Why progressives don’t face real consequences

One of the most tedious and repetitive observations made in the often tedious and repetitive discourse around cancel culture is the notion that ‘freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences’. This slightly sinister cliché is the progressive version of ‘well, think on, you wouldn’t have been shot if you hadn’t been trying to escape’. It is usually offered forth as if it is somehow a seismic statement.

Some clumsy clots – the hapless Graham Norton last year, for example, when discussing JK Rowling – have even tried to frame cancel culture as ‘accountability culture’ or ‘consequences culture’. But it strikes me that there is a shadow image of cancel culture that we might call ‘no consequences culture’.

As I write, the story of Azhar Ali, the Labour candidate in the Rochdale by-election, is still developing. Ali was recorded spouting the conspiracy theory that the Israeli government had deliberately allowed Hamas to rape and massacre its citizens on October 7^th. This is a modern version of the ancient blood libel against the Jews.

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Ross Clark

Britain is living beyond its means

Ali made a quick apology. And bish bash bosh, all was forgiven by the Labour party, which stood by him until Monday evening. Even then the party only withdrew its support for the candidate after ‘new information about further comments’ made by him came to light. Ali may well still become an MP – who votes with Labour in the Commons – if he is elected. It is, apparently, procedurally too late to switch him off the ballot, so he will still be the Labour candidate in the by-election.

Frontbencher Lisa Nandy was campaigning right alongside him on Sunday, after the revelation. (In a grim irony this was at a ‘women’s Q&A session’.) Another frontbencher, Pat McFadden, looked even more android-like than usual as his speech circuits informed Trevor Philips on Sunday that Ali’s ethnic conspiracy was ‘totally wrong’ but that he would remain the Labour candidate in Rochdale.

This is a model illustration of where cultural and political power actually resides in modern Britain. Racism is supposedly our biggest taboo. Labour are planning to bring in a Race Equality Act. But you can spout the nastiest racial conspiracies about Jews, drop a quick apology, and the party will rush to your defence.

Diane Abbott and Kate Osamor have both had the Labour whip removed, for lesser though still egregious, outbursts. But the party was perfectly able to come to Ali’s aid. As Lord Frost tweeted before the suspension, ‘The only possible explanation is that (Labour) fear (dropping Ali) will have worse consequences within their party than doing nothing and hoping it all goes away.’

This is just the latest example of no real comeback for serious lapses. Here are some more. Nancy Kelley, the disastrous former CEO of Stonewall, described lesbians as ‘sexual racists’ if they refused to entertain the idea of having sex with ‘trans women’ and suggested gender-critical groups were akin to anti-Semites. A pretty spectacular slip, you’d think, for the head of a gay rights charity. But somehow this bizarre outburst didn’t beleaguer Kelley at all, and she is now part of the team leading Lesbian Visibility Week. Then we have the tube driver who led a ‘free Palestine’ chant on his train – slapped wrist, back on duty. We don’t even know who it was that authorised or facilitated the transfer of Scarlett Jenkinson to a new school and neglected to inform them that she had poisoned a classmate at her old one. This person or persons, whose actions put children directly in danger and led to the horrible murder of Brianna Ghey, has been totally forgotten. Nobody seems even to be asking who they are, or how to ensure such a situation cannot happen again.

Whereas, as we know, there are ‘consequences’ galore for trivialities, bad taste, gaffes and opinions expressed that aren’t a part of the ‘progressive’ package.

It might be said that when an apology is forthcoming then good manners and Christian forgiveness should mean a transgressor is given a second chance. But a grovel and a touch of the forelock only works if you are on the correct side. It is inconceivable, for example, that a parliamentary candidate who had said what Ali did about any other ethnic minority and then apologised would be backed by a mainstream political party. 

There are no real consequences for such people because they are progressives, and their progressive confreres control all of the institutions. Most of the press and broadcast media don’t even notice their transgressions and they slip quickly off the media and down the memory hole – who even remembers that actress Maxine Peake spouted a bizarre anti-Israel conspiracy about the death of George Floyd? Who even remembers that Lisa Forbes, former Labour MP for Peterborough, said ‘I have enjoyed reading this thread so much’ under a Facebook post that claimed Isis was created and funded by Israel?

There’s one law for progressive and non-progressive alike, but the punishments differ.