A Heretic's Manifesto: Essays on the Unsayable

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This rotating presidency allows the holder a certain degree of power to influence the EU’s policy priorities. Perhaps the Cabinet Office is not fit for purpose after all, just not for the reasons that its identitarian critics suggest. It’s an elite that has the gall to denounce the ‘disinformation’ in the campaign for Brexit while spouting the lie that men can get pregnant. The British Medical Journal denounced the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration as ‘merchants of doubt’, as if doubt were a bad thing; as if doubt is not in fact the foundation stone of Enlightenment. On Saturday 28 October, Chris, Tom and some very special guests will be recording a live edition of this podcast at the Battle of Ideas festival in Westminster.

Deviate from their truths that say Islam is a perfect religion, that sex is changeable, that same-sex marriage is morally equal to opposite-sex marriage, and you’ll be damned as an Islamophobe, a transphobe, a homophobe. Then this morning, in a newspaper report on a new landmark study from Johns Hopkins University, we see the headline: ‘Lockdown benefits “a drop in the bucket compared to the costs”.Nevertheless, the resolution itself, and the discussion it has provoked in Brussels and beyond, mark an important escalation in the EU’s long-running culture war against Hungary. They may smile sweetly while raising this question, but a group of Scottish women’s rights campaigners reminds us that they are really asking women to allow men into all the places where they are most vulnerable. They discuss the Voice to Parliament referendum in Australia, the latest on Rishi Sunak’s crusade against smoking, and Labour’s plan to criminalise misgendering. Right now, senior officials at the Cabinet Office will be managing the fallout of this letter, along with the Covid inquiry imbroglio, rather than fixing the stuff that matters to ordinary people beset by real-life problems.

This is censorship’s grimmest offence – in shaming and silencing dissent, it delays our discovery of real, new truths, in this case the truth that shutting down society, education, civil liberties and global trade was always likely to have devastating consequences.It seems to me that, rather than engage in fruitless and expensive DEI programmes, which often only make the work environment more polarised, the Cabinet Office should employ people with the skills to deliver, the resilience to cope with a pressurised workplace, and the moral fibre to conduct themselves respectfully. We see a pregnant woman on the front of this month’s Glamour magazine and they say it is a ‘pregnant man’. Anti-Hungarian MEPs are also feeling emboldened by a recent intervention from the German government. They discuss woke censorship in comedy, the junk science about ‘ultra-processed foods’, and why middle-aged, privately educated liberals are ruining everything. Serwotka wrote in his letter to Chisholm that the Cabinet Office’s recruitment system is ‘wholly broken’ and that ‘racism remains a major issue’.

But there can be no better demonstration of privilege than transwoman Gina Gwenffrewi complaining about once having to leave a pub a little earlier than intended. Remi and Brendan discuss the truth about racial inequality, the dangers of racial identity politics and how Africa can realise its potential. Organisers of this attempted coup claim that the Hungarian government has violated certain norms and the rule of law, and therefore cannot be trusted. Women who have feared being followed, attacked or assaulted after a night out will likely struggle to sympathise with Gwenffrewi’s plight.They discuss the demonisation of ‘ultra-processed food’, the ban on disposable vapes, and why everyone is getting so fat. The plot against the Hungarian presidency is ultimately an attempt to prevent the Hungarian government from having a platform to promote its own values, such as its attachment to national sovereignty and to tradition. One in which the powers-that-be punish not only the expression of certain beliefs and ideas, but also the expression of fact itself. People with ability should be cherished and supported to thrive, regardless of irrelevant characteristics. Sadly, we have become so accustomed to woke media organisations dictating which views can and cannot be aired that simply to hear gender-critical feminists speak on TV, without hectoring interruptions or heavy editorialising, is a breath of fresh air.

Most of the government’s core objectives, such that they can be seen or even remembered these days, do not fit neatly into one departmental box. This post-truth elite insists that we doubt the evidence of our own eyes, and the light of our own reason, and instead accept its truth as the truth. We hear complaints about society’s supposed obsession with genitals from males who insist they should be allowed access to female-only spaces. If viewers see mainly aggressive, deluded transgender activists railing against calm, rational and reasonable gender-critical feminists, then the activists have only themselves to blame. Based on figures uncovered by the PCS, Serwotka claims that white staff are twice as likely to be promoted as their non-white colleagues.I was reminded of that time by a letter sent last week by Mark Serwotka – boss of the main civil-service union, the PCS – to Cabinet Office permanent secretary Alex Chisholm.