The thought police came for me; I fought my corner: Free speech is the most treasured part of our democracy

Yesterday I joined Lord (Toby) Young’s Free Speech Union. It seemed like the right thing to do in the current political climate where you are expected to ‘toe the line’ or else pay the price of being attacked and cancelled by the self-appointed guardians of the truth.

They wanted to punish me for some things I’ve said about them, the Labour Party and their fellow travellers, do not like. I say calling them completely inept and unqualified to run a corner shop let alone a trillion quid economy. They disagree, which is fine. It’s their right. But what isn’t right is to come after me for trash-talking their Government.

And when I say ‘come after me’ I mean the ‘put up job’ of using a below the radar committee, the ‘Honours Forfeiture Committee’ to attempt to strip me of my OBE.

They failed because, after forensically scraping through my life they couldn’t find evidence strong enough to clear the bar necessary for revoking my honour. The shadowy figures on the committee knew this, since it’s their own rules. It’s also true that nobody has ever been stripped of an honour without ever being investigated for any so-called wrong-doing.

My take on that is that the order to take me down came from upon high in the political world, and the instigators and the committee thought in their closed society, old-school-tie, secret-handshake-way, that a mere plumber would bow down to his social betters and accept their judgement.

Well, they got that wrong. Just as they knew there was no real case to take away my OBE, so too did my legal team at Cohen Davis. Yair and Paul took one look at the case and knew from day one that it was a politically motivated attack that had no foundation in truth. From that moment on, the committee were in for a fight, which came in the form of a 52-page bundle refuting all claims that I should pay the price of losing my OBE for my views.

Let me be very clear here; this anonymous attack-dog did not come for me for things I said on Twitter (now X) a couple of years ago (which |I have apologised for), it was my lawful criticism of a Government that has no idea what it’s doing when it comes to running the country, and a very thin skin when it comes to hearing that fact.

There are a few things I’ve said on social media that I regret, but I do not regret telling whoever will listen that Starmer, Reeves, Rayner and Co. are the worse most inept Government the UK has ever endured … with the possible exception of Liz Truss and Kwazi Kwarteng. But if you treat that weird 49 days like Queen Jane’s 9 days in the top job in 1554, Labour are the bottom of the barrel. The absolute pits.

I want to live in a world where you can say what you think and be respected for it, both by those who agree with you and those who feel the desire to voice equally strong views that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Call it what you will, free speech, libertarianism, or just being a member of a society that values a diversity of views and doesn’t use state power to shout down and punish voices that don’t suit their agenda and worldview.