Ben Kentish

Presenter “Late Nights with Ben Kentish” @LBC 10pm-1am Mon-Thurs | Ex-Westminster Editor | Columnist @theipaper | Instagram: benkentishlbc | @barnetfc sufferer

[Ben Kentish @BenKentish]

A small selection of the replies to my post. The antisemitism floodgates have opened wide recently, spurred on by people in positions of influence and power.

[Ben Kentish @BenKentish]

Just the leader of the Green Party reposting suggestions the government is being controlled by Jews…

[Ben Kentish @BenKentish]

A few other recent posts from the account Zack Polanski is promoting this morning.

[Ben Kentish @BenKentish]

The claim that Jewish people or groups exert undue control over governments is a very old and long-standing antisemitic trope. The suggestion here that the UK Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary are doing the bidding of the Board of Deputies of British Jews is a modern incarnation of that antisemitic trope.

[Robert Colvile @rcolvile]

The cyberpocalypse is going to hit British politics like an asteroid. So many people have heads buried so far in the sand (just look at what Parliament spends its time discussing...)

[BBC Newsnight @BBCNewsnight]

“I thought what Steve Witkoff said […] was a really shameful moment in American geopolitical history”

LBC presenter Ben Kentish reacts to President Trump’s special envoy calling President Putin a “humanitarian”.

#Newsnight

[Des Kelly @TheDesKelly]

Expert analysis. 🤣

[BBC Newsnight @BBCNewsnight]

“Angela Rayner said...'Yeah my three day ration supply: mascara, concealer and a bottle of Sauvy B...'"

The Spectator's Lara Brown contrasts government messaging over emergency preparedness from Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner.

#Newsnight

[Ben Kentish @BenKentish]

On @BBCNewsnight tonight from 10.30pm - tune in!

[LBC @LBC]

"It's luxury boomer communism."

Political commentator Samiksha Bhattacharjee tells @BenKentish she finds it ‘despicable’ that boomers expect Gen Z to fight foreign wars, when they had it so ‘easy’.

[Ben Kentish @BenKentish]

Andy Woodman got Bromley into League 1 on a shoestring budget - his second promotion in three years - and they’ve sacked him after ten games. The game’s gone totally mad.

[Bromley FC @bromleyfc]

Club Statement 📝

[Ben Kentish @BenKentish]

Pretty difficult to see how the Energy Secretary didn’t break the Ministerial Code with today’s Jackdaw announcement

[Ben Kentish @BenKentish]

We all know the answer. They’d be the first ones calling for “censorship”,

[Dave Rich @daverich1]

I do wonder if these defenders of free speech would sign the same letter in support of a right wing writer who wanted to give their royalties to, say, National Action.

[Ben Kentish @BenKentish]

How much more has to happen before Western leaders, including ours, wake up to the fact that the Trump Administration is more of an enemy of our interests than an ally?

[Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en]

Steve Witkoff to Putin:

You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian.

You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that, I commend you, and I thank you again.

[Ben Kentish @BenKentish]

@LoftusSteve Does it?

[Ben Kentish @BenKentish]

Genuinely baffles me that people are allowed to go on television and be billed as impartial political commentators while no mention is made of the fact they’ve been desperately trying to become a Conservative MP for years.

[@Tomorrow'sMPs @tomorrowsmps]

🔵CHELSEA & FULHAM: shortlisted: Sebastian Payne, 37, Times writer since 2024. Prev at D Tel, Spectator, Wash Post; FT. Dir, Onward think tank, 2023-24. Author: Broken Heartlands; Fall of Boris Johnson. Applied for 5+ seats, 2024. Ed: Thomas More RC Sch, Blaydon; Durham Un; City Un (MA investig jrsm).

[Ben Kentish @BenKentish]

Much as I abhor what PA do, there is a legitimate debate about whether they should have been proscribed. But the idea that someone should be allowed to carry on openly raising money for them *while they remain proscribed* - and they they’ve been “censored” if they can’t - is simply nuts.

[Ben Kentish @BenKentish]

Censorship? Sally Rooney’s own publisher made the decision to stop selling her books after she insisted she’d use the royalties to fund a proscribed terror group. If she wasn’t intent on funding terrorism via the profits of her books, there would be nothing to stop them being sold. Hardly “censorship”.

[The New Statesman @NewStatesman]

OPEN LETTER: Sally Rooney is a writer, not a terrorist. Her books must be available to the public. Their withdrawal from sale, on the basis of ill-conceived and draconian anti terror legislation, is an affront to basic principles of free speech and expression so long taken for granted in this country. We categorically reject censorship - whether direct or indirect - and urge the government to change course, amending the legislation which has led us to this point of repressive absurdity.

[Ben Kentish @BenKentish]

@Daniel_Sugarman There’s not a single name on that list that I was remotely surprised to see on it.

[Daniel Sugarman @Daniel_Sugarman]

Sally Rooney, of her own free will, publicly said that proceeds from her book sales would go towards an organisation which was proscribed after its members infiltrated an RAF base and damaged military aircraft.

Every signatory knows this. As does the New Statesman.

[Ben Kentish @BenKentish]

One of the most absurd (not to mention offensive) comparisons I’ve seen in a very long time. Salman Rushdie was the victim of an Islamist fatwa; Sally Rooney refuses to stop using her royalties to fund a proscribed terror group.

[The New Statesman @NewStatesman]

If you ever sought out the novels of Sally Rooney in bookshops – when that was still possible – you’d know they sit in the fiction stacks adjacent to the novels of another SR whose books have been withdrawn in dastardly political circumstances. Until last week, “Rooney” and “Rushdie” had little in common beyond being shelfmates; now they have more than just a physical proximity.

@tanjil_rashid_: This is censorship by other means https://t.co/T6CQQ5ZKMR

[Mark Wallace @wallaceme]

The fact this is an open letter calling for the government to reverse a decision which was in fact made by Sally Rooney to stop selling her own books is only exceeded in absurdity by the fact the New Statesman also compares her to Salman Rushdie. Ludicrous.