A TYRANNY OF HURT FEELINGS

Capping another year of unhinged censoriousness, raging in one institution after another, we now have a YouGov poll showing that the public is not that enamoured of free speech, either. Those who believe we should prioritise ‘stopping offensive and hateful speech’ apparently beat those who prefer ‘protecting free speech’ by 43 to 38 per cent.

   The extent to which free societies like Britain ever really lived up to their liberal values is up for debate. But at least liberty was until recently the aspiration, the story we told ourselves. Increasingly, that doesn’t seem to be the case, as many sinister moments in 2021 made abundantly clear.