Disliking the Messenger doesn’t invalidate the message

In those European nations that were the centre of the Enlightenment, free speech has been under the hammer.

The J. D. Vance speech delivered to the Munich Security Conference was an undiplomatic public rebuke to the European part of his audience in their home territory. So painful was it for the Conference Chairman, a German Diplomat, Christoph Heusgen, he broke down and cried in his final remarks to the conference.

The European Left and Centre were livid. The Right delighted. I am neither part of today’s European Left that is bereft of any guiding ideology although some claim to be influenced by Marx, or have ever been enamoured of the Right. I am an old time Socialist taught in the Ayrshire Labour movement, and by the works of Bertrand Russell, to apply intellectual rigour to the examination of any issue, no matter its source. In short assess the message even if you dislike the messenger.

Most public European reactions to the Vance speech came initially from non-government people, columnists and commentators, with government Ministers quoted only from private discussions as if afraid to be heard across the Atlantic. But the journalists and commentators’ rebuttal of Vance was steeped in whataboutism. How dare this man, who once condemned Trump and now licks his boots, give us a moral lecture. How dare he say we are weakening our democracies when he is Vice President to a man who refused to accept the result of the 2020 election, egged on people to attack the Capitol, gave them free pardons for violent conduct in doing so, and is now pursuing, with a view to sacking, FBI agents and Federal government lawyers who applied the criminal law against the rioters.

By listing the sins of Trump‘s conduct and Vance’s apparent blindness to his own administrations’ faults, they avoided the need to address whether what he said about the erosion of free speech in European nations having weakened us internally, has any validity.

Vance erred in some of the quotes he gave, but the question is whether his main thrust of criticism was accurate: that Europe has abandoned its principal value, free speech, and so has inflicted harm upon itself, and has thus weakened itself internally? In that he was correct. In those European nations that were the centre of the Enlightenment, where the ability to think and speak freely were essential for the break-out from the age of landowner power to the new age of productive forces and wide political power, free speech has been under the hammer.

I was born in a free speech world – but now live in one of cancel culture

One of the proud boasts I heard from adults was that in Britain people could say what they liked. Speakers Corner at Hyde Park, a place I knew only that it was in London, was held up as the exemplar, where apparently the most outrageous people could freely say the most outrageous things without fear or hindrance. A free country based on free speech, made for a strong people.

Today we here, and in most parts of Europe, we now live in a cancel world. People are sacked for things they say outside of their jobs. People still think, but self-censor their speech. Some publishers haven’t the guts to stand by longstanding authors because their staff either don’t like the writer for his/her views on subjects not relevant to the book, or don’t like what is written in the book. There are those who seek to impose the test of “right thinking” and “wrong thinking” on society.

People are officially enabled to spy on others and complain to authorities about speeches, writings and tweets. I am a member of the Free Speech Union with an ever growing list of people needing defended for speaking their minds. A recent case is instructive. This was a graduate with a first-class degree from one of the top English universities who wished to pursue a different course at a top Scottish university. She had years earlier, on Twitter, said she didn’t like Muslims. She was part way through her first year when the university got an anonymous complaint about that long ago tweet. She was investigated without being told an investigation was underway, and at its end was informed she was out, no longer acceptable to the university. The FSU helped her on the appeal. She was re-instated. No one in the university, acting on an anonymous complaint, seemed to realise that the complaint was an assault on free speech, and that they were set to ruin her chances of a career on the basis of a tweet that was no more than an expression of opinion. It turned out that her dislike for Islam was based on its attitude to women, a view taken by many other women, and men, in the UK and elsewhere.

At another university a man who had lectured there for over 30 years was subject to an anonymous complaint by one student about something he had said. He was suspended for nine months while investigated. For those nine months he was put through the wringer, living on a knife edge: was his distinguished career, and how he earned his living, to be brought to an ignominious end because one student didn’t like what he said? He was cleared, but damage was done. Again, the university, a place where all opinions should be free to mix and dispute, never saw the complaint as an assault on free speech.

How qualified are the Police who now police our speech?

In Scotland you can face a criminal charge for something you say in your own home. Thousands of citizens are logged on police files under the Non-Crime Hate Incident process for things they say or write which are not actually criminal. Who decides if what is said or written qualifies for a recording in police NCHI files? A police officer. There is law defining Hate and what makes expressing it criminal, but there is no statute defining when Hate is not criminal. So, the police constable’s view must be subjective. Is the view of a cop about what you say, do or write sufficient to put you on a police file? That is a serious erosion of free speech.

What subjective view was involved when on 22nd. February this year, two Manchester police officers called at the home of Helen Jones to quiz her about her call for Councillors to resign? Her action came after MPs Andrew Gwynne and Oliver Ryan were revealed to be on a chat group, along with local Councillors, where nasty things were said about constituents, like hoping certain old ones would die before the next election. The two MPs had the whip removed by the Labour Party. Helen Jones didn’t think one of the Councillors in particular should get off, and said he should resign. A citizen calling for the resignation of a Councillors is not a crime. Yet two cops called on her. She felt intimidated. Was that the purpose of their call on her?

From daft to dafter: Woke has helped take the spine out of Europe

The self-created woke tangle that Europe finds itself in has bred stupidity and falsehood at the highest levels. The UK has a Prime Minister who believes that only 99 per cent of women lack a penis, with David Lammy, Foreign Secretary, claiming it is possible for XY chromosome males to be given a cervix by a procedure no-one has ever heard of. Before the Supreme Court an advocate, instructed by the Scottish Government, advanced the proposition that men can be pregnant. To do so would take two miracles: not only would a man be able to get a Lammy cervix, but he would also need to get a uterus. Welcome to the world of woke.

Woke has helped take the spine out of Europe. Heusgen’s response, applauded by the audience, to Vance’s robust, direct attack on European internal weakness, was not to reply with an equally frank and robust defence of their much vaunted values, but to start sobbing over the now open breach between Republican America and its European allies. That scene must have been music to the Kremlin ear: a weak at the knees Europe wailing because its Uncle Sam doesn’t like it anymore. Easy meat.

Compare the Heusgen response to that of Singapore’s Defence Minister at the same conference when referring to the Vance speech: ‘The US “moral legitimacy” is waning in Asia – The transactionalism and seeming desire to strong arm partners into making the concessions of vassal states is a blow to US soft power. The image has changed from liberator to great disrupter to a landlord seeking rent.‘ Singapore, small state, self-confident, no crying, criticism right into America’s face.

The US message Europe is reluctant to hear: You are on your own

Starmer’s position post-Vance was insipid, reinforcing the Trump view of a European dependence mentality by calling for US air cover in any future Ukraine-Russia post-war scenario, as though European nations in Nato had no air forces themselves.

When, later, confronted by Trump’s lies about Ukraine being responsible for the war with Russia, and that Zelensky is a dictator with few cards to play, Europe’s leaders, instead of directly telling the US President that he was wrong, took the roundabout way of signalling their disagreement by telling Zelensky that he wasn’t a dictator. Tip-toe round the Donald is the only policy our leaders can think of.

On Monday 24^th. February, President Macron met Trump at the White House. Trump stood stone faced as Macron singled out Russia as the aggressor. Nor did he endorse Macron’s view that if negotiations bring the war to an end, any Russian violation of the agreement would put it in conflict with all other states party to it, which would include the USA.

Like Starmer before him, Macron was saying that Europe was still looking to the United States to supply the main security guarantee to Ukraine, rather than Europe providing it on its own. When offering European peacekeeping troops on the ground in post-war Ukraine, he explained that these would be soldiers for peace, a show of solidarity, but not for combat. No wonder Trump was able to say that Putin told him that was acceptable.

While Macron and Trump were talking in Washington, in the city of New York at the United Nations General Assembly, the USA was voting against a Ukraine and UK co-sponsored resolution condemning Russia and calling for it to halt the war. Among America’s new companions in that vote were North Korea, Belarus and Russia. The message in that, signalling the evident difference between US and European interests, was loud and clear.

Our Ides of March comes early

The EU will hold an emergency summit meeting on 6^th March to seek a united policy on how to help Ukraine in the new situation of the US acting unilaterally on its future, and how to deal with its own security. One can only hope that by then they will have got the message that America is no longer going to be around to defend them.

One can only hope that the EU leaders, along with the UK, will openly assert that Europe recognises it is on its own; that Russia and European security is a European responsibility for Europe alone to address; and that it will announce action to change the lead role, and funding, in Nato from the USA to Europe, with a European and not an American as supreme commander, and spelling out the time scale to accomplish that change. Europe displaying a backbone would make its demand to be involved in the Ukraine -Russia negotiations more credible and harder for the US and Russia to ignore.

Europe and its people will have to bite the funding bullet: being safe costs money

Such a policy will require Europe to fund a vast expansion of its armed forces, along with funding for the construction of new capacity for weapons manufacture. Given that so many European countries are deep in debt, how is that to be done? How much butter are we willing to trade for guns?

Edward Lucas, a thinker and writer, has come up with the solution – a European Rearmament Bank, modelled on the successful European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, set up in 1991 to assist economic programmes. Basically, the idea is for European Nations to subscribe to a rearmament Bank’s initial fund, which the new bank would lever upwards by issuing bonds in its own right, and thus create substantial cash for both governments and companies to build military strength. The Lucas proposal is now on the European leaders’ table.

We are now at a seminal moment in the life of Europe’s nations. Is the European continent and the UK, with a total population of over 560m people, to be masters in its own house, masters of its own fate, or continue as the nervous, compliant subordinate of a United States which openly disdains it?