People complain to me that they can no longer say what they wish. They feel they are losing their right to free speech or to independent thoughts. They have to follow the fashionable mantra of the left who dominate language and attitudes on law and order, immigration, transport and energy amongst other topics. They were hoping for some change of tone or lead from the top with a change to a Conservative majority government at the last election.
Some people try it on with this site, wanting to cast generalised allegations against religions, nations, large groups of people or named members of a global elite. I do not allow it, as I do not like unpleasant or dangerous language casting possibly false allegations and adding to divisions. Nor do I have time or legal resource to check out allegations against named individuals. There are campaigning media with better resources and more appetite to root out individual cases of law breaking, excessive influence or whatever you should go to for that.
I do, however, agree that we need to be able to talk sensibly about matters that worry people, and need to analyse problems like the cost and availability of energy or how we police our borders, free from attempts to prevent us by making false allegations against us over our motives and attitudes. We need to keep open the right to talk of these things and to disagree with the authoritarian left who wish us all to say the same things and to come to the same conclusions, when often their priorities and remedies are damaging to both our freedoms and to people’s prosperity.
If we are to recover our economy, enhance our freedoms, level up around the UK and promote individual prosperity, we do need to challenge some of the left wing assumptions which make all that more difficult. I encourage people to write in with a better vision of the future. That is why, for example, I have been working on energy policies to keep the lights on and provide more affordable energy for consumers and business, and why I have been urging the government to direct its powers to stamp out people trafficking and illegal migration risking lives to get people into the UK. We do need new approaches to a variety of problems that challenge the tired soundbites of political correctness.
