Will this new union end such storms in a teacup?
Congratulations to the journalist and free-school pioneer Toby Young, who has joined forces with Oxford theology professor Nigel Biggar to found a Free Speech Union, which launches today. “No one is safe from these witch-finder generals,” says Toby, who got “cancelled” by a Twitter mob when he became perhaps the only non-labour supporter in modern history to be appointed to a government quango.
Toby’s tenure as a Conservative non-executive board member of the Office for Students, the higher education watchdog, lasted, ooh, at least half an hour. By which time, aggrieved Leftists had discovered some jokes about breasts he made online a few years back and had him tried, hung and quartered for a “non-crime hate incident” faster than you can say George Orwell. A father of four, Toby lost all his employment because, basically, people who think as he does (and like you and I, probably) should not be allowed to exist.
Corbynism has been resoundingly rejected by the people, but the far-left, which can’t win power at the ballot box, has colonised the institutions instead, like woodworm in the skirting board. People in universities, the arts, politics and media live in fear of saying anything that might trigger the minority groups who have run a tripwire through our national life to alert them to the slightest offence.
The Free Speech Union, like a cerebral branch of Thunderbirds’ International Rescue, promises to defend anyone under attack from the ghastly thought police.
Their first big challenge could be tea bags. On Friday, the new Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, shared an apparently harmless photo of himself on Twitter making “a good brew” for his team. He had a big packet of Yorkshire Tea behind him. Cue outrage and calls to boycott lovely Yorkshire Tea by the usual smelly, self-righteous halfwits.
Right, I reckon the least we can do is a) stock up on Yorkshire Tea and b) join the Free Speech Union (freespeechunion.org). If they’ve tried to silence our tea bags, then no one is safe.