NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Lifestyle

Sacked columnist Julie Burchill hits back after 'racist' tweet about Meghan and Harry's baby Lilibet

news.com.au
15 Jun, 2021 05:36 AM4 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

Julie Burchill suggested Harry and Meghan name their baby "Georgina Floydina" or "Doria Oprah". Photo / Getty Images

Julie Burchill suggested Harry and Meghan name their baby "Georgina Floydina" or "Doria Oprah". Photo / Getty Images

A British newspaper columnist who lost her job over "racist" tweet about Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's baby daughter has penned an unrepentant essay blaming "snowflake sociopaths" and "cancel culture" for her sacking.

Julie Burchill was fired from The Telegraph earlier this month after mocking the name of the Sussexes' baby daughter Lilibet Diana on social media.

"What a missed opportunity," she wrote. "They could have called it Georgina Floydina!"

The reference to George Floyd, whose death in Minneapolis last year sparked worldwide Black Lives Matter protests, drew outrage online.

Joanna Toch, a barrister and head of @FamilyLawCafe joining Julie Burchill in her racism towards a new born baby pic.twitter.com/fVI8XcwIXY

— YT: C’est Chancy (@JesuisChancy) June 7, 2021
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Prominent lawyer Joanna Toch chimed in, replying to Burchill with a reference to Markle's mother Doria Ragland.

"No Doria?" she wrote. "Don't black names matter?"

Burchill responded that she "was hoping for Doria Oprah, the racist rotters".

Toch – who was also suspended from her law firm after the exchange went viral, despite apologising and deleting her profile – replied, "Doprah?"

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Burchill, however, refused to apologise.

Imagine my surprise at finding so many gendercrits being racist in the replies to Julie Burchill.

It's almost as if adherence to one outdated colonial idea goes hand in hand with other outdated colonial idea.... pic.twitter.com/7L22c0m5P8

— Suzanne 🦨 (@Rummlie) June 7, 2021

She took to Facebook to announce that she had been sacked by The Telegraph after five years, claiming that she had been unhappy anyway due to the paper rejecting her "edgy column ideas".

In a new essay published in The Daily Mail this week, Burchill reiterated that she was "not upset in the least" about losing her column.

"But generally, for journalism, and for young writers with spirit, it's a very bad thing indeed," she wrote.

"Newspapers with no original voices will decline even more rapidly than they would anyway in the digital age. It's ironic that a conservative newspaper which castigates cancel culture cancelled me for castigating wokery."

Julie Burchill has been sacked by The Telegraph following her racist tweets about the Sussexes' newborn daughter. pic.twitter.com/NFwssz5SoV

— Nadine White (@Nadine_Writes) June 8, 2021

Burchill insisted that her tweet was "sober, wry and entirely without racist intent", and that she could not "stress enough how much I deplore the murder of George Floyd".

"What I was mocking was the type of people who – like H&M – live in gated communities while espousing BLM's politics of social upheaval, without giving any thought to the damage that pro-BLM riots do to poor and black Americans," she wrote.

"'Defund the Police', for example – a slogan shrieked by BLM's Marxist leaders in the wake of Floyd's death – causes huge harm to vulnerable minorities, as the orgy of looting and violence in US cities such as Portland, Oregon, has shown."

She also partly attributed the backlash to a "sexist and misogynist element" within "wokeness", "in this instance towards witty women who have a savage streak".

"We live in an age of cultural insanity, a topsy-turvy land where men are women, harassment is justice and the Left are jostling to tug their forelocks and call for those of us who criticise royalty to be punished," she said.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

"As Sex Pistol John Lydon put it, 'I never thought I'd see the day when the Right would become the cool ones giving the middle finger to the Establishment and the Left become the snivelling self-righteous ones going around shaming everybody.'"

Burchill touted her move to Substack – an online platform that allows writers to send email newsletters directly to paying subscribers – where she boasts that she "cannot be silenced".

"In the autumn, I'll be back with my book, Welcome To The Woke Trials," she wrote.

"And thanks to Twitter, The Telegraph and a pair of hypocritical fibbers whose fantasy land is so fragile brilliant journalists (me) must be silenced in order to maintain the illusion – it will have a whole new ending."

Save

    Share this article

Latest from Lifestyle

Premium
Lifestyle

Exactly what long car journeys do to your body

18 Jun 08:00 PM
Royals

Princess Kate unexpectedly cancels appearance at Royal Ascot

18 Jun 06:57 PM
Premium
Lifestyle

Society Insider: Property titan’s luxury car storage club; Eric Watson’s son launches MDMA business

18 Jun 05:00 PM

Sponsored: Embrace the senses

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Lifestyle

Premium
Exactly what long car journeys do to your body

Exactly what long car journeys do to your body

18 Jun 08:00 PM

Telegraph: The science behind road trip fatigue and how to combat it.

Princess Kate unexpectedly cancels appearance at Royal Ascot

Princess Kate unexpectedly cancels appearance at Royal Ascot

18 Jun 06:57 PM
Premium
Society Insider: Property titan’s luxury car storage club; Eric Watson’s son launches MDMA business

Society Insider: Property titan’s luxury car storage club; Eric Watson’s son launches MDMA business

18 Jun 05:00 PM
Watch: Monteith’s Wild Food Challenge final returns to Auckland after 11 year hiatus

Watch: Monteith’s Wild Food Challenge final returns to Auckland after 11 year hiatus

18 Jun 06:32 AM
Help for those helping hardest-hit
sponsored

Help for those helping hardest-hit

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP