Tom Slater

Tom Slater

Tom Slater is the editor of Spiked.

The BBC is wrong: university censorship is definitely not a myth

Campus censorship is a myth. That’s the new line being spun by student union officials and university leaders in response to the campaigners, commentators and politicians raising concerns about the increasingly censorious culture on British campuses. The extent of No Platforming, Safe Space censorship and newspaper bans, they say, is being exaggerated by right-wing hacks

Vince Cable’s Brexit gag is a cry of desperation

Vince Cable has succeeded by one measure at this year’s Lib Dem conference: he’s actually managed to make news. With his Boris-esque aside in his speech today, that Tory Brexiteers are guilty of inflicting ‘years of economic pain justified by the erotic spasm of leaving the EU’, he has, however briefly, drawn attention to a

Object lesson | 6 September 2018

‘If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear,’ wrote George Orwell in his preface to Animal Farm. It is a line that has gone down as one of the great capsule defences of dissent, made all the more prescient by the fact that

What’s up with Generation Sensible?

As Love Island enters its final fortnight and the ink dries on the annual moralising thinkpieces, decrying a younger generation happy to flaunt their bronzed bodies and sex lives before the viewing public, a new survey reminds us of the more depressing reality: that young people are less debauched than ever. According to the British

The press regulation lobby represent the few, not the many

Those pushing for press regulation claim to have the people on their side, and since the phone-hacking scandal, Hacked Off has posed as warriors for the victims of press intrusion, standing up to the big media barons. Today, MPs vote on amendments to the Data Protection Bill that would effectively force publications into state-backed regulation

Giving Malia Bouattia the boot won’t be enough to save the NUS

Farewell then, Malia Bouattia. The only president of the National Union of Students to earn herself a condemnation from the Home Affairs Committee, Bouattia has been defeated in her bid to win re-election at the NUS conference in Brighton. Her time in charge of the NUS was ended by Shakira Martin, the Union’s vice-president for further education,

Censorious universities are a bigger problem than Stepford students

Have you heard the one about the students who said clapping could cause anxiety? Or the students who banned sombreros? Of course you have. You can’t move these days for tales of Britain’s blue-haired belligerents and their campus war on free speech, ‘fascist’ tabloids and fancy dress. Student leaders have become a national embarrassment – and with

Donald Trump’s media fanboys are as bad as his haters

Vicious, arrogant, obnoxious and possibly evil. These were the words Donald Trump used to describe Piers Morgan, when he won the first series of Celebrity Apprentice. That’s right: even the man they say is Hitler’s second coming is wary of Britain’s most insipid TV export. The combination made last night’s exclusive ITV interview, between Morgan

The backlash against the NUS has begun

In a move that has left student union politicos across the country clinging to their therapy dogs, the University of Lincoln Students’ Union has voted to disaffiliate from the NUS. Springing from the new, anti-NUS sentiment that is brewing on campuses across the country, Lincoln students voted 881 to 804 to leave. This was a

If comedians can’t take a politically incorrect joke, who can?

Jerry Seinfeld’s takedown of the political correctness of today’s youth should give us all pause for thought. In an interview on US radio, the sitcom and stand-up star said that college campuses have become a no-go area for comedians. ‘I don’t play colleges, but I hear a lot of people tell me, “Don’t go near

The Greens’ regressive message has lost them student votes

‘If you’re not a socialist before you’re twenty-five, you have no heart; if you are a socialist after twenty-five, you have no head,’ goes the old, oft-misattributed saying. But if you’re a Green party supporter on a university campus today, you’re more likely to have no friends. It was reported last week that the Green