Free speech on campus RIP

The new Labour government is already showing its true colours

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Keir Starmer’s Labour government just declared war on free speech. That’s right. Those who fell for the claim that the new Labour government was going to be liberal, tolerant, enlightened, moderate, and distance itself from radicals and extremists were wrong; already, Labour is showing its true colours.

What’s the story?

Well, a few years ago, myself and my academic colleagues became so concerned with what was happening on university campuses here in Britain —the mobbings, the cancellations, the intimidation of scholars who held views that conflicted with the liberal progressive orthodoxy on campus— that we decided something had to be done.

We were tired of watching people like Kathleen Stock, Nigel Biggar, Eric Kaufmann, Noah Carl, Jordan Peterson, Jo Phoenix, among many others, suffer harassment, intimidation, and in some cases even losing their jobs, simply because they happened to challenge or merely question the radical woke orthodoxy on campus.

So we helped design and push through the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, which basically created a legal requirement on universities to protect and promote free speech and free expression on campus.

Universities could no longer disinvite speakers or sack nonconformist academics because of their political views. If they did, there would be consequences, such as fines. We did this because we wanted to return universities to their original purpose -to prioritise the pursuit of truth and good faith debate above political dogma.

We also did this because we believe that universities, which already lean so strongly to the left, could not be relied upon to reform themselves. Over the last fifty years …