Please, can we just go back to personal privacy?

Liberals are changing Britain into a state that prefers to expose bigotry rather than keep us safe

If you want to find a policeman nowadays, don’t call 999: go to a gay pride rally. They’ll be out in force, posing for photos with drag queens, having a merry old time and proving beyond doubt that they are absolutely, definitely not bigots. As when, on July 22 of this year, Sussex Police tweeted that it would be marking trans pride in Brighton by providing advice on hate crime to passers-by. If you were a trans person and you did happen to get mugged that day, Brunswick Square was the place to run to for help. Nothing says “we’re on your side” like being handed a leaflet about intolerance and a free pen.

Some things never change. The force remains staffed by dedicated, brave individuals worthy of the upmost respect. But they are servants of the state – a state with an ideology that claims simply to be reasonable and kind but is, in fact, as dogmatic as any other political movement.

You and I grew up under an older liberalism that put an emphasis upon personal privacy, the view that if I choose to spend my weekends parading around the house dressed as Bonnie Tyler that’s my own damn business.

Today’s liberals, however, combine a free market attitude towards lifestyle with the Left’s penchant for telling people what to do. Liberty, tolerance and diversity are no longer just preferences but moral absolutes to be enforced. Liberals are like that woman in the kids’ club at holiday camp who used to shout “Are we all having fun?”, and you looked at each other with despair because you knew it wasn’t a question; it was an order.

This Government isn’t conservative, it’s liberal, and it continues the project of changing Britain by inches begun under Tony Blair. Many of its reforms are humane and decent. But public consultation is a veneer for decisions that have already been taken. As the top sets the direction, so the various branches of the state rush to comply with embarrassing haste.

It is proposed by NHS England that doctors ask every patient to name their sexual preference. Schools will have to provide compulsory education about relationships. And the Foreign Office has told the UN that expectant women should be called “pregnant people” to avoid offending the transgendered. It all sounds like trifling tabloid fodder, but things turn serious when the police get involved. Those guys have got real power.

Consider the Avon and Somerset police force, which decided to take on modern slavery. To raise awareness, some of their officers painted their fingernails – including the chaps – took photos and posted them on Twitter. The public took the mick. One punter replied: “How about nailing some criminals?” Avon and Somerset responded with a statement that was weirdly OTT: “If anyone found these comments offensive, please report them to Twitter. If you feel you were targeted and are the victim of a hate crime, please report this to us. We take this issue extremely seriously.”

That sounds like a threat. It’s easy to infer that the police did something daft, got laughed at and responded by inviting a sanction. If nothing else, a lot of energy has gone into this, considering that Avon and Somerset had to shut down its special burglary unit after budget cuts, having only solved one in 10 cases.

And what is this thing called “hate crime”? Aren’t all crimes on some level hateful? According to the Crown Prosecution Service, it’s “any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice”. Hostility is defined as “ill-will, spite, contempt, prejudice, unfriendliness, antagonism, resentment and dislike,” which could also be the description of my last family Christmas. Campaigners want to add misogyny to the current list of prejudices. I fear this could lead to a rash of old-fashioned gentlemen going to jail. If one opens a door for a lady, it might be perceived as misogynistic. But if one refuses, is it criminally unfriendly?

So silly is a lot of this stuff that the genial British reaction is to poke fun. Gyles Brandreth says that he would love to tell his GP about his sexuality but can’t get an appointment.

But that gag betrays a sad truth, doesn’t it? A truth about bad priorities and wasted resources. Most of us expect schools to focus on maths and English – and the average teacher agrees because they signed up for this job to teach kids, not parent them. But such is the reach of the state’s deep liberalism that, at a time when hospital patients sleep in corridors and the capital has been hit by a spate of acid attacks, time is misspent proving we are absolutely, definitely not bigots.

Fighting bigotry is important. We have laws against it and they should be enforced. But murder and theft are just as sinful as prejudice, if not more so, and yet it doesn’t feel as though they enjoy the same sense of political urgency. The alienation between the values of authority figures and the values of ordinary folk grows. You’ll find among the ranks of the silent majority plenty of minorities, trans people and coppers – united in a desire to be left alone, and for the state to focus on the one or two things it is capable of doing well.