I‘ve written a piece for the Critic this morning on Bridget Phillipson’s decision to sabotage the Freedom of Speech Act on Friday, which is free to read. Here’s an extract from the beginning:
In justifying this act of vandalism, the Education Secretary said the legislation would have imposed a “burdensome” new duty on universities to uphold free speech, trumping their obligations to protect the “safety and well-being of minority groups”.
When I read that I thought, “If only!” I don’t want to endanger the “safety” of minority students, obviously, but we all know what “safety” means in this context: psychological safety – as in “safe spaces” – rather than physical safety. When the Free Speech Union – an advocacy group I run – was involved in producing an early draft of the legislation, along with about a dozen dissident academics, we were acutely conscious of the way “safety” and “well-being” had been weaponised by woke activists to stifle academic freedom and free speech and hoped a change in the law would help universities to refocus on their core purpose.
But as that draft became a bill, and as that bill wended its way through parliament, it was significantly watered down until the new free speech duties were virtually indistinguishable from those already imposed on universities by the Education (No. 2) Act 1986. Far from forcing universities – and only English universities, mind you – to prioritise academic freedom and free speech over their countervailing legal obligations, such as the need to comply with counterterrorism legislation and to protect students from harassment, it only asked them to uphold free speech “within the law”. Exactly what that meant was unclear, given that universities are faced with a morass of competing legal requirements – something the Russell Group complained about.
Phillipson was keen to create the impression that she wanted to “protect” Jewish students from feeling unsafe and briefed the Times that the new Act would have made it harder for universities to deny a platform to Holocaust deniers. But that’s not true, something the Free Speech Union pointed out whenever this canard was repeated during the parliamentary debates.
The new free speech duties in the Act are subordinate to those set out in the European Convention on Human Rights and, as the European Court has made clear, Holocaust denial is not protected by Article 10. Moreover, the Act would only have required universities to take “reasonably practicable steps” to secure freedom of speech and it’s unlikely that any court in the land would decide that that included providing a platform to people touting malicious, intellectually meritless conspiracy theories.
Personally, I think Holocaust deniers should be free to set out their crackpot theories at universities so they can be comprehensively rebutted with evidence and reason, but that’s not something this Act would have made possible.
And this is how it ends:
I have to confess to some grudging admiration for Phillipson. In one stroke, she has been far bolder than any of her Tory predecessors in the last 10 years. I detest her ideology and believe that doing nothing to counter the wave of intolerance sweeping our universities means they will soon lose their “world class” status. But, by God, she’s a far more brutal political combatant than the enfeebled Tories. If you want to win the culture war, Phillipson has shown us how to do it.
Worth reading in full.
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So is Phillipson the first minister to break cover and discard her sheep’s clothing to brazenly display the woke wolf beneath? And is her announcement to impose the “National Curriculum“ on all schools including free schools a ploy to finally ‘get’ Michaela School since the left hates Katharine Birbalsingh and her school’s success so much?
Hmmm. Well, the Con Servatives had to pretend they wanted free speech, whereas Phillipson can go full-on dictator without anyone batting an eyelid. Personally, I prefer it out in the open rather than the sly betrayal that the treacherous so-called Tories foisted upon us. At least I know what I’m dealing with.
“The sly betrayal that the treacherous so-called Tories foisted upon us”. 100% agree. I’ll never forgive and never forget.
If so-called Conservative MPs stripped down to the altogether, you’d struggle to find a pair of cojones amongst them.
The last one who demonstrated they had any was Mrs Thatcher, and her’s weren’t the genuine article, which makes it even more impressive.
Ah, but Mrs T always had her little Willie to back her up!
She rarely had a majority on her side in the Cabinet.
All the idiocies, lunacies, of ‘Blair’s Britain’ are still with us today:
Legislation on immigration, human rights, climate change, the equality act, all kinds of nonsense.
The Conservative Party were in power, with an eighty seat majority, for five years and simply made things worse.
Phillipson, a complete numpty devoid of charm and much else, is able to sit on her ample posterior and trash Conservative legislation at will within days of recumbency.
There, in a nutshell, is the kernel of what the Conservative Party should be uniting around:
Sorting out immigration, human rights, climate change, equality legislation……
They have had local elections and a national election to listen to the voters.
Reform received the message on the doorstep loud and clear and performed an electoral miracle for a political insurgency with a strong and sensible ‘contract’/manifesto.
If what remains of the Conservatives really still don’t know what their voters want, they are far too dim to be in parliament and should resign forthwith……
Six million people voted Tory in the election just gone – presumably those six million were broadly happy with the Tory’s brand of big-state socialism. If the Tories move to the “right”, I don’t see how they will pick up many more votes, as anyone who wanted a “right wing” or “conservative” government would have voted Reform – only four million did that. This country is addicted to socialism – let’s face it, there is very little hope of that changing.
It is more accurate to say that people have a habit of voting one way or another. They are also mislead by the MSM. Many who comment here seem confused and we often read how the Tories made mistakes or need to do better, etc.
The truth is the Tories did what they wanted and it was just like Labour.
Yes those are all good points
I suppose some who voted Tory thought they were just dandy and others truly thought they would be better next time- either way I think there’s no hope for them
Many I know voted one way merely to keep an other party out. Same for Labour voters and Conservative voters.
Such a pitiful state of affairs.
I’ve done that in the past but I now think that is the wrong approach.
People vote the way they do for many and complex reasons.
I was definitely going to vote for Reform until Mr Farage became leader and reiterated his admiration for the barbaric, venal, war criminal Putin ‘as a political operator’.
I will never vote Labour for any number of reasons but most particularly because of the ‘Blair’s Britain’ shambles that surrounds us and the egregious nonentities that occupy their cabinet.
My local MP is now a Liberal Democrat, a complete Drongo.
The Conservative incumbent was a hopeless nincompoop who let us all down very badly in 2020.
Great choices…….
I may have voted Reform given those choices, but would probably have spoiled my ballot paper. Reform were poor on “covid”.
I think that is a little disingenuous, who did Covid right? Actually no one, and that is the problem. Reform got 4 million votes and has 6 seats. The Lib-Dems got less votes and has 51 seats. That is the fundamental problem. It is quite possible that next time Reform will get enough seats to form a Government, because it it unlikely that many will vote Tory, and the Labour voters will not because a good many of them will be broke, unemployed or some similar difficulty. Blair Britain will be even more embedded, but the showing by the Chancellor was so bad that I can’t see this Government lasting long. The proof that her claims are false is clear from the figures publically available, but I see them being removed very soon as likely, then you know the Government is in bad territory after 25 DAYS!
Some leaders in some countries did “covid” “right”, some people here called it right, other leaders in other countries did a bit better than ours. Sorry for me it’s a red line, but I have funny ideas on the proper role of government and the state which hardly anyone shares, so I am destined to unhappiness and frustration.
Why would any of the 6 million who voted Tory change their minds this time? The election came after a long spell in government which they royally screwed up. I see no reason why Labour will not see out their full term and it would be quite unusual for such a large majority to be reversed in a single electoral cycle.
Yes the way the seats are allocated does produce anomalies, but people who wanted a conservative government that would make a real impact on immigration and move away from Nut Zero could have voted Reform – 86% of those who voted chose not to.
Toby, you cannot be serious.
It was on the Tories’ watch that all this got going. Most Tory MPs seem to support it and the rest don’t see it as an important issue.
Tories? You could have fooled me.
More Labour than Corbyn’s wettest dreams.
Still, if they call themselves Tory then I supposed that’s what they are!
It makes sense for the Labour Party to be opposed to free speech at our New Dark Age universities because the Labour Party is a marxo-fascist party bent on the construction of the woke total-control state.
Goodness me this is the first time I have clapped eyes on Bridget Phillipson. Straight out of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, isn’t she.
She reminds me of the girl in that John Travolta film – Pulp Fiction?
Why would “jewish students” have to “feel unsafe” because of public discussion of alternate theories about historical events which happened more than 80 years ago? In other words, if Philippson was keen to create the impression that the only thing which stops David Irving (example) from building extermination camps in order to start killing “jewish students” at an industrial scale is, well, people like Bridget Phillipson, must this necessarily have been an appropriate impression? Shall we accept Phillipson’s implicit assertion that there’s no inherent distinction between speech and mass murder and that people guilty of the former must necessarily plan to do the latter?
5 main agenda’s ——–Equality Diversity Race Gender and Climate. ——-The left cannot bear you speaking freely on any of that, because it puts at risk their absurd policies regarding it all. So you must be silenced. By hook or crook all manner of excuses will be made to shut us up from speaking freely ——-We are committing “hate speech” etc. Would you believe that some ridiculous cretins on the left would lock you up for claiming there isn’t a climate crisis? This is the extent of the tyranny the left indulge in.
“ but that’s not something this Act would have made possible”
Why bloody not, that is the whole point of free speech. As others have pointed pot below, they’re closing all the doors ready to control the media when they introduce the next ‘crisis’.
I felt like asking a similar question: If it’s ok to censor historical research about certain topics because of “settled science” (pun intended), then, the original sin has occurred: If there’s one topic where only officially sanctioned opinons are allowed, there’ll always be people who think their topic, say, climate change, deserves the same kind of protection from interference by those they believe to be malcontents and who’ll actively try to achieve that. And it’s impossible to make a principled argument against this because that censorship is ok if only the topic being censored is important enough has already been agreed on.
Minorities trumping majorities. Democracy or being nice which is it to be?
Bridget Phillipson is an idealistic ill tutored youngster. How they can destroy wisdom and the best of mankind with power.