Cancelled

I’ve never been tempted to watch GB News, the non-news news channel, nor Talk TV. The lineup of presenters has never appealed to me yet I get a strong flavour of their position on issues through the regular retweeting of their social media. One of the things that is guaranteed to have steam coming out of their ears is free speech, at least if it’s something they want to hear, and the so-called cancel culture. 

Cancelling someone and preventing them from saying something to an audience is considered high wokery, something that those on the left wing are more than happy to do to stifle those on the right. It’s a key weapon in the armoury of the liberal elite to prevent the truth from coming out. Yet the truth will out, the right people need to be given a platform as long as you are not a republican, a climate activist or any other protestor, unless you carry out your protest in a way that doesn’t inconvenience anyone.

This week though, I have learnt of a couple of incidents where this government, hardly left leaning, is cancelling people and preventing them from speaking at organised events, however well qualified they are to speak on the subject. Their crimes are saying something which objects to government policy. Potential speakers are having their social media accounts trawled to see if anything suspect has been mentioned, including retweeting other people’s comments and even parody accounts.

By way of example, an invitation as a guest speaker to the Chemical Weapons Demilitarisation Conference in May of this year was withdrawn.

‘Rules introduced by the Cabinet Office in 2022 specify that the social media accounts of potential speakers must be vetted before final acceptance to the programme. This is to check whether these people have ever criticised government officials or government policy. The vetting process is impartial and purely evidence-based.’

That’s me out then and I imagine more than half of the country. 

What have we become? What we call democracy in this country is based upon the right to hold different opinions. Indeed, the largest party not in government is referred to as the official opposition. Fewer than 44% of the electorate voted for the party in government and, by definition, the majority are likely to have something unsupportive to say. Even within the Tory party there is disagreement, Braverman managed to diss her own immigration policy at the recent Nat C conference. Is she going to be cancelled too?

The more worrying aspect is that the government is supposed to represent the needs of the whole electorate and not just the ever-diminishing circle who agree with them. By cancelling other opinions, it is living in an echo chamber, reinforcing its own views and becoming more and more remote from the society it is there to represent.

Free speech can be unpleasant and painful at times. Just because you can, cancelling others’ opinions is the wrong thing to do because the only guaranteed outcome is that as soon as you are not in power, whoever is will do the same to you.