Back in 2012 I attended an earlier version of this event at the Barbican. It was depressing and things have not improved on the liberty front since then. In fact our “Conservative” government has made things considerably worse. This year's festival is at Church House in Westminster. 


Ben Delo opened the keynote by commending Claire Fox of the Academy of Ideas for staging these festivals. He then depressed me by citing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the beginning (rather than as seems to me more likely, the eventual end) of the right to free speech. It doesn’t help if the advocates of fundamental freedoms believe they are in the gift of governments, rather than being the inalienable natural right of every human. Where those rights are denied, it is governments that do so.

He and Claire Fox both referenced The Westminster Declaration, which may perhaps be a beginning in the fight back for free speech.  

In her keynote address, Fox spoke of the dark cloud over this event from the recent pogrom in Israel.

The first session I attended went straight to the point of my current despair by asking the question “who really rules today?”  Matt Goodwin author of “Values, Voice and Virtue” said there is a crisis of morality and authority among our ruling elites. Our old establishment was not really ideological. However from the 1970s we’ve seen its authority drain away. The new British Establishment that has replaced it is highly ideological. It is searching desperately for moral legitimacy after 40 years of failure on every front. Only 20% of the British public shares its values so we’ve now entered a post-democratic era in which voters feel both unrepresented and disrespected.

Pamela Dow, of Civic Future, an ex civil servant, said we might tolerate the elite more if they were elite. But they’re not. They’re hopeless. Her organisation was founded to change that;

Our goal is to identify and empower a wide range of talented young people with the tools to be effective in public service, in all its forms. We will host a range of events and activities to broaden and deepen the understanding and capabilities of all those in, or considering, public life. For example, we will convene informed debates on the defining political and philosophical issues of the day, and practical sessions on effective politics and government. 

Anand Manon was not convinced. He said talk about "elites" is an excuse for the incompetence of a very powerful government that prefers to do "soundbite politics" rather than govern competently. 

Harry Lambert of New Statesman said the problem wasn’t the cultural left but the economic right. He trotted out the old Labour line on redistribution of wealth by taxation as if it was just after the war. To listen to his naive nonsense, you'd never have believed that our oppressed productive minority is already taxed so heavily to fund a massive state that many are shrugging their shoulders and giving up. The poorest US State is now richer per capita than the UK.

My later question from the floor was to ask him where the time machine was parked that had brought him from 1948. Claire Fox, in the chair, accidentally revealed her idea of what taxes are for when she responded to my observation that I’d been taxed to death and my money given to people I detest by saying “I was with you until you said that - I’ve been on the dole a few times.” Of course it’s not benefit claimants I resent my earnings being given to, but such parasites as woke civil servants and state-funded social science  professors intent on destroying our civilisation!

Frank Furedi challenged Lambert's daft idea that the economic world was unaffected by the elites' culture wars by referring to the Harvard Business Review, which these days reads like it was written by a Marxist sociology lecturer. The “pronoun elite” is completely in charge. They seek cultural hegemony by demoting us from citizens to passive "stakeholders" in various neat categories, which (rather than reason or intellect) govern our every thought. The real question, he said, is how do we get our voice back so we can decide the future of our society.

All I really gained from the first session was that I need to read Matt Goodwin’s book.

There was some degree of agreement (except from the young idiot from the New Statesman) that we’d gone too far in suppressing speech. Even he, in fairness, said he didn’t defend the radical progressive extremists (though I suspect he just wanted to change the subject back to his pet theme of increased redistribution of wealth from "the rich" who will of course just sit still as the percentage of their earnings taken from them by state force is even further increased). I really wished I could introduce him to my many friends from Poland with whom I worked on reconstruction of their nation's economy after growing up under state socialism. Not that I think Lambert would learn anything from them, but just because they would find him hilarious!

The second session was about privacy. It was interesting but, as always, there was no clear plan as to how to solve the various problems. My impression was simply that I trusted no one on the panel to “solve” anything on this subject without creating much worse problems in terms of increased state power. We don't need government, from whom we really need privacy, to "protect" us from corporations who merely want to target us more accurately with advertisements for stuff we might (unlike most state "services") actually want.

After lunch, I changed to the economy strand to listen to discussion about ESG and whether it’s bad for business. I was able to offer an anecdote from my own business life on the subject. This was a more heartening discussion. Only one of the panelists made any attempt to justify ESG as a way to help business make better decisions. Most accepted (as did every questioner from the floor) that it was a burden on business, which tended to make everything more expensive to no measurable good effect. The general view seemed to be that ESG investing was a luxury that had thrived while money was cheap. As the cost of capital is now rising faster than at any time in history, it seems likely that this nonsense on stilts will be cut down. There is pressure on government to reform it. 

I was a business lawyer for decades and I literally don’t care what’s “good for business.” Businesses only exist to serve their customers well in order to deliver a return to shareholders on their investment. History shows us what’s best for those customers is for business to have as much competition (and therefore as many difficulties) as possible. What customers don't need is government adding to that burden by creating bullshit rules to make it look as though they're helping. That's what ESG is.

Just as most HR employees are, in truth, enforcement officials for labour laws and most Finance Department employees are tax collectors for VAT and PAYE income tax, ESG staff are – whether employees or consultants – state officials that companies are forced to pay for. If this hidden cadre of employees who do not serve businesses' customers, employees or owners in any productive way and exist only to exert control on behalf of the state was counted as part of the civil service, the true scope of state power would be horrifyingly apparent. 

I observed in this discussion that governments seem mostly to have given up on the traditional socialist goal of owning the means of production. They're happy to leave businesses in private hands as long as they are entirely directed towards the state's goals. There's a name for that corporatist approach and it's "fascism".

I spent the rest of the afternoon watching a recording of "Free Speech Nation" for GB News, presented by Andrew Doyle of Titiana McGrath fame. That will be televised this Sunday at 7pm apparently. It included a shocking interview with Australian MP Moira Deeming about her experience of being expelled from the parliamentary Liberal Party there, after being denounced by the party leadership as a Nazi. She plans to sue them for defamation and I hope she wins. 

Another interesting interview was with Melissa Chen and Faisal Saeed Al Mutar of Ideas Beyond Borders an organisation "founded by two immigrants to the United States from Iraq and Singapore who made their life mission to make critical thinking, liberty and science accessible to people worldwide". Apparently more books are translated into Spanish every year than have been translated into Arabic in the last thousand years and in Iraq (where Faisal was born) there are more books banned than are read. They seek to translate key censored texts to make them available to readers in countries where they are forbidden. Even in somewhere like Iran, people are able to use VPN to get around tech restrictions to access forbidden information.

Faisal offered the interesting perspective that he preferred to deal with open, strict censorship where he knew what ideas would get him into trouble than with the current cancel culture in the West where the boundaries are constantly shifting. 

My favourite part of the day was the interview with US philosopher (and cancelled academic) Peter Boghossian. In September 2021, he resigned from Portland State University, citing harassment and a lack of intellectual freedom. He explained to us that the university had simply made it impossible for him to do his job. He gave a harrowing account of process as punishment, explaining that repeated "investigations" into his alleged breaches had wasted huge chunks of his life. He didn't believe (though Governor DeSantis in Florida, among others, is trying) that it would be possible to regain control of the old universities in the States from radical "progressives". He thought it was going to be necessary to establish new institutions in parallel.

The lady sitting next to me had left her seat just before shooting began saying she'd be back in a moment and asking me to look after her bag. She seemed innocent enough but when she failed to return, I became concerned. Reluctantly, as I didn't want to disrupt the event, I spoke quietly to one of the GB News staff. I must say I was very impressed with how the matter was then handled. A few minutes later, two security guys showed up and discreetly asked me to identify the package I was concerned about. They then thanked me for my vigilance and quietly took it away. I don't think even the people immediately around me were aware that there'd been any kind of security problem. I stayed right to the end and the lady never did return. If I was mistaken about her, I hope she got her bag and coat back!

The tedious process of shooting and re-shooting the segments of the show caused a time over-run of more than an hour so I was late home tonight and exhausted. Still I managed to finish this blog– although it was after midnight before I posted it.

I plan to return for the second day and report my experience. 

Mark Littlewood opened the afternoon session. He spoke against the idea of untrammelled free speech. In private places, it’s more a question of property rights than morals. In the public square, much changed by social media, he doesn’t think it’s a legal issue either. It’s a cultural one and there’s a long, messy job ahead to change our culture.

Baroness Claire Fox and Mark Francois MP came to the point of the day under the heading “what can parliamentarians do?” Francois however didn’t address it. He just spoke about his Brexit book being turned down by all British publishers and advocated self-publishing on Amazon. Yay for his personal de-cancellation but he’d nothing to say about conquering it in general.

Fox was depressed in the wake of the recent pogrom in Israel by calls from all sides for more hate speech laws. The police have all the power they need. They just don’t enforce it — and certainly not consistently. As I have so often said here, she said we need fewer, better laws — properly enforced.

Still neither speaker really addressed the issue until a questioner asked about loss of democratic control of the civil service. In response to this Fox said it was more insidious than public servants simply refusing to enforce laws they didn’t like. They draft all the laws and have been warping them to be woke-compliant. The politicians were “too busy” to read them in detail she said, to a sharp intake of breath from the audience!

Rafe Heydel-Mankoo of the New Culture Forum said that cancel culture is the most powerful and effective weapon of the radical left. There is no path to victory unless young minds are won over. Our young are more left-wing than ever, and they’re not changing their minds as they used to. The battle has been lost in the primary and secondary schools even before they come to university. These are fragile, risk-averse children unaccustomed to living unsupervised. This makes them vulnerable to the woke mind-virus. Much in the same way that they suffer more physical allergies because they’ve been screened from infection in sterile environments.

The “woke madrassas” in his view are the teacher training colleges. They were fine when small and independent but have now been taken over by universities.  These should be closed and training should be done on the job in schools. All good ideas but hardly like to feature in the Labour manifesto on which the next government’s first King’s Speech will be based!

Nigel Farage was keynote speaker and on fine form  

Thirteen years into what’s laughably called a Conservative government the state has grown beyond our imagination. Drive your own taxed car down the Embankment at 23mph at 2am and you’ll get a fine. If you stole it however, nothing will happen. We’re punishing the good people not the bad.

He advised the TFA to resist digital currency. Control of your money is the ultimate control and it’s coming. We can blame the Marxists all we like, he said, but in his view;

Conservative cowardice is the biggest cause of cancel culture in our country today. 

He spoke of his most recent experience with Coutts and more than ten other banks when he tried to move his accounts. More than a million people have been debanked, which is the ultimate form of cancel culture.

Farage predicted the Tories will be crushed  at the next election. They deserve to be crushed and they need to be crushed so the pendulum can swing. A choice between “two cross-dressing parties” is no use and he predicts that after the Tories are smashed there’ll be a much needed rethink of what politics is about. It is a long game though and  you first have to win the battle of ideas.

Farage was followed by Nick Buckley, founder of Mancunian Way who was accompanied by Ben Jones a lawyer from the Free Speech Union (of which, like the TFA, I am a member).

The charity Nick founded fired him because he wrote a blog post criticising Black Lives Matter. He took on the charity with the help of the FSU and won. His rather optimistic view is that cancel culture is all just a fad and not to be taken seriously. From his own experience, the woke are bullies and fade away if resisted. His slogan is:

Be a ninja not a whinger.

by which he means don’t lose your job by full on confrontation with he woke in your HR but resist in small and subtle ways.

FSU’s lawyer reported they have dealt with 3,250 cases of people losing their jobs. The bad news is that it’s a bigger problem even than we fear, but the good news is that they have won 73% of those cases. 

Dr David Starkey said we are suffering from the casting down of heroic masculine courage in favour of the more feminine virtue of the Magnificat

The proud will be brought low, and the humble will be lifted up; the hungry will be fed, and the rich will go without (Luke 1:51–53)

We used to glorify heroism and need to do so again because freedom is not a birthright. It’s an achievement. It has to be won. 

We are ruled by bureaucrats and experts and forget history  China fossilised once the mandarinate — a bureaucracy — was established. Rome fell when the pay of its army was doubled. As for experts, an ancient philosopher told us

The judge of the meal is not the chef [the expert] but the eater.   

He said memorably that

Woke grows like fungus in the dark turpitude of bureaucracy.

We have put quangos and bureaucrats in charge of all the key decisions; ranging from the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England to Natural England on town and county planning.

He’s not as optimistic as Nigel that this can be turned around, but reminded us we are the only nation in the world ever to have reversed a revolution without outside intervention. Our present problems stem from changes made by New Labour. He asked why the conservatives have  not reversed all the terrible damage they did  

He stressed the difference between healthy capitalism and our present corporatism is a proper understanding of property rights, which we seem to have lost. He urged us to return to England’s key characteristics:

Freedom individuality and eccentricity!

I left with spirits lifted, but as I said to my near neighbour during a break, I had heard a great deal of analysis and some optimism but no actual plan. At best, I am persuaded that this horror can be undone, but I doubt I shall live to see it.

Lembit Opik, former LibDem MP spoke first. He’s joining The Freedom Association's council in a return to the issue — free speech — that brought him into politics. His family’s background in Soviet Estonia is why he cares about the issue. He spoke of training he had at the BBC not to challenge climate change, even with facts. He was rebuked by producers for pointing out to a climate change campaigner that the polar bear population was at a record high. It was true, but not ever to be said. Cancel Culture is about suppressing all arguments — good and bad — against the “liberal” (ie left) establishment narrative. 

He disagreed that cancel culture came from the US. Certainly the word “woke” did (a good word hijacked by bad people) but the ideas are thoroughly Soviet. 

The next speaker, Matt Goodwin is a politics professor who has moved from advising Labour and mostly speaking to the left to mostly speaking to people on the right. He hasn’t changed. The left has radicalised and closed itself off. Radical progressives probably represent 10-15% of society. They’re focused obsessively on race and rewriting history and they are prepared to suppress opposition in pursuit of social justice. They concern him, but he’s more concerned by the failure of the moderate left to oppose them. He’s particularly concerned about its effect in education. These ideas are being pushed heard in primary and secondary education.

I asked him if the ideological imbalance in academia was really an accident. He insisted there was no conspiracy.  The radical progressives were relentless and their opponents simply weren’t. Things are changing and non-woke academics are, for example, turning from the traditional universities and towards new institutions such as the universities of Buckingham and Austen. 

There is an argument that radical progressivism is filling the gap left by religion. Once people signalled virtue by reference to their religious piety.

The surprise guest at the event was Jacob Rees-Mogg. Out of complacency — total confidence in our constitution — he said we’ve neglected to protect it. There have been creeping law reforms that undermined it — eg the evolution of a privacy law inimical to free speech. 

He agreed with a questioner that the Online Safety Bill was a threat to free speech. It was almost impossible to oppose because it was presented as protecting children.

He presented himself as a victim of New Labour reforms that elevated quangos and over politicians and made it impossible to move away from left-wing policies. As he said, Brexit had removed all superior legal forces to parliament and created the opportunity to sweep bad laws away but no one challenged him as to why Conservatives had been in power so long without doing (as he said) enough or (as I would say) anything to do just that.

Eric Kaufmann, a professor much-cancelled at Birkbeck who has moved to Buckingham spoke about how woke our universities are. Only Buckingham in the UK has any academic diversity. Elsewhere his research shows leftists outnumber non-leftists in academia 9 to 1. Most professors would not hire a Conservative or (worse) Brexit supporter.  He said only government could fix that (which made me, if anything, gloomier).

Charlie Bentley-Astor, a recent Cambridge graduate, spoke of the situation there. She felt there was a “poverty of bravery” that prevented students from putting their heads above the parapet.  My own daughter who studied there too was clear that she would be penalised academically if she did so. With a dominant leftist majority in academia, I am not at all clear that legislation coupled with courage could make a difference. Students who speak up and go to Ombudsmen to uphold their right to do so may “win” only to lose when their degree is awarded.

The final session was about the limits on free speech. Tom Slater, editor of Spiked Online took the radical US style view, that all speech short of incitement, should be free. Lembit Opik was vaguer, but keen to advocate a push back.

I agree with Slater and was delighted to hear his view from the youngest person present, but can’t imagine any politician standing successfully on a platform to legalise hate speech.

Dr Alma Seghal Cuthbert, Director of Don’t Divide us, stood for the Brexit Party and experienced a “chilling effect” on her academic career in consequence. She spoke about being disinvited from an education conference because seven anonymous participants (from five hundred) claimed to be “scared” by Don’t Divide Us’s ideas on the subject of critical race theory.  She thought the fundamental problem was the prioritisation of emotional safety — by the way on a selective basis.

At the end of the morning session, I remain — alas — pessimistic. I hope for better this afternoon.

I am attending the Freedom Association's conference on this subject at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster today. I am here in the hope of recovering some optimism on this subject. As I wait for proceedings to begin I frankly despair.

It’s not a good sign that TFA had to conceal the location of the event until the last moment. Nor is the fact that, at 66 years old, I’m one of the younger people in the audience. It looks like a nostalgia-fest for what we’ve lost, rather than a rally to fight the good fight.

The usual suspects are here. David Campbell-Bannerman, TFA chair. Mark Littlewood, outgoing Director-General of the IEA. Baroness Fox of my home town in Wales, Director of the Academy of Ideas. Nigel Farage. Dr David Starkey. I’ve heard them all speak before. Their hearts are good, no doubt, but they (and I, in my tiny way) are the very people who — I fear — lost this battle before we even knew we were fighting it.

Hope springs eternal of course. I have never more desperately wanted to be wrong. Let’s hope I can report something to lift the spirits of the would-be free. Watch this cyberspace.

The Football Association was asked to light up the iconic arch at Wembley Stadium in the colours of the Israeli flag. They refused. This has been widely condemned. In my view sport should never "do" politics. When a friend asked me to write to the FA in support of the request to light up the arch, I politely refused on those grounds. So, in a sense, I think the FA is right. However, having virtue-signalled relentlessly on other non-sporting issues for years, there is something sinister about the fact that it won't in this case.

The FA had footballers kneel in solidarity with a single foreign criminal who was unlawfully killed, but won't express sympathy with more than a thousand murdered innocents. After the terrorist attack in Paris in 2015, the FA's officials lit up the arch in French colours. They were happy to express the support many of us felt for a nation that, if presented with a big red magic button that would erase England from history, would lose lives in the stampede to press it. Yet they choose to remain neutral between the vicious, anti-semitic, baby-butcherers of Hamas and their victims. 

It was undoubtedly a mistake ever to mix sport with politics. I should not be put into a position at Craven Cottage where the nice young asian guy who sits next to me has to wonder if I am a racist when I don't stand when our players "take the knee." My refusal to acquiesce in virtue-signalling at the behest of the Marxist monsters of BLM isn't racist at all but I am not at the Cottage for a political discussion. I'm there for the joy of sport and an escape from the tedium of my politically-polluted life. I deeply resent the Premier League, Football Association and indeed the club putting me in an awkward political position at a football match.

The truth is that the FA's inconsistency arises from cowardice. On the day of the Hamas invasion, its supporters were dancing for joy (as captured on video by Countdown's Rachel Riley and published on her Twitter feed) on a street 0.6 miles from where I live in West London. According to the 2021 census, our city's cultural diversity is enriched by the presence of 1.3 million adherents of "the religion of peace." Quite a few – it seems from such celebrations – take pleasure in Hamas barbarism. The FA is unsure of how many fall into that category and – given their history of violent response to perceived slights - is afraid to annoy them.

The FA might also be justified in worrying that The Metropolitan Police force service is so afraid of offending British Muslims that – if they did kick off at Wembley in the non-football sense – it wouldn't hold them to the same legal standards as other Londoners. I wouldn't personally be surprised to see the Met – firmly a part of Britain's Leftist Establishment – side with them.

I don't agree with those calling for the police to suppress pro-Hamas celebrations or demonstrations. Hamas is legally designated as a terrorist group in the UK and it is a crime to support them, but I think that's a legal mistake. They are no more revolutionary, violent or bloodthirsty than many social science lecturers in our universities and no-one is calling (nor should they) for their vile Marxist ideology to be suppressed. Besides, I welcome their free speech. As a practical matter, I need to know who are the murderous sorts among my neighbours. I need that knowledge to inform my decisions about my socialising, my shopping and indeed whether I choose to keep living where I do.

I have every confidence in the Israel Defence Force's ability to respond appropriately to Hamas. I am on Israel's side – as every civilised human should now be – and simply wish them (as they would wish themselves) a speedy victory with minimum bloodshed. I am more interested in what I have learned in the past week about the state of my own nation and its capital city. Evil is among us and our response to it is – as evidenced by the FA's pusillanimity – far too naive, timid and weak. I fear we are going to pay a price for that before too long.

I set out in Speranza (my 2009 Ferrari California) on May 21st to drive to Cannes via Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. Regular readers will recall it was quite an adventure. Speranza made it to Germany, where her brakes failed at 150mph on an autobahn. Exciting but not injurious — save to wallet and pride. 

I continued my journey in hire cars after she was recovered to the nearest dealer back in Luxembourg, where she remained until last Monday — almost two months!

The carbon ceramic brake disk that cracked is a “lifetime” item. It’s quite possible — as my car is approaching 100,000 miles — that I was the first customer ever to require a replacement. Many owners have a collection of several Ferraris with less mileage in aggregate than Speranza. She is a rarity for having been used as designed; a grand tourer, taken on grand tours. I can easily imagine Maranello having to order a pair of the disks from the manufacturer. For whatever reason, it took weeks.

Then diagnostics revealed two more issues. A worn wheel bearing needed replacing — another wait for parts. And a software update mandated by Maranello caused an engine sensor to fail. Fortunately that only required a software patch to fix – after yet another delay by Ferrari. If the responsiveness of their parts department reflects that of the Formula One team, it's no wonder no Ferrari since Speranza was built has been entitled to the "Constructors' Champion" badge she bears on her dashboard.

I flew to Luxembourg last Monday to collect her. I’ve put on a lot of weight post-COVID and post-WEXIT (my name — Wife Exit— for my divorce). Heathrow seemed bigger than I remembered and I was exhausted by I got to my plane. Sulking in metaphorical tents is good for neither physical nor mental health.

Public transport goes from not quite where you are to not quite where you want to be via places you've no desire to go. It was great to get back to independent private transport for the return journey. I must remember what that plane trip felt like though. In my heyday I flew several times a month and never once felt like that. It was quite a shock. If I’m to enjoy my remaining life, I clearly need to take better care of myself. 

I was unsure how I'd feel about driving Speranza after the late unpleasantness. I was done with the dealer within 90 minutes of landing so found myself with an afternoon to kill before dinner with my friends. So I drove out along the Moselle Valley towards Germany and enjoyed the wine country scenery. Monday was a bad day to do it. All restaurants and all but one of the vineyards were closed. I managed to buy some "thank you" wine for my host and then spent an hour at a view point overlooking the river. It was probably only 80 km or so, but by the end of it I was completely at ease with Speranza again. She was a joy – as she has been for most of the almost 90,000 miles I've driven her.

Arriving late afternoon at my friend's house, we had a glass before the other dinner guest arrived; a mutual Russian acquaintance from when I was my friend's bank's lawyer in Moscow. We spent a pleasant evening chatting in a delightful restaurant. We sadly remembered a time when we all thought – with what now seems foolish optimism – that Russia was becoming a normal country.

Our Russian friend has left his country. Having passed his language and other tests, he's waiting for his Luxembourg passport to come through. Russia doesn't do dual citizenships, so then he won't technically be Russian any more. He made no complaint, but talked cheerfully and knowledgeably about a wide range of subjects. Still, I felt for him. During twenty years as an expatriate I often enough missed my home culture. How much worse to be, not expatriated, but exiled?

The war in Ukraine has terrible consequences – and not just for the Ukrainians. As the truth slowly dawned on international investors, few of the Russian lawyers I trained to do such businesss were using those skills even before the war began. Now, it seems vanishingly unlikely that they ever will. They and the other citizens of one of the world's great cultures are suffering – as so often – because of the corruption at the heart of their polity.

I've no sympathy at all for the evil and/or clinically-insane Russian leadership. At the risk of being de-banked by some half-wit with the political understanding of a sixth-former, I do feel for the Russian people. They can't all decamp to Luxembourg.

Yes, I know the movie character was Ratched. Bear with me. According to Wikipedia, she is also;

a popular metaphor for the corrupting influence of institutional power and authority in bureaucracies

She's a symbol of what I want to write about today and her name echoes the essential problem. 

Sir Keith Joseph was a key influence on what became known as Thatcherism. He coined the phrase ratchet effect to describe the way in which each new Socialist government moved policy leftwards, whereas a Conservative government never moved it back. If the UK State was a car, then the Labour Party was the accelerator (gas pedal), the Conservative Party was the brake and there was no steering wheel.

The direction of political travel was never in doubt and only the speed could be adjusted by the electorate. Sir Keith's point, well-taken by Margaret and constantly railed at by Tory wets was that the ratchet had to be broken if the Conservatives were actually to move towards their goals. For all that Leftists call themselves "progressives" (perverting the language as they love to do in order to thwart honest discussion) real human progress should be in quite another direction.

Taken to its logical conclusion, the end result of the ratchet effect must be that everything either belongs to the state or is under state control. Democratic Socialists and Communists have always had the same ultimate goal. The former are just more patient. They will cheerfully discuss each step of the journey with the electorate, as long as the planned route never changes. All it takes to see the destination is to zoom out a little and observe the completely consistent direction they and all their predecessors have taken. 

Margaret's achievement in breaking the ratchet was significant. For a while, though she had no such intention, the Left even feared that it had been reset so that the wheel would turn the other way. Tony Blair certainly felt the need to reassure voters that Thatcher's reforms would not be endangered by electing the Labour Party under his leadership. He even claimed to be her ideological heir; a bold lie even by political standards. 

It has been clear for some time however that Sir Keith's ratchet has been refurbished, well-oiled and set back as it was before Thatcher. This is why, as I made clear in my last post, I had no interest in the Conservative Party's choice of new leader. It turns out I was wrong that it didn't matter at all, however. The choice of the political naïf Truss has at least shone a searchlight on the situation. She tried to be a sort of Thatcher mini-me and failed dramatically. At the first hint of any movement rightwards, all hell broke loose. Even though another self-absorbed leadership contest will surely scupper the Tories for the foreseeable future, her position is already in doubt. 

I am not sure if it needs a conspiracy theory to explain why a nation that keeps voting Conservative keeps moving leftwards. I don't believe there are dark cabals planning it. I don't think they're even needed. Someone like me, who believes – along with my namesake – that 

Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

is simply never going to apply for employment by a state as huge and pervasive as the UK's.

I have horrified state employees in conversation by saying, in perfect truth, that my conscience would not allow me to sleep at night if I had their job. Not because what they do each day is necessarily always bad, but because every penny they are paid to do it has been taken from others by force. My proudest boast is that every penny I ever earned came from contracts freely entered into by clients with choices. If I had ever worked for the state, that would not be true. 

So it's not surprising that, when the state apparatus has grown to be – as it is in the UK – a gorilla in a flea circus, that the people working for it are broadly in favour of a state on such a scale. No conservative or classical liberal could possibly wish for that, but it's the highest aspiration of a Leftist. So the Prime Minister may be "Conservative", her cabinet may have some "Conservatives", and the electorate may be mostly conservative by instinct, but the state apparatus rolls leftwards regardless. It's going to take leadership by someone with more of a personality than Truss to take on that mighty foe and win.

If you're in a minority in cabinet (and, if you're thinking at all, you probably are quite often) you must let your colleagues know about your concerns. However you mustn't say anything to undermine the agreed policy in public. You stand behind the decision. This isn't dishonesty in a broad sense; it's basic teamwork. Most voters have been part of a team in their lives and understand this well. A minister who thinks a policy is very wrong has the option to resign. If it's morally wrong or likely to cause serious damage to voters, that's what the minister should do.

"Cabinet responsibility" is therefore not a problem to voters. We get it. We would probably take against a minister who was disloyal in this way. We might even sympathise (while of course – for we are only human – enjoying the PM's discomfiture) when a dissenting minister briefs the press anonymously.

This is one reason why the recent Conservative Party leadership election has been so problematic for the government. Like a primary in the US, it has provided endless ammunition to the opposing party as candidates tried to differentiate themselves. A bit of Blue on Blue was inevitable. It's an index of the poor quality of the Reds that no more serious damage was done. The fact that modern Leftists seem to look more for opportunities to insult their opponents than to engage them in reasoned argument is a gift that keeps on giving.

Some interesting data emerged – for example as to the COVID 19 lockdowns – but the fact that the people claiming they'd opposed them were in Cabinet at the time – and didn't resign – prevents them gaining the moral high ground. We're still left feeling betrayed that the "the science is clear", "there is no alternative," "Save the NHS"  propaganda was a lie, of course. It just doesn't make us love the people claiming they always knew. And of course it's embarrassing data HM Opposition can't exploit, because its stance on democidal lockdowns was consistently "sooner, harder and for longer". 

As a supporter of Austrian economics and a proponent of minimal Government/maximal Liberty, I couldn't take seriously the various candidates' sloganising about free markets and free societies. The Johnson regime was wrong on pretty much everything but Brexit in ways that suggest that – though the Left can't win an election in Britain because most Brits are conservative – they're winning all the arguments in the corridors of power. Until a "conservative" government actively purges the Deep State including the Civil Service, the police, the NHS and the education "blob", it will always now be conservative in name only. To these "Conservatives", "Liberty" is a nostalgic name to call your daughter, not a principle to die for. 

On such issues, for example, as Net Zero (the ultimate cause of the current cost of living crisis;  the proximate cause being the actions of a Russian leadership emboldened by our suicidal energy policies) this Conservative Government is to the left of reality itself. The Deep State in Britain (the permanent establishment that is merely fronted by elected politicians) is to the left of the Chinese Communist Party. It doesn't care who the Prime Minister is. It doesn't need to. 

So no, I can't get excited about a change of PM. It's as interesting and important as changing the figurehead on a tall ship. The UK Ship of (Deep) State will sail on serenely to the nation's doom. Liz Truss might be slightly more aerodynamic than Bunter Johnson, but not enough to make a difference to a ship so vast, clumsy and barnacled.

Nothing has changed and I see no reason to hope that anything will until it's too late.

Celebrity gossip is not my thing. This case has been particularly unedifying. In a rational world, people would now pay less attention to the opinions of play actors, having seen what shallow, narcissistic souls (and I speak as a devoted theatre person who admires their professional skills) they often are.

What has been interesting about the trial is the MSM vs Social Media aspect of it. Wounded journos bemoan the fact that people have followed the trial – not through the lens of their analysis and opinion – but via such odd channels as TikTok. I understand their point of view. They are professionals and would like people to trust them. However, they just don't seem to understand the role they played in losing that trust. They would do better to work hard to win it back, rather than insult the customers they've so clearly lost. The intense social media interest in a defamation trial shows the demand for coverage is there. Perhaps they should begin to think about how best to meet it? No-one (as the Remain campaign has still not learned) was ever insulted or abused into agreement. It's just bad advocacy. 

I have watched a couple of the videos of which they complain out of curiosity. They consisted of people I had never heard of pointing fingers and raising eyebrows in the corner of a screen showing video from the court. Every so often they'd point downwards to a "subscribe" button. Having practised law myself, I was just as unimpressed as the journalists with this approach to court reporting. Unlike the journalists, I recognised that their customers' preference for it is a profound critique of the MSM. Just how much trust have you lost, dear journalists, that people trust these clowns more?

I formed a strong suspicion that the "influencers" in question had a very limited understanding of what was going on. That didn't particularly concern me. Most people don't understand most laws and still less most court procedures. That "influencers" can make money grimacing thus doesn't bother me. Good luck to them. What was really amusing however was the reaction on social media to the outcome of the trial. The "believe the victim without ever establishing they were a victim" mob is in uproar. Some hilariously misguided points are being made.

Firstly this bubble of fanatics is convinced that the ravings of their social media foes during the trial somehow influenced the outcome. If only people had read their tweets and not those of the Nazis*, Ms Heard would have won. Firstly, she didn't entirely lose. Mr Depp's suit succeeded. She did defame him. Part of her counter-suit succeeded. He did defame her. Whatever damages he wins will be offset by the damages she wins. They've both damaged their careers with this nonsense and (as so often) only the lawyers have really won. As a retired lawyer, I am relaxed about that. I am confident both legal teams will make better use of these idiots' wealth than they would have done themselves. I see excellent private educations in their offsprings' future!

Secondly, the jurors were among the few people in America without access to the social media (or indeed the mainstream media) coverage. They were probably (statistically) also among the majority of Americans who don't pay much attention to the enraged rants of people correcting other people's errors on the internet. The jurors formed a view on the evidence presented to them in court. They did so with guidance from the judge as to its relevance. Legal process is not perfect in America or anywhere else but it wouldn't have to be very good to be a more reliable route to truth than Twitter etc.

I read an exchange today where someone told a tweeter saying the jury had not believed Ms Heard that it might be true "in his bubble" but evidence from agencies in the field proved otherwise. I have never seen a point more spectacularly missed. Statistical evidence from social work or law enforcement agencies in the field may or may not prove that most domestic abusers are male and most victims female, but that says literally nothing about the facts of this (or any other) specific case. That some women are abused does not prove this one was. 

When studying law I was taught that modern civilisation began when legal relations stopped being determined by status and were instead determined by contract. Much energy is now being expended to reverse that. Rather than reviewing their evidence to determine what happened between two equals in law, we are being asked to accept that Ms Heard is telling the truth because she's a woman and that Mr Depp is an abuser because he's a man. Let's pass over for the moment that the very people insisting women can't lie can't define a woman. They are essentially reviving the medieval concept of "nobility" to ascribe inherent moral superiority to new categories of nobles. 

Surely they can see this is a route back to the "status" oppressions of old? If someone is always to be believed because of their status (rather like a feudal prince or lord) they will be able to oppress those of lesser status with false accusations. As in the story of Robin Hood, where a lie about the outlaw's father allowed a superior lord to seize his land, so modern lesser humans will lose out to unscrupulous members of the new "nobility".

Economic equality is a crock of shit. All attempts to enforce it will create poverty at best. Equality before the law, however, is the beating heart of a healthy civilisation. If you are claiming legal privilege on the basis of your status being anything other than just "human", you are an enemy of civilisation itself. What are now called "protected characteristics" may (or may not) be significant politically but, to be just, the law should be blind to them.

*Anyone who disagrees with them.

I practised law in Central and Eastern Europe. My old firm had offices in both Moscow and Kyiv. I lived in Warsaw (11 years) and Moscow (7 years). The region is where most of my friends are, including both Russians and Ukrainians.

I am pleased to see some of the former putting dove of peace emblems on their social media profiles. It says much about Russia that I worry it may have adverse consequences for them. One of my Ukrainian friends was interviewed on BBC radio recently. It was chilling to hear his usual calm, reasonable tone as he talked of joining a citizens militia and preparing to resist invasion. He and I were law partners. I fear for his safety and that of his family. He was born to a Ukrainian family in Canada and had the option to leave. I respect and admire his decision to stay and fight. I hope, in his position, I would have his courage. As his friend, I wish he was in Canada.

I hoped against hope that Putin was sabre-rattling. Part of the secret of his success has always been that, one way or another, he keeps Russia in the western news, which soothes his electorate. Why? Because it was a shock to their collective psyche to descend from being one of two super-powers to just a regular nation with an economy the size of Belgium's. Britain struggled psychologically in descending from being the greatest empire in history to just another G7 nation, but we had decades to adjust. We had time to build such institutions as the Commonwealth to soothe the jangled psyches of citizens used to red world maps in their classrooms. Russia had only days.

I am not excusing Putin's aggression by saying the West has made terrible mistakes in handling the demise of the USSR. They flowed not from malice but from a naive, innocent and as it turns out optimistic belief that Russia would rapidly become just like us. Fukuyama's book The End of History and the Last Man (published as I moved to Warsaw) pretty much summed up our leaders' attitude in that respect. The West simply did not feel the need to take the Russian elite's paranoid views on NATO seriously. It saw Russia just as a new, economically-insignificant, member of the Free World. 

NATO was an anti-Soviet defensive alliance. Its weaponry was trained on Russia and the Warsaw Pact. When the USSR ended, it should probably have been disbanded precisely because Russia's military and intelligence communities (who, unlike in other Warsaw Pact countries, were not purged after the fall of the USSR) had grown up thinking of it as "the enemy." They felt threatened by it. That feeling was unjustified. NATO was a defensive alliance with a "no first strike" doctrine. It poses no threat to Russia now and, in fact, never did. The feeling is real though. More accomplished diplomats than ours would have understood its significance.

If post-Soviet Russia's economy had been bigger, it might have been listened to. Ignoring the fears of its generals and spies because it was now a country that didn't matter very much seems in retrospect to have been an error. It won't help a paranoiac to laugh and say he doesn't matter enough for anyone to be out to get him.

This became a worse (but still unrecognised) problem when Putin and his chekisti (ex-KGB men) came to power. The military, intelligence and political communities were in practice just different arms of the Communist Party in Soviet times. Real democratic politics was in its infancy when Putin came to power. Once he was in the Kremlin, Russia's political elite was once more completely aligned with the attitudes of old KGB guys like him.

I suppose we in the West thought we could just rewrite NATO doctrine and retarget its weaponry to handle other threats. NATO worked, so why not repurpose it? The other Warsaw Pact countries, after all, cheerfully applied to join. I was in Poland when that happened and can assure you my friends there still saw it (having had the same education as their Russian contemporaries) as an anti-Russian alliance. That's exactly why (knowing Mother Russia rather better than we did) they wanted to join! I mentioned to a person I met from the Foreign Office at the time that I thought it was a mistake because Polish attitudes were (a) entirely contrary to NATO doctrine and (b) likely to fuel Russian paranoia. She said (I quote from memory, but I am confident it's pretty accurate);

The Foreign Secretary privately agrees with you but the Cabinet doesn't. Anyway the Americans wouldn't hear of excluding Poland.

So while we in the West sincerely saw NATO expansion as harmless (and would probably have accepted Russia as a member, with some conditions) the Russians didn't. Neither did some of their former allies who were joining it – and the Russians knew that. We are not responsible for their paranoia, but we did feed it. 

That said, Putin is lying comprehensively in his depiction of NATO. There's a useful (and very mild) web page of refutations from NATO itself, which is well worth a read. He is just spinning a yarn to justify doing what he wants to do. He's pretty clearly expressed his view that the Ukraine has no right to exist as an independent nation. My hopes have failed. He's about to fix that "error" and, in so doing, write himself into Russian history as (he thinks) a hero. 

The Putin of my days in Moscow was cleverer than this. He knew that rattling his sabre was enough. I fear that his isolated life for so long among people too scared of him to tell him he's wrong has caused him to lose his mind. I don't fear for the West, which could defeat his armies as readily as we could defeat those of Belgium, I do fear for my friends in the region.

I explained to a Ukrainian lady I met yesterday that – while I could understand if she had no time for that at the moment – I feel sorry for the Russian people. They are a wonderful, cultured people who have almost always been badly led because of endemic corruption. The end of the USSR didn't end that, as anyone who'd read Gogol could have predicted. Russia didn't stop being a problem to the West when the USSR fell. It may prove to become a worse problem now because the old Communist leaders always responded rationally to circumstances. I fear this madman won't. 

The West's leaders must perform better now than they have so far because how they respond could expose the world to much more than the loss of Ukraine's independence.