Can the government be trusted with free speech? 

This summer, horrified by the rising numbers of students no-platforming and harassing visiting speakers whose views they don’t like, the government anointed the Cambridge philosopher Arif Ahmed ‘free speech tsar’. Prof Ahmed said at the time that his new role, at least as he saw it, wasn’t a culture wars stunt: he was interested in protecting free expression across the political spectrum.  

We have every reason to think he’s been beavering away since then to ensure our campuses continue to zing with the free and frank exchange of ideas, and good on him. But if he has any spare time, there’s something else that seems to merit his attention: a bigger and more consequential threat to free speech, I’d say, than the callow posturing of student unions. There is a culture of systematic no-platforming and double-cucked snowflakery, it turns out, in the supposedly pro-free-speech government that appointed him.