One of the first decisions the Labour Party made upon entering office was to attack free speech.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson abandoned the Tories law protecting free speech in universities, claiming it was unnecessary.
But we are now seeing why it was necessary to protect freedom from the cancel culture.
The Durham Union Society, the university’s 182-year-old debating society, has been excluded from the university’s freshers fair by the Students Union.
Jacob Rees-Mogg weighs in on Keir Starmer’s approach to free speech
GB News
Now, the student union has tried to claim that this is because of historic allegations of racism made against the Durham Union Society.
But GB News understands that this is much more than a mere spat between warring student factions.
A few years ago, the student union accused the debating society of being a safe haven for colonial apologists.
Since then, the debating society has tried to be pragmatic so it can have a presence on campus.
But the student union has insisted on an equality, diversity and inclusion agenda to be rolled out if it wanted to be included. So you’ve got to be inclusive, to be included otherwise were excluded for not being inclusive.
In other words, it engaged in ideological blackmail and the debating society has tried to oblige. But apparently, its ideological purity hasn’t met the litmus test for the EDI fanatics in the union.
This is Labour’s responsibility because, of course, it subscribes to the EDI extremism. The Conservative legislation that was halted at five to midnight would have required the university authorities to defend free speech, so ought to have stopped the student union from blacklisting an ancient bastion of debate.
It would have imposed duties on the student’s union to ensure free speech was being upheld and provided a mechanism through which the debating society would have appealed at the way it was being treated.
As I’ve said before, over time socialists change their flags, their slogans and their badges.
But fundamentally they’re against freedom of speech because truth is always the biggest enemy of socialism, I’m afraid the latest iteration of socialism, in the form of the Reverend Keir Starmer, is no different.
