Strong on domestic politics; awful on foreign affairs – particularly those concerning Australia and America, about which they know about as much as the chap down the pub who skims headlines while drowning his sorrows in cheap Canadian whisky. Please, do us all a favour and stop regurgitating whatever nonsense you’ve read in the Telegraph or Guardian on these subjects.
Before this became yet another offering for the bourgeois Sensible Centrists among us, this was a refreshingly stimulating podcast & publication, but both have become thoroughly orthodox in outlook and decidedly generic, even trite, with a surfeit of bien pensant pearl-clutching worthy of every EU simp and BBC toady. (When can we expect Emily Maitlis or Rory Stewart to be fêted on the show?)
Tom never misses a chance to tut-tut like a schoolmistress over the “chronically online right.” He is much more interesting as part of his new Friday quartet (or even on ‘Last Orders’). Fraser Myers’ takes are insipid whenever he strays into the unfamiliar hinterlands of international politics. The podcast guests, never traditionally a strength, are now especially lamentable too – at best adding nothing and at worst subtracting much. (Lauren who?!)
After many years, I’ve since unfollowed from this show & stopped donating to the publication, with much sadness. Occasionally I return hoping to find that Spiked recovered its old independence of spirit, but it’s still more concerned with seeming “respectable” and inoffensive these days.
O’Neill’s sister show is the one remaining bright spot, even if – regrettably – he is in danger of becoming a one-trick pony in the wake of his monomaniacal focus on Israel, a country I support but one I don’t wish to hear about so incessantly. At least O’Neill’s willing to put some mustard on his opinions. More than can be said for this lot.
