When I returned to Britain after twenty years abroad, I found myself widowed and living alone in a London very different from the place I was working when I went abroad in 1992. I would ride the 94 bus to town, only hearing the English language on the recorded announcements. Buses and tube trains, which I remembered as being quiet enough to work on, were a clamour of every language but my own. Where, I wondered, were the English?

I had been home for a year before I realised that a good number of people on the bus were as monastically silent as me. Looking around at them I realised we were here. We’re just still quiet. Too nice to say “shush” to the first noisy incomer to ignore our cultural practices, we were now doomed to be inaudible in our own capital. When I had an Indian girlfriend (later, briefly, my wife) I mentioned it to her. The next day she reported that she’d discussed it with all the other foreign students on her masters course and that they’d had an “aha” moment. So that’s where the natives are, they’d said!

I remembered this at the rally in Hyde Park today. On the 94 bus there, I’d googled it and found no sign it was happening. The Met had asked the organisers not to publish the location so that the pro-Hamas “protesters” they so assiduously protect didn’t threaten our (or more likely their officers’) safety. I wondered - denied all modern means of publicity - if anyone would be there. 

I needn’t have worried. There was a large, multi-generational, polite and well behaved crowd to listen to the Israeli ambassador and other speakers remember the pogrom of a year ago tomorrow.

The UK I grew up in is still here, though you’d never guess it from the clamour of the MSM, our terrorist—sympathising government or social media. We’d talked to each other, exchanged private messages and kept the whole thing — amazingly — off the internet. We’d been sure enough we could do it that families had showed up with their grannies and their infants without fear of the swastika-waving “we love Hezbollah” fascistic barbarians who had owned London’s streets yesterday. 

I am not able to stand very long these days and after a short time I needed the loo. I hate being old. Having found relief, I sat in light rain on the nearest free bench to the event and watched Londoners of middle-Eastern appearance and Muslim garb walk by, horrified, at the sight of a sea of Israeli flags in Hyde Park. They’d clearly had no idea it was going to happen.

Part of me hates that secrecy was needed. Londoners should be able to show their support for civilisation as loudly and proudly as our barbarian cohorts show theirs for its enemies.  I just loved the fact that we’d been able to organise in the face of such obstacles — and that so many of us showed up to stand in the rain, remember the victims of a pogrom and — so differently from the pogroms of old — show support for an army of Jews equipped to fight back and defeat their enemies.

I am not Jewish as many of the attendees were but I felt  happy to be among my people. My people in the sense of civilised Londoners, free of hatred and political extremism, doing the right thing for no better reason than that it was the right thing. 

Remember 7.10. Stand with Israel. Because it’s right and because — if she falls — she won’t fall alone. 

PS. It seems I did stay to the end. I listened to the speeches at a distance from my rainy bench and the event is now ending with the national anthem. You won’t hear God Save the King at a pro-Palestine rally, that’s for sure. Israel still exists and so — for now — does Britain. 

Margaret Thatcher famously quoted Kipling's Norman and Saxon to President Mitterand of France in an EU meeting;

The Saxon is not like us Normans. His manners are not so polite.
But he never means anything serious till he talks about justice and right.
When he stands like an ox in the furrow – with his sullen set eyes on your own,
And grumbles, 'This isn't fair dealing,' my son, leave the Saxon alone.

She was trying, perhaps not as delicately as her diplomats would have wished, to explain how the apparently calm British will react – eventually – to being wronged. 

I spent twenty years in three other countries and worked closely in business with people from many more. I have often smiled to myself since returning when I hear British people speak of our unique sense of fair play. It's not unique at all. Everyone has it. We do not own fairness. We do not own tolerance.

We do, however, traditionally pride ourselves on both and the way we see ourselves has shaped our reactions over the last twenty-five years as we welcomed more immigrants than in the previous two millennia. A few years ago I listened quietly to a Bangladeshi friend – a would-be human rights lawyer – talk about racism in our country. I asked her where in the world was a better place to live as a member of an ethnic minority. On reflection, she agreed with me that there is nowhere.

I am not saying we couldn't treat each other better. Of course we could and should try. But let's take a moment, as our streets burn and our elites condemn us as far-right racists, to be proud of how we've behaved in general towards so many new arrivals in such a short time.

Britain, like Europe's other social democracies, was, when this process began, not producing enough children to maintain our population. That wasn't intrinsically a problem. Depopulation would mean cheaper land and housing, more room for nature and a cleaner environment for example. It was however a major problem for our political elites because of what Nye Bevan called "the big dirty secret about the National Insurance Fund." Which is, there is no f***ing fund.

The "from the cradle to the grave" welfare state was a mis-sold insurance product. We and our employers paid something called National Insurance on our salaries, which was supposed to fund benefits when we were sick, unemployed or too old to work. However, none of that money was ever actually set aside and invested. Politicians spent it in ways they thought would win votes. They counted – like the founders of a Ponzi scheme – on future contributors. When they realised those contributors weren't coming in sufficient numbers, they knew their scheme would collapse. The demographic crisis was theirs.

One day history may reveal which politician in the capital of an old European empire realised there was a ready supply of workers in the former colonies. People who spoke our languages and were familiar with our systems of government – because both had been forced on their ancestors. It was a perilous idea that may yet prove to be the end of European civilisation but he must have looked like a genius to his peers.

The doors were opened and cheap labour flooded in. From the lofty heights where the elites survey us, it looked like a perfect solution. On the ground, not always so much. Mostly we've been welcoming, accepting and tolerant. We've sometimes even gone beyond tolerance and flattered our new arrivals that they've enhanced our magnificent old culture with their jerk chicken and curries. 

Yet already when I was a youngster practising criminal law problems had begun to emerge. A custody sergeant with whom I used to chat when waiting to see clients in the cells told me suicide rates among Muslim girls in our Midlands city were disturbingly high. Asked why that was, he said they were not suicides, but honour killings – the first time I'd heard that phrase. No-one, he said, commits suicide by pouring paraffin over themselves and setting themselves alight. It's just too painful.  Muslim men were killing their daughters and sisters. Asked why there were no prosecutions, he said senior police officers made it clear to their subordinates that it was "racist" to suggest the dead girls' families' stories of suicide were untrue.

Fresh out of my university law faculty, I sneered that his bosses were right and he was a racist. I will never forget the last words he said to me;

Young man, then you're part of the problem.

And I was. In that moment, I'd turned away from murdered women to preserve my smug world view. Just as, decades later, council staff and police officers in cities all over Britain turned away from young girls groomed and raped by Muslim men, for fear of being called bad names.

Decades later, our elites are still sneering. Yes, skin colour is irrelevant to moral worth. Yes, other religions can and should be tolerated. Yes, immigration can be a good thing – if managed properly. Our island story is peppered with immigrants who made this a better place. But flooding the country with people who don't even aspire to share our values and doing so at a speed that gives no chance – even if we were trying – to assimilate them into our society, was always crazy.

We've long been cowed into submission. We watched as our present PM "took the knee" in solidarity with one black American thug who sadly died an unlawful death, when he'd said not a word about myriad British victims of grooming gangs or honour killings. We watched swastika-bearing pro-Hamas protestors be protected by police from "obviously Jewish" passers-by who might upset them. We watched police run meekly from violent ethnic minority protests against children being taken into care and heard our elites make excuses. We watched our authorities cave into that violence and hand those children back.

Then, when three innocent girls were recently murdered by a second-generation immigrant, we watched the ferocity of the police response to protests. We thought they'd gone soft. We thought they didn't know how to respond to illegal violence. We were wrong. They know how to do it but only to those who challenge the state's political narrative.

It's been called "two tier policing." That is a mild term indeed for open, shameless injustice. Call it what you like, to come back to Kipling, it isn't fair dealing. That's why anger – simmering quietly for so long – is boiling over now. Terrible things may be done, which I will not support or excuse. I am not going to stoop to our elites' disgusting level by excusing wickedness on identarian grounds. I will just say the British State created this dangerous situation.

Our country didn't become the best place to be in an ethnic minority because we are bad people. Calling us bad names and unleashing the state's thugs on us for crimes so readily excused in others is unjust. The government never shuts up about equality, but the most important equality of all is equality before the law. When that fails, as it is failing, there is good reason to ask once again what it really means to be British – and this time get the answer right. 

Firstly, some sad news. Some of you will  – like me – have once followed JMB's Blog Nobody Important. It's open only to invited readers now but back in the heyday of blogging (when we all thought citizen journalism was going to change the world) you will remember her often mentioning her husband, whom she dubbed "The Old Scientist". I am sorry to report that he has passed away at the age of 89. I had the pleasure to meet him just once, when I stayed at their home in Vancouver on my North American road trip in 2013. He was a decent man who lived his life well and I feel for my friend in her loss.

Secondly, as I seem to have exposed more of my personal life than usual of late, just a brief report that – though my situation is as sad as before – I am getting on with my life and feeling better. I had a good run in Speranza to visit my parents last weekend. There are not many Ferraris in the world with over 91,000 miles on the clock, but (touch wood) she's in fine fettle and running well. I don't know why I don't drive her more. Call me shallow and materialistic, but she lifts my spirits every time. It is hard to feel sorry for yourself on the open road at the wheel of a bella macchina. I can't wait for borders to be properly re-opened so I can visit my friends on the Continent. 

Thirdly, a brief "state of the nation" summary from my point of view. If you think I am wrong, please tell me. Trust me; I would love to be wrong. 

It is gradually dawning on the British public that they've been had over COVID. They still don't tell the pollsters so but it's becoming an object lesson in the difference between stated preferences (which often signal "virtue" or seek to give the questioner what s/he wants) and revealed preferences (shown by how we behave in practice). For example, when out and about in London it's clear that only state fanatics and submissives are still wearing masks. I dutifully obeyed when on public transport in London for most of the Scare, but now I just carry one to wear if challenged by an official. Most travellers are not wearing them and the submissives now dare to do no more than cast a stink-eye. I hope the divisive hatreds stirred up by Government propaganda will now die down but I fear that many friendships have been irremediably broken. 

Most of the West panicked in a very similar fashion, though Florida has thankfully provided a control group for an experiment that would otherwise have lacked one. As data reveals the ineffectiveness of non-medical interventions (the use of state force) we can therefore expect a united front from the global establishment and its lickspittles in the media. Data will be spun. Evidence will be bought, paid for and rigged. Every government will point at all the others and say "we followed global best practice based on the data we had at the time." That may have been true for a month or two at the beginning but it's clear now that the British Government, for example, knew damned well that its tyrannical measures were not necessary. The real scandal of "partygate" is not that Downing Street civil servants at the heart of the state apparatus ignored the law. It is that their conduct reveals they knew their propaganda was false and/or wildly exaggerated. 

If they believed what they told us, the law would have been irrelevant because they would have been too scared not to comply. 

The British Establishment is safe however. Not least because, as it metaphorically thrashed the British public, HM Opposition's only complaint was that the whip was not thick enough, was not applied soon enough and was wielded with insufficient vigour. The Labour Party is not going to hold HM Government's feet to the fire for forgetting our every liberal tradition because HMG's ripostes will all be examples of Labour's demands for more, more, more state violence. 

It's hard to say now (as I have believed my whole life) that Labour cares less about Liberty than the Conservatives. I am not sure the latter has left any space at the authoritarian end of the political spectrum for Labour to occupy. The "Conservative" knee-jerk reaction to a perceived threat was to boss us all about in excruciating detail, while borrowing on a colossal scale to throw public money at the problem. If a Labour manifesto were ever to be written in plain English, that's pretty much what it would say. As "Conservative" support for government tyranny weakened, Boris Johnson, in effect, became the Leader of the Labour Party – herding its lobby-fodder to vote for his measures. Every time he wrote about Liberty (and he has done so many times in his career as a journalist) he lied. He may be the cleverest PM we've ever had, but he's also (and I recognise this is a huge claim) the least principled.

Intelligence without principles is more dangerous than the politicians' usual dozy uselessness. I see no better replacement from either side of the House, but he must go. 

I cannot imagine ever bringing myself to vote again. I have always voted (as I remember explaining to my Polish teacher as she prepared to vote for the first time in the immediate post-Communist era) in the cynical manner of an intelligent citizen of a long-standing democracy. I know them all for rogues. Their aspiring to have power over their fellows while living on them parasitically reveals them as such. So I have always voted for the robbers who would steal – and the thugs who would bully – less. I never saw my vote (except perhaps during the Thatcher years) as anything more than a damage-limitation excercise. When push came to shove, however, it seems – even in my world-weary cynicism – I was deluding myself.

Can we hope for any useful lessons to be learned from the pan-panic? When the butcher's bill is received for the non-COVID patients killed by state action, will it give politicians pause for the next emergency? We can hope so. I fear what they have mostly learned, however, is that if they deploy their psychological-warfare "nudge" units effectively enough, they can get us to put up with far more than they'd previously dreamed of. Buckle up, friends. I suspect you're going to see more of your governing classes than you previously feared.

Reader Ian emailed me a question and was kind enough to hope it would provoke a post. It has. His email was long but the crux of it was this;

Why do you think commentators are so keen to present the "anti-vax" side as deranged?

 

The entire public debate seems to be "they work" so "you should take it" and if not you are an idiot who wishes harm on others.

To call the Benn Act the “Surrender Act” is to incite violence against those who enacted it, according to Labour. The Act was designed (as its sponsors would tell you) to ensure the UK does not leave the EU without some variant of the “withdrawal agreement” previously “negotiated” by Mrs May and thrice rejected by this Zombie Parliament. That agreement was famously described by former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis as;

”...a deal that a nation signs only after having been defeated at war”

So, if accurately describing an Act of Parliament is all it takes to provoke anger against you, perhaps that anger is righteous? If you are prepared to enact all sorts of radical policies on the basis of mere pluralities, but thwart the decision of an actual majority of the British People, then perhaps you have invited their wrath?

Neither the Conservative Party nor Labour has, since the War, ever secured a majority of the national vote. The Conservatives secured 55% in 1931.

Labour’s highest percentage post-war was 48% in 1951. The Conservatives’ highest share of the vote was 49.7% in 1955. Neither has achieved 52% post-war and no likely victory in the imminent General Election will give a popular mandate approaching that.

If the Liberal “Democrats” win a majority in Parliament and revoke the Article 50 notice, 40-something percent of the electorate will have thwarted 50-something percent. The anger then would be hard to contain and would be stoked to dangerous levels by the smug triumphalism of the Remain Ultras and the EU imperialists. You saw their sneering grins outside the Supreme Court this week. You saw Verhofstadt’s tweets. Imagine them if they win.

The Referendum was necessary precisely because the constitutional issue of EU membership cut across party lines. A big majority was secured for Remain in 1975 (including my very first vote) because the “Common Market” was seen as a benign liberalisation of international trade. Discontent was seething at the steady mutation of that Common Market into a proto-state. No government had ever asked the British People to approve that change. Most indications were that they wouldn’t have approved.  

Leavers ranged from libertarians like me, through patriotic statists of right, left and centre to the hard left of the Labour Party and indeed the Communist Party. Reasons for leaving ranged from principled objections to an over mighty state to a desire to escape EU restrictions on “state aid” that prevented an even mightier state. That’s why, when Remainers ask “...but what do Brexiteers want?” we can’t answer with a political programme. Our only honest answer is “...whatever the future political direction of the UK might be — it should be decided by people we can sack if they annoy us.”

Boy oh boy, are the people in charge in both Westminster and Brussels annoying us now! We want an election to sack as many of them as we can. For so long as they deny us that, they are relying on our decency and good manners to sleep easily in the beds we have feathered so lavishly for them. They’d better hope we are more decent than them and have far better manners than they have exhibited in their sneering, supercilious and dismissive campaigns against us. And far better manners than Labour’s Shadow Chancellor.

The violence of his discourse makes “humbug” seem rather gentle, no? But then it is always “one rule for us...” with them. 

It used to be obvious in England that a good person was a law-abiding one. I was brought up to see the police as my friends and my protectors. I hate that I don’t feel that way now.

There was no road to Damascus moment. I had no personal bad experience with a police officer. I don’t think the police (apart from some senior officers far closer to being politicians than coppers) are to blame.  Rather there has been a decades long Chinese water torture of political “reforms”. Some were driven by the cynical “identity politics” of the Western Left; designed to set brother against brother and sister against all brothers so as to create conflicts only greater state power can resolve. Others, like this one, were political stunts to play on our instincts to win votes.  

We all agree that every human life is of equal value before the law. Right? Yet, shamefully, that’s no longer the view of the English Law in practice. To kill or injure a straight white male carries a lower sentence than to kill or injure someone whose protected status makes hurting them a “hate crime” for example. The law in effect now values members of certain ethnic groups, women, the members of one religion and non-heterosexuals more highly. Those who preach loudest for “equality” have long sought — cynically or stupidly — to undermine the only equality that matters; equality before the law. 

Boris’s latest trick along these lines — “life means life” when sentencing those who kill infants — is cynical not stupid. We are programmed by nature to love and protect not only our own young but those of all humans. For many of us that spills over into an urge to protect any childlike creature; whether a vulnerable adult human or a non-vulnerable adult panda whose markings make its eyes look big (a psychological trigger because babies are born with adult size eyes). “Think of the children” is such a common political ploy precisely because one of our strongest instincts is to do so.

A Government source told The Sunday Telegraph:

“Most people think all parties and the courts have lost the plot on sentencing. We agree with the public.”

So do I. But I also believe every human life is of equal value. Sentences should (all other things being equal) be equally severe no matter who the victim is. The government’s other recent stunt — more severe punishments for those who attack police — is from the same immoral playbook. They pick a group we favour; brave coppers, cute little children, and then signal their virtue by passing laws to “protect” them. Oppose such reforms, as I am doing here, and you bar yourself from public office. Congratulations. You’re too ethical to be a politician. 

Don't oppose such reforms however and the criminal law gradually becomes a source of societal resentments and injustices. Since its purpose is assuage resentment and crush injustice, that’s a problem, no?

I try not to be provoked by ill-judged political outbursts by my friends on social media. Life’s too short to fix everything someone gets wrong on the internet. Or so my wife tells me. Today, for example, I almost wasted an hour of my life responding to attacks on Jacob Rees-Mogg on my personal Facebook page. This was from friends (one of whom is an English journalist in Russia) commenting on this article in The Independent about the style guide JRM issued to his parliamentary staff, which was leaked to ITN.

My journalist friend said it reminded him of the forlorn attempts of the Académie Française to hold back changes in the French language. One of his friends essayed a witticism by posting this image

Fair enough, that’s a mildly amusing comic exaggeration but JRM, while not a libertarian, is very much a small state man. Unlike his authoritarian opponents in both his party and others, he wants fewer rules and less state interference with personal choices. It’s ridiculous to compare an office memo to the control-freakery of the Académie Française. He’s not laying down the law, just giving stylistic guidance to his employees. Write to him in your preferred style and they’ll now politely respond to you in his. Where’s the story here?

Yet class-obsessed (though disproportionately posh) journalists have apparently spent hours counting how many times Hansard features JRM using expressions he’s asked his staff to avoid. I understand they’re bored of Brexit. Aren’t we all? But if a free press has value (and I think it does) this strikes me as a poor example of it.

JRM is eccentric. He’s different. He adds to the rich and varied warp and weave of our wonderful society. He very much enhances its cultural diversity, in fact. But as his politics don’t suit the media hive mind, look how intolerant of “difference” journalists truly are. One extra space behind a full stop and he’s a dangerous reactionary!

Let me try to match my friend in Moscow in the field of OTT analogies. It reminds me of how the gentlemen of the press piled in behind Carl Beech when he falsely accused many Tories (and one — Jewish — Labourite) of sexual abuse and even murder. Never mind the facts, never mind the effects on the people concerned and their families. There’s the hated “other” in our sights. Attack!

So much for the kinder, gentler politics the Magic Grandpa promised  

These of course are the very same journalists who first systematically ignored and then, when the story broke, downplayed statutory rapes by the thousand so as not to criticise cultural difference in England’s poorer towns. These are the same journalists so carefully weighing the pros and cons of the Jessica Yaniv story in Canada (or in the case of Canadian media so carefully ignoring it). Such courage! Such independence of thought! What was that old rhyme again?

You cannot hope
to bribe or twist,
thank God! the
British journalist.

But, seeing what
the man will do
unbribed, there's
no occasion to.

There. I haven’t wasted that hour. I’ve made a blog post from it. Now shall I send my friend in Moscow a link to it on Facebook ....?

Democracy does not determine right and wrong. Democratic outcomes are not necessarily correct. If you live in an unfettered democracy like that of the United Kingdom, you will often find yourself on the wrong side of majority decisions that are misguided at best and quite often wicked. Classical liberals must be careful of crowing about "the will of the People" when they find themselves on the right side of a vote, because we are far more often on the wrong side. 

Opinion polls suggest that relatively few Britons support free-market economics, freedom of expression or even (apart from their own) private property. A majority of "Conservative" voters, for example, seem to support Labour's new policy of issuing unpaid-for shares to employees and appointing trade-union directors to company boards. Those shares will not be "free." Their issue will dilute the value of existing shares. The value they represent will have been taken by force from the company's owners. Also, when investors find companies with employee shareholders less attractive, the value of the company will be further reduced. Appointing employees whose interests conflict with theirs will have negative consequences to the shareholders who own those companies. If they wanted such directors, they could have appointed them at any time. It is said that Labour intends to have employee directors trained by the Leftists of the Trade Union movement, so they will (like the party under its current leadership) be hostile to the very concept of capitalism.

No amount of democratic perfume can make such theft and economic vandalism fragrant. It's immoral. It's wrong. And yet the national debate is not about ethics but practicalities. If a mugger steals your watch at gunpoint, you don't reserve judgement on the morality of his actions until you know what motivated his crime or what it will do to the reputation of the neighbourhood. Yet, when the BBC news reported on Labour's new policy, its "expert" merely commented that Britain's status as one of the world's top destinations for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) may be adversely affected. The rights of pensioners, life assurance policy-holders or people like me living in retirement on my investments count for nothing – unless we are foreigners with other choices who might take our money elsewhere.

A democratic vote is not a sacrament. It is just an alternative to violence as a way of settling societal differences. When we are on its losing side, we had best remind ourselves of that. To oppose a democratic outcome is to encourage a return to violence. That is what the Remainers in Parliament are risking. I was for Leave but if the vote had gone the other way I would have respected it. Our unity as a nation is more important to me than having my own way – even on a subject as to which I have been passionate, angry and frustrated for decades. It seems I was naive. Neither the unity of our nation nor favouring non-violent ways to resolve disagreements means anything to some prominent Remainers.

My grandfather returned from his military service in World War II as a cripple. His country's reward was to "nationalise" (i.e. confiscate) the trucking business he and his brothers had built pre-war with their own sweat and their savings from working as boys, teenagers and young men down a coal mine. Elected on a manifesto that promised the "nationalisation," the Labour government had appointed the only local valuer they could find who was a party member to fix compensation as low as possible. Successive governments then took decades to pay it, in ever more debased coin as inflation eroded the already-rigged value. I asked him years later how that had felt. He told me this.

My friends and some of my family voted for it. Labour people sincerely believed the government could run my business better than I could. I knew they were wrong and time proved me right but at the time what was I to do? I could have been angry with my neighbours and miserable for the rest of my life. Or I could accept the democratic vote, get on with my life and do the best I could.

I loved, admired and (for all his faults) respected my grandfather. Never more so than at that moment. 

This week I visited the "I Object" exhibition at the British Museum co-curated by Ian Hislop, the editor of Private Eye. His co-curator Tom Huckenhall talked me and other members through the displays at a private viewing. One of the subversive pieces is an image of Egypt's last Pharaoh, Queen Cleopatra, copulating with a crocodile. Tom commented that "sexual slander" has always been used as a political weapon. Interestingly he also said that this was one of several pieces in the exhibition that had not been created by or for dissidents but had instead been commissioned by a political opponent. It was part of a slanderous campaign by Octavian (later Caesar Augustus) to strengthen his claim to be Emperor over that of Cleopatra's lover, Antony.

I cannot have been the only person present who thought of the US Democratic Party's campaign to discredit Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump's nominee to the Supreme Court. Sexual slander is indeed a potent political weapon, now as in 30BC. Its being perpetrated by democratically-elected politicians does not make it any less vile and rotten than when committed by a would-be tyrant of the ancient world. As I watch my beloved America torn apart by a politically-motivated sham as far from the truths so self-evident to the Founding Fathers as could be conceived, I remind myself again that democracy is not an ethic. It's just a very human, practical but flawed device to avoid violence.

It is not, has never been and never will be a means to divine truth, justice or morality.

My new friend within the London Labour Party wrote to me recently saying, among other things, that

The left, once famously critical of religion, will say nothing against Muslims!

He has a point. The Roman Catholic Church is deservedly weathering a massive media storm over priestly abuse of children – or more accurately over some of its leaders' disgraceful endeavours to conceal that abuse. Go to any leftist forum online and you will see the traditional anti-clericalism of the left, for which my friend hankers, in full spate. You will also however see similar vitriol being directed at Boris Johnson. This, for an article in which he defended the right of Muslim ladies to dress in the ways they sometimes choose (and sometimes have chosen for them). Why? Because he also mocked them a little by saying, thus attired, they looked a bit like letterboxes.

It wasn't a very good joke. It wasn't a new joke. It was not as critical of the ladies in question as things previously said by some calling for Boris's head. It was hardly on a level with the sexual abuse of innocents. But it was criticism of Muslims and that, even when mild or (God forbid) justified, is now beyond the leftist Pale.

The left has also been tying itself in unseamanlike knots over the definition of antisemitism. Our government and other nations around the world have adopted the IHRA definition but Labour has devised its own variant. Why? Because of the parts of the IHRA definition that say questioning Israel's right to exist is anti-semitic. This is a problem to Labour because so many of its Muslim voters (and their Far-Left supporters in the Party) actually DO call into question Israel's right to exist. Indeed, Jeremy Corbyn's "friends" in Hamas are remarkably clear on the subject, for example in the preamble to its current charter, dating only from last year;

Palestine, which extends from the River Jordan in the east to the Mediterranean in the west and from Ras al-Naqurah in the north to Umm al-Rashrash in the south, is an integral territorial unit. It is the land and the home of the Palestinian people. The expulsion and banishment of the Palestinian people from their land and the establishment of the Zionist entity therein do not annul the right of the Palestinian people to their entire land and do not entrench any rights therein for the usurping Zionist entity.

My favourite rabbi, Rabbi Sacks, posted a video some time ago which I featured in this post. As I quoted there, he made this point about the difference between criticising Israel and being anti-semitic

I was recently talking to some schoolchildren and they asked me: is criticizing Israel antisemitism? I said No and I explained the difference. I asked them: Do you believe you have a right to criticize the British government? They all put up their hands. Then I asked, Which of you believes that Britain has no right to exist? No one put up their hands. Now you know the difference, I said, and they all did.

Denying Israel's right to exist is the new anti-semitism, as Rabbi Sacks' video (and the IHRA definition) make clear. But the left can't accept that because it is electorally dependant on Muslim votes. While denouncing ordinary Brits (to our puzzlement) for our alleged racism, sexism and homophobia it kowtows to the genocidal views of  lethally racist, sexist, and homophobic voters in our midst for fear of being branded islamophobic and losing their votes.

This graph (source) makes the point well

We who agree with Dr Martin Luther King that every human should be judged on "the content of his character" must resist the temptation to laugh at them, hoist so hilariously by their own identarian petards. Instead we must politely point out their amoral inconsistency to everyone who will listen. Identity politics is toxic for all of us.

I am not sure how I ended up on the mailing list but I was invited to this event today so I went. Part of me wants the Conservative Party once more to fulfil the function it did in Margaret Thatcher's time – as a radical opponent of Big Government, dedicated to free markets, deregulation and privatisation. I encounter the occasional member from the libertarian wing like Dan Hannan or Syed Kamall and hope springs once more in my naive breast. I had met Kamall at a Libertarian Home meeting. I found him somewhat wanting ideologically, but the fact he showed up raised hopes. It was his name on the programme and that of David Campbell-Bannerman MEP that made me decide to risk wasting a Saturday that could have been spent on my pleasures. 

The name of the organising group – Conservative Progress – should have tipped me off. Progress is a good thing, just like being social. But organisations that use either word in their titles are usually to be avoided. This one was founded by two enthusiastic young politicos named Nabil Najjar and Luke Springthorpe and describes itself as follows:

We are a grassroots organisation founded by Conservative activists for Conservative activists. We host events that are relevant and engaging, and offer training that is beneficial to developing activists. We also promote and share good practice and offer a platform for the views of conservative minded political activists.

Most of the people at the conference were either pro-Brexit, or were Remainers who accepted the referendum result. The Soubry Faction was not in evidence. So the discussions around that issue were both illuminating and encouraging. Suella Braverman MP, Under Secretary of State at DEXEU, assured us that there is "a lot of unity" in Cabinet on Brexit and that the legal agreements to give effect to it are about 75% complete on terms that Parliament should be able to approve. She pointed out that if Parliament didn't, the only alternative would be a "no deal" Brexit. That would leave us dealing with the EU (as many countries successfully do) on WTO terms. 

Even more encouragingly, as he's not under Cabinet discipline, Campbell-Bannerman was just as optimistic. He said the EU has offered a free trade deal on better terms than with any other country and that we should simply accept it. He said the legal terms were "about 80% agreed". He was as relaxed as I am about a "no deal" exit but said that as a good "Canada++ free trade deal" was on the table, why not get it done? For me, accustomed to the views of the BBC and others longingly predicting the catastrophic outcome they desire and to those of Brexit bloggers fearful of betrayal, this was worth losing a few hours with my hobbies.

The rest of the speeches were less edifying. I was clearly not among the classical liberal elements of the Party. James Palmer, Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, for example remarked that "Conservatives would find it hard to accept" his idea of capping development land prices at, say, ten times their agricultural value. Damn right they would. Price controls are economic idiocy that lead to shortages, rationing, violent expropriation and corruption. No true Conservative would find it easy to accept such wickedness. But no-one in the hall seemed to share my concerns. 

The logic behind Mayor Palmer's dottily immoral idea was that, if the Party can't solve the problem of millennials not being able to afford to buy houses, they will be lost forever to Labour or the Liberal Democrats. So to hell with the economic principles that a true Conservative Party would exist to preserve. Let's instead be "pragmatists" (as I have remarked before, Tory code for "unprincipled shits") and bribe young voters. I tried frantically to intervene during questions but the young moderators preferred mostly to call upon people of their generation; often friends whose names they knew. So I did not have chance to point out that while Mayor James and his colleague from London were blaming development companies, land banking and (God help us) "capitalism" for the housing shortage, the solutions are in the hands of national and local government. 

Real estate is not really a free market anyway. If a piece of land is worth £x without a planning permission and £20x with one, then most of the value of a development site is within the gift of the planning authority. This is why real estate is the most corrupt area in most economies across the world. If a piece of paper issued by a modestly paid local official is worth more than land; for most of human history the most fundamental of all economic assets, then that official is – shall we say – always going to be treated very well. The only reason planning engenders less corruption in Britain than in the other countries where I have worked (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia and China) is because there is a legal presumption in favour of development that complies with published zoning plans and the appeals procedure is efficient. A bribe would get your project approved perhaps six months more quickly here and that time certainly has economic value. But usually not enough to risk gaol and disgrace. That, and not any moral superiority on our part, is what keeps us from the crookedness common elsewhere.

In London in particular the solution to the housing crisis is greater density. Our Capital City is far less densely built than, for example, Paris or Berlin. Where I live in Ealing, the world's first suburb originally spawned by the world's first metro - the District Line, one might almost be in a village judging by the terraced villas with their poxy little gardens and the grander homes interspersed amongst them. At the same distance from the Place de la Concorde as Ealing is from Trafalgar Square, you would be among high rises. Yet Ealing's planning policies forbid them and make even more modest multi-family housing more difficult to build. And the same Conservatives in Name Only who were blaming greedy development companies for pricing housing out of young hands campaigned on a slogan in the recent elections of "Keep Ealing low-rise." The other local politician on the panel understood this well enough to propose massive densification of public housing (occupied by Labour voters) but not for the private housing occupied by his own. How little like a true Conservative did he sound when proposing to build lots more council flats at subsidised rents mostly paid by welfare benefits to solve the housing crisis? I leave it to you to imagine.

Of course, to densify London would involve upgrading roads, sewers and utilities to support all the new residents (or the more widely dispersed millennials released from their squalid house shares). Yet when Labour has periodically set the economy ablaze and the voters have called in the Conservative Fire Brigade to quell the flames what has it done? Has it reduced the ranks of public servants doing pointless jobs? Has it reined in public spending and reduced taxes? Has it withdrawn from all the busy-bodying and prod-nosing begun by its Labour predecessors? No! It has usually just pushed back all the infrastructure projects the construction of which is one of the few valid jobs for government. Keep the "Diversity coordinators" and spend millions on "Public Health England" to nag us about our diets. But let the roads degenerate to Third World standards and let fatbergs block the Victorian sewers.

Even more terrifying than the support from Comrade Mayor Palmer was the wild enthusiasm for Penny Mordaunt MP, Secretary of State for International Development. Mordaunt is a great speaker and I tip her as a future PM. She had the room eating out of her hand by saying all the right things if you believe that the State can ever be an efficient and honest dispenser of largesse to the world's poor. If you believe that nonsense, however, you're not a true Conservative and should not really have been in the room, let alone cheering her on. She was all for clever targeting of aid; directing it to relieve pressures that might otherwise lead poor people to become economic migrants for example. But she was naively confident that, six months into her brief, her talent was such that all British aid was now finding its way to deserving recipients. This, despite the fact she admitted that on her first day her department could not account for where any of it had gone until then!

She began by talking about how generous Brits are in donating to development and poverty relief charities but then, like any Socialist would, set about conflating the generous nation with its ugly, nasty guard dog, the State. A true Conservative would stop taking money from poor people in rich countries to give to rich people in poor countries and would let taxpayers make their own choices about charities to support. Ms Mordaunt is no true Conservative in that respect and neither were any of the people in the audience judging by the rapturous applause her meretricious speech received. 

The "Blue Labour" jibe against the "Conservative" Party seems well justified on today's showing. The people I spent today with were well to the left of any Labour government to date. They were only "Conservative" by comparison to the current Labour leadership, but then by that comparison Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin could have joined us. My subscription is up for renewal and I can't imagine I will stay a member.