The true meaning of free speech

Right after Donald Trump’s landslide, I opined on YouTube that this turning point could sound the death knell for Woke World – an observation that decayed to hoary cliché within hours. I also supposed that Trump’s triumph might signal to the UK that all that diversity, equality and inclusion/systemic racism guff is totally yesterday – in the hopes that even if Brits don’t care about fairness, rationality and reason, they might at least be horrified by appearing passé.

I regret not getting that cheerful forecast in print, because I rarely write optimistic columns, and the window for celebrating this crippling blow to poisonous progressive politics has already closed. Last week’s persecution of the beguiling Daily Telegraph journalist Allison Pearson by Essex Police is a reminder that we can’t defeat a lethal social brain cancer just by staying up late on a Tuesday night.