
I no longer care about microaggressions: Ash Sarkar
Ash Sarkar is the face of woke. Up against the Goliaths of the right wing, the 32-year-old journalist from north London counts tech billionaires like Elon Musk and US president Donald Trump among her adversaries — of which she has many. Another to cross her path was Piers Morgan before his unceremonious exit from Good Morning Britain in 2021, when during a heated TV debate about Trump and Obama, she quipped: 'I'm literally a communist, you idiot.' A video of the moment has since clocked up nearly eight million views on YouTube. In 2023, Sarkar was ranked No 45 on the New Statesman's Left Power List, and through appearances on shows like Question Time and in her role as senior editor of Novara Media, she has become one of the left's most ubiquitous commentators. Thus it will come as a surprise to many that Sarkar is now sounding the death knell for the culture wars on which she made her name, declaring: 'Woke is dead.'
By that, she means all this uproar about unisex bathrooms and the debate over whether there should be a Black James Bond or a gay James Bond is simply not the priority. Such a statement might seem counterintuitive to everything Sarkar stands for, but 'diversity, equity, and inclusion', she says, is a distraction from the real issues. And so goes Sarkar's argument in her debut book Minority Rule: Adventures in the Culture War. 'Identity has become the dominant preoccupation for both the left and the right,' she tells me in The Independent offices. 'I no longer care about microaggressions — pronounce my name however you want.'
Sarkar knows that this view is controversial, and as ever, she's prepared for the backlash. 'People are gonna be like, she's moved to the right,' she jokes, drily. She's correct. A quick scan of recent comments on Novara Media, the platform she helped get off the ground over the last decade, reveals a rift in the left-wing ranks over her apparent conversion. 'Pathetic,' writes one person. 'A fundamentalist identity politician slating an ideology she built an entire career around as the Western public massively rejected it.' One headline in The Daily Telegraph reads: 'The Queen of Woke just exposed the hypocrisy of the virtue-signalling Left.' Still, online jibes are nothing compared to the death threats she's received in the past. 'I'm not worried about anyone from the left killing me,' she laughs. 'They've all got iron deficiencies anyway.'
Sarkar is self-assured when it comes to politics, offering analysis with the certainty of scientific fact. And for someone who is about as famous as a journalist can get, she doesn't find talking about herself all that interesting. Unlike other media personas who make a meal of just about any X post — ahem, Piers Morgan — she shrugs off any insults, attacks, and controversies, often with a smirk or a funny remark. Sometimes a literal shrug. She has not once thought about quitting her job ('I made my bed') and tells me she doesn't feel any sense of pressure despite her still-rising profile. Sarkar doesn't get upset or angry about the vitriol she faces and credits a lack of media training for her ability to speak with wit and candour compared to the fusty politicians she often shares mics with. A testament to that candour, she calls such MPs 'degraded, atrophied figures'. Sarkar attributes her penchant for insults to her time at an all-girls school. 'It was an Olympic sport,' she says of the name-calling. 'And everyone else was much better (at it than me).'
Perhaps most surprising of all, Sarkar doesn't enjoy fighting. 'I hate conflict in my personal life,' she says. 'I'm a scared little dog. If my husband is like, 'Look, let's have this difficult conversation, tell me what you really think.' I cannot do it. Whereas, if you put me in a news studio and say, 'Talk to this pro-privatisation lobbyist, they're going to take your head off and you've got to stop him from doing that,' I'm like, 'Great. Fine, light work.''
She's since come to the realisation that compartmentalising like this isn't exactly healthy. The death of her stepfather last year heralded the end of what Sarkar calls her 'avoidance and 'inshallah' strategy'. At the age of 31, she entered therapy for the first time where she learnt that being unmoved and removed is a survival technique. 'But you can't just freeze things out,' she says. 'Being frozen is not the same thing as being resilient.' Sarkar has been trying to tap more into her emotions. 'You have to accept that your brain is the dumbest part of you,' she says. 'You have to drop down into this intuition and work out what it is that it's telling you.' So far, it's a technique that has served her well, guiding her through some of the biggest decisions in her life, like getting married in 2023. For Vogue, she wrote a piece on how marriage and Marxism can, in fact, co-exist.
Outside of TV and radio, you can find Sarkar hungover on the sofa with her husband (also an activist) and their cat Mousa Dembélé (named after the PSG footballer) watching Sharpe, the Nineties series about the Napoleonic Wars, starring Sean Bean. She falls asleep to woodworking videos. Her social media algorithm is wholesome, made up of 'cats, comedy, and recipes'. She's also an Aries. All this to say, she does, in fact, lead a very normal life.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Middle East Eye
4 hours ago
- Middle East Eye
Nearly 60 British MPs and peers call for full arms embargo on Israel
Nearly 60 British MPs and peers have called for a full embargo on arms exports to Israel and for the government to be more transparent about the licences it grants for military exports. Their demands, outlined in a 18 July letter sent to Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds, come as Lammy has warned Israel of further sanctions if it does not reach a ceasefire in Gaza. The UK joined 27 other countries, including Australia, Canada and France, to condemn Israel for depriving Palestinians of "human dignity", and urged the Israeli government to immediately lift restriction on flow of aid. "We've announced a raft of sanctions over the last few months," Lammy told ITV's Good Morning Britain on Tuesday. 'There will be more, clearly, and we keep all of those options under consideration if we do not see a change in behaviour and the suffering that we are seeing come to an end.' Read more: Nearly 60 British MPs and peers call for full arms embargo on Israel British Foreign Secretary David Lammy speaking about Israel in the Commons on 21 July 2025 (House of Commons/AFP)


Middle East Eye
7 hours ago
- Middle East Eye
UK: Nearly 60 British MPs and peers call for full arms embargo on Israel
Nearly 60 British MPs and peers have called for a full embargo on arms exports to Israel and for the government to be more transparent about the licences it grants for military exports. Their demands, outlined in a 18 July letter sent to Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds, come as Lammy has warned Israel of further sanctions if it does not reach a ceasefire in Gaza. The UK joined 27 other countries, including Australia, Canada and France, to condemn Israel for depriving Palestinians of "human dignity", and urged the Israeli government to immediately lift restriction on flow of aid. "We've announced a raft of sanctions over the last few months," Lammy told ITV's Good Morning Britain on Tuesday. 'There will be more, clearly, and we keep all of those options under consideration if we do not see a change in behaviour and the suffering that we are seeing come to an end.' New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters But those who signed the letter, including Zarah Sultana, John McDonnell, and Jeremy Corbyn, say the UK government should immediately end all arms exports to Israel or risk being complicit in genocide. 'The components which create the fighter jets that Israel has used to level Gaza are 15 percent British-made - we cannot hide from that," said Labour MP Steve Witherden, who organised the letter. "Without British arms export licences, these jets could not fly, they could not drop their bombs." Calling for answers The letter follows an adjournment debate last month that marked the first time arms export licences to Israel had been debated in the Commons since before the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attacks on Israel. 'The bare minimum we can do is be fully honest about what we are sending to a state involved in the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians' - Steve Witherden MP The MPs and peers asked for clarity about data about UK arms exports to Israel in 2024, released by the Export Control Joint Unit (ECJU), a cross-departmental body overseeing UK export licensing for military and dual-use items. During last month's debate, Trade Minister Douglas Alexander said the majority of the £142m in military export licences approved in 2024 to Israel were for components that would be re-exported to third countries, including Nato allies. But the letter says that ECJU data shows that of the £141.6m in standard individual export licences for military goods issued in 2024, more than half of the approved value appear to be intended for direct use in Israel. "Could the government clarify how this data aligns with the minister's claim that the majority of these licences were for re-export?" the letter asks. Alexander also said that more than £120m - or around 85 percent of the total value of licences for military exports to Israel last year - 'were for components to support exports of military items from Israeli companies to a single programme for a Nato ally'. The MPs and peers have asked the government to clarify which Nato ally is involved, the name and nature of the programme, and when it was established. Approved UK arms exports to Israel skyrocketed under Labour, data shows Read More » They have also asked for clarity about a surge in individual licences, totalling £127.6m and mostly for military radars and targeting systems, that were issued between October and December 2024, after the newly elected Labour government announced the suspension of around 30 arms licences to Israel. Witherden said that repeated calls for greater transparency about arms exports from the government "have so far gone unanswered". "The bare minimum we can do is be fully honest about what we are sending to a state involved in the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians," he said. Last month, the High Court rejected a challenge brought by rights groups that sought to halt the export of British-made F-35 fighter jet parts indirectly to Israel, through a global supply pool, following a 20-month court battle. In their ruling, the judges said they found that the issue was a matter "for the executive which is democratically accountable to Parliament and ultimately to the electorate, not for the courts".


Gulf Today
9 hours ago
- Gulf Today
David Beckham left with bald patch after ‘terrible' hair accident
David Beckham has been left with a misshapen bald patch after he tried to cut his own hair at home. The 50-year-old, known for his trendsetting looks, attempted to hide the damage, which he said was caused by the clipper of his hair trimmer falling off while he was shaving. His wife Victoria playfully mocked him for the blunder as she shared the aftermath on her Instagram page on Sunday (20 July). 'You tried to cut your hair but what have you done?' she asked as David is seen covering the spot with his hands, before revealing a clearly triangular-shaped patch on his characteristic buzz cut. Victoria laughed at the reveal, to which David replied: 'It's not funny. The clipper head fell off.' 'The hours of content that the kids have got from this,' she continued. 'It does not look good. I'm going to always be honest with you – it looks terrible.' The former England footballer is known for his much-imitated hairstyles throughout the years, including his divisive blond mohawk, but his buzzcut is widely considered the most iconic and popular of his looks. He adopted the look in the early 2000s. 'I had a hairdresser at the time called Tyler. I said to him: 'I'm gonna cut my hair' and he was like: 'Are you sure? You really want to do that?'' he recalled in an episode of the family's Netflix series, Beckham, in 2023. He was confronted by his Manchester United Coach Sir Alex Ferguson about the decision to chop off his blond hair: 'And [Ferguson] said: 'David, take the cap off,' and I said no,'' he continued. Ferguson then called the athlete out for his 'stubbornness' at the time, before adding: 'And then I said: 'Oh well.'' However, according to Beckham, he didn't shave his head for the sake of publicity. 'I never did it to create attention. I'm not that person.' James Clarke, a Manchester paparazzi member, recalled some of the reactions to Beckham cutting his blond hair at the time. 'When David Beckham shaved his head, I honestly thought a member of my family had died. Because my phone went off,' he said. 'The panic in people's voices that this... We haven't got it documented yet.' The Independent