Corrupting our language, where care and concern for children is called ‘hate’, and mutilating and poisoning them is ‘love’

(This item first appeared in the Brighton Argus on 17th December 2024)

It was George Bernard Shaw who said: “The British and the Americans are two great peoples divided by a common tongue.” That might not be quite true, but we have had different dialects, but these, too, are merging with the Americanisation of the English language. This is nothing new. Speaking on the wireless in 1935, Alistair Cooke declared that “Every Englishman (sic) listening to me now unconsciously uses 30 or 40 Americanisms a day”.

Dr Hilary Cass with her report on NHS services for children and young people who are questioning their gender identity or experiencing gender dysphoria

When I first came to the U.K., even though I was a first generation South African from an English-speaking family, I used words and phrases that were not understood in Brighton. ‘Red robots’ and ‘circles’ in the road meant nothing to Brightonians who said ‘traffic lights’ and ‘roundabouts’. Before then, my father and his brother who were born and brought up in Stoke-on-Trent, could communicate with each other in the North Staffs dialect that the rest of us struggled to comprehend. A more famous saying, now available as an inscription on mugs, asks: “Cost tha kick a bo agen a wo an yed it til thee bost eet?” It means: “Can you kick a ball against a wall and head it until it bursts?” My aunt Dorothy, who lived in the Potteries, would call me “duck” – a common term of affection towards both men and women as in “Tow rate owd duck?” meaning “Are you all right dear?”

Our language and local dialects are being lost thanks to our arrogant cousins from across the Atlantic. We no longer have tomato sauce but ketchup. Chips are now fries (though not in South Africa where crisps are called chips). Mac and cheese, keeping you across all the news, and cookies are just a few other examples. Why can’t we say macaroni cheese, keeping you up-to-date, and biscuits? Computers have given new meanings to common words like apple, windows, mouse and cookies.

‘Sussex as she wus spoke’ is a delightful guide to the Sussex dialect by Tony Wales. I learned some gems from this book: ‘all mops and brooms’ (to be in a muddle), a ‘bum-freezer’ (short coat), and ‘so drunk he couldn’t see through a ladder’ (very drunk). Many of the words and sayings are, to me, ‘wimwams for goose’s bridles’ (something not understood). This column gets its shares of ‘balsam’ (uncomplimentary remarks) but I hope I will be spared on this occasion.

In George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four, ‘Newspeak’ limited a person’s ability to articulate and communicate abstract concepts, such as personal identity, self-expression, and free will, which were described as ‘thoughtcrimes’, acts of personal independence that contradicted the ideological orthodoxy.  Orwell explained that Newspeak is a language characterised by a continually diminishing vocabulary where complete thoughts are reduced to simple terms such as Minitrue (Ministry of Truth), and Miniplenty (Ministry of Plenty). 

Political discourse today has adopted a similar approach. The most obvious recent example has been the ability to close down debate on women’s sex-based rights by accusing someone of being a TERF (a trans-exclusionary radical feminist) or being ‘transphobic’ when questioning the ideological orthodoxy of trans-rights. 

After the publication last week of the thoughtful and authoritative Cass Report on NHS services for children and young people who are questioning their gender identity or experiencing gender dysphoria, it has been interesting to see which politicians have backtracked on their previously-held views. These same people never lifted a finger to defend the likes of Professor Kathleen Stock (hounded out of Sussex University for her gender critical views) or the Labour MP Rosie Duffield (ostracised and abandoned by her party’s leadership). These latter-day converts are yet to apologise to Kathleen or Rosie, or the countless other women and some men (like Father Ted creator, Graham Linehan) who have spoken out so bravely. Yet some of those who said nothing are now calling for a ‘kinder’ dialogue when through their previous silence they were complicit in a hateful ideology.

This ideology has, for almost a decade, captured politics and, most alarmingly, the NHS. Children have been put on toxic medication that can lead to an increase in cancers and infertility, and young people have been mutilated by the removal of perfectly healthy organs.  And here again language has been corrupted. As my friend, Helen Saxby, explained, “it’s urging caution and research in the treatment of children that has been smeared as ‘hate’, and playing fast and loose with children’s health that has been rebranded as ‘love’.” It is people like Helen who will be judged as being on the right side of history, and that history has begun to be written through the Cass Report.

Time for an end to Brighton Pride: it has become toxic

(This item first appeared in the Brighton Argus on 9th August 2023)

Last Saturday, notwithstanding the rain and wind, tens of thousands of people turned out for the annual Brighton Pride. I have been on Pride marches for many years. I used to joke that I always stood out from the crowd of exotically dressed (and undressed) revellers by going, uniquely, as a boring middle-aged man.  I was told that I carried off this persona as if I lived it every day!

But I didn’t go on the march this year. I just watched some of the parade as it passed through London Road. It wasn’t the wind and rain that deterred me. I would not have gone even if it had been glorious weather.  This may be an unpopular view but I have deep concerns about what Pride has become. The level of alcohol and drug use is depressing, resulting in personal crises for some.  I know traders in London Road who dread the day, shutting up shop because trade is non-existent, because of the aggro they experience, and the open dealing of drugs.

Residents in neighbouring streets, too, do not look forward to the day, seeing their front gardens turned to public toilets and worse.  When I was at BHT Sussex, we would arrange security for our residential alcohol and drug recovery services which is on the route, such was the appalling behaviour of some revellers. 

Brighton Pride 2019

In normal years – when not impacted by rain and rail problems – the amount of plastic waste that Pride generates shames this environmentally-conscious city, and the amount of broken glass provides an ongoing hazard for dogs.  This year it was much better, partly due to the provision of bins and portaloos. Yet we have lost access to Preston Park for ten days, including the Secret Garden and The Rockery.

I think Pride has had its day and it’s time to call a halt to it.  It has become an excuse for alcohol and drug binging, of corporate posturing, and political expediency.  Businesses spare no expense to assert their support for LGBT issues. Perhaps they could rather reduce their prices or support food banks during this cost-of-living crisis.

Politicians feel obliged to attend. So do leaders of the police, fire and ambulance services. Attendance at Pride has become a shallow, tokenistic gesture for many.

It wasn’t always the event that it is today. In the 1980s I went on one of the earliest Brighton Pride marches, from Hove Town Hall to Preston Park. There were only about 200 of us marching that day. It was more of a political demonstrations. I was one of just six Brighton Borough Councillors willing to take part.

Preston Park during Pride 1992

The reception on the streets was sometimes hostile, with threats of violence and beer cans being thrown at us.  At Preston Park, there were few stalls and little celebration beyond a few truly political speeches. I have a photograph I took in the park at the end of one Pride march. There were just two stalls, one selling a publication called Daring Hearts which recorded the lesbian and gay history of Brighton and Hove from the 1950s and 60s.

Following one march, there were some outrageous homophobic statements by a Conservative Brighton councillor quoted in The Sun. In response, my Labour council colleague Jean Calder proposed, and I seconded, the first-ever pro lesbian and gay motion debated by the Council.  A few days later, Jean and I were subject to ‘loony leftie’ slurs in The Sun, a rather disturbing experience to be on the receiving end of an attack in the most widely read newspaper in the country.

Those days are happily gone. But there are now deep divisions within the LGBT communities. It can no longer be called a single community, if ever it was. There were times when lesbians were excluded from gay bars and clubs because they were women. Today Pride is far from a welcoming environment for those who question the behaviour and attitudes of some trans rights activists who aim anything but so-called ‘trans-love’ at lesbians, feminists and others who argue for and defend women-only spaces.

Originally Pride had a focus on same-sex attraction and relationships which were being vilified and needed to be defended.  Once again, same sex relationships are under attack by people who subscribe to gender ideology and who say that sex-based rights are no longer important or relevant. 

There are other events, such as Trans Pride, that allows the promotion and celebration of trans rights. I am not calling for an end to Trans Pride, but to Pride itself which has become toxic.  Let’s not pretend that Pride remains one big, happy family.

My brief experience as a film censor

(This item first appeared on 11th January 2023 in my ‘Brighton and Beyond’ column in the Brighton Argus)

In the 1980’s, I found myself accidentally elected to the old Brighton Borough Council. In 1986, as Committee places were being carved up amongst councillors, something called the Film Viewing Working Party was mentioned. It was explained to us that every local authority had to have a panel able to review the recommendations of the British Board of Film Classification. We were also told that the committee hadn’t met for over 20 years. That sounded like just the one for me, a committee that never met. So, selflessly, I volunteered to take on this onerous responsibility.

Within a week, a women’s group at the University of Sussex had collected the requisite number of signatures that required the working party to review the classification of the film 9 1/2 Weeks.

On a damp Wednesday morning, three councillors, Tehm Framroze, Doreen Radford and me, accompanied by a council lawyer and a committee clerk, found ourselves sitting in an empty cinema off the Brighton seafront watching what can only be described as a second-rate movie. 

My abiding memory is a scene where Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger were bonking at the top of a clock tower as the great bonging bell tolled backwards and forwards. It was at that precise moment that Cllr Radford nudged me and asked: “Would you like another toffee, dear?”.

Back at the Town Hall the lawyer explained that we had done our duty and we could now just ratify the classification. I asked him what options we had. He said we could reduce the classification to allow younger people to see the film. When pushed, he reluctantly said that we could also ban it from public cinemas in Brighton.

So I proposed that we ban it. There were a few scenes that I had found completely unacceptable (although I freely acknowledge that you could see more unacceptable things on television most nights, both then and now). It wasn’t nudity. In fact, I don’t think there was any. What I objected to was that the more Basinger’s character resisted the advances of Rourke’s character, and the more he forced himself on her, and the more she said no, the more the film suggested she ultimately enjoyed the experience. This is the classic rape myth.

I feared that a young lad out with his girlfriend, on seeing this in a Hollywood film, would have the false assumption reenforced that the more his girlfriend said no, the more she would enjoy it.

To my surprise I was supported by Doreen Radford who said that she had been a foster mother in Brighton for more than thirty years and had lost count of the number of times teenage girls had come home on a Friday or Saturday night, very distressed, having been forced to go further with their boyfriends than they had wanted.

So, 9 1/2 Weeks was banned from public cinemas in Brighton. The Duke of Yorks cinema, as a private cinema club at the time, was able to screen it. Its decision resulted in many people resigning their membership. There were picket lines outside. It even split the Militant Tendency down the middle, mainly on gender lines, with women on the picket line and the men going in to watch the film.

As a result of our decision, the film got some notoriety and probably more people saw it because, according to The Sun, it was “too saucy for the seaside”.

Of all the things I achieved as a councillor (there weren’t many), I think that the debate that the banning provoked, on censorship, on pornography, on violence against women, was up there as one of the best.

One of the objections to the banning that people voiced was why should anyone, not least a 26-year-old as I was at the time, have the right to decide what adults should be allowed to see? Well, I was an elected representative at the time and could always be voted out at the next election. And society has always drawn a line, quite rightly, in what is acceptable and not. No decent or rational person would say, for example, that the sexual exploitation of children should be allowed as popular entertainment. Where we draw that line is the legitimate subject for debate.

What does worry me today is that personal views and the freedom of expression is now being censored. The language being used is ‘no platforming’ where, for example, opponents try, increasingly successfully, to silence those with gender-critical views, even to the point of them losing their employment.

If we are a civilised society we must be allowed to debate and to disagree. People have the right to be offended, even if no offence was intended, but we must be allowed to speak the truth as we understand it.

My message for Rishi Sunak: build hundreds of thousands of Council homes

If there is one thing that should persuade the new Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, to change course on its housing strategy, it is news that councils spent £1.6 billion between April 2021 March 2022 on temporary accommodation for homeless households in England. A quarter of this bill was spent on emergency bed and breakfast (B&B) and hostel accommodation, with B&B costs alone increasing by 20% in the last five years. The overall increase is 61% compared with five years ago.

There should be another reason to persuade him to change the government’s approach – the human cost of housing people in such accommodation rather than in a home of their own. There is ample research on the long-term impact of accommodating children in temporary accommodation in terms of lower educational attainment, mental ill-health, and the loss of other life opportunities. For adults, there is an increase in mental health problems, alcohol and drug misuse, and break downs in relationships, to mention just three consequences.

I spoke at a conference last week and, in response to a question about what would improve the current situation, I said that the only thing that will begin to address the housing supply and affordability crisis would be to build council houses in their hundreds of thousands, coupled with the abolition of the Right to Buy. 

Come on, Rishi Sunak. Do you want a legacy of which to be proud?

Please, Prime Minister, can we have some grown-up housing policies?

Earlier this month Boris Johnson gave a speech in Blackpool where he said he would “turn benefits to bricks“ by allowing people on benefits to put that money towards the cost of a mortgage.

At the time I was not particularly complimentary, saying that the proposals were “stupid, ill-thought through, and harmful.” (Note to self: I must stop sitting on the fence on issues such as this!)

Has the government learned anything from recent history? I draw your attention to policy disasters in housing over recent decades, not least in the two years before the 2008 banking collapse when the most popular banks sold over 200,000 sub-prime mortgages.

Last week in parliament it was revealed that most people in receipt of housing benefit will not be able to take advantage of Johnson’s ‘benefit to bricks’ plan. Who would have thought?  David Rutley, a minister in the Department for Work and Pensions, admitted that the plan will likely impact on just a limited number of people. He said: “There are five million in receipt of housing support, and though we know that it is likely most will not be in a position to take up the new policy, it removes a barrier that currently prevents thousands of families from buying their own home.”

That is a most optimistic spin on a ridiculous policy and damns it by faint praise. It must be excruciating for intelligent, thoughtful ministers required to defend policies dreamt up in the playground that is the Prime Minister’s mind.

Experts have said that in areas where house prices are high, such as Brighton and Hove, it is unlikely that universal credit payments will be enough to allow anyone at all on benefits to buy a home. There is also a deafening silence from lenders as to whether they would be willing to be part of this scheme.

This is a policy that raises hopes only to see them dashed on the rocks of reality.

There have been other government housing proposals in recent weeks, including the extension of the Right to Buy to housing association tenants that are, frankly, ludicrous and unachievable. Housing associations are not public bodies. Their house building programmes are backed by billions of Pounds of private borrowing with loan covenants based on rental income forecasts over thirty or forty years. Financial institutions have a charge on the very homes that the government wants to be sold off cheaply.

The commitment to extend the Right to Buy is likely to be as hollow as previous promises to do this. The National Housing Federation has raised concerns with ministers while the Housing Secretary, Michael Gove, has said that he wants to ‘seduce’ housing associations to take part, but has said that no organisation will be forced to comply with the proposal.

As someone who works for a housing association, it is unlikely that I will allow myself to be seduced by the delectable Michael Gove, tempting though that might be. I won’t let him have his wicked way with me because selling social housing is wicked. We already have an affordability and supply crisis on an unprecedented scale. The selling off of housing association homes will only make this situation even worse.

Over 40% of council houses that have been sold are now let out in the private rented sector with rents four or five times the level of previous social rents. This has been a major contributing factor to the spiralling cost of housing benefit – an all-too-predictable consequence of the failure of successive governments, of all colours, to build council housing.

There used to be a bi-partisan approach to house building. Let’s not forget that it was a Conservative government in the 1950s, with Winston Churchill as Prime Minister and Harold MacMillan as Housing Minister, that built a record 350,000 home a year.

I have seen nothing in Boris Johnson’s statement, nor in the housing measures in the Queen’s Speech, that gives me any confidence whatsoever that the government is serious about addressing housing’s affordability and supply crisis that has bedevilled this country for far too long. 

Housing policy should not be a short-term, vote-grabbing activity designed to appease restless backbenchers. 

Appeasing backbenchers and tinkering around with failed housing policies is no way for a government to behave. It is far too important for the country and for people in housing need. Housing should be where people live, not a political football, nor seen merely as an investment opportunity.

A serious solution to the housing crisis requires long-term strategic planning and, if we are going to get truly affordable homes, a massive investment in the building of social housing and an end to the Right to Buy.

In short, we need a return to grown-up housing policies.

Brighton and Hove can be the most close-minded and intolerant of places

(This item was first published on 22nd June 2022 in my ‘Brighton and Beyond’ column in the Brighton Argus)

Two years ago today (22nd June 2020) there was a brief letter in The Times from someone called Alan Hawkes: “Sir, There were several articles in Saturday’s comment section (June 20) with which I profoundly disagreed. Keep up the good work”.

In this age, when merely questioning perceived orthodoxy can result in people losing their jobs, being no platformed and being ‘cancelled’, the sentiment in Alan Hawkes’ letter was most refreshing.

Brighton and Hove, in spite of its reputation for tolerance and inclusivity, can be the most close-minded and intolerant of places, where people are hesitant to say what they actually believe for fear of being ‘cancelled’.

Bari Weiss was, for a short while, a columnist on the New York Times but resigned because of the growth of the ‘cancel-culture’ of a growing number of journalists and others working for that paper. In her resignation letter she wrote: “A new consensus has emerged . . . that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.”

During the European referendum there was next to nobody on the left in Brighton who would admit that they were going to vote Leave. I was amongst the ‘next to nobody’. What shocked me was the reaction I received when I mentioned to friends and colleagues that I was merely considering a Leave vote. The self-righteous indignation was shocking. Just a couple of people asked me why, but generally I was met with reactions ranging from mild surprise to a few people refusing to talk to me about it.  

“How does it feel getting into bed with Boris Johnson and Nigel Farrage?” I was asked. “About the same as getting into bed with David Cameron and George Osborn,” was my reply, adding, “but that isn’t a constructive political argument.”

I was actually undecided about how to vote right up to the day of the referendum. I could have gone either way. I had long been persuaded by Tony Benn’s argument that the European Union was un-democratic and anti-socialist.  I would go further. I think the European Union, as an institution, is anti-democratic, corrupt and anti-socialist. 

I am an internationalist and believe in the importance of international institutions. If I believed that the EU could be reformed I would have voted Remain. But the Treaty of Lisbon makes that almost impossible.

I didn’t vote ‘Brexit’, nor do I wish to be associated with the xenophobia of Farrage or the incompetence of those who failed so miserably in negotiating Britain’s exit. I never believed the lies about the “oven-ready agreement”, no border in the Irish Sea, £350 million a week for the NHS, or that trade deals would be the easiest thing to agree. 

By contrast, Project Fear and other claims of Remain, along with an almost delusional belief in all things EU, were equally unconvincing, and are one reason why Labour lost in 2019, and may continue to lose support in former rock-solid Labour areas of the north.

Sometimes when I have mentioned that I voted Leave others have confided in me that they, too, had voted Leave but didn’t want others to know, such is the fear of being ostracised by the Brighton version of Bari Weiss’s ‘enlightened few’.

The period we are living through is characterised, in Brighton as much as anywhere, by intolerance, specifically an intolerance of original thinking and dissenting views. The ‘enlightened few’ need to realise that the silent majority isn’t listening and, if they are, they are being alienated by the uncompromising certainty of the enlightened few about all things.

The age of Twitter has contributed to a new level of intolerance. It is so easy to retweet what you agree with, follow those who reinforce what you think, and block anyone whose views do not conform with your version of the truth.

This is the opposite of Thought Leadership in which you share your best understanding and welcoming views that challenge and develop your thinking. I have, on occasions, blogged on one day and, following feedback, changed my mind in a post the next day. The worst that can happen from robust debate is that you improve your thinking.

Political debate today is so poor and subject to the absence of Thought Leadership where whatever the Leader says is regarded by acolytes as the undisputed truth, no matter how obvious it is that the Prime Minister is lying or the Leader of the Opposition is going back on his word. All this is now being ‘costed in’ to political fallout. How utterly depressing, and it makes for a poorer democracy.

Meanwhile, to everyone who fundamentally disagrees with some of what I write … keep up the good work.

Misogyny, sexism and male-on-female violence is a problem for men to resolve, not women

(This item was first published in the Brighton Argus on 13th October 2021. The sentences in italics were removed by the Argus prior to publication).

The sexual assault of a woman in Meeting House Lane has been described by police as ‘an isolated incident’ as reported in the Brighton Argus yesterday (12th October 2021). How can something be described as isolated when sexual harassment and sexual assaults are a daily occurrence, where domestic sexual assaults are commonplace, and when at least three women are murdered each week.

The one thing that brings all these together, making them not isolated incidents, is that the perpetrators are almost exclusively men.

It is one reason why I am supporting the fantastic #CallHimOut initiative by the Lewes Football Club’s men’s team against the epidemic of misogyny, sexism and male-on-female violence. In a statement the club has said that “it’s time, it’s way beyond time, that men took personal responsibility for what all women have to endure, day in, day out. This is a problem for men to resolve, not women.”

The principle of #CallHimOut is that whenever a man hears or sees something said or done that they feel is disrespectful, sexist or harmful in any way to a woman, whether she’s there or not, they will speak to that man and they will #CallHimOut. 

I know from personal experience that doing so isn’t easy, particularly in a sporting environment. Back in the early 1990s after I objected to sexist exchanges in the pub after a cricket game, I was never again asked to play for the team. It was distressing but nowhere near as distressing as the experience of women who are on the receiving end of demeaning comments, unwanted advances, and ‘isolated’ sexual assaults.

There is an increasing recognition of unhealthy attitudes and dangerous behaviours in police forces up and down the country. Perhaps male officers in Sussex Police and the Police Federation itself could #CallHimOut and, thereby, begin to rebuild trust in policing. 

Blaming Brexit for the current ills of the country is a sloppy, unproductive exercise

KFC is running out of chicken, and McDonald’s has run out of milkshakes. Hauliers are complaining of a shortage of hauliers, and fruit and veg remains unpicked in the fields. The construction industry has said that there is a shortage of labour. Today ITN is reporting that care providers are experiencing the greatest-ever shortage of staff.

What is to blame for this? “Brexit”, everyone (or at least Guardian readers and many people in Brighton and Hove) will shout.

The cause is much more complex, of course.

One of the Leavers’ slogans was “gaining control of our borders”. The previous ‘hostile environment’ has now been put on steroids. We hear more and more of “illegal asylum seekers” trying to get into the U.K. (Please note, that being an asylum seeker is not ‘illegal’. Trying to criminalise vulnerable people fleeing persecution, even death, is wrong.  It is not illegal, and suggesting it is is disingenuous and shameful).

Back to “gaining control of our borders”. Since the U.K. left the EU, the government has failed on so many levels regarding the border. When there was clear evidence that the Covid Delta variant was reaping a tragic havoc in India, the government closed the borders to Pakistan and Bangladesh, but failed to control the border to those travelling from India (and before that South Africa, Brazil, the USA, etc. where there was clear evidence of a threat to the U.K. population).

As for labour shortages, the government has, inexplicably, done the opposite. While Brexit has resulted in the U.K. withdrawing from the arrangement that allowed the free movement of labour, ‘controlling the border’ should not mean closing the border to those skilled and unskilled workers on whom the country and its economy rely. Politicians who have allowed that may be pandering to their base, but it is certainly harming the economy. 

The labour shortages we are experiencing were not inevitable and easily avoidable. A simplistic condemnation of Brexit, and trying to reopen that debate is as futile as it is unhelpful. It really is time to move on.

Brighton is in danger of getting a reputation for being a closed-minded, intolerant city

A year ago today (22nd June 2020) there was this letter in The Times from someone called Alan Hawkes: “Sir, There were several articles in Saturday’s comment section (June 20) with which I profoundly disagreed. Keep up the good work”.

In this age when merely questioning perceived orthodoxy can result in people losing their jobs, being no platformed and being ‘cancelled’, the sentiment in Alan Hawkes’ letter is most refreshing.

Brighton and Hove, in spite of its reputation for tolerance and inclusivity, can be the most close-minded and intolerant of places where people are hesitant to say what they actually believe for fear of being ‘silenced’. 

Bari Weiss was for a short while a columnist on the New York Times but resigned because of the growth of ‘cancel-culture’ of a growing number of journalists and others working for that paper. In her resignation letter she wrote: “A new consensus has emerged . . . that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.”

During the European referendum there was next to nobody on the left in Brighton who would admit that they were going to vote Leave. I was amongst the ‘next to nobody’. What shocked me was the reaction I received when I mentioned to friends and colleagues that I was merely considering a Leave vote. The self-righteous indignation was shocking. One or two asked me why, but generally I was met with reactions ranging from mild surprise to a few people refusing to talk to me about it.  “How does it feel getting into bed with Boris Johnson and Nigel Farrage?” I was asked. “About as distasteful as you getting into bed with David Cameron and George Osborn,” was my reply, adding, “but that isn’t a valid political argument.”

I was actually undecided about how to vote right up to the day of the referendum. I could have gone either way. I had long been persuaded by Tony Benn’s argument that the European Union was un-democratic and anti-socialist.  I would go further. I think the European Union as an institution is anti-democratic, corrupt and anti-socialist. I am an internationalist and believe in the importance of international institutions. If I believed that the EU could be reformed I would have voted Remain. But the Treaty of Lisbon makes that impossible.

I didn’t vote ‘Brexit’, nor do I wish to be associated with the xenophobia of Farrage or the incompetence of those who failed so miserably in negotiating Britain’s exit. I never believed the lies about the “oven-ready agreement”, £350 million a week for the NHS, or that trade deals would be the easiest thing to agree. By contrast, Project Fear and other claims of Remain, along with an almost delusional belief in all things EU were equally unconvincing, and are one reason why Labour lost, and will continue to lose, in former rock-solid Labour areas of the north.

Sometimes when I have mentioned that I voted Leave others have confided in me that they, too, had voted Leave but didn’t want others to know, such is the fear of being ostracised by the Brighton version of Bari Weiss’s ‘enlightened few’.

The period we are living through is characterised, in Brighton as much as anywhere, by intolerance, specifically an intolerance of original thinking and dissenting views. The ‘enlightened few’ need to realise that the silent majority isn’t listening and, if they are, are being alienated by your unreasonable certainty about all things.

Happy Alan Hawkes Day!

Those in positions of power should not be too insecure, too arrogant, or too deluded to listen to those who might perhaps know more than them

It is being reported that the government will later today (16 February) announce new measures to strengthen legal protections for free speech in higher education. Whether threatening to fine universities and student unions will be enough is debatable. Nevertheless, I think, if anywhere, universities should not suppress free expression and the exploration of alternative views.

I would hope that the government will go further and extend the right of charities to speak freely. In recent years, under governments of all colours, comments by charities about the impact of government policy have not been welcome. The so-called Lobbying Act was one attempt to stop charities speaking truth to power, and clauses have been inserted into government contracts restricting charities ability to speak on behalf of their beneficiaries. In 2017 the government refused to amend the Lobbying Act following advice from a House of Lords committee, something I described at the time as being a sign of political weakness. I said: 

“A sign of a healthy democracy is that those in power allow comment and listen to views that might not be comfortable for it.  Charities, while not party political, should be free to speak out on behalf of the causes and people they support.”

The former Minister, Brooks Newmark, told charity chief executives like me that we should stop becoming in politics and that we should “stick to your knitting”. (Perhaps Mr Newmark should have stuck to his knitting rather than sexting).

Recently we have had leading politicians attack “activist lawyers”, “do-gooders” and “lefty lawyers” who seek redress through the Courts on behalf of their marginalised clients, often when government departments are not following their own laws and rules. I wrote about these attacks recently.

Criticism is not always easy to hear, but those in positions of power should not be too insecure, too arrogant, or too deluded to listen to those who might perhaps know more than them.

(A footnote about Brooks Newmark. After leaving politics he set up a charity and has said some interesting things regarding public policy, much of which I largely agree with, regarding the normalisation of rough sleeping. He is a charity founder who, I am pleased to see, is trying to influence government policy. I have no evidence, on the other hand, whether he is any good at knitting!)