Brendan O’Neill

I have a real problem with the term ‘Tory rebels’. Because it’s questionable, to put it gently, that either of these words apply to the Conservative Party MPs who are threatening to side with Labour and the Lib Dems in tonight’s parliamentary battle against no deal. They don’t sound much like Tories. And rebels? Do me a favour. Phillip Hammond, Ken Clarke, David Gauke, Phillip Lee and the others — the ‘Gaukeward Squad’, as some refer to them — pose as valiant insurgents against Boris and his overreaching executive. The media madly flatter these pretensions by talking up the MPs as the bravest politicians in living memory.

This morning, a petition demanding ‘Do not prorogue Parliament’ is doing the rounds. At the time of writing, more than 1.4 million people have signed it. Remainers are very excited. They’re holding the petition up as proof of a mass outpouring of democratic disdain for Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend Parliament for a few more days than is normal. It is no such thing. It looks more like yet another middle-class hissy fit against Brexit and the people who voted for it.  As the petition map demonstrates, the signatories are strikingly concentrated in certain parts of the country, especially the leafy, super-middle-class bits of southern England.

Not content with agitating against democracy with his relentless Remainer shenanigans, now Tony Blair appears to be aiming his fire at freedom of speech. Seriously, is there no civilisational liberal value this man doesn’t want to take down? A new report for Blair’s think-tank, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, says hard-right groups should be subjected to censorship even if they are not involved in any kind of violent activity. The report says the government should draw up a list of ‘designated hate groups’ — you mean a blacklist? — and these designated groups should be prevented from appearing in media outlets or engaging with public institutions.

Last night’s ‘F**k Boris’ demo in London really was an extraordinary spectacle. It felt almost historic. For what we had here was a gathering of radicals raging against a new Tory PM for threatening to upend the political status quo. Yes, these supposedly edgy, rebellious, pink- and blue-haired haters of Conservatism were essentially pleading with Boris not to be so revolutionary. It was bizarre. There may have been music and dancing and weed — the soulless whiff of that deadening drug was everywhere — but this was fundamentally a conservative protest. Small-c, natch. It was a plea to keep Euro-technocracy intact and not to cave in to the demands of the hoodwinked masses who voted for Brexit.

There’s a new way of testing if someone is genuinely committed to the ideal of national sovereignty. Let’s call it the Darroch Test. Will you stand up to any foreign leader who arrogantly presumes the right to tell Britain who its ambassadors overseas should be? Or will you cave in to that foreign leader and effectively let him or her dictate the make-up of Britain’s diplomatic corps? That’s the Darroch Test. That’s the new national sovereignty test. And, sadly, many Brexiteers, the people who are meant to be standing up for the sovereign rights of the British nation against foreign oligarchies and bureaucratic bullies, have failed it. Yes, this concerns Kim Darroch, who resigned today as ambassador to the United States.

Nothing better sums up the intolerance and sheer meanness of the hardcore Remainer set than their loathing for Kate Hoey. These are the kind of people who solemnly shake their heads when women in politics or business are subjected to sexist abuse on the internet. But such concerns fly full-speed out the window where Hoey is concerned. For her, no insult is off limits, no abuse out-of-bounds. She’s a traitor, a Faragist, a fascist, a hag. All those words, and worse, have been used about Hoey in the numerous media assaults and Twitterstorms she has been subjected to for the crime of standing by her principles. Especially her principled belief that the European Union is an anti-democratic oligarchy and Britons’ vote to leave it must be upheld.

Who’s really harassing Carrie Symonds? We have no proof that her boyfriend Boris Johnson is. One surreptitiously recorded late-night row does not add up to evidence of an abusive relationship. But we have plenty of proof that leftists are. That’s the great irony of the Boris-tape controversy: Boris-bashers claim merely to be concerned for Ms Symonds’ welfare but in truth many of them seem hell-bent on making her life a misery. Ask yourself what kind of person puts up posters outside a young woman’s flat mocking her lover. That’s what some of Ms Symonds’ neighbours have done. They attached posters to metal railings showing Boris looking ridiculous, alongside the words: ‘We’d rather endure him as our neighbour than our Prime Minister.

In last night’s scuffle between Conservative MP Mark Field and a Greenpeace protester, which of them was really behaving in an entitled manner? The story is that it was Field, there in his black tie, drinking and chortling with bankers at a fancy dinner as the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave a speech on the state of British politics. The way Field grabbed the protester by the neck before marching her out of the opulent room is being held up as symbolic of Tory arrogance and privilege. Labour MPs are calling for him to resign. Some even want the police involved, to teach these cocksure men of the entitled Tory party a lesson. But in truth, it wasn’t Field who displayed colossal levels of entitlement last night — it was the protesters.

What a bunch of big babies the right can sometimes be. These people spend oodles of time mocking lefty snowflakes and touchy students for taking offence at every off-colour joke or un-PC point of view. And yet it turns out they’re just as susceptible as any moaning millennial to having a fit of the Victorian vapours when someone says something they find offensive. Exhibit A: the unhinged fury over Jo Brand’s joke about battery acid. Seriously, over the past 24 hours right-wingers have given the PC left a run for its money on the boo-hoo offence-taking front. You thought it was only purple-haired SJWs who try to get comedians sacked and even arrested for cracking dodgy jokes? Think again.

I love everything about the European Parliament election results. As a Brexiteer, of course I love that the Brexit Party came out of nowhere to obliterate the Tories and Labour and induce yet another outbreak of Brexit Derangement Syndrome among the chattering classes. But I also love the fact that Remain parties did well, too. I’m happy that the Lib Dems, with their sneering, juvenile, anti-democratic slogan of ‘Bollocks to Brexit’, came in second place. And I’m pleased that the Greens, for whom Brexit is a calamity on a par with the climate catastrophe they breathlessly drone on about, also had a good showing. Why? Because the victory of a proper Brexit party on one side and of the Bollocks to Brexit lobby on the other is a wonderfully clarifying moment.