tonight. All of these warnings are being issued to
Remoaners are having the mother of all meltdowns. What’s rankled them this time? The Brexit 50p, of course. Yes, they’re now raging against a coin. I’m genuinely starting to worry about these people. To clarify, I’m not talking about Remain voters. There were 16.1m of those and the vast majority of them are perfectly normal
Eurocrats still don’t get it. They still don’t get Brexit. They still don’t understand that us Brits didn’t vote for some kind of trial separation from the EU. No, we voted for a full and everlasting divorce. There’s no going back. We’re out (or will be soon) and we’re staying out. The latest EU bigwig
It is actually fitting that Harry and Meghan’s decision to leave the UK is being referred to as Megxit. Because this royal temper tantrum, this flouncing out of the UK by the most painfully PC couple in monarchical history, has much in common with Brexit. Like Brexit, it has exposed the vast moral divide that
Finally, Hollywood has received the thrashing it so richly deserves. The self-satisfied movie elites have been called out — to use their own PC parlance — over their hypocritical moral preening and hollow woke posturing. Courtesy of our very own Ricky Gervais, Hollywood’s right-on bubble has been burst, and what a brilliant sight it was.
The Labour party has lost the plot. That is the only explanation for the bizarre, self-destructive antics it has been engaged in since its drubbing in the December election. It has learnt nothing. It is blissfully and stupidly carrying on down the path of Remainerism and/ or Corbynism that lost it the election. Instead of
We’re closing 2019 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 2: Brendan O’Neill on the January episode of Question Time when the audience cheered for no deal: How brilliant was that cheer on Question Time last night? Isabel Oakeshott said Theresa May should just walk away from the EU. Fiona Bruce asked
Stormzy has a song called Shut Up. ‘Oi rudeboy, shut up’, he raps. I wish he’d take his own advice. His predictable political musings are getting boring. His Corbyn cheering went down like a cup of cold sick with the populace. And his chattering-class views are just embarrassing for someone who claims to be grime.
The ‘red wall’ has fallen. Brick by brick. Almost every bit of it. Seats held by Labour for decades have been seized by the Tories. To me, this is the most exciting thing in this extraordinary election. It feels almost revolutionary. Working people have smashed years and years of tradition and laid to waste the
When’s the Question Time for over-60s, then? Or maybe even over-75s? After all, elderly people face specific social problems: pension issues, care, loneliness. And yet they aren’t getting their very own QT, unlike under-30s, who are. Tonight the BBC is hosting a special youth version of its flagship political show and in the process it
Boris Johnson likes to call black people ‘piccaninnies’. Everyone’s saying it. Even Stormzy said it this week in his endorsement of Jeremy Corbyn. It is ‘criminally dangerous’ to give the keys of Downing Street back to a man who refers to ‘black people as “piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles”’, the grime superstar said. Whether Stormzy also
Prince Andrew is a creep. But he’s not the only one. There is also something creepy about the public shaming of Andrew. There’s something disturbing in the obsessive, salacious chatter about his allegedly depraved private life and the presumption that he is guilty of terrible crimes. The Andrew storm increasingly looks like a clash of
