On press censorship (and how Old Holborn is doing more to protect our liberty than Stephen Fry)

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The great and good of liberal metropolitan Britain set about regulating the press (or rather that bit of the press they disliked). This quote sums up just how repulsive it is that men and women quick to shout about liberty led a campaign to introduce censorship:

The campaign to restrict the historic rights of the press to rabble-rouse and publish and be damned—rights fought for over centuries by some of Britain's greatest liberals—has been led from the very start by people associated with Index on Censorship, PEN International, and Liberty, and cheered on by the liberal establishment. It wasn't a brutal state or truncheon-wielding coppers who effectively brought to an end 350 years of relative press freedom in Britain—it was liberals; it was progressives; it was the cultural elite; it was people who have made a name for themselves over the past 30 or 40 years as supporters of freedom of speech, though we now know what a colossal con that was.

It should concern all of us that the campaign to guard our free press is supported not by liberals but, other than the press itself, by 'vile Internet trolls', anarchists and libertarians. Plus a good few Conservatives.

We have, in truth, discovered that the left want liberty - if you want to call it freedom - on their terms and not on the basis of that most central of ideas: that a man is free to say what he wants. It should cause us to pause when Old Holborn is doing more to protect our liberty than that most sainted of liberals, Stephen Fry.

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Free Speech

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I've said before that my politics is simply defined - free speech, free enterprise, free trade. And today free speech has become compromised by fear of offence, by the blandishments of a collective idea of 'equality' and by the likes of Hacked off who seem to want a selective free speech. I would add to this loss - and too few mention this - the misplaced view that commercial speech is somehow different from any other kind of speech and therefore can be banned.

So this statement really matters to me:

...free speech is not a value in the politicians’ sense. It is not quantitatively commensurate with ‘protection’ or ‘tolerance’; it is not capable of being part-exchanged with other so-called values. Properly speaking, free speech is not really a thing to be distributed, calibrated and balanced by the state at all. It is simply not the state’s to divide. Rather, it is a fundamental freedom, a lived liberty, that allows individuals the space to think and speak for themselves, without external compulsion. The point about free speech is that it is speech free from external compulsion; the state’s role in free speech is to guarantee its own absence, not assert its presence as some sort of values accountant, totting up the worth of each idea, and balancing the intellectual books.

I am also reminded that, in Bradford, the Labour Party rejected free speech because it would have meant rejecting the false use of 'Islamaphobia' to close down criticism of Islam. Left wing politicians in Bradford turned their backs on liberty and chose instead a world where politicians, bureaucrats and bullies can decide what you and I are allowed to say.

You too can do a little bit - it's just an online petition and will probably change nothing. But you will have set your mark down in support of liberty. It's online here.  You're in good company - Joe Jackson's there!

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Things that aren't extremism

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Today is clearly a day to talk about  extremism. But to do this we need first to know what people mean by 'extremism'. Here are some things that are not extremism:

1. Living your life according to the tenets, strictures and requirements of a religious faith

2. Asking that the institutions of society recognise your right to live according to your religious faith

3. Promoting your religious faith to others as a good way of living

4. Asking that a school respects your faith in its education of your children

5. Criticising the action of government where those actions attack the practice of your religious faith

The problem is that we appear - regularly for Islam and increasingly for Christianity - to confuse religious orthodoxy with extremism and seek to marginalise religious belief where is doesn't accord with the assumed mores of the secular majority. We also have a new intolerance of ideas - we may believe otherwise but for many Christians, Muslims and Jews homosexuality remains a sin (just as sex outside marriage remains a sin). To seek to close down this belief - to demand that people believe otherwise - is to reject a central premise of our society: the idea of free speech. And this, for me, is a far worse extremism than being a devout Muslim, Jew or Christian.

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Advice on free speech for UKIP

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If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; And if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; For you will heap burning coals on his head, And the LORD will reward you. (Proverbs 25:21/22)

One of the UKIP candidates for the 'South East of England' (easily the least coherent of the EU 'constituencies') has been moaning about the antics of Unite Against Fascism and Hope not Hate:

Janice Atkinson, as Ukip SE chairman, and MEP candidate, has raised concerns about the way the police may deal with the protestors at the Ukip Margate public meeting, on Sunday,18th May. She has formally asked the chief constable to arrest any protestors who call Ukip's supporters 'fascists', hurl other abuse or any physical assault, for 'hate crime' or under the public order act. 

Now I understand why Janice has gone off like this (presumably under instructions from her fellow SE UKIP candidate one Nigel Farage). After all it's exactly the behaviour we would expect from left-wing political parties, student unions and the like when faced with robust debate from the likes of UKIP. So the naturual response is to fight fire with fire, to take Boromir's advice and use the weapons of the enemy 'for good'.

And the response is wrong-headed - just as reporting a green activist in Cambridge for fact-checking Labour's attempt to damn UKIP's policies was stupid. Indeed if UKIP actually believe in free speech (and Nigel keeps telling us they do) then the party should be welcoming UAF and Hope not Hate into their meetings. OK there's a risk but UKIP would be better served treating UAF and its ilk with the contumely they deserve rather than playing the same anti-free speech card that these left-wing groups so love.

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Quote of the day...

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Absolutely:

I am free not to be offended by a cartoon I did not draw. If my prospective constituents do not like me not being offended, they are free not to vote for me. Other Muslims are free to be offended, and the rest of the country is free to ignore them. I will choose my policies based on my conscience. As such, I will continue to defend my prophet from those on the far right and Muslim extremes who present only a rigid, angry and irrational interpretation of my faith.

We need more to challenge intolerance of free speech in this manner.

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No Platform for Smokers!

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You know you're a pariah when you can't go on a platform to make your case - so it is with smokers' rights champion, Simon Clark:

However, a number of our speakers, some of whom are directly linked to the Welsh Government have stated that they are no longer able to speak at the seminar if you were to participate. As I stated it is usual for the Forum to include a range of divergent opinions amongst speakers, however on this occasion we feel that in fairness to delegates that have registered to attend based on a programme that includes these speakers it would be unfair and impractical to continue the seminar without their involvement.

Simply because Simon was on the same bill these speakers - or enough of them to worry the organisers - refuse to participate and the smokers; rights case (whatever we make think of it) isn't heard.

So speakers at the conference in question are free to exclude smokers, to treat them as filthy pariahs and to denigrate their choice while denying anyone the opportunity to defend their choice.

As I said - No Platform for Smokers!

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In which Bradford's Labour councillors vote against free speech...

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The strange party that is Respect put a motion to Bradford Council calling for the English Defence League (EDL) to be banned. For sure they used a posh word - 'proscribed' - but what they wanted was them banned because they hold some unpleasant and rather racist views. Apparently this makes them terrorists (I understand that Respect are loony lefties and probably believe in collective guilt but this was an argument I just didn't get) so we can ban them under our rather egregious terrorism laws.

The Conservative Group considered this and decided that we would respond with a simple statement of principle:

"Council affirms its support for free speech"

We took the view that this would remind people of how democracy is important and that free speech is central to democracy. Put simply, without free speech democracy is a sham. We also pointed out that banning things - OK, 'proscribing' - is a great way to get publicity (Cllr Glen Miller our group leader managed to get 'Life of Brian', Robin Thicke and 'Spycatcher' into his speech).

Affirming our support for free speech would allow the police and others to manage (or overmanage as sometimes happens) the risks of disorder and to deal with crimes such as inciting violence. The last thing we needed was a headline saying 'Council calls for EDL to be banned'.

However, we lost the vote - Bradford's Labour Councillors chose to oppose free speech so their own mealy-mouthed piece of fence sitting got passed!

I had to smile! I always knew socialists didn't believe in free speech. And now I have it confirmed!

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Quote of the day: the 'offendedness sweepstakes'

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Spot on:

‘One of the many things that Rauch predicted was that if you allow something to be a perfect trump card on what people are allowed to say – in this case, it’s the claim of offence – you’re going to notice that the bar for being offended gets lower and lower. People have played the “I’m offended” trump card over and over, and it has turned into what Rauch calls an “offendedness sweepstakes”

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How the UN works...

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In this case to undermine free speech:

When, in March 2008, I attempted to challenge this falsehood in the Council by pointing out the incompatibility of the Cairo Declaration with the UDHR, I was silenced on a point of order by the Pakistani delegate who said: ‘it is insulting to our faith to discuss the Sharia in this Council’. Sadly the president agreed, banning from that point on any ‘judgmental statements regarding any system of law’. In June 2008, the Egypt delegate brought Council proceedings to a halt for almost an hour when he insisted that no reference could be made to Islam, Sharia law or fatwas. Faced with a vote that could have overturned his decision to let the speaker continue, the president backed down, and when the meeting resumed he told the Council that ‘we do not need to discuss religion in this Council, nor shall we’. Islam had won a free pass and is now officially absolved of any responsibility for any human rights abuse carried out in its name.

Why do we tolerate this corrupting and shocking organaisation?

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More on that pesky free speech...

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Apparently expressing the beliefs of mainstream christianisty, islam and judaism is now illegal:

Mr Miano has recently been out preaching in Wimbledon. He very much enjoys biblical evangelism, speaking about spiritual growth, personal holiness and the person and work of Jesus Christ. On Monday, his theme was sexual immorality - all forms (1Thess 4:1-12). He talked about sin - heterosexual and homosexual - without discrimination. As he was preaching, a lady heard him say that homosexuality was a sin, and promptly summoned the police, who duly arrived.

Mr Miano was then arrested for violating Section 5 of the Public Order Act: he was accused of using homophobic speech likely to cause anxiety, distress, alarm or insult.

Now I don't think that homosexuality is any sort of sin but I do know that free speech means others should be able to express that view. And I also know that many christians, muslims and jews consider homosexuality to be a sin.

But there's something about sinners - at least if you're a christian:

Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven. Luke 6:37

The suppression of free speech is an act of judgement as plainly as is the stoning of adulterers or the casting out of people we choose to label 'sinner'.

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The scariest quote I've read in a while...

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Seriously:

“There is a line in the sand between freedom of speech and the right to use hate speech. Freedom of speech does not guarantee you that right. We live in a democracy and we believe in free speech. People will now quote Voltaire but he never had the benefit of going to the gates of Auschwitz and seeing where unfettered free speech ends up.”

This is from some chap at an organisation calling itself "Hope not Hate". An organisation that clearly doesn't believe in free speech and that has a spokesman who thinks Nazi Germany was a land of "unfettered free speech".

The problem is that government - local as well as national - will not face down these organisations as they campaign for less and less free speech.

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Free press?

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I caught a few moments of the ever crazier arguments promoted for regulating - they call it "statutory underpinning", which sounds like a 19th century dressmakers regulation - the press.

Of course, once you regulate the press you get:

1. A press that isn't free and where politicians and their pals can keep their bad deeds away from the public
2. A slippery slope - each year there'll be calls for changes, a little more control (mostly "for the children" I don't doubt)
3. A supine, spineless, risk-averse media - imagine if it were all like the BBC?

This is why we shouldn't listen to a floppy-haired actor and some bloke who likes his bottom spanked. And why we shouldn't play silly political games with fundamental rights - like free speech.

Unless, of course, you're the Labour Party!

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Human rights and the curse of laws

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The debate over the Human Rights Act and its parents - the European Court of Human Rights and the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" - is a strange one. Not because the matter of 'rights' is unimportant or even that these laws are without value but because the presumption in all of this is that rights exist only because of our masters' benevolence. The debate seems to treat 'rights' in a way little changed from the rights granted by feudal lords to their most loyal servants - somehow our rights will disappear, melt like snow in Summer, were the Human Rights Acts to be scrapped.

The state constrains rights and then allows, in its benevolence, some of those rights to be freed. The state is not the source of rights but exists - or should exist - to protect those rights. The debate shouldn't be about the existence or otherwise of rights but about the best way to ensure those rights are guarded.

Let it be known that the British liberties are not the grants of princes of parliaments, but original rights, conditions of original contracts, coequal with prerogative, and coeval with government. That many of our rights are inherent and essential, agreed on as maxims and established as preliminaries even before a parliament existed.

It does not matter at all whether we have signed some declaration, taken part in some international court or passed laws within parliament. All that matters is that our rights are protected, that we can have confidence that authorities charged with upholping those rights will do so and that this will be done without fear or favour.

This is not the case. Take Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that document that we cherish:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Does this say anything about being arrested for being rude about a diver? Or stopped from photographing a police station or an airport? Or the entire edifice now being built around 'hate crime' and 'equalities' - an edifice designed to bully people into accepting the left's newspeak rather than to deal with hate?

Perhaps there is a case for declaring some beliefs so dreadful and to merit their expression a crime - but where do we stop with defining those dreadful beliefs? And if it is right to prevent racism by making its expression a crime despite this being contrary to Article 19, surely it is also right to allow the deportation of criminals who constitute a threat to wider society despite their claim of a "right to a private and family life" under Article 8 of the UK's Human Rights Act?

In all the discussion around 'rights', there is an assumption that the Human Rights Act is intended to protect rights and not to contain fundamental rights within a body of law - to bring those rights back under the definition and purview of the state. So free speech is qualified - to such an extent that any protection of our 'right' to speak is nullified by the tools available to agents of government. The protection of "health or morals" seems so broad as to allow almost any statement ot be proscribed. And if this is not enough the Act allows the limiting of free speech to protect 'national security' and to prevent 'disorder'.

The Human Rights Act isn't a universal, sacrosanct declaration but, as with all laws, a flawed, controlling interpretation of the idea of 'rights'. The idea that changing it - even scrapping it - represents a backward step and that somehow our rights would vanish is nonsense. The most important rights - speech, movement, assembly, protest, exchange - these rights are more honoured in the breech by the Human Rights Act. The state is granted so many controls and the 'rights' are so curtailed that it's hard to see that the loss of the Act would make much difference.

In discussing 'rights' we should be talking first about what are the things that make us free and then what are the justifications for limiting somebodies freedom. Instead we indulge in an ever more occult discussion - guarded closely by lawyers - where the parsing of particular sentences and the dissecting of judges' opinions casts a thick mist over any understanding of 'rights'.

Finally, just as 'equalities' rules run the risk of being used to secure advantage, so it the case with the Human Rights Act. And because our judges care more about words than intention - such in the curse of laws - the result is decision-making that does not promote rights but that brings the protection of rights into question. To the ordinary man such inconsistencies, such egregious interpretation of 'rights' means that we run the risk of destroying protection on the altar of lawyerly pedantry.

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Sorry Ms Moore, I'm right wing and I believe in freedom

There has, it seems, been some great debate amongst assorted "equalities" mongers - indeed the debate has descended into a row and from there spiralled down into political protest. And all because of something that Suzanne Moore said.

So the Guardian, seeking to pour oil upon these troubled waters, gives Ms Moore the space to explain herself (as it were). In doing so she launches into a justification founded on a belief in freedom:

...I feel increasingly freakish because I believe in freedom, which is easier to say than to achieve and makes me wonder if I am even of "the left" any more.

Of course, Ms Moore spends the rest of her article explaining how she's still a leftie really and that believing in freedom is a good thing. In doing this she can't resist positioning herself away from those on the right who claim to believe in freedom:

What we have is a few rightwingers who took some E in a field once and so claim to be libertarians, but are in fact Thatcherite misogynists. We have the double-think of "free schools", which exclude those who most need them. We have "freedom" for the very rich to take from the very poor while lecturing them on their moral poverty. We have women and gay people pushed into the conformity of lifelong monogamy, even though it clearly does not work for so many.

You see what Ms Moore has done here? That's right, she's parked the idea of free speech (that she claims to support) and sought to redefine freedom as something that cannot reside with the right. Now I'm a right-winger (although I never took an E in a field) and I don't recognise Ms Moore's argument. For sure, I've no time for those patronising sorts who want to judge the lifestyle choices of working-class people - you know the drinking, smoking and shagging. But I don't see this sort of middle-class disgust at such lifestyles as a peculiarity of the right. Indeed, the Guardian-reading left is perhaps more guilty of wanting to make moral judgements about lifestyle.

The problem for Ms Moore is that she likes the license of sexual liberation and the idea that no-one should have their talent dismissed simply because of their gender, sexual preferences, skin colour or accent. But she can't get her mind round the idea of economic freedom - the free enterprise and free trade bits of the great triumvirate of liberties.

As a Conservative, freedom is central to be world view. It is what we fought to secure, it is why we stand in silence every November to remember and it's why we get involved in politics. If freedom were secure - and secure for ever - then we could return to the plough and get on with the joy of life. But that freedom is threatened - by the sorts who would deny Ms Moore her words but also by those who would let others starve to protect their own income and position, by those who would create monopolies and by those who would castigate someone for the dreadful crime of creating jobs, wealth and success.

Suzanne Moore is right about freedom. But wrong to try and suggest - even to hint - that freedom can only be owned by the left.

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Can anyone reading this still wish to remain in the EU?

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My epiphany on the European Union came a few years ago when I read of meat being dumped in West Africa where it destryed the livelihood of native herdsmen. If you still haven't decided that we should leave, read this:

The ruling stated that the commission could restrict dissent in order to "protect the rights of others" and punish individuals who "damaged the institution's image and reputation". The case has wider implications for free speech that could extend to EU citizens who do not work for the Brussels bureaucracy.

The court called the Connolly book "aggressive, derogatory and insulting", taking particular umbrage at the author's suggestion that Economic and Monetary Union was a threat to democracy, freedom and "ultimately peace".

I live in a free country - or so I was told. It would appear that our European masters wish to crush that liberty:

Mr Colomer wrote in his opinion last November that a landmark British case on free speech had "no foundation or relevance" in European law

Heaven save England if we remain in this ghastly fascism.

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Free speech, free enterprise, free trade...

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...and while I’m about it free choice and free markets.

It hurts doesn’t it! I’ve been struck by the swiftness with which people have told me that, yes, believing in free speech, free enterprise and free trade are great but that this doesn’t mean supporting free markets. Because free markets are a bad thing.

Don’t you just love the division of freedoms? We launch enthusiastically into supporting freedoms where we like them but feel unable to back those freedoms where they don’t suit our prejudices. So here’s a little game with my three freedoms.

Supporting free speech means:

• Opposing the arresting of people for the ‘crime’ of causing offence - free speech means having the right to offend and to be offended.
• Believing that there is no institution, religion or organisation that is above criticism or immune from satire – free speech means having the right to criticise, to question and to condemn
• Rejecting the banning of advertising – marketing communication is speech and should be free, to suggest otherwise is to undermine free speech

Supporting free enterprise means:

• Believing that there are almost no circumstances where “more regulation” is either right or appropriate – free enterprise can only work where markets are free
• Rejecting the concept of ‘market failure’ – markets always and everywhere, when left to their own devices, succeed and failure is the result of intervention
• Opposing market fixing devices such as guilds, registrations, subsidies and regulations that restrict market entry – free enterprise requires a level playing field not a protected system

Supporting free trade means:

• Rejecting managed markets – and this includes so-called “fair trade” – since they prevent free exchange and free enterprise
• Opposing protectionism in all its forms whether regulatory or financial – tariffs, duties, anti-dumping rules, quotas and environmental or employment regulation
• Supporting the liberalising of international markets in finance, government services and insurance – without free trade in these areas, other trading arrangements are compromised

This is the deal with freedom – it doesn’t come in tidy little units where we can have a little free speech but not have free trade. If you want it you have to want it all. So when people try to tell me that they want a free press but not a free market in news (because of the big bad Murdoch) then they are, in truth rejecting that free speech. When people say they want free enterprise but that free markets must be controlled, I know that they don’t support free enterprise. And when people tell me they support fair trade (and suggest that this is somehow ‘ethical’), they are no friend of freedom.

All these freedoms interlock – dividing them doesn’t work and diluting one freedom compromises another. It’s hard to have free enterprise without free speech, free trade requires free enterprise and the ability to choose, interact and exchange is central to any society laying claim to being free.

Those three things – free speech, free enterprise and free trade – are the things that matter. And we know they’re working when we have free markets, free assembly and free choice.

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On being right-wing....

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It has been a funny experience watching and listening to all that American politics playing itself out on our media. And the thing that makes me scratch my head most is the automatic connection made between being “right-wing” and a set of ossified social opinions. Sometimes this is called “The Christian Right” or “Social Conservatism” and always is it characterised by opponents as “bigotry” or – by the more mild-mannered – “out-of-touch”.

Now I’m right-wing. At least if you define being right-wing as wanting a small government, as believing in self-reliance, personal responsibility and looking out for the neighbours. None of this is about god, gays or the production of babies. Yet these outlooks have become cemented into place as fixtures of being “right-wing” in America.

But I’m still right-wing. Not in some cuddly, metroliberal, noblesse oblige kind of way but red in tooth and claw, in-your-face right-wing. The sort that believes in that old Reagan dictum:

"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help ...”

If we want change – and boy do we need it – then we have to dump the social conservatism, the judgemental moralising and the ‘Kinder, Küche, Kirche’ attitude to women. And with that baggage goes the tutting, curtain-twitching, lip-pursed, “they shouldn’t be allowed to do that” approach to the neighbours. The speed at which social attitudes to homosexuality have changed should be the starting point for our understanding of how being 'right-wing' must change.

None of this is about the 'nasty party' tag the left - and our current Home Secretary - lumbered us with. Nor is it about some process of centrist triangulation - a sort of Blue-rinsed Blairite approach. Indeed that approach and the "always tack to the centre" attitude of the terminally ambitious in both main parties has been responsible for the managerialist, Whitehall-knows-best policy platform that dominates current agendas. And created the mess we're in.

Thirty years ago I concluded that being right-wing meant being against the establishment's viewpoint and position. Even back in the early 1980s under a Conservative government, the establishment was viscerally anti-enterprise and especially disliked people who drove vans and the reps in their Ford Sierras. The "business" voice was provided by the smoothly-attired, public school leaders of the big businesses rather than by the bloke with a garage on the corner.

And even then - and this still applies - business voices played second fiddle to the sounds of people who weren't trade. You know the sorts - lawyers, doctors, the occasional bishop, folk from the BBC. To this smooth bunch were added, for entertainment I suspect, a few luvvies (only the posh ones with RP accents who went to RADA) and the occasional writer or journalist.

And, for these people, being right wing was the worst sin. I recall being introduced to a senior chap from the TUC by a good friend (who was both a priest and a Liberal) with words like this:

"Ah, this is Simon. He's the presentable sort of Tory."

Now I knew what my friend meant - I wasn't about to call for the blacks to be sent home or for women to be stopped from working. The sort of positions that the sophisticated establishment folk believed (and still believe) are held by most (definitely unpresentable) Conservatives. It was OK for me to be let out in establishment circles - I wouldn't scare them.

Believing in free choice, free speech, free enterprise and free trade seems to me the only moral political position - all others involve preventing someone from doing something because you think you know better. And that free choice, free speech, free enterprise and free trade stuff - that's right-wing. That's what it's about. It's not about god. It's not about gays. And it's definitely not about babies.

And so long as a few so-called "conservatives" think its about god or gays or women having babies and doing the washing up then the establishment - the left-wing corporate state - will have us by the balls. Being right-wing is about believing in freedom. That's it really and trying to build a coalition between people who really want to be free and people who want to take away or prevent others having freedom is never going to work.

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Free speech, free enterprise, free trade....

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These are the three things that matter most to me - fighting for them is the reason I remain in politics. Little else matters when you get to the crunch - free speech opens the doors of discovery, free enterprise allows us to create wonders from that discovery and free trade allows the riches of that discovery and creation to be shared by all.

These things are also the reason why I'm right-wing rather than left wing. And I'm reminded again just how much the left will always fall back on protection - the route to stagnation, stasis and the promotion of poverty. Here's some chap called Hines in the Guardian:

Progressive protectionism by contrast would instead allow countries to wean themselves off export dependence. It would enable the rebuilding and re-diversification of domestic economies by limiting what goods states let in and what funds they allow to enter or leave the country. Having regained control of their economic future, countries can then set the levels of taxes and agree the regulations needed to fund and facilitate this transition. 

Clearly Mr Hines has never been to North Korea! Yet this proposal - little different from the autarky that thrilled Mussolini, fascinated Franco and led to Pol Pot's murderous 'year zero' - is made seriously by a left-wing commenter in a leading English newspaper.

The left really don't understand this freedom stuff - it's not just that free speech, free enterprise and free trade are morally right, it's that they are better in practice too! And when we limit freedom to speak, to do business or to trade, we make ourselves poorer in spirit as well as poorer in the pocket.

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Dr Harris and the sexual health debate - a tale of judgemental intolerance

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The Government has announced the membership of its Sexual Health Forum including the anti-abortion charity, Life but dropping the British Pregnancy Advice Service. Apparently this is a truly terrible thing:

...former Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris said Life's presence could prevent the panel from functioning properly.

He told the newspaper: "When you have an organisation campaigning against the law and against current policy on sexual health, which is pro-contraception and about ensuring that abortion is a choice, then the risk is that you prevent the panel being given access to confidential information."

Quite why this is I don’t know but it reveals – in a man who lays claim to the mantle of “liberalism” – a considerable degree of intolerance. Who is he to say that one or other view on any issue should not be represented to ministers? But then Dr Harris has a bit of a track record of such judgemental intolerance, for example in condemning anti-abortion GP, Tammie Downes:

The Guardian reported that Liberal Democrat MP and noted abortion and euthanasia campaigner, Evan Harris, denounced Dr. Downes to Health Minister Dawn Primarolo and asked for an investigation.

And, as a member of the BMA’s ethics board Dr Harris tried to:

...remove the legal right of doctors to refuse to refer for or arrange abortions.

None of this makes Dr Harris wrong – there is a genuine debate to be had about abortion and I am willing to listen to the arguments for and against the status quo, tighter controls or liberalisation. Sadly, Dr Harris wants Government to only receive advice from those who share his view that abortion should be much easier to obtain. As with so many on the left – and Dr Harris certainly isn’t what I would call a liberal – the intention seems to be to close off the debate and to characterise those who take a different view as brainwashed religious zealots.

What concerns me most in all this – and I worry far more about the issue of “mercy-killing” than I do about abortion – is that by closing out the debate, Dr Harris directly contradicts his own oft-stated belief in free speech. By saying that only pro-abortion views should be presented to the Government’s deliberations about sexual health is to deny access on the basis of prejudice rather than to promote free speech.

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Vince is right about business and competition - but his solution is wrong, very wrong.

We have to disagree with Vince don't we? After all his rhetoric about spivs and gamblers, his comments about capitalism, his anti-business stance - all these things make him wrong and bad?

Well not exactly. Indeed Vince's comment about business and competition is absolutely spot on:

Capitalism takes no prisoners and kills competition where it can, as Adam Smith explained over 200 years ago. I want to protect consumers and keep prices down and provide a level playing field for small business, so we must be vigilant right across the economy – whether in the old industries of economics textbooks or the newer privatised utilities and cosy magic circles in auditing, law or investment banking. Competition is central to my pro market, pro business, agenda.

Understand this dear reader - business is, to the very core of its being, anti-competition. As a businessman my aim is - or should be - to secure some form of monopoly or monopolistic advantage so as to get closer to the nirvana of maximised profits. Whether it's the market trader who objects to another swagman taking a stall in the covered market, the banker who persuades the regulator to prevent market entry or the steelman who bribes the government party to introduce protectionist anti-dumping rules. Or even the horny-handed farmer moaning about the inadequacy of subsidies. All these businessmen - and women - are not interested in promoting competition. They are interested in reducing competition - at least so as it favours their profitability.

Vince referred to Adam Smith who famously said:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices…. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies, much less to render them necessary.

And that was what Vince was on about - the last labour government (and governments elsewhere and before) facilitated a corrupting association between bankers, financiers and governments that allowed a vast conspiracy against the public interest to damn near destroy our economy. We allowed - just as we have done with health, with education, with agriculture and (increasingly) with social care - the production of the service to take precedence over the consumption of the service. Government has acted against the interests of the people and in the interests of rent-seekers (and spivs and gamblers) seeking to profit from monopolies of service.

We have forgotten what else Adam Smith had to say:

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.

I'm not sure Vince - with his faith in the power of 'better regulation' quite understands - almost always, regulation acts against the interests of the consumer by reducing competition, preventing market entry and stifling trade. So, while Vince is right about business not liking competition he is wrong about how to protect that competition:

But let me be quite clear. The Government's agenda is not one of laissez-faire.

And that's where you're wrong, Vince - if you want more competition you have to get Government out of the way, to stop giving in to special pleading, to break down the monoliths of health and education and to institute again a free-trading, free-market, laissez-faire economy. It will work - and we, the consumers, will be grateful for the wealth that our liberty brings.

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