The Trouble with James O'Brien

The radio host and polemicist demonstrates how vibe-based politics thrives, impervious to evidence

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James O’Brien, the highly successful LBC radio presenter, has been described as “the conscience of liberal Britain”. I know this because it says so on the cover of his new book. If true, this conscience is arrogant, hectoring and utterly humourless. 

The titles of O’Brien’s previous books, “How To Be Right” (2018) and “How Not To Be Wrong” (2020) serve as a warning that his latest, “How They Broke Britain” will be more of the same. And so it proves. Nuance is not the polemicist’s friend but it the reader’s chum. 

O’Brien’s thesis is introduced early. Recent years have not been kind to the Unite…