The woke wars intensify
Nigel Biggar was not an obvious target for cancellation. A New Labourite, a Remainer and a public supporter of gay marriage and abortion up to 18 weeks, he might have seemed almost right-on – for an Oxford Professor of Divinity, at any rate. Nonetheless, when in 2017 he had the temerity to suggest that the British Empire had done some good as well as bad, 170-plus academics signed a letter urging Oxford University to withdraw support for his work. This was one of the first stirrings of ‘cancel culture’, the tactic of quashing wrongthink not by argument or persuasion but by sheer force of numbers. Unfortunately for themselves, Biggar’s detractors
