Katie Hopkins controversy: Petitions clash over Lincolnshire show booking

A Stamford arts venue is facing backlash after booking controversial far-right commentator Katie Hopkins, widely condemned for her radical views on ethnic minorities and PC culture.

Katie Hopkins, 47, will be at the Stamford Corn Exchange on May 16 next year for a show about her brain surgery to recover from epilepsy, as well as her typically non-politically correct viewpoints and her career in broadcasting.

Hopkins is best known for her appearances on The Apprentice and Celebrity Big Brother, which triggered a level of fame and recognition and prompted a pursuit into a broadcasting career.

Initially people were drawn to her close-to-the-bone and perceived ‘real’ attitudes to the world’s issues, but over time she has consistently promoted dangerous vitriol and pushed agendas that are typically considered to be racist, xenophobic and classist.

She was permanently banned from Twitter in 2020 for breaching the platform’s hate speech policies, though continues to be active on her Instagram and YouTube channels – which have a combined half a million followers.

Her upcoming appearance in Stamford has caused intense debate and scrutiny, with many suggesting that someone with views as radical as Katie Hopkins should not be allowed a platform, and others underlining the importance of freedom of speech.

Tickets for the show cost £23 and can be booked from the Stamford Corn Exchange website. It naturally goes without saying that the show is designed for adults.

Hopkins is no stranger to Lincolnshire, having recently visited Skegness for a YouTube video accusing the government of selling out the people of the seaside town – as the government is housing migrants and refugees at hotels in the area.

The Stamford Corn Exchange has also defended its decision to book Hopkins, saying it was the best selling show at the venue this week, alongside their Cinderella pantomime, and that is because the show is “pure comedy and nothing about her opinions at all.”

The Stamford Corn Exchange on Broad Street. | Photo: Google Street View

A spokesperson for the venue said: “We are a receiving house theatre, and we are wholly self-funding charity. As such we must put on a wide variety of shows that appeal to as wide a demographic as possible; this inevitably means that we will host some performances that some people take exception to.

“Where this is the case, we can only hope that people understand that not all shows can appeal to all people, and while a specific show may be objectionable to you, another show that you may wish to see could be objectionable to someone else.

“We are proud that we are able to subsidise amateur and community theatre by the amount of professional shows we run to allow us to do this, so diversity in acts is essential.

“The Katie Hopkins performance is, in essence, a comedy performance; comedy, like almost all performance art, is highly subjective. This performance is titled “Live. Laugh. Love” and will focus on her recovery from a life threatening illness, her TV career, and her charity work.

“What one person finds funny another might not, and some may even find it objectionable. We have many shows a year that some of our patrons may regard as diverse, such as burlesque shows, stand up comedians, political satirists, psychic mediums, adult pantomime etc.

“Our booking of Katie Hopkins has proven to be controversial. Some people have expressed concern dismay and outrage, that we, as an independent theatre, have chosen to host such a performance.

“However, were we to refuse to book a performance on the grounds that someone, somewhere might find the contents of that performance objectionable then we would likely have to consider closing the doors for good.

“If a performance falls within the remit of the licenses we hold, and – of course – within the law, we feel there would have to be extremely extenuating circumstances to warrant the cancellation of a show.

“When we were approached by a long standing agent to put on this show, who we have worked with for 13 years and has never brought us a poor standard show, and has always delivered exactly what the biography of a production has been advertised we had no concerns that the show will be anything other than the Comedy show promised.

“We remain an inclusive venue, we do not discriminate against anyone, and we such tirelessly to create the most diverse programme we can achieve.”

Petition back-and-forths

A petition has been set up in response to the show booking, titled ‘Katie Hopkins is not welcome in Stamford’. At the time of reporting, it has over 500 signatures.

The creator of the petition, Bret Allibone, said: “Katie Hopkins is booked to spread her hate speech to the people of Stamford at the Corn Exchange theatre.

“I propose that we petition Stamford Corn Exchange to cancel this booking so that Stamford isn’t seen welcoming Katie Hopkins share her poisonous prejudices and make money off the back of it. We should show that she, and others like her, are not welcome to our town.

“Katie Hopkins has many times stood accused of displaying views that have been described by critics as Islamophobic, racist, classist, and misogynistic.

“Stamford does not want Katie Hopkins. We ask that Stamford Corn Exchange does the right thing and cancels this booking as does not entertain similar bookings in the future.”

However, not all share that view. A counter-petition, shared by Hopkins herself to her 306,000 Instagram followers on Wednesday morning, had been set up saying she was welcome in the town of Stamford, stressing the need for “rights to free movement”.

That petition is nowhere to be seen anymore, suggesting either the 38 Degrees platform or the organiser of the petition took it down.

Katie Hopkins urged her followers to support a petition welcoming her to Stamford amid controversy of her booking at the Corn Exchange. The petition has since been deleted. | Photo: Instagram

So who is Katie Hopkins?

Katie Hopkins is most accurately described as a right-wing political commentator and media personality. She has built a large base of followers over the years with a series of controversial and outspoken opinions on the world’s biggest topics, but has faed widespread condemnation on more than one occasion.

Here are some of the times her wildly controversial statements landed her in hot water, and perhaps an insight into why so many people are feeling frustrated by her booking in Stamford:

• Hopkins was the punchline of a viral joke in July 2013, when she appeared on ITV’s This Morning criticising “lower class” children names, as well as children named after geographical locations. Her child is called India.
• In December 2014, after a Scottish aid worker returned from Sierra Leone with Ebola, she took to Twitter to post: “Little sweaty jocks, sending us Ebola bombs in the form of sweaty Glaswegians just isn’t cricket. Scottish NHS sucks.”
• In April 2015, she accused dementia patients of being “bed blockers” that would be better off dead
• That same month, in a column for The Sun newspaper, Hopkins compared migrants to cockroaches and called them “feral humans”, proposing that gunships be installed on the waters to stop people crossing over borders
• After a truck was driven into crowds in Nice, France in July 2016, she said Islam “disgusts” her but assured people that she wasn’t Islamaphobic. This came not long before she called Sadiq Khan the “Muslim Mayor of Londonistan”
• The Mail Online had to pay a British Muslim family £150,000 in damages in 2016, after a Katie Hopkins column falsely accused them of having extremist links to Al-Qaeda
• Hopkins was ordered to pay some £300,000 to food writer Jack Monroe in 2017, as she falsely alleged that he had vandalised a war memorial in another of her newspaper columns
• Following the Manchester Arena bombing incident in May 2017, Hopkins took to Twitter to call for a “final solution” – a reference to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party tactic of ethnic cleansing
• Also in May 2017, Hopkins responded to the Black Lives Matter movement by posting: “Dear black people. If your lives matter why do you stab and shoot each other so much”
• Hopkins was forced to apologise to Finsbury Park Mosque in October 2020 after inaccurately linking it to a violent incident earlier that year
• In July 2021, she was deported from Australia for posting about deliberately breaking the country’s COVID-19 health regulations

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