Patrick West

Patrick West is a columnist for Spiked and author of Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche For Our Times (Societas, 2017)

‘Blasphemous’ drawings and the myth of tolerance

From our UK edition

It’s often assumed and frequently stated that the biggest threat to British society these days comes from cultures which are alien and inimical to ours. Yet our way of life has for decades faced an equally formidable threat – from forces which emanate from within. A well-meaning, self-abasing and cowardly coterie of white liberals have sought

Why do Britain’s councils hate patriotism so much?

From our UK edition

The war waged by those in authority on those who make overt displays of patriotism shows no sign of relenting. This campaign against Englishness and Britishness has never been an open, honest one, undertaken with manifest intent. This is a devious war pursued through crafty bureaucratic means and framed in the timorous language of health

Who cares if Britain’s Eurovision entry has German lyrics?

From our UK edition

What with the prospect of further resets with the European Union, and with British culture seemingly in a constant battle with those who would degrade and debase it, it’s easy to understand why some people are oversensitive to perceived threats to this country’s independence and integrity. Alas, sometimes this touchiness descends into out-and-out paranoia. Eurovision

The real reason Greens are gaining ground

From our UK edition

It was only a matter of time before an ultra-progressive, hard-left party with a fondness for voguish identity politics, enthusiasm for multiculturalism and morbid obsession with Israel came to preeminence in this country. This inevitability is the consequence of a demographic time-bomb just waiting to make its effects known. It’s no surprise that the Greens

Were fans wrong to boo the Ramadan fast-breaking footballers?

From our UK edition

So much of what is commonly understood to mean multiculturalism has in truth been class warfare by other means. A great deal of it has entailed affluent, white middle-class types telling the white working-class that their culture and values are of unexceptional or lesser worth. Much state-sanctioned multiculturalism has been an exercise in scolding the

‘Family voting’ allegations cannot be ignored

From our UK edition

If allegations of ‘family voting’ taking place at Thursday’s Gorton and Denton by-election prove substantiated, the incidents will not only mark a grave infraction of the law, they will give further weight to the fear that this country is becoming perilously fragmented, terminally Balkanised and mired in sectarianism. Polling had scarcely closed when, a few

What Esther Rantzen needs to know about ‘religious people’

From our UK edition

In politics, there has always been an assumption held by atheists, humanists and many liberals in general that those of a modern, secular persuasion act with autonomy and reason because they are unencumbered by religious belief. They believe themselves in possession of an intellect that needs no external crutch or sanction. While this enables them

How Britain learnt to turn a blind eye to shariah

From our UK edition

The more excitable and less well-educated elements of the liberal left are forever apt to observe that politics today resemble those of the 1930s, being prone to denounce a development or policy they disdain as being ‘just like Nazi Germany’. To be fair, they have a point. It’s not just the street brawls we’ve seen

What Louis Theroux’s Netflix show won’t tell you about the ‘Manosphere’

From our UK edition

There once was a time when you couldn’t move for some progressive voice complaining in superior tones about the latest ‘moral panic’ bestriding the country, stoked in their imagination by right-wing neurotics fearful that Britain was going to the dogs. Whether it be concerns related to pornography, video nasties, Mary Whitehouse’s latest campaign to clean

Would you be friends with a Reform voter?

From our UK edition

Most of us have had disagreements with friends over politics at some point in our lives. Or worse. One of the constant threats to friendships is that such differences could one day spill over into acrimony or result in a full-blown falling-out. In my youth, the election night parties held by my parents seldom ended without

Why Gen Z is troubled by Jesus

Many teenagers today find Christianity off-putting because Jesus seems too fond of “mansplaining.” He appears to have a “God complex,” while the Almighty is alienating on account of being “really violent and aggressive.” These are the findings in the report Troubling Jesus, the third part of Youthscape’s “Translating God” project, based on a recent survey of British 14-

christianity gen z jesus

The British countryside isn’t racist

From our UK edition

In the fevered imagination of those obsessed with implementing ever greater ‘diversity’, there is seemingly no object or aspect of life they won’t seek to change at all costs. Thus it’s no surprise to hear that the latest target of opprobrium is the British countryside itself. It epitomises the blundering ignorance of the global, Anywhere

Woke language obviously doesn't change the way we think

It’s been a cherished belief of progressives over the decades that you change the way we think, and in turn transform society, by changing the kind of language we use. This stretches back to a 1980s strand of feminism determined to jettison default masculine terms such as “chairman” and “headmaster” and replace them with gender-neutral

language

Woke language obviously doesn’t change the way we think

From our UK edition

It’s been a cherished belief of progressives over the decades that you change the way we think, and in turn transform society, by changing the kind of language we use. This stretches back to a 1980s strand of feminism determined to jettison default masculine terms such as ‘chairman’ and ‘headmaster’ and replace them with gender-neutral

Stop shoehorning diversity into BBC dramas

From our UK edition

At last, the BBC has been forced to admit what even the dogs on the street know to be true: that the corporation is guilty of ‘shoehorning’ diversity into its television drama output, in series such as Shetland and This Town, and making them feel ‘preachy’ and ‘inauthentic’ as a consequence. Productions which distort history

Labour is the nasty party now

From our UK edition

Labour has long prided itself on being the party of compassion. Indeed, ever since Thatcherism, personified in the minds of many by the fictional television character Alan B’Stard – and ever since Theresa May gave her 2002 speech admitting that the Conservatives were the ‘nasty party’ – being compassionate has been a trademark and a

Will the new Mock the Week actually be funny?

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Heaven knows we could all do with a laugh right now, what with 2026 having begun in such an inauspicious manner, with tumult abroad and a stream of grim headlines at home. It would be a relief to be able to make light of it all, and to skewer the powers that be with a

Why are teachers so obsessed with the ‘far right’?

From our UK edition

Much has been written in recent years, and even recent days, about the threat posed to the mental wellbeing of children by malign external forces, whether it be X generating nude images of women, the misogyny spread by influencers such as Andrew Tate, or the welter of ‘misinformation’ available online. But a story at the

Cadavers will always captivate. Museums need to chill out

From our UK edition

Is it right to put human remains on show? It’s a question that museum curators and the public have been asking themselves ever since European institutions began displaying bodies of the dead – notably Egyptian mummies – in the early 19th century. It’s the same question that continues to be posed today in Canterbury. Here,

Woke isn’t dead – and here’s the proof

From our UK edition

In one respect, the scaremongers are right: Racism is alive and well in this country, being imbedded in our institutions and abetted by the arms of the state. But this scourge manifests itself not in the hackneyed and often illusionary variety forever invoked by the liberal-left. This is the benevolent, ‘nice’ form of racial discrimination,