Vibe Shift with Brendan O’Neill

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Tickets are available from Leeds Salon.

Recently, we’ve seen growing opposition to the policies – and what some term the ‘luxury beliefs’ – of sections of the ruling elite. In particular, we’ve seen this around the issues of transgenderism, apocalyptic environmentalism and mass immigration – on which if you aired the ‘wrong’ opinions you could find yourself facing cancellation, protest or even arrested.

According to Brendan O’Neill in his latest book, Vibe Shift: The Revolt Against Wokeness, Greenism and Technology, this backlash represents nothing short of a ‘vibe shift’ – that is, ‘a seismic turn in the moral zeitgeist brought about by popular discontent with the old, knackered order’, ‘the reassertion of the wisdom of the crowd’ and the ‘revenge of common sense’ around ‘Biology. Industry. Sovereignty’.

But is O’Neill right? Or does he exaggerate or romanticise what often appear disparate protests around a range of unconnected issues. There’s now even a backlash against the backlash. So, is the vibe really shifting? Come and join the discussion!

SPEAKER
Brendan O’Neill is the chief political writer, and former editor, of online current affairs magazine spiked, and hosts the spiked podcast The Brendan O’Neill Show. He’s also a regular columnist for several other publications, including the Spectator. The Guardian calls him the Danny Dyer of journalism while Andrew Bolt of the Aussie Daily Telegraph says he is ‘one of the world’s funniest, fiercest critics of groupthink’. He’s author of a number of books, most recently After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation (2024) and Vibe Shift: The Revolt Against Wokeness, Greenism and Technocracy (2026).