In defence of Piers Morgan

The Liberal Democrat party’s foreign affairs spokesgoblin, Velma from Scooby-Doo — or ‘Layla Moran’ as she is known to close friends and family —has decided that freedom of speech on university campuses is of absolutely no consequence. Indeed, she described the government’s initiative to preserve the rights of students to hear a diverse range of opinions as ‘divisive’ and quite unnecessary, while she was appearing on one of those BBC Question Time editions that nobody watches any more. Velma presumably thoroughly approved of her own party’s subsequent decision to remove the tweeted clip of her spouting this bilge so that the public couldn’t hear it. If you are opposed to freedom of speech it is important to be consistent on the issue, and so if one’s own freedom of speech is repressed one should rejoice rather than cavil.

Velma’s views seem to accord with those of Nadia Whittome, the Labour MP for Nottingham East — the youngest of our parliamentarians at 24 years old and with a mental age of approximately seven and a half months. In July, Whittome explained that talking about things was a gateway to hatred. She said: ‘We must not fetishise “debate” as though debate is itself an innocuous, neutral act. The very act of debate in these cases is an effective rollback of assumed equality and a foot in the door for doubt and hatred.’ Whittome was on this occasion referring specifically to the righteous fight for trans emancipation — an obsession undoubtedly shared by her 60,000 constituents who habitually refer to what we once called ‘women’ as ‘menstruators’ and are anxious to ensure that men in wigs are allowed access to women’s toilets, prisons, sporting events, etc. That is, after all, why they turned up at the polling station and voted for her. If this is not the case, perhaps they could review their bizarre decision in 2024.