Brendan O’Neill

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.

This is a shameful week for Scottish nationalism. Let us state plainly what has happened: the government in Westminster has had to intervene in Scotland to save women’s rights. Central government has had to use its legal powers to defend women’s safety and liberty from Scotland’s devolved nationalist government that seems to have diminishing regard for such things. Nicola Sturgeon’s reputation deserves never to recover from this. This is the news that the government intends to block Scotland’s Gender Recognition Bill. This is the bill that would make it easier for people in Scotland to legally change their gender. It would also lower the age at which they can do so, from 18 to 16.

I’m just going to say it: I’m Team William. In that scrap that Prince Harry says happened at Nottingham Cottage, where Prince William allegedly lost his rag and pushed Harry to the floor, I’m cheering Will. Everyone who has a brother — I have five — knows they sometimes need a clip round the lughole. And I trust Will made the right decision when he physically reprimanded his little bro. There are many reasons I’m in the Cambridge camp. The Sussexes are just saps, aren’t they? I’m far more shocked that Harry called his therapist after William allegedly attacked him than I am by the incident itself. After having an altercation with his brother? Harry really went from killing radical Islamists in Afghanistan to phoning his life coach because his brother broke his necklace?

Donald Trump is done for. Trumpism too. That’s the main takeaway of the Midterms. Many of the candidates Trump backed performed badly and Trump’s own incessant meddling in the Republican campaign seems to have turned voters off. That curious, manic, sometimes amusing little epoch in modern Western politics – the Trump era – is over. But anyone who thinks this means populism is over is kidding themselves. Those folk of a more technocratic bent who are currently clinking their glasses of champagne at the prospect that populism is heading for the graveyard of bad ideas are in for a rude awakening. For there’s another takeaway from these Midterms – Trumpism might be dead, but populism lives. Trump’s humiliation is undeniable.

This week, on BBC radio, I made a confession: I am a denier. Not a climate-change denier – an apocalypse denier. I thought it was a clever point – to distinguish between my acceptance that climate change is happening and my scepticism that it will imminently bring about the fiery destruction of Earth. Apparently not. You should have heard the intakes of breath. Apparently even apocalypse denialism is unacceptable in polite society now. It was on Nicky Campbell’s show on 5 Live. I was up against a spokesperson for Just Stop Oil and the question was whether that movement’s art-splattering and road-blocking antics are justifiable. I made my point – that Just Stop Oil strikes me as an out-of-touch movement that is mad to agitate for less energy production during an energy crisis.