© Clare KendallStephanie Flanders, BBC economics editor, was sure the euro was 'secure'
Two adjacent items in last Monday's
Daily Telegraph highlighted what has become one of the more prominent features of British life. In one, Cristina Odone described how she was asked to speak in favour of marriage at a conference arranged by the World Congress of Families, at the Law Society. At the last minute, the Society cancelled the debate on the grounds that it was "contrary to our diversity policy" - "espousing as it does an ethos which is opposed to same-sex marriage". (Though the society happily hosted a meeting recently to promote assisted suicide which, unlike marriage, is still against the law.)
Adjoining this was a fine rant by Boris Johnson against the BBC: "statist, corporatist, anti-business, Europhile and, above all, overwhelmingly biased to the Left". He called for its next director-general to be a Tory.
The wider point these two pieces illustrated was the success achieved by the upholders of politically correct orthodoxies in taking over the institutions that represent the commanding heights of our society, and using them ruthlessly to ensure that no dissenting voices are heard. Any view contrary to their dogmas becomes what Orwell called, in
Nineteen Eighty-Four, a "thoughtcrime".
We saw this for years in the way that those daring to question the euro, or the onward march of the EU to political integration, were dismissed with contempt - by politicians, the BBC and every variety of the great and the good - as "fruitcakes", "xenophobes" and "Little Englanders". We saw it in spades as the promoters of "consensus" on global warming took over the commanding heights of the scientific world - such as the Royal Society, Nature, the universities (on a sea of climate-change related funding). Supported again by politicians and the BBC, they were determined to show the maximum intolerance to those who challenged their orthodoxy, however rationally: these were "deniers", "flat-earthers", "anti-science nutters", who must be "in the pay of Big Oil".
Comment: See also:
Why I Heckled War Criminal Tony Blair at Colby College Graduation
Court finds Bush and Blair Guilty of War Crimes