'The problem is the left is weaker than the right - it's getting its head kicked in'

Ash Sarkar the Queen of Woke’ speaks with Maira Butt about moving past identity politics and debates over unisex loos, sparring with Piers Morgan... and going to therapy

- Maira Butt

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 8 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 the fuck you want.”