Brendan O’Neill

I know we’re all meant to be quaking over the election result in Italy. That we’re all supposed to be gnashing our teeth over the ‘first far-right politician since Mussolini’ to lead the Italian people. That is how much of the media is referring to Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Brothers of Italy party and now on course to become Italy’s first female Prime Minister following the victory of the right-wing bloc in Sunday’s elections. And yet I find myself far more concerned – troubled, in fact – by the behaviour of Brussels than by anything that has happened in Italy. Consider the comments made by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

The left needs to shake off its ‘bourgeois environmentalism’. It needs to distance itself from the ‘bourgeois environmental lobby’ and make the case for fracking and the building of new nuclear power stations. Who do you think said this? Some contrarian commentator? A right-winger irritated by eco-loons? Nope, it was Gary Smith, the general secretary of the GMB trade union. In an explosive intervention in left-wing discourse, Smith has accused Labour of a ‘lack of honesty’ and of ‘not facing reality’ on the energy question. We are living through a severe energy crisis and yet still Labour is sniffy about fracking and down on nuclear power, he says.

The images coming out of Iran are remarkable. Women are ripping off their hijabs and burning them in public. They’re dancing in the streets and shaking their freed hair as onlookers whoop and cheer. These are stunning acts of defiance in a theocratic state in which women are expected to mildly, meekly accept their status as covered-up second-class citizens. Of course these heart-stirring protests are a response to something unimaginably awful: the death of Mahsa Amini. Mahsa, a beautiful 22-year-old Kurdish woman from the city of Saqqez in Iranian Kurdistan, was arrested by the morality police in Tehran last week for failing to wear her hijab in the ‘appropriate’ way. She slipped into a coma while in police custody and died three days later.

No one should ever be arrested for what they think or say. It is remarkable – and depressing – that this still needs to be said in the 21st century. But it seems it does. Over the weekend we witnessed an alarming, almost medieval act of censorship. A woman was dragged away by cops for holding up a sign that said ‘Abolish the monarchy’. It was an intolerable assault on freedom of speech. The woman in question was standing outside St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, which was awaiting the arrival of the Queen’s coffin. Mournful crowds had gathered. But this woman wasn’t in the mood for mourning. She was in the mood for politics. Her sign, in full, said: ‘Fuck imperialism. Abolish the monarchy.’ Remind me what century this is?

I am a republican, always have been, and yet I now feel a great sense of loss. And not only because a 96-year-old mother, grandmother and great-grandmother has died, which is always an occasion for sadness, whether the deceased was a monarch or an ‘ordinary’ member of the public. No, also because Elizabeth II represented something incredibly important. She embodied values that are at risk of extinction. She represented history in an era of anti-historical hysteria, forbearance in a time of narcissism, and public service in an era of self-worship and self-regard. That was the great irony of Elizabeth II: she was the pinnacle of the establishment and yet she bristled, with every fibre of her being, against the values of the new establishment.

Can we all take a moment to marvel at the courage of Joe Lycett? Imagine the cojones it must take to go on the BBC and make fun of the Tories. How truly stunning and brave. Roll over Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks – there’s a new comedy insurgent in town. I’m being sarcastic, clearly. And sarcasm, as we know, is the lowest form of wit. Apart, perhaps, from going on the BBC to make fun of the Tories. I honestly cannot think of anything more pedestrian and less amusing than that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU8SCvKHidI Witness the way Lycett kept looking over at Emily Thornberry, the doyenne of bourgeois London leftism Lycett is being fawned over for his satirical storming of Laura Kuenssberg’s new Sunday morning political show.

So according to Iran it is Salman Rushdie's own fault that he got stabbed. It had nothing to do with the vile death warrant issued by Iran’s own ayatollah in 1989. It’s unrelated to the fact that the fatwa was reaffirmed in 2005. It’s not because Iran’s Revolutionary Guards once said ‘the day will come when (Muslims) will punish the apostate Rushdie for his scandalous acts and insults against the Koran’. No, it’s all Salman’s fault for – you guessed it – ‘insulting the sacred matters of Islam’. He brought that terrible knife attack upon himself. It is hard to think of a more despicable response to the alleged attempted murder of Rushdie than this.

If you find yourself wondering over the next few days why it is so swelteringly hot, I have an answer for you. It’s because of rich people. It’s because of those wealthy elites with all their gas-guzzling vehicles and reckless holidaymaking. It’s their fault you’re sweating on the Tube. This infantile claim really is being made, and by supposedly serious politicians. Labour’s Richard Burgon, over on his Instagram account, is wringing his no doubt sweaty hands over the filthy rich folk who apparently landed us in this weather apocalypse. ‘As we face 40C temperatures and the first ever Red Extreme Heat Warning, remember this climate crisis is driven by the wealthy’, he cries.

I see there’s much chortling over the fact that Rishi Sunak once said he had no working-class friends. It was in 2001, for a BBC series called Middle Classes: Their Rise and Sprawl. In a resurfaced clip, Sunak, who would have been 21 at the time, says: ‘I have friends who are aristocrats, I have friends who are upper class, I have friends who are working class… well, not working class.’ It’s the way he swiftly corrects himself when he says he has working-class mates that has got people going. It’s the speediest of self-corrections. It’s like he suddenly thinks to himself: ‘Oh God, no — I don’t associate with those people.’ ‘Gotcha!’, the social-media set is saying. The clip has gone insanely viral.

I know it’s the season of ‘dunking on Boris’, which is fine. He deserves a bit of dunking for the errors of judgement he made over Partygate and Pinchergate. But if only for the purposes of brief respite from all this Boris-bashing, I think we need to reflect on the one good thing he did. The thing that will fortify his place in the history books. The thing that elevates him above the rest of the political class. It’s quite simple, really: he stood up for working-class voters when hardly anyone else in the establishment would. This week has been a strange experience for me. From many of my middle-class colleagues in the media, I have seen only Borisphobia. Their Schadenfreude is off the scale.

Here’s something I’ve learned over the past few days. The right loves the working classes when they’re voting for Brexit, but it hates them when they go out on strike. When they strike, they’re wreckers, a pox on the nation. They’ve clearly been led astray by their smooth-talking union bosses. So what if there was a democratic secret ballot in favour of the strike action they’re taking – these low-information workers clearly did not understand what they were voting for. The left, meanwhile, loves the working classes when they’re out on strike, but of course it hates them when they’re voting for something like Brexit. When they strike, they’re heroic, they’re sticking it to the man.

Arron Banks, the pugnacious Brexiteer, has lost his claim for defamation against Carole Cadwalladr, the darling of the Brexit-loathing bourgeoisie. Banks brought the action in relation to two public utterances made by Ms Cadwalladr. First, her TED talk of 2019, in which she said:  ‘And I’m not even going to go into the lies that Arron Banks has told about his covert relationship with the Russian government.’  And second, a tweet she posted, also in 2019, in which she linked to her TED talk and said:  ‘If you haven’t watched it please do. I say he lied about his contact with the Russian govt. Because he did.

Bradford was chosen last week as the UK’s City of Culture for 2025. This week, Bradford Cineworld – as well as a number of other cinemas around the country – announced that a new movie called The Lady of Heaven was being pulled from schedules following protests by angry Muslims. So is this what we can expect from a City of Culture in 21st-century Britain – the creation of all kinds of culture, except for anything that might offend some adherents to the Islamic faith? The fuss and fury over The Lady of Heaven has been incredibly revealing. This is a British-produced epic historical drama about Fatimah, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad. It was written by the Shia cleric Yasser Al-Habib. The film has been slammed by some Muslim observers.

There’s a meme that goes: ‘I, for one, welcome our new overlords.’ It’s a paraphrase of a comment made by Kent Brockman, the newsreader on The Simpsons, and it’s intended to signify submission to some crazy powerful force. I couldn’t help but think of that line when I saw the photo of Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald giddily welcoming representatives of the American Empire to Dublin this week. There she was, the leader of a party that was once devoted to liberating Ireland from external meddling, smiling widely as she greeted representatives of the most powerful military nation on Earth. Sinn Fein translates as ‘We Ourselves’. It was set up to get Britain out of Ireland. Now it’s welcoming America in.