I WONDER whether the job of Home Secretary turns people into intolerant authoritarians, or whether people already that way inclined tend to get the job. My suspicion, looking at recent holders of the post, is that it’s the former: the longer people have been in the role, the more likely it is that they start to act like a commissar.

But perhaps, like PE teacher, police officer, prison warder or Member of Parliament, it’s a job that appeals to exactly the sort of person who should, under no circumstances, be allowed anywhere near it. That’s not to suggest that there aren’t fine people – probably the majority of them – doing these jobs, but only that a lot of thoroughly unsuitable people would like to do them for all the wrong reasons.

That, however, corresponds with the dismal truth that the mass of the great British public is depressingly unsuitable for the job of having an opinion on civil liberties. Poll after poll suggests that, on subjects such as capital punishment, sentencing and immigration, there are substantial chunks of the population who think that even politicians as alarmingly gung-ho as Priti Patel, Theresa May, John Reid and David Blunkett are pinko softies, insufficiently committed to stringing them up, sending them back and throwing away the key.

The current bill before the Commons, which proposes to restrict political protests to the point where you can get 10 years in prison for causing “serious annoyance”, is a particularly dreadful example of this tendency. But let’s not pretend this is confined to Westminster, or the Tory party.

 

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The Hate Crimes Bill just passed by Holyrood is, however well-intentioned, an oppressively illiberal measure, which has made it potentially illegal to maintain, around your own dinner table, contentious opinions like thinking biology is an objective fact. One of the worst recent assaults on freedom of speech – the legislation against “glorifying terrorism” – was passed by Tony Blair’s government, while the signature position of “identity politics” and “social justice” campaigners is to silence any opinion that ought to be “cancelled”.

It’s perhaps not surprising that politicians from every point on the political spectrum should be keen on this kind of thing: by definition, one of the impulses that leads people into politics is the notion that something should be done and that, what’s more, they know what it is, and are just the person to do it. Those of us with more sense argue that frequently, not only should nothing be done, but that doing something for the sake of being seen to do so often makes matters worse.

It may be unwelcome for those of us who subscribe to what we may have thought were basic, more or less universally shared, notions of post-Enlightenment liberty to have to acknowledge that plenty of people don’t. But it is true, and appears to be true for almost every political tradition (if you doubt this, consider quite how ferociously illiberal, not to mention anti-democratic, many Liberal Democrats are).

Respectable centre-Left protests are always subject to hijack by Trotskyists and other Marxist extremists; mainstream conservative positions are liable to be taken up and pushed rightwards by reactionaries and bigots; libertarian and liberal stances draw in crackpots and conspiracy theorists; causes such as independence or Brexit attract monomaniacs on both sides and fervent believers can easily develop the characteristics of a religious cult.

Yet while that may be a perpetual problem, it has particular urgency at the moment, because both Holyrood and Westminster have imposed curtailments on normal human rights and activities that, in any other circumstances, would be regarded as unfathomably oppressive. Even Fascist and Communist governments didn’t issue blanket prohibitions on hugging your children, visiting your dying grandparents, or eating a sandwich while sitting on a bench in a park.

That’s not to say that I disagree with those rules. The sane position is surely to regard some of them as excessive and some of them as essential, but to acknowledge that, as long as we’re in the middle of a pandemic, they’re an understandable set of measures. We can, even if we disagree with it, see the reasoning behind them. We should, even if it chafes, try to abide by them.


But we must not, under any circumstances, come to regard them as anything other than extraordinary and temporary. I confess I’m astonished, in poll after poll, by the degree to which the reaction of a very large section of the population to some proposed restriction is that it doesn’t go far enough.

 

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Part of this may be a psychological reaction: if you’ve been following the rules, it is maddening when others appear to be breaking them. Apparent inconsistencies in policing – the women’s vigil last week, the gathering of jubilant Rangers fans, the anti-lockdown protests, the Black Lives Matter demonstrations – quite rightly infuriate many of us. But that should be on the grounds of failings or differences in the policing (or lack thereof), not on how much sympathy we have with the cause.

Another problem is the disparity of the effects of these restrictions. Some people – the rich, the retired, those who can comfortably work from home, those in safe public sector jobs – have found lockdown tiresome but not insufferably arduous. For others – the poor, front-line workers, the self-employed, the young and of course those who have themselves been ill or bereaved – it has been near unendurable. But whether you’re a lockdown hawk or sceptic, it must surely be worth wondering whether other people’s circumstances should lead you to be less censorious.

The rhetoric and, I still think, the natural instincts of the majority of the current Westminster government, and indeed opposition, is in favour of social liberalism and fiscal conservatism. It is a paradox that it should have been the most authoritarian and free-spending ever, but I suspect many are prepared to accept that as an accident dictated by extraordinary circumstances. But only pro tem.

It alarms me that all those in authority like having as much power as possible, and spending without restraint to make themselves popular. Now that they’ve had a taste of it, the test for them will be their readiness to abandon those positions. What alarms me yet more, however, is that so many people don’t seem to worry about the dangers if they don’t.

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