Official Toryism has now moved from feeble uselessness to crazy lawlessness. The party leader Kemi Badenoch has tried to put herself at the head of those complaining about the punishment of Mrs Lucy Connolly.
An obscure Tory peer with intellectual pretensions has joined in, declaring madly that Mrs Connolly – who pleaded guilty to a criminal offence and was sentenced according to law, and then released in due time – was a ‘political prisoner’.
Mrs Connolly had gone on Twitter to urge others to set fire to buildings full of people.
She did this on the basis of foolish rumours which turned out to be untrue. On Twitter, which seems better at spreading muck than sense, about 300,000 people saw what she said.
Around that time, others befuddled by the same rumour had begun to engage in violent disorder on the streets.
Even Mrs Connolly’s growing band of respectable Tory defenders concede that what she said was revolting and stupid. Yet they have decided to identify with her.
After the horrific murder of three young girls in Southport, Lucy Connolly went on Twitter to urge others to set fire to buildings full of people
They complain of ‘two-tier justice’ and, of course, they are right that others, equally deserving of fierce punishment, have got away with it. This unequal treatment is rooted in changes which the Tory Party either made or accepted when it was in office.
The only wise and thoughtful response is to demand that those others are treated as Mrs Connolly has been, and to pledge action to make this happen. Making this woman into a martyr is dangerous.
But there’s an interesting thing about the new ‘radical Right’ which has sprung up since Tory defectors to Reform idiotically put Labour in office last year.
They’re not interested in serious policies that might reverse the Left-wing revolution.
They’re only interested in slogans and the quick and fickle street popularity they get from sympathising with Mrs Connolly.
Tory party leader Kemi Badenoch has tried to put herself at the head of those complaining about the punishment of Mrs Connolly
This is a grave mistake and a sign of desperation. There is a very old rule about politicians and mobs, and I will restate it here in case the very youthful Mrs Badenoch and Lord Whatsisname don’t know it.
Those who try to put themselves at the head of a mob in the morning are very likely to end up being chased by the same mob before sunset.
This sort of folly endangers law-governed parliamentary democracy and, while you may not think much of it, you will like the alternative even less.
Civilisation is delicate and precious. It is easily smashed. I have seen cities and countries which used to be civilised and then descended into disorder. It could happen here as it did there.
And Mrs Connolly’s defenders may well help that to happen.
‘Freedom’ law is just an illusion
You may think that Freedom of Information (FoI) laws make it easy for people such as me to squeeze facts out of unwilling public bodies. It is not true.
Last November, I asked Cheshire Police for a recording of a briefing they gave to selected journalists (not me) in October 2022, just before Lucy Letby’s first trial opened in Manchester.
Remember that what I am asking for is material which has already been given to journalists, not some deep national secret.
Cheshire Police refused, so I went through Freedom of Information (FoI) procedures. This got nowhere, so I appealed to the Information Commissioner’s office. I have read their reply several times and discussed it with lawyers.
Yet it still seems to say that the information requested concerns a living person, and criminal charges, so it can’t be disclosed.
Yet it has already been disclosed to a roomful of reporters. So much for FoI.
Ukraine warwongers get their way again
It look as if the Euro-warmongers who rushed to Washington last week have got their way. A peace deal in Ukraine, never much of a possibility, has now been parked in a dark corner, where I suspect it will rust to death.
I’m not surprised. Lots of people now prefer war without end to a scruffy, underhand peace.
While I long for someone to end this stupid war, I think it is now almost impossibly difficult to do so.
As in the equally futile 1914-18 war, too many passions have been unleashed for anyone to accept the sort of shabby deal that used to end wars in the old days.
Now they either go on indefinitely, as in Kashmir, or they continue until one side or the other secures a total victory at vast expense, as in the Second World War.
But I still don’t understand why weak, peaceable European countries are so keen to continue this war, which they did not start or seek.
The conflict really belongs to the US, which goaded Russia for years, and to Russia, which eventually lost its temper and moronically did what the US wanted it to.
European leaders last week joined President Zelensky in Washington to meet with President Trump to discuss peace talks between Russia and Ukraine
Poor old Ukraine just serves as America’s battering ram and as the scene for their quarrel, as Vietnam did in another age.
Most EU countries have suffered from this war. Britain, which cannot even protect its own south coast, is in no fit state to match its denuded forces against Russia.
But some such plan seems oddly popular with populations who seem to think the blood and screams will never come near them or their homes and families.
This is the second time that European politicians have managed to extend America’s proxy war in Ukraine. I can’t think why.
Back in 2022, peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul were derailed. ‘Europe’, much encouraged by one Alexander Johnson, persuaded Kiev back then to believe it could win a shooting war against Russia.
Many thousands of deaths and much misery later, this has turned out to be a false promise.
But, as the severely anti-Putin commentator Owen Matthews rightly says in The Spectator, Ukraine’s President Zelensky cannot possibly make the concessions demanded by Putin.
As Mr Matthews says: ‘It’s possible his troops would refuse orders to withdraw even if he tried to make them. And Ukraine’s ultra-nationalists would be literally up in arms over such a betrayal, making Ukraine instantly ungovernable.’
Zelensky has been the prisoner of these ultras since his attempt to make peace (he campaigned for office on a peace platform) was derailed by protests in 2019.
As so often, those who started this should have remembered that wars are easy to begin and very difficult to end. But there really is a major wisdom shortage in the world just now.
