Richard Dawkins: It’s hard to imagine that Leave would win a second referendum

On a book tour to promote Outgrowing God, travelling from London’s Festival Hall to Birmingham and then Manchester, I have plenty of time to listen to audio books, my new enthusiasm. This week it’s Douglas Murray’s The Madness of Crowds. The title is a well-chosen echo from Charles Mackay’s 1852 classic. Well chosen because our present epidemic of bullying ‘wokeness’ is disturbingly reminiscent of the witch-hunts of past centuries. I’ve had mixed feelings about Murray since he traduced me as a cowardly Islamophile (I’m accustomed to the opposite, equally unjust accusation). But his latest book is beyond brilliant and should be read, must be read, by everyone. He mercilessly exposes the hypocrisy and embarrassingly blatant contradictions that run rife through the current ‘woke’ vogue: compulsory surrender to yelling, screaming students who betray the whole purpose of a university by shutting down free speech; or sanctimoniously applauding doctors who instantly accept the unsupported claim of a child to be in the wrong body, and provide sex-changing hormones without consulting the parents; or attacking and ‘de-platforming’ distinguished feminist writers who choose not to use the word ‘woman’ for someone with a penis and a Y-chromosome.