Tom Slater is the editor of Spiked.
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
Here’s a tip. If you’re having trouble getting the police to promptly attend after a burglary, tell them the scumbag tweeted something mean about you as he made his escape. If the outrageous experience of Daily Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson is anything to go by, this is sure to shoot you right to the top of plod’s priority list.
Anti-fascism ain’t what it used to be. It used to mean signing up to go to fight Franco’s fascists in Spain, turning out against Oswald Mosley in the East End, or trading punches with National Front thugs. Now it means trying to get right-wing Tory MPs no platformed on elite university campuses – and occasionally
Socialism, wrote George Orwell, has often had a habit of attracting posh cranks. He witheringly described the ‘sandal-wearers and bearded fruit-juice drinkers who come knocking towards the smell of “progress” like bluebottles to a dead cat’. Even though Starmer’s Labour has all but dropped the s-word, fully embracing its role as the party of the
Pray for Windsor. From today, Extinction Rebellion is descending on Windsor Home Park for ‘three days of creative, peaceful action to propose democratic renewal’. It sounds like a mini festival – offering a mix of politics, camping and amateur dramatics. There will be a ‘Massembly’, in which the assembled extreme greens will discuss and vote on how
It’s boom time at Ofcom. In the past few years, what was until recently the government-backed regulator for broadcasting, telecoms and postal industries (already an absurdly broad range of responsibilities) has seen its remit expanded beyond all recognition. Following the passage of the Online Safety Act 2023, Ofcom has been handed the famously straightforward task
It’s hard to keep up with what is racist these days. It used to be straightforward. You know, discriminating against, hating or depriving rights to certain groups for no other reason than the colour of their skin. But that quaint definition just won’t do anymore. Nowadays, the countryside is racist, maths is racist, telling a
It must be exhausting being Elon Musk. Alongside sending rockets into space, working on brain implants and running one of the world’s biggest social-media firms, he seems to have a plethora of beefs to attend to. The arrogance of EU officialdom knows no bounds. So soon after Musk’s war of words with Keir Starmer, over
Just Stop Oil’s campaign to infuriate ordinary people has moved up a gear. After bringing traffic to a standstill and disrupting play at the snooker, now its activists are targeting those havens of peace, harmony and low blood pressure: Britain’s bustling airports during the school summer holidays. A group of JSOers sat themselves down on
‘A politics that treads more lightly on all our lives.’ That’s what Keir Starmer – remarkably, our new Prime Minister – promised a weary nation as he was vying for their vote. Perhaps fittingly, he ended up with a victory that is incredibly light on voters – a huge majority on a lower vote share than any
What a difference a week makes. Last week, White House spinners and Democratic pundits were insisting that clips of US president Joe Biden appearing to freeze up, slur his words and generally show his age at various public events were selectively edited ‘cheap fakes’ – tawdry, low-tech misinformation put about by the scurrilous right-wing media. Now, after Biden froze
Far be it from me to give advice to the Green Party. From their insistence that ordinary people put up with being poorer and colder to ‘save the planet’ to the alarmingly high number of Israelophobic, 7 October-denying cranks on their candidates list, I’m really not a fan. Still, I’d gently suggest that the golden rule for
Wind farms. Heat pumps. Hamas apologism. It’s a curious combination, but one that an alarmingly high number of Green party candidates seem keen to pursue at this General Election. Yes, the political party nominally devoted to a single issue – ‘saving the planet’, at the cost of ordinary people’s living standards – has landed itself
Is it racist to tell a Japanese colleague that you like sushi? No, says an employment-tribunal judge, in another welcome blow for sanity. This is the conclusion to a downright deranged claim of racial discrimination lodged by Nana Sato-Rossberg, a linguistics and culture professor, against her employer, the School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas) at
The eco-activists of Just Stop Oil have often been caricatured as a group of middle-class students with too much time on their hands. Their latest stunt at the British Library today shows how wrong that is. Middle-class pensioners with too much time on their hands are also well represented in this group, it seems. The
Blaming Brexit for everything has become a kind of tic among the great and good. Like the buck-passing politicians who used to blame everything on Brussels, the cultural elites have taken to blaming all manner of ills on the British people’s revolt against the EU back in 2016. Economic stagnation? Brexit! Covid deaths? Brexit! Poor
The case of the ‘paraglider girls’ just keeps getting worse, exposing a criminal-justice system that seems to have become riddled with bias and Israelophobia. A mixture of bias, ignorance and cowardice has been exposed at every level of the criminal-justice system On Tuesday, a judge at Westminster Magistrates Court essentially let three women – Heba
The triumph of green ideology within our institutions, corporations and public life is staggering. Notions that would have once been confined to meetings in the back of a Brighton bookshop are now the common coin of government, big business and, of course, the cultural elites. All of them now seem to agree that cheap and