AMONG those old enough to remember, a settled view has formed that political leaders in the modern age are ingenues compared to the towering intellects of old. A yellowing cast of characters, belonging to all the major UK parties, are recalled with affection in the same way that older football supporters swear that modern players have little of the stature of the “real men” of the 1950s and 1960s.

The same names are held up as exemplars of the golden age of politics: Harold Wilson, Edward Heath, Barbara Castle, Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins. We can all add a few more of our own. They are each regarded as a beacon of integrity, impeccable good manners and unquestionable moral rectitude. The passage of time has canonised them.

Perhaps they were all of that; perhaps not, but they all bestrode a stage free of the intense spotlight that falls each day on political leaders in the 21st century. Of necessity, a person who seeks high office today is obliged to ensure that each word they write or speak has been subject to an anti-bacterial process where they’re scoured clean of any wrinkle or imperfection. It’s just that all traces of originality, sincerity, wit and soul are wiped too. And I’m not sure that Wilson, Castle and Jenkins could have risen above this either.

Yet, even as you seek to give the modern elites the benefit of the doubt, it’s become evident in recent years that they are bound by something regressive. It speaks of desperation and a deep mistrust and loathing for ordinary voters. I can’t ever recall another time when the men and women of high office – on either side of the Scottish Border – seemed so fearful and so instinctively disdainful of the voters.

The most egregious example of this was Rishi Sunak’s announcement last week that he wanted to widen the definition of extremism to include a sprawling category of “extreme hatred of Britain”. Those suspected of having expressed anti-British Nationalist sentiments could find themselves referred to Prevent, the Conservative Government’s clumsy and unlovely vehicle to combat ‘radicalism’.

Certainly, you might dismiss this simply as an unedifying and despairing stunt contrived to appeal to the scarecrow wing of his party as Mr Sunak teeters on the edge of defeat in its leadership contest. In the course of his gilded life, he has never previously encountered any obstacle hindering his serene procession to riches and influence. It must be galling now to encounter thorns in a path that’s so far been strewn with rose petals.

I mean, he can’t really be serious about this, can he? Britain has a long and bestial history of exterminating entire peoples and civilisations who have tried to stand up to their occupation and sacking of their lands. Sedition laws were their preferred method of subjugating dissent in the lands that they conquered, and especially in India where nothing could be allowed to stand in the way of the looting. In Ireland, an entire penal code that forbade any expression of indigenous culture and religious faith was brutally enforced at all levels of society.

But surely those days are gone. The Tories have recently championed the cause of free expression by conveying an anti-woke message and this has featured heavily in this rabid leadership contest. Yet, here is one of the two remaining contenders for the leadership of their party and the country proclaiming his desire to criminalise severe disaffection for what you might believe Britain has become.

Who gets to define what ‘extreme hatred’ looks like? Will police forces across England, currently knee-deep in claims of racism and violence against women, become arbiters of what is and isn’t hatred of Britain?

If perhaps you are a devotee of the Sex Pistols and decide one day when you’re feeling a bit antsy and rebellious to play Never Mind the Bollocks in your car with the windows down might you be apprehended by the police? Anarchy in the UK, for goodness sake. And “God Save the Queen, the Fascist regime.” And “God Save the Queen, she’s not a human being.”

Before the end of the Tory leadership contest I expect one of these two dangerously delusional candidates to pledge to bring back hanging. And the other one to respond with: “Hanging’s not good enough.” It’s the Frankenstein version of Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen sketch.

Lis Truss had earlier lowered the bar on what the Tories consider to be democratic engagement with an all-out assault on trade unions. She wants to widen restrictions on industrial action to more industries. The UK Foreign Secretary, who remains favourite to be the next UK Prime Minister, Truss wants to impose “minimum service levels” on what she says are “critical national infrastructures” in the first month of her government.

Her planned crackdown would now extend to teachers, postal workers and the energy sector. It would hand power to directors and chief executives to determine minimum staffing levels and potentially criminalise any organised dissent.

At any other time this too could be dismissed as playing to the lowest Tory life-forms in a winner-takes-all contest. But, what makes it more chilling is that even if her premiership were to be short-lived, nothing of Sir Keir Starmer’s agenda gives you any confidence that he would seek to unstitch such oppressive legislation.

North of the Border, this malady has also been evident in the Scottish Government’s chaotic and iniquitous attempts to restrict the thoughts and words of the public at large. The Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications Act criminalised an entire section of mainly working class men for singing songs that the UK Government would doubtless have deemed “hatred of Britain”.

When that law was (often literally) laughed out of several courts in the land the Scottish Government sought another way of cracking down on the tendency of Scotland’s edgier citizens to express iniquitous thoughts with its notorious Hate Crime Legislation. At one time, it even encouraged family members or private guests to report slovenly speech around the dinner table.

It’s not hatred of the UK by the people that’s the problem here. It’s hatred of the people by our political leaders that we need to address.

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