Free Speech

With all the splits and ruptures cracking our national unity, true patriots will be comforted to observe an emerging consensus in the moderate mainstream. Downing Street and a Theresa May wannabe have reached a cordial agreement to the effect that "dehumanising or derogatory" language has no place in politics, except when it is applied to Asian paedophiles, economic refugees, citizens of nowhere, shirkers, antisemites and other deserving cases. The Conservative Party, it appears, is full of people who deeply and sincerely believe in capital punishment; many of them also favour corporal punishment according to the predilections of their chums in the head-chopping House of Saud, and doubtless the more traditionally-minded among them have nothing in particular against burning difficult women at the stake. Undoubtedly they share with the Blairites a staunch faith in the pleasurable efficacy of torture. Since they believe that the dead-eyed warden is a traitor, and that traitors should be decapitated, drawn and quartered, or simply strung up live on Murdochvision, their talk of knives and nooses is not only eminently reasonable; it is dictated by the logic of their position. Given that the dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK has done so much to help normalise the use of such language against those with fewer bodyguards than she has, it is certainly courageous of her to register objections now that the verbal violence has recoiled upon herself.