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An elephant trap for the left
A demoralised and insular left is in danger of handing the issue of free speech over to the dishonest right – and no good can come of it for socialists, warns KEVIN OVENDEN

ON THE one hand, threatening to cut funding from English heritage bodies that do not promulgate the official fiction that the British empire was an unalloyed force for good.

On the other, arrogating to the state fresh powers to enforce free speech on university campuses that are apparently in the totalitarian grip of left-wing lecturers and their anti-colonial studies.

The flat contradictions in the Tory government’s attempts to divert attention from its failures into a US-style “culture war” are more than simple hypocrisy.

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