Welcome To Our World. Again.

Not very long ago, it was a "conspiracy theory" to suggest that the 77th Brigade existed at all, even though it recruited openly, and even though the Chairman of the Defence Select Committee, Tobias Ellwood, was proudly a Lieutenant Colonel in it.

Having spent decades in the anti-austerity and anti-war movement, and therefore also around things like the blacklisting scandal and the stories about the Miners' Strike, today seems like one of those "welcome to our world" moments for the Right, of which the first that I can properly recall was when they whined like toddlers about what had in fact been the minimal policing of the Countryside March.

As an opponent of the Government, you are being spied on? Imagine! Come back to us when they have banged you up, or when they have arranged it so that no one will employee you or rent a home to you, or when they have made it impossible for any school to admit your children, or when they have tried to murder you. That is what real dissidents get in Britain, and always have done.

Every time that these people mention "cancel culture", even though they are often correct on the specific point, then I want to laugh out loud, and I often do. Some of us have never not been cancelled. By far the most glaring example of cancel culture in the years that it has officially existed has been the defenestration of Jeremy Corbyn, who did not always help himself. But the phenomenon has existed forever.

Along with the likes of the Integrity Initiative and the Institute for Statecraft, the 77th Brigade uses organised threats of violence to force the cancellation of any and every event featuring George Galloway. The latest was to have been in Sunderland on Tuesday 7th February, coincidentally the evening after Peter Hitchens will be in Durham, also to speak on Ukraine. Unlike Hitchens's address, it has been cancelled. Of course. Although we must visit the pub that was to have hosted it, the Mountain Daisy. It deserves our custom. Not to be threatened with physical violence by the agents of its own State.

Such tactics give terrifying context to the attempts of Ellwood and of Tom Tugendhat to become Prime Minister, a cause on which neither of them has given up. Hitchens will have assumed all his adult life that he was subject to these agencies' attentions, as Davis will have done for a very long time. As for Toby Young, he was practically a member of the Cameron Government, which allowed him to dictate its schools policy and which tried to put him in charge of the entire university sector. But now, he is out of favour. What goes around, comes around. Those of us who have never been in favour extend a hearty greeting of, "Welcome to our world." Meanwhile, Hitchens writes:

Elsewhere in this newspaper I discuss the extraordinary discoveries by the excellent Big Brother Watch (BBW) organisation, showing what looks very much like British Government involvement in policing opinion during the Great British Covid Mistake.

I’m pretty sure that the big internet companies did not stand up very bravely for free speech when this happened. These things are well-hidden and I suspect that BBW’s boss, Silkie Carlo, has discovered only a tiny part of what went on.

There are two issues here. The first is whether speech should be free at all at such times, which in my view it absolutely should. If your policy is wrong, which it was, how will you find out if you forbid debate? The second is direct government involvement. In Britain, I think the state crossed a dangerous line during Covid and I believe it has not retreated.

This week, there’s an even more important issue, the future of the planet. Those of us who are deeply worried by the decision to send tanks – such as the British Challenger 2 – to Ukraine should be watching carefully to see whether our opinions get a fair hearing, especially on the internet.

Readers of The Mail on Sunday, which believes profoundly in free speech, are lucky. They get to hear both sides. But in the wider world of the web, are dissenting voices heard? Or is there no sound except the grinding of tank engines and shouts for more war?

Welcome to our world. Again.