Brendan O’Neill

Who’s really harassing Carrie Symonds? We have no proof that her boyfriend Boris Johnson is. One surreptitiously recorded late-night row does not add up to evidence of an abusive relationship. But we have plenty of proof that leftists are. That’s the great irony of the Boris-tape controversy: Boris-bashers claim merely to be concerned for Ms Symonds’ welfare but in truth many of them seem hell-bent on making her life a misery. Ask yourself what kind of person puts up posters outside a young woman’s flat mocking her lover. That’s what some of Ms Symonds’ neighbours have done. They attached posters to metal railings showing Boris looking ridiculous, alongside the words: ‘We’d rather endure him as our neighbour than our Prime Minister.

In last night’s scuffle between Conservative MP Mark Field and a Greenpeace protester, which of them was really behaving in an entitled manner? The story is that it was Field, there in his black tie, drinking and chortling with bankers at a fancy dinner as the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave a speech on the state of British politics. The way Field grabbed the protester by the neck before marching her out of the opulent room is being held up as symbolic of Tory arrogance and privilege. Labour MPs are calling for him to resign. Some even want the police involved, to teach these cocksure men of the entitled Tory party a lesson. But in truth, it wasn’t Field who displayed colossal levels of entitlement last night — it was the protesters.

What a bunch of big babies the right can sometimes be. These people spend oodles of time mocking lefty snowflakes and touchy students for taking offence at every off-colour joke or un-PC point of view. And yet it turns out they’re just as susceptible as any moaning millennial to having a fit of the Victorian vapours when someone says something they find offensive. Exhibit A: the unhinged fury over Jo Brand’s joke about battery acid. Seriously, over the past 24 hours right-wingers have given the PC left a run for its money on the boo-hoo offence-taking front. You thought it was only purple-haired SJWs who try to get comedians sacked and even arrested for cracking dodgy jokes? Think again.

I love everything about the European Parliament election results. As a Brexiteer, of course I love that the Brexit Party came out of nowhere to obliterate the Tories and Labour and induce yet another outbreak of Brexit Derangement Syndrome among the chattering classes. But I also love the fact that Remain parties did well, too. I’m happy that the Lib Dems, with their sneering, juvenile, anti-democratic slogan of ‘Bollocks to Brexit’, came in second place. And I’m pleased that the Greens, for whom Brexit is a calamity on a par with the climate catastrophe they breathlessly drone on about, also had a good showing. Why? Because the victory of a proper Brexit party on one side and of the Bollocks to Brexit lobby on the other is a wonderfully clarifying moment.

I have a question. How come when someone like Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez funds themselves through small donations it’s a sign of how engaged and democratic they are, but when the Brexit Party does the same thing it’s proof of how sinister and shady that party is? I think we all know the answer to this question. It’s because the liberal elite is staggeringly hypocritical and now applies a double standard to everyone in politics. If you’re on their side, you’re pure and clean; if you’re on the opposite side, you’re dirty and ‘dark’.

The Bermondsey by-election of 1983 is widely regarded as one of the nastiest, most scurrilous election campaigns in British history. Peter Tatchell, queer-rights activist and bona fide national treasure, stood for the Labour Party against Simon Hughes, who stood for the Liberals. Tatchell was the target of a ceaseless campaign of smears, innuendo, hatred and homophobia. It came from all sides: the tabloids, the hard right, Liberals themselves. Of all the tactics used against Tatchell, perhaps the lowest, the most awful, was the attempt to depict him as a paedophile, or at least a friend of paedophiles. Incredibly, the tabloid press sent young boys to Tatchell’s apartment, presumably in the hope that he would invite them in.

Guy Verhofstadt, the Brexit coordinator for the European Parliament, has got some front. This morning he slammed the decision to cancel the results of the municipal and mayoral elections that took place in Istanbul in March and to force the people of Istanbul to vote again. And yet Verhofstadt’s chums in the Remainer camp want to do exactly the same thing in the UK. Indeed this week Verhofstadt will visit London to campaign for the Lib Dems, whose slogan is ‘Stop Brexit’ and whose aim is to bring about a second referendum. Verhofstadt’s hypocrisy is staggering — he brands Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan a dictator for the overthrow of a democratic vote and yet he cosies up to British politicians who are hell-bent on overthrowing a democratic vote.

So it’s acceptable now to assault electoral candidates? That’s the pretty scary take-home message from the Tommy Robinson ‘milkshaking’ incidents. Journalists and even politicians have been going wild for the bloke in Warrington who threw his milkshake in Robinson’s face yesterday as he was out campaigning as an independent for the upcoming Euro elections. It’s the second time this week Robinson was milkshaked. It will no doubt become a trend. ‘Milkshake a fascist.’ Videos of the incidents have gone viral and even Tory MPs have cheered the strawberry-flavoured assaulters. Johnny Mercer said the attacks made him ‘#lovebritain’.

Emily Thornberry reached a new low today. At Prime Minister’s Questions, she turned the Commons’ heartfelt offering of condolences to the family and friends of Lyra McKee into a tirade against a Hard Brexit. In reply to David Lidington — who was standing in for Theresa May, who is attending McKee’s funeral — Thornberry said the murder of McKee by the New IRA is a ‘sickening’ reminder of the violence of the past and evidence why a solution to the Irish border question is necessary. She appeared to land on the argument that in order to avoid a hard border in Ireland – and to avoid the kind of terrorist violence we witnessed on the night McKee was murdered – we ultimately need to keep the UK in a Customs Union.

Every now and then there is a political moment, some event or comment, that reveals just how much society has changed. This week contained one of those moments. On Tuesday it was reported that nine pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong had been found guilty of causing a public nuisance by taking to the streets five years ago to demand a greater democratic say in how their society is governed. And on the same day, the exact same day, the Guardian published an article with the headline ‘Democracy is overrated’. Most voters have ‘no idea’ about what’s going on in the world, the piece argued, and therefore it would be better if they just didn’t bother voting.

Remember when people would say things like, ‘Jeremy Corbyn might talk a lot of nonsense but at least he has principles’? We now know what rot that was. Corbyn is, in my view, the most unprincipled politician in the UK right now, and by some margin. Exhibit A: this man who was a devoted Eurosceptic his entire life has now effectively been employed by the establishment to keep us tied to the EU. This man who raged against the Brussels machine for years is now tasked with softening Brexit to such a degree that Britain will remain tied to the Brussels machine. For a taste of power, for a taste of influence, Corbyn has sold out everything he once believed in. It is a depressing and depraved spectacle.

Suella Braverman, the Conservative MP for Fareham, said yesterday that the radical left is increasingly hostile to open debate and is now obsessed with ‘snuffing out’ freedom of speech. And how did the radical left respond to her comments? By trying to snuff out her freedom of speech. It was almost too perfect: a politician says lefties are easily offended and determined to shut down opinions they don’t like, and lefties respond by stamping their feet and saying, ‘I’m offended! Shut her down!’ Self-awareness isn’t the new left’s strong suit.

I’ve had a lot of flak for describing Saturday’s march for a ‘People’s Vote’ as ‘disturbing’. Angry emailers inform me it was actually a super-polite demo at which children and even pets joined hundreds of thousands of adults in a good-natured traipse through central London calling for Brexit to be rethought. It’s true the marchers were polite. And it’s true there were pets. I saw a dog with a ‘Bollocks to Brexit’ sticker attached to its head. But the politeness bordering on tweeness of Saturday’s mass march cannot disguise its true and, yes, disturbing aim — to overthrow a great act of democracy.