A festival is a celebration. I'd love to celebrate freedom in Britain, but I'm not sure we still have it. Margaret would be horrified by how closeted real Conservatives are now in British institutions. In fairness, she would also despise them for accepting that. 

 

We still have enough freedom for this event to take place, I suppose. Attendees of working age are probably not mentioning their attendance to their HR department, however. Especially if they're in academia or the public sector. I, however, am retired and don't give a damn.

 

Margaret was Chancellor of Buckingham University. The current vice chancellor (the subject of a recent attempt at cancellation himself) told us in his welcoming address that people all over the world show him their picture of the Iron Lady handing them their degree certificate. It's a university set up to counter the takeover of established academia by Marxists. 

 

I joined the Conservative Party as a teenager when Margaret took over the leadership and left it when she was defenestrated by the Wets. Those were the only years in my life when the British Conservative Party had an ideology I could get behind. Or indeed any ideology at all. At her first Cabinet meeting as PM, Thatcher removed her copy of Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty from her handbag, slammed it down on the table and declared,

Tory wets of my acquaintance during my 11 year membership scorned the very idea of political principles. They saw the party as a machine for winning elections and thought its manifesto should contain whatever words in whatever order might serve that pragmatic goal. The idea of an ideology was, in their view, vulgar. But then, in their view, so was Margaret and so was I.

 

I am not the biggest donor to the Margaret Thatcher Centre but I was the first. I was present in Grantham when Donal Blaney announced he was founding it and went online from my phone to donate. His phone pinged and he announced my donation during his speech.

 

The pathetic failure of Britain's neglected infrastructure represented by the closure of Heathrow denied us a couple of the expected speakers but I still had a stimulating day. The most interesting discussion for me (though perhaps not for all the non-lawyers present) was on Whither the Rule of Law? I learned for example that a hearing in an Employment Tribunal (supposed to be quick, cheap justice for the wronged working man or woman) can now cost about £200,000 – and twice that if you need a KC. I was delighted to hear the practising barristers on the panel declare that the problem was too much law. Endless legislation and regulation has made everything so complicated that only the extremely poor (with access to means-tested legal aid) or the very rich can afford justice. I couldn't get a word in from the floor to quote Montesquieu, but will do so here. The problem is we've forgotten his wise advice that;

The law of unintended consequences means that laws meant to make justice better have made it unavailable. One of the barristers commented that in any given pub you can find men entitled to access to their children for example who simply can't afford to go to court. The same barrister, a gender-critical bisexual, said he would never be a KC because he doesn't meet the DEI criteria now in force. He added that the costs and delays in our courts – while mostly the fault of too much / too complicated laws – was also exacerbated by DEI requirements (designed and administered by a bureaucrat beyond political control) that make hiring judges unnecessarily difficult. Too much law plus too few judges means too little justice.

 

Toby Young of the Free Speech Union made an excellent speech and there were good panels featuring Tom Harwood and Nana Akua of GB News, Mahyar Tousi of Tousi TV, Andre Walker of Talk TV, Dan Wootton and David Campbell-Bannerman.

 

Allison Pearson of the Daily Telegraph spoke of her experience at the hands of Essex Police when she was accused of a hate crime and revealed that she is going to sue them (and their Chief Constable). I was surprised that this story was news to many of my neighbours. I fear I may spend too much time every day trawling political news. 

 

Greg Smith MP, a survivor of the Tory rout at the last election had good ideas for policies but no real answer to my question as to how – even if they were accepted by Blue Labour – the Conservative Party could expect to be believed. Their traditional electorate was furious with them. That was the message of the election and they still hadn't received it as far as I could see. They'd had plenty of chance (and a healthy majority) to implement his ideas, but had crawled to The Guardian instead.

 

The general view (very optimistic I think) seemed to be that this government is "the dead cat bounce of social democracy in Britain" and is so destructively incompetent that the Right will be forced to unite in 2029. The voters will have no patience with them if they allow their internal divisions to prevent the rout of Labour. This rather misses the point that the electorate had expressed that impatience already. Starmer got no more votes that Corbyn. His majority is not a result of voters turning to Labour, but of a furious rejection of the unprincipled, useless Conservatives. 

 

Let's hope tomorrow's sessions reawaken my optimism!