Unaccountable cabal of woke officials is bent on pursuing a radical progressive agenda

Battered by dismal ratings and now threatened by Nigel Farage’s insurgent Reform Party, the Tories had hoped the first televised leaders’ debate might change the dynamic of their faltering election campaign. Rishi Sunak certainly gave a spirited performance, but there was no knock-out punch. Indeed since Tuesday, his party has fallen further in the polls and is now just two points ahead of Reform.

The reason the Conservatives are struggling so badly lies in their recent record in office. Millions of people who voted Tory in 2019, particularly in the Red Wall seats of the former Labour heartlands in the North and the Midlands, now feel profoundly disillusioned. After 14 years of Conservative rule, mass immigration is at a record level, the tax burden is at its highest since the 1940s, public services are mired in crisis, and the welfare system is undermining enterprise and employment.

At times, it feels as if Britain is governed not by a Conservative administration but by an unaccountable cabal of woke officials bent on imposing a radical progressive agenda, where diversity has become the official orthodoxy, and vast sums of taxpayers’ money are squandered on indoctrination.

Exactly 40 years ago, Margaret Thatcher began her drive to abolish Ken Livingstone’s notorious fiefdom of the GLC which was a byword for politically correct bureaucracy and profligacy. But the spirit of the GLC did not disappear. On the contrary, it was reincarnated across large swathes of the public and voluntary sector, reflected in the fashionable obsession with identity politics and the impulse to smash tradition.

So under a Tory Government, we have had the remarkable phenomenon of the RAF imposing a temporary ban on the recruitment of white men in the name of promoting diversity, while Whitehall departments, acting like members of a religious cult, observe every ritualistic landmark in the woke calendar, such as World Hijab Day, Bisexual Health Awareness Month, International Migrants Day, Transgender Awareness Month, Black Inclusion Week, and World Pronouns Day.

June is officially designated Pride Month in Britain, creating yet more opportunities for the reinforcement of ideological groupthink. In my own research this week, I counted 116 charities that are involved with Pride. Together they raked in last year a total of £34million, Among them are Manchester Pride, with a revenue of £2.7million, Bristol Pride which took in £549,000, and Birmingham LGBT with an income of £969,000 last year. But bigger than any of these is the LGBT Foundation, which spent £4.4million last year, has 93 staff, and runs workshops such as “the Sex Tapes”, a discussion where “panellists speak about their experiences in the world of sex toys and kink” and another on “Naturel Cycles” which aims to provide “a trans inclusive and gender-free way of working with the menstrual cycle or the Moon Cycle” to bring order and insight.

The grim truth is that in Tory Britain, public money is being used to bankroll decadence. Recent analysis of academic grants by the journalist Charlotte Gill highlighted a £842,000 project to examine “the impact of gay erotica and porn magazines” on gay culture in post-war Europe. This kind of sexual extremism is also happening north of the border where the arts funding body Creative Scotland dished out £85,000 for a controversial theatre project which planned to feature real, unsimulated sex. It was only after a huge public outcry that the funding was withdrawn.

The agenda of the woke brigade is to undermine family life and create a climate of excess without restraints on personal behaviour. That is why the zealots keep pushing sick, misogynistic drag acts at children, in order to shatter innocence.

It is to the eternal discredit of the Tories that recent governments have done little to challenge this trend.

Nigel Farage a realistic alternative

Nigel Farage is one of the most extraordinary politicians in British history. He has never been a Minister nor, despite eight attempts, even an MP, yet he has exerted a greater influence over the course of our nation than most modern party leaders. Without him, Britain would have never escaped the imperialist clutches of the European Union. He has achieved this through the sheer force of his spellbindingly eloquent personality. Both in front of a camera and on a platform, he is probably the greatest political speaker of our times.

I have been lucky enough to get to know Nigel well over the years, helped by our shared love of cricket and military history. I once asked him what was the secret of his fluency. Did he practise in front of a mirror or rehearse with colleagues? “Oh no, it just flows naturally,” he replied straightforwardly.

Now that gift of fluency looks like it could bring the biggest realignment in British politics since the early 1920s, when Labour eclipsed the Liberals as the leading party of the left. A Farage-led Reform movement may soon overtake the Tories, at least in vote share. The Conservatives have only themselves to blame. They thought they could casually betray their promises because their voters had no one else to vote for. But Farage is now providing a realistic alternative – and oblivion now beckons for Sunak’s party.

Car crash? More of a multiple pile-up

Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch has been hailed as the likely next leader of the Tory party, but she dramatically failed to live up to that billing this week with a disastrous series of media interviews in which she came across as both arrogant and out of her depth.

She was meant to clarify the Government’s transgender policy but she only succeeded in spreading confusion; not so much a car crash as a multiple pile up.

Tourism boom? Count me out

“To travel is to live,” wrote Hans Christian Andersen and most people seem to agree. Global tourism is booming.

The cruise industry has just boasted that passenger numbers will break all records in 2024. But count me out of this rush to the airport or the liner, I have no shred of wanderlust, no bucket list, no interest in seeing far flung places.

Anchored in my comfort zone, I dread the idea of going “off the beaten track” which to me is a place of fear without access to decent toilet facilities.

Benefit fraud no laughing matter

The urgent need for drastic welfare reform was highlighted by the shameful recent case where a Bulgarian gang was able to steal an incredible £54million from the benefits system because identity checks were so inadequate. As they perpetrated their massive fraud they mocked the British authorities, But for the taxpayer, it was no laughing matter.

Jeremy Vine joins latest celeb club

BBC Broadcaster Jeremy Vine has just written his first murder mystery. The book, which is to be published next year, will be the first in a series that features a Devon-based radio host turned sleuth.

Vine says that he was inspired by Agatha Christie but he must also have been influenced by the swelling army of celebrities who have become best-selling authors, including Richard Osman, Graham Norton and Dawn French.

At least Vine wrote his own work, unlike the supermodel Naomi Campbell, whose 1995 novel was ghosted. Indeed, it was joked that Campbell had not even read the text, never mind written it.

George Orwell’s warnings live on

Tomorrow marks the 75th anniversary of the publication of George Orwell’s epic novel 1984, which painted a terrifying vision of Britain under authoritarian socialist rule.

“Frightening and depressing” was the verdict of the left-wing New Statesman magazine at the time.

But the novel remains as powerful today as it was in 1949. Many of its concepts, like groupthink, Big Brother and thought crimes, have become part of our political discourse, while freedom is under threat from the cancel culture, ideological bullying, misinformation and the rewriting of history.