Brendan O’Neill

What century is this? I ask because today, in London, peaceful protesters have been handcuffed and arrested for daring to express disapproval of King Charles. For daring to believe Britain should be a republic, not a constitutional monarchy. This is a grotesque assault on freedom. It is borderline medieval. No one’s feelings, not even the King’s, should ever trump the people’s right to freely express their beliefs in public. ‘Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties’ The footage coming out of Trafalgar Square shames Britain. We’ve seen protesters in ‘Not My King’ t-shirts being arrested. Cops apparently seized hundreds of placards.

The right needs to calm down about Sinn Fein. It needs to chill out about the fact that the party’s vice-president, Michelle O’Neill, will be attending the coronation of King Charles. It needs to relax about that selfie featuring Sinn Fein’s former president, Gerry Adams, gurning next to Joe Biden during his jaunt in Ireland. It needs to stop fretting over the spike in support for Sinn Fein in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in recent years. For all of this stuff is not proof that Sinn Fein’s old radical goal of creating a 32-county republic is gaining ground. On the contrary, it points to the neutering of Sinn Fein, to its hollowing out and humiliation; to the transformation of this once guerilla-style party into Ireland’s version of the Lib Dems.

The radical left have a new favourite phrase: ‘hierarchy of racism’. This is when one form of racism is treated more seriously than another. Such racial favouritism infuriates online leftists. It is anathema to the noble cause of anti-racism to elevate one ethnic group’s suffering over another’s, they cry. All racism is bad, they’re forever reminding us. But here’s the thing: they only ever use that phrase ‘hierarchy of racism’ when it’s anti-Semitism that is being talked about. I guarantee that every time you hear a Corbynista or some other virtual radical bemoan the treatment of certain kinds of racism as more concerning than others, it’s because anti-Jewish hatred is in the news. It’s like a tic they have.

Who is the real victim in the Dominic Raab bullying saga? I know the story is that he was a monster in his various departments, allegedly barking instructions and wagging a finger at his stressed-out minions. But the anti-Raab revolt smacks far more of bullying to me. Civil servants clubbing together to drum an exacting minister out of his job? It definitely has a whiff of Mean Girls to it. Raab has resigned as deputy prime minister following the findings of an investigation into his alleged bullying. In his resignation letter he says the investigation dismissed all but two of the accusations against him. The findings are ‘flawed’, he says. They potentially set a ‘dangerous precedent’.

I see it is acceptable again for men to tell women what to do. And to snap ‘Get over it!’ if any of the little dears dares to quibble or speak back. How else do we explain William Hague taking to the airwaves to wag a patriarchal finger at the Women’s Institute and instruct it to welcome transgender women into its ranks? Lord Hague was asked about infighting at the WI, between a leadership that wants trans women on board and ‘rebel members’ who think it’s odd and wrong to let biological males join a famously female-only organisation. Hague was unequivocal. The pesky WI insurgents who outrageously believe that people with penises are men, not women, need to get with the programme, he said on Times Radio.

The worst thing about Gary Lineker’s intervention in the small boats discussion is not whether he broke BBC rules on impartiality. It’s not that he has, once again, used his privileged platform – one largely funded by us! – to spout dinner-party platitudes about the evil Tories. No, it was his political use and abuse of the crimes of history, his marshalling of the evils of Nazi Germany to score some political points against the Conservative government. It amazes me that people like Lineker cannot seem to see how immoral and even dangerous such tactics can be. The Match of the Day host turned tiresome virtue-signaller kicked off about Suella Braverman on Twitter yesterday.

Let me get this right. In Scotland’s political class it is de rigueur to believe that someone with a penis can literally be a woman but it is the height of bigotry to think marriage should be for heterosexuals only? It is good and ‘progressive’ to say that men, even rapists, should be put in women’s prisons if they claim to be women, but it is a cancel-worthy speechcrime to say marriage should be between men and women only? Scotland, you are so lost. We need to talk about the persecution of Kate Forbes. It is revealing so much about our febrile and unforgiving political climate. For me the big takeaway is just how disorientated so-called progressive politics has become.

The middle-class left cracks me up. They’re always wringing their hands over the lack of working-class people in politics. And yet the minute a man from a working-class background – a former miner, no less – starts to soar in the political realm, they launch a hate campaign against him. They brand him thick, an imbecile, a Rottweiler, a piece of gammon. ‘What’s this gruff, ill-educated blowhard doing on our turf?’, they essentially say. It seems they like the idea of working-class people, but not the reality. Of course I’m talking about Lee Anderson, the colourful, outspoken Tory MP for Ashfield. He’s become the bete noire of the university-educated left.

So is Shamima Begum a celebrity now? Tonight, a documentary about her airs on BBC Two. Over the weekend, her picture was splashed on the front page of the Times Magazine. ‘I was in love with the idea of the Islamic State. I was in denial. Now I have a lot of regret’, says the strapline, next to a pic of a madeover Begum sporting a fetching vest, baseball cap and fire-engine red nail polish. How long till she has her own reality TV show? The Only Way Is Raqqa, perhaps. The media’s sympathy for Shamima Begum is starting to creep me out. Lovingly framed, soft-lens photos accompany the interview. She stares doe-eyed into the camera and pleads for our understanding. The reason she fled Bethnal Green for Raqqa was because she was ‘not content’ with her life, she says.

In Sydney today, the LGBT movement had its Westboro Baptist Church moment. It protested at someone’s funeral. Like that cranky religious sect in the US that noisily demonstrates at the funerals of soldiers, LGBT activists waved placards calling the deceased a ‘monster’ and ‘scum’. They chanted for him to ‘go to hell’. ‘Burn in hell’, said one banner. ‘Nonce’, said another. It was a truly disturbing spectacle. A new low in identity politics. It was Cardinal Pell’s funeral. Pell was Australia’s most important Catholic leader. He served as Archbishop of Melbourne and later as Archbishop of Sydney. He then went to Rome where he was Secretariat for the Economy in the Vatican.

Is Nicola Sturgeon a transphobe? I ask because she has decreed that Isla Bryson, a violent man who identifies as a woman, should not be locked up at a women’s prison. And every woman who has said similar in recent years, every feminist who has said that no blokes should be allowed into women’s prisons, women’s domestic-violence shelters and women’s changing areas, has been horribly attacked by the right-on. They’ve been denounced as phobes, bigots, TERFs and worse. So is Sturgeon a bigot, too? Should she be cancelled? This is the disturbing story of the male rapist who says he is a woman. Scot Isla Bryson, whose birth name is Adam Graham, was found guilty of raping two women. Following his conviction he was remanded to Cornton Vale, a women’s prison in Stirling.

Remember when Britain knew how to do a good political scandal? Secretaries of State sharing showgirls with Soviet attachés. A member of parliament faking his own death. The Tories launching a ‘Back to Basics’ moral crusade even though half the party seemed to be getting their leg over someone who wasn’t their wife. Those were the days. You were guaranteed a good kick out of a scandal back then. Fast forward to 2023 and what is scandalising politics now? The fact that the PM didn’t wear a seatbelt in the back seat of his car. The fact that Rishi Sunak was not strapped in while he was filming a little video about levelling up for his Instagram page. ‘Beltgate’, some people are calling it. Shoot me now. This has got to be the lamest, daftest ‘gate’ of modern times.