No sacred cows

On Saturday morning, when I was helping Caroline prepare for a lunch party, I got an urgent request for help from the leader of a populist, right-wing campaigning group. His organisation had just been debanked. He had five days before the account was closed, during which time the bank would return the money it had received in membership dues to the members and keep anything left over, effectively bankrupting the company. No reason was given, other than that it had breached the bank’s ‘community standards’. ‘That can’t be right,’ I told him. ‘Back in March, the government announced it was changing the rules to make it harder for banks to shut down accounts for political reasons.

Michael Gove’s decision to stand down in this election was a reminder that the one really bright spot in the past 14 years was the education reforms he steered through between 2010 and 2014. These policies were vindicated in the most recent PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) survey, which showed England climbing the OECD’s international league table and outperforming Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In maths, England rose from 17th place in 2018 to 11th in 2022, whereas Scotland, significantly above England in 2010, fell below the OECD average. I was involved in the most successful of these reforms, the free schools programme.

I don’t envy the people who run Ofcom. On the one hand, they’re under enormous political pressure to sanction GB News, which, in the eyes of its establishment critics, is a contaminated river of far-right propaganda that’s polluting the ‘delicate and important broadcast ecology of this country’ (Adam Boulton). But on the other, they want to preserve their status as the keepers of the ring and cannot be seen to be holding GB News to a higher standard than other broadcasters. That makes their lives complicated because, in reality, the channel’s politics are far closer to the Telegraph than they are to Fox News, and it’s no more partisan than LBC or Channel 4 News.

As Christopher Snowdon recently pointed out, the past few governments have had a habit of passing laws that are either wildly ambitious or incredibly trivial, while neglecting the real problems Britain faces, such as the housing shortage, the productivity crisis and the eye-watering dysfunction of the NHS. An example of the former is the net-zero emissions law passed in 2019, as if the energy policy of a small island in the North Sea can affect the world’s climate. An example of the latter is a bill that will make it a criminal offence to get cats to follow you down the road. Believe it or not, this had its second reading in the House of Lords last week and will enter the statute books later this year.

Rishi Sunak has been widely ridiculed for trying to spin the local election results as bad news for Keir Starmer. While acknowledging they were ‘bitterly disappointing’ for the Tories, the Prime Minister cited an analysis by Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, the renowned psephologists, showing that a similar showing by Labour in a general election would leave the party 32 seats short of an overall majority. ‘Keir Starmer propped up in Downing Street by the SNP, Liberal Democrats and the Greens would be a disaster for Britain,’ he said. This was wishful thinking, according to John Curtice, the polling expert. He pointed out that the way people vote in local elections doesn’t mirror the way they’ll behave in a general.

This week the Welsh parliament has been debating a law that would ban politicians from lying. Assuming it ends up on the statute books, any member of the Senedd, or candidate standing to be a member, found guilty of the new criminal offence of ‘deception’ will have to give up being a politician for at least four years. What could possibly be wrong with that, you ask? The vital question, as with all efforts to ban bad speech, is who decides? After all, part of the art of being a politician, dating back at least as far as the Roman Senate, is to massage the truth to promote whatever side of the argument you’re on. That doesn’t mean you’re at liberty to make things up out of whole cloth, but most successful politicians operate in the grey zone where the rules are a bit fuzzy.

On Sunday, the BBC did something unusual. It invited Luke Johnson, a climate contrarian, to join a panel with Laura Kuenssberg to discuss net zero. As followers of this debate will know, the BBC’s editorial policy unit issued guidance to staff in 2018 saying: ‘As climate change is accepted as happening, you do not need a “denier” to balance the debate.’ Although it did allow for exceptions to this rule: ‘There are occasions where contrarians and sceptics should be included within climate change and sustainability debates.’ Presumably this was one such occasion.

You’d assume the reaction to the SNP’s new hate crime laws would make other authoritarian governments hesitate before introducing similar legislation. Humza Yousaf has become a laughing stock and his approval ratings have fallen by 15 points. But apparently not. The new Irish Taoiseach, Simon Harris, is determined to railroad through the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill, Donald Tusk’s government in Poland wants to introduce a new law that would make it a criminal offence to ‘defame’ a member of the LGBT community and Justin Trudeau is pressing ahead with an Online Harms Bill that makes our own Online Safety Act seem like the First Amendment.

I’ve been busy planning a trip to New Zealand and Australia. I’ll be gone for about five weeks from mid-June, which is by some distance the longest holiday I’ve ever had. Except it won’t be a holiday, since I’ll be spending quite a bit of time raising money for the Free Speech Union’s sister organisations in the Antipodes. There will be dinners to attend, events to speak at, hands to shake. But I’ve also built in some down time, which will be an opportunity to do some sightseeing. I’ve used Trailfinders to book my flights and hotels, which has made the process much easier. I’m flying out on Emirates to Auckland via Dubai, which means the total flying time, including the layover, is 23-and-a-half hours.

Among my generation of Oxford graduates – late fifties, early sixties – there is currently a great deal of talk about who the next chancellor should be. In February, the present incumbent, Chris Patten, announced he was stepping down at the end of this academic year, thereby triggering an election to find his successor. The electorate consists of anyone with a degree from the university, which is about 350,000 people. In addition to the predictable runners and riders – Tony Blair, Rory Stewart, Imran Khan – three ex-Conservative prime ministers are in the mix. The chancellorship of Oxford is one of the few remaining elected offices in the UK in which a Tory still stands a chance. Former holders include the Duke of Wellington, the Earl of Derby and Harold Macmillan.

A new documentary, Climate: The Movie, by the maverick filmmaker Martin Durkin, is becoming a phenomenon, though it’s received almost no publicity in the mainstream media. It rejects the idea that we’re in the midst of a ‘climate emergency’, so that’s hardly surprising. But it has already racked up millions of views online and been translated into ten languages. I watched it on YouTube on Monday and can confirm it’s a dazzlingly entertaining film that distils the case against climate alarmism into a succinct 80 minutes. One of the reasons it’s so hard to challenge the narrative about climate change is because it supposedly reflects the ‘settled’ scientific consensus.

I got a letter this week informing me how much it would cost to renew my car insurance: £2,671.47, up from £1,587.86. It could be worse, I suppose. Owners of Range Rovers tell me that the cost of insuring one in London for a year is about the same as the replacement value of the car. But even so. This is a seven-year-old VW Touran we’re talking about. Not the first choice of London’s crack regiment of car thieves. I will not capitulate to the soft totalitarianism of the professional-managerial class  The really depressing thing is this quote came before I’d notified the insurer of the three points Caroline has been given for going 26mph on the Finchley Road, which is now a 20mph zone.

Michael Gove is back in the news, having come up with a new definition of extremism that he wants to roll out across Whitehall and beyond. Those captured by this definition, whether persons or groups, won’t be able to take up official roles or receive taxpayers’ money, with the primary purpose being to stop Islamic radicals embedding themselves in organs of the state. But in order to pass muster, both legally and politically, the definition cannot just catch immoderate Muslims in its net, so he’s had to come up with something universal – and therein lies the difficulty.

For the past ten or so years, Caroline has taken herself off to Barbados for two weeks every winter, leaving her long-suffering husband to hold the fort. To be fair, it’s a freebie, so she can hardly be blamed. Her best friend, Bridie, is a tennis instructor and in return for giving lessons to the guests at a five-star hotel for a couple of weeks, not only does Bridie get free room and board but she gets to bring a plus one. All Caroline has to do is make up the numbers in the occasional game of mixed doubles. That I haven’t collapsed under the strain and hired a cook or a housekeeper has impressed my mother-in-law This year, though, is different. Caroline now has a part-time job in travel PR and her company has just picked up a new client with several hotels in Barbados.

I was shocked to read about the behaviour of Joe Biden’s dog, Commander. According to a CNN report based on freedom of information requests, he bit US Secret Service agents on 24 separate occasions between October 2022 and July 2023. There were also numerous other incidents involving the White House staff. These were not playful nips, either. The agents reported being bitten on the wrist, forearm, elbow, waist, chest, thigh and shoulder, with at least two bites requiring stitches. On one occasion, an agent was bitten so badly that tours of the White House had to be suspended for 20 minutes while a janitor mopped up the blood.

My oldest friend, Sean Langan, was back in the news this week. He’s carved out a niche for himself as a maker of low-budget documentaries in conflict zones and his most recent film was shown on ITV on Monday night. He keeps costs down by shooting them himself on a hand-held camera, which isn’t easy given that he also stars in them. This involves holding a camcorder at arm’s length and pointing it at himself as he wanders through some of the world’s most dangerous hot spots, often in the midst of explosions and gunfire. He’s paid a heavy price for being a war correspondent with his finances suffering and even losing several teeth The fact that he’s a one-man band means he’s able to make films in places few other documentary--makers can reach.

In 2017, David Lloyd Clubs took out a long lease on the privately owned sports facility at the end of my road. It used to be called the Park Club, but the new leaseholders, having spent £9 million tarting it up, proposed to call it ‘David Lloyd Chiswick Park’. As a proud resident of Acton, I was outraged and wrote to the CEO, pointing out that the new name would antagonise the locals by implying there was something shameful about their area. ‘The club is on a street called East Acton Lane, it’s about 250 yards from a railway station called Acton Central and 500 yards from a sign saying “Welcome to Acton”,’ I wrote. ‘If you pretend the club is located in Chiswick you will be ridiculed.

I don’t know what I’d do if QPR banned me from Loftus Road for the next two-and-a-half years. It was bad enough not being able to go to games during lockdown, but the thought of all my mates attending while I was stuck at home would be devastating. When the Rs are playing at home I look forward to the match all week – it’s become my only social activity that isn’t related to work, a vital safety valve. It would be devastating to my mental wellbeing. Yet that’s exactly what’s happened to Linzi Smith, a 34-year-old Newcastle fan. On 31 October last year she was banned from St James’ Park for the remainder of this season and the next two. Why? Not for getting into a fight in the stadium or abusing a steward.

By the time you read this, my son Ludo will be in South America, where he’s gone for what remains of his gap year. He deferred his university place and has been working in a pub since he left school, trying to earn enough money to go travelling. I made the mistake of telling him I’d match whatever he managed to save, imagining he’d struggle to put aside more than £500. Turns out, the little bugger saved more than £5,000! Still, he’s going to need £10,000 to pay his expenses. He’s spending the first four months in Brazil and doesn’t speak a word of Portuguese, so will struggle to get a part-time job, even in a bar. His girlfriend is joining him in four months and they’re planning to embark on a South American tour, beginning with Peru.

The UK Health Security Agency is sufficiently concerned about the growing number of measles cases in the West Midlands that it declared a ‘national incident’ last week. According to official figures, there have been 216 confirmed and 103 probable measles cases in the region since last October. The cause? The uptake of the MMR vaccine is at its lowest level in more than a decade, according to Dame Jenny Harries, CEO of the UKHSA. For some, this is proof of the ‘harm’ that anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists can do if greater efforts aren’t made to silence them. A leading article in the Times blamed the outbreak on ‘disease disinformation’, accusing activists of waging ‘irresponsible and immoral campaigns’.