Starkey raving racist or cantankerous old goat?

David Starkey’s a racist! That’s right, a racist, a knuckle-dragging ignoramous better suited to what passes for debate at The Den than that practised in the cloistered, cerebral majesty of his alma mater. 

In a recent interview with the brilliant yet spooked Darren Grimes, he argued that the Atlantic Slave Trade was not a genocide. If it had been, he said, rather injudiciously in the current climate, I must concede, there wouldn’t be so many ‘damned blacks’ in Africa. 

But was this statement a clumsy faux pas or an expression of Starkey’s barely concealed racism? 

I’d be inclined to go with the former. Yes, as I said, his words were clumsy and ill-considered, but he wasn’t damning black people per se, and anyone who listens to the interview objectively can see that. He was expressing his exasperation with those who claim that the Atlantic Slave Trade was an act of genocide. If it was, he implied, albeit slightly exaggeratedly, then after 300 years of unrelenting genocide, there wouldn’t be any black people left in Africa. 

But he’s done this before, his detractors scream. He said that British whites were emulating blacks. Again, this blunt, provocative, shoot-from-the-hip style does not betray the heart of a fascist. It betrays a thoughtful historian exploring socio-cultural trends without the burden of political correctness.

It enables him to speak freely and explore ideas, ideas that will no doubt be honed and modified, sharpened into a more accurate and nuanced diagnosis, in the distiller of free and open debate. 

His claim that whites are emulating blacks, for example, hits on an important sociocultural phenomenon in which US and Jamaican ‘cool’ gangster culture has been imported and adopted by black, Asian and white, often but not always, inner-city youths with not only dialectal and sartorial consequences, but violent ones too. It’s a very important discussion to be had. 

Okay, he’s too general for my taste, and could be misinterpreted - as he has been - and open to accusations of promoting and perpetuating stereotypes. Indeed, it’s easy for me to say, but he should have modified his remarks and said that, yes, a destructive subculture has been imported from mainly black communities in Jamaica and America, but that’s not to say that all Afro-Caribbeans inhabit it, or even that those who manifest some aspects of it are dangerous and afflicted. But he didn’t.

He shot from the hip. That doesn’t make him racist, though. It makes him clumsy. 

What worries me more is the reaction to Starkey’s tactlessness, especially among those claiming to be against race-baiting and for free speech. They immediately accused him of racism - knowing that the accusation alone will cancel him - and, more worryingly, anyone who defended him, me included, has been branded with the same rotten, damaging label, my accuser weirdly saying that she still liked me. It was like being carted off to the Gulag after being denounced, only for my denouncer to say, as I’m being herded onto the cattle wagon, ‘I still like you.’ Incredibly worrying.

Where’s the forgiveness for misspeaking? Why think the worst of people? We need to be more charitable and stop shouting racist; otherwise, people will stop speaking, ideas won’t be explored and remedies will remain lost.

Neo-Marxist academics have spent decades radicalising their students. They must be reined in.

Julia Hartley-Brewer conducted a fascinating and revealing interview with Dr Kojo Koram earlier this week. A lecturer in race and empire at Birkbeck College, the University of London, Dr Koram could hardly contain his enthusiasm for the violent removal and illegal submersion of Edward Colston's statue in Bristol. He pointedly refused to condemn the violence and, at one particularly surreal moment, even claimed that vandalising the statue - a statue that no doubt served as a comforting mainstay for over a hundred years, bearing witness to the trials and tribulations of successive generations of Bristol's proud inhabitants - was both educational and supported by the majority of the British public. It was astonishing. A learned academic not only condoning but celebrating mob rule.

You could be forgiven for being taken unawares by the events of the last week or so. Statues have been toppled, monuments desecrated and national heroes publicly humiliated. It's indeed been a disorientating time for us all. Why do so many youngsters appear to despise our country? Why are so many immune to reason and seemingly possessed by a visceral, uncontrollable fervour that manifests itself in blood-lust and violence? As I said, it's incredibly disorientating. And when you add the complicity of our educated elites and previously respected institutions into the mix - either through actively encouraging and cheering on the rioters or cowardly turning a blind eye - you get a perfect storm of bewilderment, confusion and, as an inevitable consequence, anger and frustration.

That's why Dr Koram's revelation was so helpful. He represents the source of our current unrest, the womb in which these destructive cultural forces gestated.

Broadly speaking and simply put, our universities are to blame. They are the madrassas responsible for this recent assault upon our cultural heritage. Indeed, over the course of the last several decades, they've become hotbeds of neo-Marxist thought disseminated and promoted by radical left-wing scholars like Dr Koram. 

Heirs to a heady mix of Antonio Gramsci, Georg Lukacs and a long line of anarcho-socialist thinkers, they wish to overturn the hegemonic cultural conservatism that, in their eyes, oppresses the less fortunate, whether represented by working class, BAME, gay or transgender groups. For these scholars, Scientific Marxism is inadequate to the task: oppression is not only experienced through economics; it's also experienced through culture and religion. That's why our statues, monuments, art, even television programmes are under attack. They are seen as instruments of oppression.

And if you believe I'm being alarmist and reductive, that Dr Koram is one man, unrepresentative of the university sector as a whole, consider this: a 2017 survey conducted by the Adam Smith Institute found that eight in ten university lecturers were left-wing. According to the report, 'Conservative and Right-wing academics are particularly scarce in the social sciences, the humanities and the arts', and, as a consequence, universities are 'afflicted by group think and a dysfunctional atmosphere where key assumptions go unquestioned, dissenting opinions are neutralized, and favoured beliefs are held as sacrosanct'. 

In addition, signalling their underlying desire to subsume and suffocate our cultural particularism as embodied in the nation state - which, let's not forget, they view as oppressive -, nine out of 10 university staff backed Remain during the EU Referendum. And this phenomenon isn't just the preserve of the UK, either. A 2016 study conducted in the US found that left-wing university professors outnumbered their conservative colleagues by 12 to 1. It couldn't be clearer. The Left has a stranglehold on the dissemination of ideas throughout our great educational institutions. Furthermore, it has progressively increased this stranglehold over the last five or six decades.

Think, for one moment, what this means. Yes, academics are brainwashing impressionable young kids who - armed with a bit of knowledge and the passion, naivety and arrogance of youth - are deployed as shock troops, violently railing against perceived, largely mythical inequalities, and practically applying the trite, unoriginal anarcho-Marxist theories of their tutors.

But they have also indoctrinated the politicians, Silicon Valley hipsters who patrol and police the Web, right-on journalists and broadcasters: all those university-educated elites who provide the rioters with covering fire and control the narrative. They, too, are sympathetic to the protesters' demands, for the simple reason that they've been inculcated with the same worldview that sees oppressor and oppressed in just about everything.

Okay, you might say, but many of the protesters aren't university educated neo-Marxists. And you'd be right. But they've been exploited by groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter. These are the groups orchestrating the incipient cultural revolution taking place. And they are very much led by university educated neophytes. Just take Black Lives Matter as an example. This radical, extremist group which calls for nothing less that the abolition of the police, the nuclear family and, among other things, the destruction of capitalism, was set up by Alicia Garza, a devout Marxist and sociology graduate from the University of California, San Diego. Her comrades in arms, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi are, again, like Garza, left-wing graduates. 

Antifa, moreover, hardly needs to be introduced. It's full of middle-class, highly educated, privileged radicals demanding revolution. Make no mistake, these groups are conducting the purge, and they're led by graduates brainwashed by leftist professors.

Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, they're being tacitly, sometimes explicitly, supported by our cultural and political elites - elites imbued with the same worldview as the iconoclasts. Even our Police Force appears to be sympathetic to the cause.

It's quite incredible when you think about it. Those who extol the virtues of a university education the most - its recipients -, are the first to forget an important aphorism: a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. And by giving their students a half-baked, highly ideological, one-sided educational experience, our universities are failing in their duty to provide a well-rounded, objective view of the world, a failure that's leading to grotesque displays of intolerance.

Dr Koram did us a huge favour this week. He inadvertently exposed the insidious source of the cultural vandalism we've borne witness to over the last week or so. Neo-Marxist academics have spent decades radicalising their students - students that are now both our elites, and our cultural vandals. They must be reined in. 

George Floyd's murder was not the result of institutionalised racism.

George Floyd's death was shocking. To witness David Chauvin, a man ostensibly employed to enforce the law and uphold the highest standards of conduct so publicly and brazenly do the opposite, choking a defenceless citizen whilst he begged for his life and, most disturbing of all, pleaded for some final gesture of maternal love and comfort during his dying moments, was indeed a profoundly grotesque and provocative experience. I felt both sickened and angry. 

The protests that followed were therefore understandable. America certainly seems to have a problem when it comes to police brutality. There were over a thousand victims of police shootings in 2019 alone. But the protesters - and later the rioters (criminals with whom I have little sympathy) - are not protesting against police brutality per se; they're protesting against what they perceive to be institutional racism within the US-wide police force - racism that, according to them, leads to African-Americans being disproportionately targeted and murdered. That's why the protest movement Black Lives Matter has played such a significant part in the demonstrations.

But are African-Americans disproportionately the victims of police brutality and, if so, is such disproportionality the result of endemic, institutionalised racism? Many seem to think so. From politicians to media luminaries, celebrities to ex-president Barack Obama himself: all subscribe to the pervasive and, in their eyes, incontestable view that racism is incubated within and secreted from the very institutions responsible for dispassionately and equitably upholding the law and with it, the constitutional rights of every American citizen, regardless of race. According to this perspective, that's why blacks are more likely to be shot and killed by the police. Obama even linked George Floyd's murder to 'slavery, Jim Crow, redlining and institutional racism'. He hastily concluded that Floyd's murderer was indeed motivated by racial hatred tolerated and encouraged by an institution that remains bedevilled by the legacy of Jim Crow.

But these charges don't stand up to scrutiny. First, we don't know what motivated the officer responsible for Floyd's death. It is therefore presumptuous and, I must say, knowing the possible repercussions of making such inflammatory claims, irresponsible and reckless to ascribe motive when it's far from clear what prompted the offender. Trump's not the only one stoking the fire here.

Secondly, let's not forget that whites are the victims of half of police shootings. Okay, they'll say, but blacks only represent 13 per cent of the population, therefore, proportionately, they’re more likely to get shot. But blacks are responsible for over 50 per cent of the nation’s homicides; they account for 40 per cent of the prison population; in short, they are more likely to commit violent crime. Bearing this in mind, they’re also more likely to find themselves confronted by an armed police officer, increasing the likelihood of getting shot and killed. Any sane, reasoned glance over the statistics reveals the charge of endemic racism unsustainable. That is not to say that racism doesn’t exist within the police force; nor that racism wasn’t the primary motivation for the murder of George Floyd - though, as I said, that hasn’t been proven yet. But these protests are motivated by spurious claims of endemic, institutionalised racial hatred. They’ve even led to nauseating mea culpas by white, privileged virtue-signallers. They must be challenged with the facts.

This will be no easy task. University educated opinion-formers, virtue-signalling celebrities, corporate CEOs and politically correct politicians - brainwashed by an anti-Western, self-loathing, anti-white and anti-democratic educational establishment and encouraged by an elite culture that values the public display of moral superiority above all else - are almost irredeemably invested in this lie. Antifa activists are their shock troops; members of Black Lives Matter their useful idiots. It really is incredibly disturbing to watch educated people gleefully report the looting of shops and destruction of businesses, especially when they belong to the very people they purport to champion.

It is also incredibly disturbing to watch people in this country who, just over a week ago, hysterically called for the head of one man accused of breaking the Government's lockdown rules, refuse to even question let alone condemn the Antifa-inspired protests gripping London - protests that clearly and flagrantly breach the Government's rules as thousands of people stand cheek by jowl, refusing to even pay lip service to the social-distancing strictures. The West is in a deep malaise.

Yes, the murder of George Floyd was more than a tragedy. It was an abhorrent display of police brutality that caused public revulsion and understandable demands for justice - demands that, let's not forget, have been met with David Chauvin's arrest and indictment. Moreover, it shone a light on the charged and highly sensitive issue of police brutality in America - though perhaps the prevalence of firearms can at least partially explain the nervous overreactions of some officers. But febrile charges of institutional racism - the accusations that sparked and sustain the protests - just don't stack up. The real story here appears to be the chattering class, bien-pensant willingness to perpetuate lies in an effort to sow division and further demoralise the Western democracies. We must not let them.

Leaving the EU is a joyous expression of national self-confidence. For that, we have Thatcher to thank.

When one considers our historic, ever-changing and uneasy relationship with the European project, one can’t escape the conclusion that it’s predicated upon a post-war diminution in national self-confidence brought about by the decline and fall of the British Empire.

Our victory in the great twentieth-century struggle against nazism, fascism and Japanese militarism may have led to unbridled celebrations and unprecedented feelings of national pride, but, ultimately, and quite unexpectedly, it introduced a period of national decline and soul-searching, punctuated by the odd awakening, until 1979, when a more long-lasting and irreversible revival took place.

Indeed, the referendum result and Boris Johnson’s election victory, culminating in our departure from the EU last week, were the long term consequences of Margaret Thatcher’s revolution and the resurgence in national pride and confidence that accompanied it.

During World War Two, the contradiction immanent in Britain’s fight for freedom against Nazi imperialism whilst presiding over the largest seaborne empire in history was necessarily ignored. After victory, however, this was no longer possible. It had to be confronted.

The British empire had become morally unjustifiable and consequently unsustainable, as well as, after the financial strain of the war, economically unviable to boot. In 1947, the jewel in Britain’s imperial crown was granted independence and violently partitioned into Pakistan and India; Ghana gained independence in 1957 and Nigeria in 1960; indeed, throughout the 1950s and 60s, Britain’s imperial possessions fell, like dominoes, into the hands of charismatic, indigenous leaders armed with the language of liberty devised by the British themselves.

Britain had become a shadow of its former glory. Britannia no longer bestraddled the world, mistress of the seas, trident in hand; instead, she sat passively, seeking handouts from her new creditor and master on the other side of the Atlantic – an ocean once dominated by the imposing guns of her navy. In 1956, in a final coup de grace, her master and patron chased her out of Suez with a swift, humiliating reproach. Britain’s hegemony was at an end.

Let’s just imagine for one moment what this meant to its people, how disorienting it must have been. Everything they had known, everything they had taken for granted, their identity and the sense of self that came with it, had been turned upside down. It is unsurprising that a great loss in national self-confidence ensued and, to make matters worse, Britain, exhausted and demoralised, peered across the English Channel and enviously observed the economic miracle taking place in Europe.

In West Germany, for example – as a result of Marshall Aid, currency reform and responsible labour relations, as well as the opening up of global markets -, industrial output doubled and Gross National Product grew by 9 to 10 per cent each year between 1950 and 1957. Between 1947 and 1973, moreover, the French economy grew by, on average, five per cent per annum. Both countries, along with Italy, which also experienced phenomenal growth rates during this period, caught up to and eventually exceeded Britain’s GNP. Furthermore, from 1950 to 1965, Britain’s GNP per capita slipped from 7th to 12th in the world. By 1975, it was down to 20th.

Riddled with inflation, beset by poor productivity, declining industries and truly dreadful labour relations, not to mention a precipitously haemorrhaging empire and concomitant decline in global prestige, Britain’s leaders desperately sought to find a new role in the world and forge a new identity by joining the Common Market and, they thought, tying themselves to Europe’s economic miracle.

After Britain was refused entry in 1961, Edward Heath’s Conservative administration finally joined the European Economic Community in 1973 – a decision ratified by the British people in a referendum two years later. The loss of national self-confidence that resulted from our post-war imperial retreat and relative economic decline had led to a decision made of desperation and fear. We indeed joined the EEC in a fit of anxiety-induced panic.

However, Thatcher changed everything. Her radical reforms, unapologetic patriotism, uncompromising will and remarkable character lifted the nation out of its post-war torpor and restored its self-confidence. The unions were tamed, fiscal profligacy was replaced by fiscal restraint, markets were liberalised, inefficient nationalised industries privatised, inflation was controlled and, consequently, annual growth exceeded four per cent during the late 1980s.

A British ‘economic miracle’ was being enviously mooted on the continent – a truly remarkable turnaround from the stagnation and misery afflicting the nation just 10 years earlier. Successive governments, even Labour ones, refused to reverse the Iron Lady’s reforms and, in 2015, Britain became the fifth largest economy in the world, largely thanks to her courageous endeavours – wisely left to bear fruit by her successors.

Most important, though, was the national pride restored by Thatcher’s indomitable spirit and sense of moral purpose. Along with Ronald Reagan, she led the free world’s fight against the inhumanity of Soviet communism; in 1982, she ignored her doubters and successfully dispatched a task force to wrestle back the Falkland Islands from Argentina’s military junta; and in 1990, just before her downfall, she encouraged George Bush senior, then American president, to dispense with the wobbling and stand firm against Saddam Hussein after his unprovoked attack on Kuwait. Like Britannia, Thatcher bestrode the global stage, handbag in hand, and gave Britain back its pride and self-confidence.

That this national revival led to rising public disaffection with the EU cannot be gainsaid. Why should a wealthy, self-confident country like Britain sacrifice its sovereignty to a sclerotic, unresponsive, undemocratic, supranational and meddlesome bureaucracy like the European Union? On 23rd June 2016, the answer was clear: it shouldn’t – a decision that, after three and  a half years, was reaffirmed by Johnson’s election victory.

If Britain joined what was to become the EU in a moment of disorientation and self-doubt, it voted out as a confident, self-assured, optimistic, outward-looking and independent nation state. For this, we have Thatcher to thank. And as a delicious accompaniment, she posthumously drove a stake through the heart of her vampiric nemesis, Michael Heseltine. Victory has never been sweeter.

First published on Conservative Home on 3rd February 2020

What we can’t but must say about the NHS

Where do I begin? Watching Channel 4‘s recent drama about the Mid-Staffordshire NHS scandal, The Cure, was an evocative, thought-provoking and highly emotional experience. Heartbreaking, exasperating and intensely depressing in equal measure - yet, at times, strangely uplifting as the drama’s unlikely heroine courageously fights and, to an extent, though not as resoundingly as one would’ve liked, defeats powerful vested interests - The Cure is a story that, above all else, serves as a timely reminder of the things we can’t say about ‘our’ NHS, even if its employees kill our loved ones.

The story begins as Julie Bailey’s elderly mother, a bright, kindly 86-year old lady named Bella, is taken ill with complications caused by a pre-existing hernia. What should have been a routine medical response for a treatable condition, however, turned into an eight-week ordeal. Bella was subjected to the daily invective of a nurse more suited to employment as a guard at Ravensbruck and with it, cruel, almost routine levels of neglect. Much to her daughter’s dismay and confusion at the callousness of individuals ostensibly employed to help the elderly and infirm, the nurses withheld vital medication and a disinterested doctor nonchalantly informed her of her mother’s imminent and unavoidable death, contradicting a colleague who had recently described Bella’s condition as eminently treatable.

Finally, after two long nightmarish months, the hospital delivered what can only be characterised as a coup de grace. Bella was forcefully dropped onto her hospital bed and, as a consequence, died of heart failure shortly afterwards. It really was heart-wrenching.

Bella’s experience was no exception, though, as became horrifyingly apparent to her daughter both during and after her ordeal. Julie witnessed a desperate, dehydrated and disoriented patient drinking water from a vase, food left out of a neighbouring patient’s reach and later, when embarking on her campaign for justice, hundreds of victims’ families with similar stories of abuse and neglect. On a personal level, having witnessed the mistreatment of my own grandparents at the hands of a clearly failing health service, I found it particularly harrowing, memories of neglect and the daily battle for decent, humane treatment flooding back. 

I’ll say it again: the NHS is failing! Its labyrinthine, impenetrable bureaucracy is impossible to navigate, as demonstrated by the endless and confusing list of agencies and acronyms that make it up. The Department of Health (DOH), General Medical Council (GMC), Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), the Chief Independent Health Regulator known as Monitor, the Strategic Health Authority (SHA), Primary Care Trusts (PCTs), the Patient Advisory Liaison Service (PALS) and the HCC (Independent Health Regulator Watchdog). See what I mean? This multitude of interconnected tentacles is not only impenetrable for patients, opaque and impossible to understand thus disempowering, it’s also dehumanising. The patients become mere pawns, often irritants, in the daily game played by multifarious producer interests relentlessly competing and jostling for favoured positions within the bureaucracy. 

Patients become nothing more than numbers as ambitious bureaucrats obsess over data and targets. At one point in the drama, the CEO of Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust, Martin Yeates, suggested altering the way the Trust collected data in a bid to hide the fact that its mortality rate was 40 per cent higher than the average. No concern for the patients, just a desire to save his career, an appalling trait shared by Toni Brisby, the Chair of the Trust, who, in one scene, gave grieving families just three minutes to share their experiences before abruptly cutting them off. They were clearly an inconvenience. She had better things to do with her time, like trawl through and manipulate data, one supposes. 

I was left wondering whether the bureaucracy is to blame for such spiteful, insensitive behaviour. In other words, given the unique, highly charged and, yes, undermanned milieu, would we all become like Yeates, Brisby and the abusive nurses and care workers, or does it take a sociopathic personality to display such cruel indifference? I’d go with the latter. I don’t care how pressured and overworked you are, common humanity, your ability to empathise, should always inform your actions. Look at the tortured, wonderful nurse and whistleblower. She was a beacon of light in a dark dystopian cesspit of maltreatment. 

The problem that the NHS faces, however, is that the wrong people are attracted to such bureaucracies. Caring, good, apolitical people have no wish to enter such a cutthroat and deeply cynical organisation. Those that do, I suspect, are either fighting against the tide or ready to give up, frustrated and demoralised. I have several friends in this latter category. In addition, and according to another friend who was an NHS manager and before that, worked in a Trust’s HR department, it’s almost impossible to sack someone for incompetence. So mediocre, sometimes highly unsuitable individuals are left to do their worst.

The most striking aspect of The Cure, however, apart from the wonderful performances of the actors, was the degree of opprobrium that Julie Bailey attracted for making public her mother’s treatment. Her shop was vandalised, her tires punctured, she was shunned by the local community and even received death threats. In the end, she had to close her business and move away. And what happened to the individuals responsible for hundreds of needless deaths? Yeates, the CEO, was suspended on full pay before resigning. That’s right, not a single prosecution was pursued. Julie may have received a well-deserved MBE but, in many ways, she endured a harsher punishment than the care workers, nurses and NHS executives. She was the one hounded out of her home.

Our politicians spent the whole General Election talking about the NHS whilst saying the sum total of nothing. It was extraordinary. You could be forgiven for thinking that everything is perfect, provided we chuck it a few more quid. This couldn’t be further from the truth. It needs root and branch reform. But incessantly calling it ‘our’ NHS as though it’s some kind of sacred, infallible institution, denouncing critics as puppets of big-pharma and the US, and intimidating into silence anyone who questions or criticises its care, is obstructing open debate, discussion and, as a result, the reforms we so desperately need.

I would urge our politicians to watch The Cure and take inspiration from Julie Bailey. If they demonstrate a tenth of her implacable courage, we really will have the best health service in the world.

Farage is a political Titan – yet now he risks being Brexit’s executioner

I’m a big fan of Nigel Farage. He’s a political Titan. Without him, we’d still have Theresa ‘the grey’ May in number 10. That fact alone makes him worthy of a knighthood, in my book. But he has really messed up during this general election, brutally demonstrated by the defection of four of his most prized candidates yesterday.

His excuse that Annunziata Rees-Mogg’s withdrawal was down to her loyalty to her brother Jacob was desperate, as was his conspiratorial claim that all the defectors had ties to the Tory Party. It’s been a precipitous, ugly and perhaps irrevocable fall from grace.

He’s unconvincingly attacked Boris’s deal, and, although agreeing to withdraw Brexit Party candidates from all 300-odd constituencies held by the Conservatives, he’s continued to attack Boris, our only hope of delivering anything close to what the people voted for back in 2016, and stubbornly refused to withdraw candidates from marginal seats currently held by Labour – an unfathomably vacuous decision that could see a Labour victory as the Brexit vote splits in these crucial marginals. Brexit could be put to death. And Farage, yes Farage, could be the executioner. Hard to believe, eh?

It could have been so different. He should have withdrawn his troops from all but a few seats in which the Tories had no chance of winning. Such a move would have been selfless, statesmanlike and, above all, rational. As things stand, he’s allowed his ego and visceral hatred of the Tory Party to cloud his better judgment. Yes, they may be arrogant, entitled, born-to-rule, sneering mediocrities who’ve gleefully attacked and disparaged Farage for 25 years. But they’re our only hope of Brexit.

Further, if Farage had played his cards right, appeared statesmanlike and above the fray of petty party politics, committed to the betterment of his country and uninterested in personal advancement and devoid of ambition, he’d have elevated himself to greatness among Brexiteers and, perhaps, constructed a powerful springboard for a resurgence.

The Tories are still the Tories, wet, dreary and perpetually bullied by our liberal-left media and institutions. Even after Brexit, immigration will continue unabated and loony leftist policies on transgenderism, crime and punishment and terrorism will continue to be implemented. There is a place for a modified Brexit Party, committed to finding sensible, thoughtful answers to the challenges of identity, the mass movement of peoples, democracy and statehood that we face.

I, for one, am only voting Conservative because I believe, tentatively, that Boris is our best chance of realising what 17.4 million people voted for back in 2016. And because the survival of our democracy will be determined by Brexit’s fate, for me, this is a single issue election. As far as their wider policies and ideological outlook are concerned, from what I’ve seen, the Tories do not offer an imaginative, radical programme that matches the grave magnitude of the challenges we face. And I’m not talking about the largely confected threat of anthropogenic global warming. I’m talking about Islamic terrorism, mass immigration, globalism and identity, as well as the unsustainability of the NHS in its current guise, crime, punishment and education. The Tories offer no credible answers to these challenges. It’s going to be the same old same old.

Farage had a window of opportunity. He may have blown it, though, and unwittingly stumbled into obsolescence.

First published on Conservative Home on 7th December 2019

Can teachers be trusted to teach primary school pupils about LGBT relationships?

Anderton Park Primary School has found itself at the centre of what some would characterise as a dispute between two very different value systems. On one side you have the self-styled defenders of secular, socially progressive liberalism and with it, alternative lifestyles, whilst, on the other, you have conservative religious values or, more accurately in this case, conservative Muslim values.

For several weeks now, predominantly Muslim parents have been demonstrating against the school’s approach to promoting equality – an approach that exposes pupils to books featuring cross-dressing children and gay families. Shakeel Afsar, the self-appointed leader of the demonstrators and, interestingly, an individual without a child at the school, accuses the headteacher, Sarah Hewitt-Clarkson, of ‘social engineering’. Ms Clarkson has reportedly received threatening emails and phone calls and, last week, in a further escalation of the dispute, hundreds of pupils were kept off school by disgruntled parents.

But should we see this as another example of secular values conflicting with those held by some of our more conservative Islamic communities? A recent Newsnight report certainly thinks we should. Apart from a perfunctory nod to ‘some’ Christians sharing the reservations of ‘some’ Muslims, there was little exploration of wider societal concerns about the exposure of children to such material. Neither was there an adequate discussion of the benefits and disbenefits of the school’s methods which, by the way, are now replicated by similar programmes in hundreds of primary schools across the country.

This, in my view, is a mistake. First, of course we need to discuss and explore the possible implications and consequences of making pupils read books about cross-dressers, same-sex relationships and gay marriage. These are our children, after all. Secondly, we shouldn’t be dragged into viewing this dispute through the prism of progressive secularism versus reactionary religious conservatism. It is much more complicated than that. Many who consider themselves to be progressive secularists, for example, share the concerns of their more traditionally minded, religious friends and neighbours.

And what about me? I suppose I’m a partially progressive (I supported civil partnerships but opposed gay marriage; believe that a person should be, out of common courtesy, addressed by their preferred gender pronoun but, in reality, can’t really – actually - change gender), partially conservative, partially secularist (I converted to Catholicism to get my children into a good school, but, if I’m being honest, would probably describe myself as agnostic and detest fundamentalist creeds of all stripes) mishmash of confused, contradictory positions, as you’ve probably deduced.

The point is, like many progressive secularists and conservative Muslims, Christians and Jews, I’m deeply concerned about schools exposing children to books about same-sex relationships and transgender peers without, at the very least, shedding some light on the possible implications through a public debate.

Yes, some might argue that by openly challenging bigotry, encouraging tolerance and making LGBT pupils feel safe, respected and valued, such an approach has enormous benefits. But what if, instead of encouraging tolerance, highlighting alternative lifestyles does the opposite, especially if it conflicts with belief systems that are prominent in the pupils’ homes? Could emphasising difference draw unnecessary attention to LGBT pupils and, as a consequence, encourage rather than discourage vilification? Are these not questions worth asking, before we jump in, feet first, experimenting with the lives of our children?

Furthermore, teaching children from the age of four or five about alternative lifestyles may plausibly raise awareness of human sexuality, encouraging them to question and even experiment with their own sexuality. It may elicit unnecessary confusion, even distress, leading to hitherto unconsidered behaviours.

By far my biggest concern, however, is trusting a highly politicised, ideological profession to dispassionately promote tolerance rather than encourage, even glorify, alternative lifestyles. Children are extremely impressionable and, generally speaking, will do almost anything to please adults, especially those, like teachers, in positions of power and authority. What wouldn’t my kids do to impress their teachers? What if one of these teachers insidiously convinces my son that he is gay or transgender? It’s not beyond the realms of possibility. After all, three generations of educators have convinced our children of the evils of capitalism, the Tory Party and now, more recently, the abomination that is Brexit. Indeed, going one step further, what better way to attack petit bourgeois capitalism than launch an assault upon its bulwark, the traditional family? Such a fear is neither outlandish nor unfounded.

And before you accuse me of being a conspiracy theorist, consider the following: a teacher turned whistle-blower recently exposed his/her school for tricking vulnerable children into believing that they were the wrong sex. Indeed, according to the whistle-blower, most of the 17 pupils in the process of changing gender at the school were autistic. Dr Joanna Williams, a university lecturer and author of the book Women vs Feminism, believes that schools are ‘sowing confusion about gender identity’ by ‘encouraging even the youngest children to question whether they are really a boy or a girl.’ This is extremely worrying. If true - and, as a teacher of 15 years, I have no reason to doubt the veracity of such claims - some teachers are abusing their positions to further some kind of warped, misguided political agenda. Would you trust them to dispassionately teach your children about LGBT relationships? I certainly wouldn’t.

And herein lies the problem. Too many schools believe they’re in the business of indoctrinating and socially engineering our children. They’re not, or, at least, they shouldn’t be. Until this simple fact is widely accepted and rectified, I’d rather teachers didn’t involve themselves in issues as sensitive as marriage and relationships, especially when one considers the age of many of them. They are young, naïve, inexperienced and armed with youthful idealism and a terrifying, burning sense of the new, politically correct morality. They are Corbyn’s shock troops.

Dressing up the Anderton Park Primary School dispute as a conflict between progressive secularism and reactionary religious conservatism serves as a kind of displacement activity. By characterising the demonstrators as reactionaries and, by implication, extremists, the school - and its decision to promote equality through the introduction of books that feature same-sex couples and cross-dressing children -, being their antithesis, is naturally portrayed as moderate, reasonable and mainstream. Therefore, according to this narrative, there is nothing to discuss, apart from the intolerance of our more conservative religious communities. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Many people, including some that would consider themselves to be progressive and, dare I say it, even atheistic, are deeply troubled by the prospect of their children being exposed to such material. Indeed, the school’s position is neither moderate nor mainstream. It must be debated as a matter of urgency.