Tim Black
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Articles by Tim Black
Ukraine is cursed to have such unreliable allies
Share Topics Politics USA World Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. Of all the Trump administration’s many betrayals of Ukraine, its actions over the past week constitute arguably the most abhorrent. First, the White House agreed to pay Russia billions of dollars in return for a limited supply of diesel – despite President Trump having only just signed off on a sanctions bill targeting, er, major purchasers of Russian gas and oil.
Andy Burnham’s anti-Brexit conspiracy theories
Share Topics Brexit Politics UK Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. Remember when Andy Burnham promised the voters of Makerfield that he had no intention of overturning Brexit?
The case for populism
Frank Furedi’s In Defence of Populism is the definitive guide to the forces upending the status quo across the West. Share Topics Books Brexit Politics Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. The populist revolt may have gripped Western nations for over a decade now, but it has remained wilfully misunderstood by our political and cultural elites.
Why Argentina smells blood over the Falklands
Share Topics UK USA World Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. Argentine president Javier Milei finally went there. Addressing the nation last week, he reasserted Argentina’s claim on Las Malvinas – known to the rest of us as the Falkland Islands, the British Overseas Territory 300 miles off the coast of mainland Argentina.
Miley Cyrus announces ‘Bass Persuades’ album for September
Miley Cyrus announces ‘Bass Persuades’ album for September Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Miley Cyrus has announced a new album. The music star, who is now going by the mononym Miley, will release her 10th studio album, Bass Persuades, on Sept. 18. Miley, 33, shared the news Tuesday alongside a black and white photo of herself with a rose in her mouth. Miley will promote the album with a pair of shows Oct. 16 and 18 at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.
No, Trump hasn’t ruined the World Cup
FIFA was hardly morally pure before the Balogun Affair. Share Topics USA Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. The actions of the White House and FIFA have cast a temporary pall over the World Cup. After the USA’s Folarin Balogun was harshly sent off during last Wednesday’s victory over Bosnia and Herzegovina, FIFA decided to ‘suspend’ what should have been an automatic one-match ban for the star striker.
Andy Burnham is just Keir Starmer in jeans
Anyone expecting ‘hope’ and ‘change’ are deluding themselves. Share Topics Politics UK Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. Following his resounding victory in the Makerfield by-election, former New Labour hack Andy Burnham is set to return to Westminster next week. Unless something remarkable happens, this will be the prelude to the former Greater Manchester mayor assuming leadership of the Labour Party and becoming our next prime minister.
Trump’s ‘peace deal’ leaves all the big questions unanswered
Share Topics USA World Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. Three and a half months in, and it seems as if the joint US-Israel war with the Islamic Republic of Iran is finally drawing to some sort of close. That’s certainly the view from up on Capitol Hill. Writing on Truth Social, President Trump announced that a ‘deal’ with Iran was now ‘complete’ and that the vital trade route, the Strait of Hormuz, would immediately reopen.
The Mandy Files expose the terrifying emptiness of Starmer’s government
They tell us nothing about Mandelson’s appointment, but confirm all our worst fears about Labour’s wretchedness. Share Topics Politics UK Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. Coming in at over 1,500 pages, there’s no doubting the volume of the Mandelson Files, dumped on the public to no great excitement on Monday. Their significance is rather less clear. They certainly haven’t lived up to their billing.
Peter Murrell’s shopping sprees expose the rottenness of the SNP
Scotland’s ruling party has behaved as an aloof, unaccountable clique for far too long. Share Topics Politics UK Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. Peter Murrell, the ex-husband of former Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon, is set to spend a long time in prison. The former Scottish National Party chief executive (between 2001 and 2023) has pleaded guilty to embezzling over £400,000 from SNP campaign funds.
Andy Burnham is for turning
On Brexit, on woke and on the economy, Labour’s would-be saviour has struck every pose imaginable. Share Topics Politics UK Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. A New Labourite, a Corbynista and Keir Starmer’s No1 fan all walk into a bar. The landlord looks up and says, ‘The usual, Andy?’. There may be various versions of this Andy Burnham joke doing the rounds, but they all hint at the same truth. The mayor for Greater Manchester tries to be all things to all Labourites.
Labour: enemies of the people
Less than two years on from its landslide General Election victory, Labour is in crisis. It now regularly polls below 20 per cent, about 10 percentage points behind Reform UK. Labour leader Keir Starmer is, according to surveys, the most unpopular prime minister on record. These are the kind of data that presage a future parliamentary wipeout. The widespread loathing of Labour is already playing out electorally.
Andy Burnham is just Starmer in northern drag
Share Topics Politics UK Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. Are there two other words that better capture just how lost the Labour Party is than ‘Andy Burnham’? Yes, that Andy Burnham – the long-lashed, Blair-era frontbencher who crashed and burned in two successive Labour leadership contests (in 2010 and 2015), before decamping from parliament to become mayor of Greater Manchester in 2017. At the time, he described life in Westminster as ‘poisonous’ and a ‘living nightmare’.
The Greens are neither populist nor popular
The local elections have exploded the myth of the Green wave. Share Topics Identity Politics Politics UK Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. Thursday’s local elections have exploded one myth. The Green Party of England and Wales is definitely not riding a wave of popular support to power.
The Epstein mania turns lethal
Share Topics Politics UK USA Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. No doubt we’ll learn more about the motives of Cole Allen, the suspected shooter at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, during future court proceedings. But his rambling ‘manifesto’, emailed to family members minutes before Saturday’s assassination attempt on Donald Trump, gives us a good idea of what was driving him. ‘I am a citizen of the United States of America’, he writes.
Sayyid Qutb: the godfather of Islamism
Share Topics Long-reads Politics Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. As historian Faisal Devji has recently shown, the meaning of the term Islam began to change during the 19th century. In the colonial context of South Asia and the Middle East, the likes of ‘pan-Islamic’, anti-colonial activist Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838-1897) began to turn it into something rather more modern, in opposition to European imperialism and the West more broadly.
Iran is waging a forever war
This ceasefire will do little to resolve the real source of the conflict: the Islamic Republic itself. Share Topics Politics USA World Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. And so an ‘entire civilisation’ did not die on Tuesday night, as US president Donald Trump threatened if the Islamic Republic of Iran did not agree to end the conflict and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
The fall of the Islamic Republic is nigh Original
Share Topics Long-reads Politics World Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. The Islamic Republic of Iran was always far more than a nation state. It was, as one insightful critic puts it, ‘the most ambitious political-theological experiment of the 20th century’. After nearly five decades, it’s an experiment that has failed catastrophically. Despite its invocation of tradition, the Islamic Republic’s intellectual roots are thoroughly modern.
MPs are foxtrotting while the world burns
You could hardly ask for a more on-the-nose metaphor for our insulated, ineffectual political class. Share Topics Politics UK Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. Footage was shared widely yesterday of about 40 MPs enjoying a dance class in Westminster’s Portcullis House, overseen by Strictly Come Dancing hosts Angela Rippon and Alex Kingston.
Britain’s graduates are being thrown on the scrapheap
From AI interviews to being ‘ghosted’ by employers, the job hunt has become a degrading, inhumane process. Share Topics Identity Politics Politics UK Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. The dire consequences of Britain’s student-loan racket are no longer a secret. They have become a major talking point in recent weeks. Contrary to the claims of UK chancellor Rachel Reeves, the system is anything but ‘fair and reasonable’. Equally unfair is the graduate-jobs crisis.
Don’t mourn the death of the ‘assisted dying’ bill
Proponents of state-sponsored suicide tried every trick in the book to avoid debate on this dangerous bill. Share Topics Politics UK Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is on its last legs. Having been voted through by the House of Commons at second reading in November 2024 with a , it was approved at a third reading in June 2025 with a reduced majority of just 23.
The Iran War has exposed the folly of Net Zero
Ed Miliband and Labour have learnt none of the lessons from the Ukraine energy crisis. Share Topics Politics UK USA World Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. The Strait of Hormuz, one of the most vital shipping routes in the world, has been closed by Iran since the US and Israel began their airstrikes last week.
How the Taliban is exploiting the turmoil in the Middle East
The Afghan Islamists are menacing their neighbours in Pakistan in a brutal bid for power and recognition. Share Topics World Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. Afghanistan and Pakistan are continuing trade cross-border blows, fuelling instability in a region reeling from the US-Israeli war with Iran.
Starmer can’t keep cowering behind international law
As war rages in Iran, appeals to the ‘rules-based order’ have never sounded so hollow. Share Topics Politics UK World Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. German chancellor Friedrich Merz went off script on Sunday, when he bluntly stated that Berlin would not be governed by international law when considering its response to the war in Iran.
The Iran War began on 7 October
The Islamic Republic and its ‘Axis of Resistance’ are victims of their own suicidal lunacy. Share Topics Politics UK USA World Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. Not even three years ago, paid goons of the Islamic Republic murdered a 13-year-old British girl. They bashed their way into the room in which she had scrabbled for sanctuary with her mother and sister and shot her to death. They then set a fire, reducing the girl to ash.
Students for the ayatollah
Why are young people at British universities mourning the death of a vile Islamist tyrant? Share Topics Politics UK World Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. It is hard to imagine what university-aged Iranians – many of whom have been putting their lives on the line in defiance of their nation’s brutal theocratic regime – would make of their counterparts in the UK.
Labour’s attack on jury trials is an attack on democracy
Justice secretary David Lammy’s plans will take yet more power out of ordinary people’s hands. Share Topics Politics UK Uncategorised Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to attend In Defence of Trial by Jury, a panel event co-organised by spiked and the Free Speech Union. The event was a response to UK justice secretary David Lammy’s absurd plans to reduce the number of Crown Court cases that go before juries.
No, Paloma Faith, a baby cannot ‘choose’ its sex
Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. British singer Paloma Faith has said she’ll let her third baby decide whether it’s a boy or a girl. In an Instagram video earlier this month, she prances around, cradling her bump, insisting it’s 2026 and her child will decide his or her or ‘their’ gender when they’re old enough. Anyone who disagrees is, apparently, a ‘transphobic, homophobic prick’. ‘It’s 2026 – do we even give a shit about gender anymore?’, Faith says.
Far-left violence in France is spiralling out of control
The alleged lynching of Quentin Deranque shames a complicit left and complacent establishment. Share Topics Politics World Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. On 12 February, 23-year-old right-wing activist Quentin Deranque was brutally beaten and left for dead in the street by a group of anti-fascist militants. His death in a Lyon hospital two days later has left France reeling.
It’s not ‘Islamophobic’ to condemn Mothin Ali’s ayatollah apologism
Zack Polanski is making outrageous excuses for his deputy leader’s mourning of Iran’s supreme leader. Share Topics Identity Politics Politics UK Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. ‘The blatant Islamophobia that Keir Starmer is demonstrating through smearing Mothin Ali would be shocking – but it’s becoming a pattern’, intoned Green Party leader Zack Polanski on X last night.
Is it a crime to mock politicians in Germany?
A pensioner has been investigated for calling chancellor Friedrich Merz ‘Pinocchio’ on social media. Share Topics Free Speech Politics World Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. On 23 February 2026, police in Heilbronn, a city in south-west Germany, opened a criminal investigation into a retired man. His alleged crime? Calling chancellor Freidrich Merz ‘Pinocchio’. No threats. No incitement. Just a blunt, rather amusing suggestion that Germany’s national leader tells lies.
Hollywood’s hierarchy of victims
Share Topics Identity Politics UK Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. Let’s begin with what should not need saying: a white person calling a black person a ‘nigger’ is one of the most racist and offensive things they could possibly do. That word carries centuries of degradation and violence behind it, and when it is directed at two black actors standing on one of Britain’s most prestigious stages, it lands with the full force of that history.
The death of a tyrant Original
Under Ayatollah Khamenei, the Islamic Republic became one of the most despotic, dangerous regimes on Earth. Share Topics USA World Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. ‘Death to the dictator.’ Iranian protesters have chanted this in the direction of Ayatollah Khamenei for years now.
Why they attack Churchill
The wartime hero is a potent symbol of the civilisation culture warriors revile. Share Topics Identity Politics UK Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. Once again, the statue of Sir Winston Churchill in Westminster’s Parliament Square has been vandalised. On Friday, red graffiti was sprayed on the memorial of Britain’s wartime leader, stating, ‘Never Again is Now’, ‘Free Palestine’, ‘Zionist War Criminal’ and ‘Globalise the Intifada’.
The Iran strikes have put the Middle East on the brink Original
Share Topics Politics USA World Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. And so begins the latest, most dangerous phase in a Middle Eastern conflict that first erupted with Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. Well over two years on from that murderous, anti-Semitic onslaught, Israel and the US have this morning launched a large-scale aerial assault on Hamas’s chief sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Labour's sleazeocracy - spiked Original
The exhaustion of Keir Starmer’s Labour government has certainly been far quicker than that of the New Labour administrations of the 1990s and 2000s. But the parallels are unmistakable. Both New Labour and its Starmer-fronted retread pitched themselves to voters as virtue incarnate, making almost identical pledges to restore trust in politics after years of Tory ‘sleaze’ – a catch-all pejorative for a whole range of misbehaviour, from financial impropriety to marital infidelity.
The West will come to rue this betrayal of the Kurds
The brave men and women who fought ISIS are being punished, while Islamists are being rewarded. Share Topics Politics USA World Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. Over the past few weeks, Syrian government forces have been fighting the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). They have been attempting to force them out of the resource-rich north-eastern region of Syria, which has been controlled by the Kurds since they defeated the Islamic State (ISIS) a decade ago.
The tyranny of Palestinianism
Share Topics Politics UK Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. So now we know: you can do pretty much anything you like in the name of Palestine. You can seemingly trespass on other people’s property. You can apparently damage things. You can seemingly carry a sledgehammer around. And a court will let you off.
The Greens’ Hannah Spencer is no friend of the working class
I don’t care if she’s a plumber. All her party’s policies are objectively anti-working class. Share Topics Identity Politics Politics UK Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. Finally, the posh left has found a plumber it likes. Having for years wrung their untoiled hands over ‘gammon’ – meaning ruddied-faced blokes who work for a living – leisured leftists have at last happened upon a tradesperson that doesn’t make them come out in hives.
Why we’re leaving the Labour Party
Lifetime members Sir Robin Wales and Clive Furness explain how their former party has become unrecognisable. Share Topics Free Speech Identity Politics Politics UK Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. The Labour Party was to represent the interests of the British working class and to promote the values of the Enlightenment. Yet recent YouGov polling shows Labour has more support among people earning over £70,000 than any other party.
Spain has just flung open Europe’s borders
Pedro Sánchez’s illegal-migrant amnesty will be Merkel 2.0. Share Topics Books Polemics Politics World Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. In 2015, Europe experienced its most significant wave of inward migration since the Second World War. German chancellor Angela Merkel responded by unilaterally opening her nation’s borders, without consulting her own people or her European neighbours. More than a decade on, the impact of that migrant crisis has yet to subside.
Why has Mandy been given such an easy ride in the media?
Share Topics Politics UK USA World Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. UK prime minister Keir Starmer is far from the only one who stuck by Peter Mandelson long after the scandal surrounding him became impossible to ignore. In the past few weeks, despite new evidence of Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein being made public, the BBC continued to offer him a platform.
The shameful disinformation over the Gaza death toll
Pro-Palestine journos and activists still treat Hamas’s demonstrably false figures as uncontested facts. Share Topics Politics UK USA World Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. The way much of the media handled last week’s ‘news’ about Gaza’s death toll is nothing short of shameful.
Celebrities for illegal immigration
Share Topics Identity Politics World Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. A cynic once said that the reason people become artists is so they can have wealth, attention and beautiful lovers, and it’s equally true of the other branches of the creative and performing arts. Though they can talk about their ‘craft’ until the cows come home, most people go into showbiz so they can be recognised as special – not as ‘civilians’, as Liz Hurley memorably called non-creatives.
Why class must not become a ‘protected characteristic’
Share Topics Politics UK Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. There is a new push to make social class a ‘protected characteristic’ under UK law. A report by Manchester organisation Class Ceiling has claimed that ‘more than 50 per cent’ of respondents who worked in the arts said they had been discriminated against on the basis of their background – treatment that involved ‘harassment’ and ‘bias’.
The Mandelson scandal exposes Labour’s flaming hypocrisy Original
Share Topics Politics UK USA Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. To misquote Jeffrey Epstein, ‘Bad Petey’. We already knew from previous releases of the Epstein Files that Peter Mandelson was overly chummy with the world’s most notorious nonce. We’d seen the photos of Mandy in various Ken-like outfits chatting with his ‘best pal’. We’d read his birthday wishes to the dodgy financier who just loved to share his ‘glorious homes… with his friends (yum yum)’.
The Epstein feeding frenzy Original
Share Topics Politics UK USA World Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. On Friday, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) opened its bowels and dumped another tranche of the so-called Epstein files on the public. And it is a lot this time. To be precise, it consists of three million pages, 180,000 images and 2,000 videos from the two criminal investigations into financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The Islamic Republic is a cautionary tale for the left
In 1979, left-wing revolutionaries sided with Islamists – and ended up digging their own graves. Share Topics Politics USA World Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. In autumn 1978, Iran’s deeply unpopular monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah, was coming under increasing political pressure. The main source of this was not the religious right, as troublesome for him as the clerics had become.
The Islamic Republic is a cautionary tale for the left
In 1979, left-wing revolutionaries sided with Islamists – and ended up digging their own graves. Share Topics Politics USA World Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. In autumn 1978, Iran’s deeply unpopular monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah, was coming under increasing political pressure. The main source of this was not the religious right, as troublesome for him as the clerics had become.
When Foucault met the ayatollah Original
Why the radical postmodernist championed a reactionary Islamist cleric. Share Topics Politics World Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. In October 1978, the radical Iranian cleric, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was addressing an audience of Western reporters and intellectuals in Neauphle-le-Château, a village outside Paris. It’s fair to say that most of those present as Khomeini quietly held forth were impressed by this aged opponent of Iran’s sclerotic, corrupt monarchy.
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