PETER HITCHENS: Have Cressida Dick’s Cake Squad joined drama because they too hate us being free?

Now at last we can see what the whole shutdown frenzy has really been about. The BBC last week interviewed the Chief Commissar of the Welsh People’s Republic (I think this is his title), Mark Drakeford. 

They asked him about the sharp difference between Welsh Covid policy and England’s currently more relaxed view under Johnson.

He replied: ‘In Wales we still have a greater attachment to collective ways of doing things… We don’t have the same attraction that you see Conservative politicians having for that sense of individual freedom trumping everything else.’ 

I thought this was pretty remarkable language – but that might be because I am a teeny bit prejudiced against zealots like Mr Drakeford.

The Met Police Cake Squad, waving handcuffs and truncheons and donning the baseball caps they now wear for all the biggest inquiries, are hurrying to act. Has the Metropolitan Police, whose chief Dame Cressida Dick is as useless as she is radical, joined in this because, like Drakeford, they much prefer ‘collective solidarity’ to human freedom?

Yet it wasn’t just me. The broadly Left-wing and pro-lockdown commentator Janice Turner said of the outburst (for such it was): ‘What struck me was the way he spat out ‘individual freedom’ – like the very concept was unconscionable, even repellent. The pandemic’s political axis is hardening.’

How right she is. I have seen this from the start as part of a decisive and possibly final battle between collective authoritarianism and freedom under the law. And the current attempt to overthrow Johnson is a key part of that battle. His enemies are also the enemies of freedom as we have known it.

All these things run together – the sour restriction of free speech at universities, the cancellation of authors for breaking rules they didn’t even know existed, the growing police involvement in patrolling the boundaries of speech (I’ll come to the police), the use of the law to bludgeon the law-abiding rather than punish the wrongdoer. 

It’s been seething just beneath the surface of our national life for years now. But in March 2020 it went nuclear. 

The BBC last week interviewed the Chief Commissar of the Welsh People's Republic (I think this is his title), Mark Drakeford. They asked him about the sharp difference between Welsh Covid policy and England's currently more relaxed view under Johnson. He replied: 'In Wales we still have a greater attachment to collective ways of doing things... We don't have the same attraction that you see Conservative politicians having for that sense of individual freedom trumping everything else

The BBC last week interviewed the Chief Commissar of the Welsh People’s Republic (I think this is his title), Mark Drakeford. They asked him about the sharp difference between Welsh Covid policy and England’s currently more relaxed view under Johnson. He replied: ‘In Wales we still have a greater attachment to collective ways of doing things… We don’t have the same attraction that you see Conservative politicians having for that sense of individual freedom trumping everything else

And Johnson’s belated decision to prefer common sense to collective bossing and nosey-parker regulation has badly scared the Covid Hezbollah.

If he gets away with this, their whole achievement – getting the country to give away real freedom in return for an illusion of safety – will crumble.

And now the police, who as we all know are totally bored by actual crime and disorder, have come tumbling into the drama. 

The Met Police Cake Squad, waving handcuffs and truncheons and donning the baseball caps they now wear for all the biggest inquiries, are hurrying to act. 

Has the Metropolitan Police, whose chief Dame Cressida Dick is as useless as she is radical, joined in this because, like Drakeford, they much prefer ‘collective solidarity’ to human freedom?

What do you think? I expect they miss the days in 2020 when they could arrest people for sunbathing or walking in the park, and shout at them to go home. Their attitude is shocking. Dame Cressida and Sir Keir Starmer, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, must both know that a police inquiry is not a conviction and that everyone is innocent until presumed guilty. 

Yet in the Commons on Wednesday Sir Keir snapped and snarled at Johnson as if the police involvement was itself a finding of guilt. 

Johnson's belated decision to prefer common sense to collective bossing and nosey-parker regulation has badly scared the Covid Hezbollah

Johnson’s belated decision to prefer common sense to collective bossing and nosey-parker regulation has badly scared the Covid Hezbollah

To do so he used Dame Cressida’s shocking words in which she suggested there was ‘little ambiguity’ around the ‘absence of any reasonable defence’. That simply is not for the police to decide.

The involvement of the police in politics is always wrong whichever side you are on. Fifteen years ago I said on this page of the arrest of Anthony Blair’s aide Ruth Turner in the pursuit of the supposed ‘cash for honours’ scandal: ‘Silly people are rejoicing over the arrest of New Labour’s Ruth Turner. This is wrong, dangerous and short-sighted.

‘Just because this creepy totalitarian method has been used against someone you don’t like, it doesn’t mean it’s right.’

We are being shoved down a very nasty slope, towards a society I don’t fancy living in. And in this case it is Johnson’s enemies who are doing the shoving.

Missing side to Branagh’s Belfast tale 

I have many reasons to remember 1969, some good, some painful, some terrifying, some plain embarrassing. As a result, my mind is filled with vivid recollections from that strange year. So I was gripped by Kenneth Branagh’s new film Belfast, which tries to recreate that precise era.

It’s not bad, and often rather beautiful. One minor moment set in a hospital reminded me of what utterly different places they were then, quiet, orderly, under authority.

But would a joiner trying to pay off a huge tax bill travel by plane between Belfast and England? Would a family that had to hide from the rent collector have a telephone?

It’s also interesting how the story, set in a mainly Protestant street, dwells on a bigoted clergyman and tells us a lot about the undoubted gangster loutishness of some supposed Loyalists. But there might have been a tiny bit more about the bad people on the other side.

A cartoon to sum up our times…

I have always loved this cartoon, drawn 60 years ago by Alex Graham, creator of the Fred Bassett comic strip. Alas, he is no longer with us, but his daughter Arran has kindly given me permission to use it here.

It is funny in itself, but it has come to be a perfect summary of the West’s mad treatment of Russia. 

We did not in fact defeat Russia in any war in 1990. But we treated them as if we had. We promised them that we would not expand Nato eastwards. Then we did exactly that.

They growled a bit, but we ignored it. Now they’re really cross and Joe Biden, much like the man in the cartoon, is wondering what he did wrong. He and lots of other Western blowhards should learn some history.

It is funny in itself, but it has come to be a perfect summary of the West's mad treatment of Russia

It is funny in itself, but it has come to be a perfect summary of the West’s mad treatment of Russia

The BBC has now moved on from trying to tell us what to think, to policing those who don’t share its views. Last week I was approached by a Marianna Spring, who proclaims herself the Corporation’s ‘Disinformation Reporter’. 

She wants to question me about my work during the Covid panic. I’ll keep you informed about her enquiries, which are proceeding. 

But my view is that her very title is an expression of prejudice. ‘Disinformation’ is just a long way of saying ‘lying’.

If she thinks I’m dishonest, then let her say so on the BBC and we’ll see how that goes. But in general, if you want to investigate something, you start with an open mind and see what you find. How can your mind possibly be open, if you glorify yourself as a judge of truth before you even start? And remember, this is being done with licence-payers’ money.

If the BBC wants to hunt down ‘disinformation’ about the Covid crisis, it is my view that it should clean its own house first.

To comment on Peter Hitchens click here.  

***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk