If Andy Burnham is currently fixated on the price of gherkins, then it is a sign we need some bigger ideas in British politics. Our latest three publications aim to offer just that. The latest releases in our Letters on Liberty series open up three big areas where we need some bravery, bigger horizons, and more freedom in every area of our lives.
The first, by engineer David Turver, is a fact-loaded defence of energy – tracking the links between energy consumption and society’s big developmental leaps to argue that energy is, literally, freedom. The second, by barrister Dr Anna Loutfi, asks the reader to do what would make many lawyers, politicians and campaigners gasp – scrap the Equality Act. Far from securing our hard-won and necessary protections, Loutfi argues that this piece of legislation has changed the way we see ourselves and how we interact with one another – and not for the better. The third, by spiked’s associate editor Dr Tim Black, is a fast-paced tour of the history of ‘Islamo-Leftism’ – the lash-up between Islamist ideology and Third-Worldist lefties – and why this egregious alliance is no laughing matter. Titter at signs declaring ‘gays for Gaza’ all you like, Black argues, but the anti-Western, nihilistic tendencies of both camps are more of a worry than you think.
It is in the spirit of a battle for freedom that we continue to publish our Letters on Liberty. They are intended to sit as literary pistols in your pocket, ready to be used during debates and discussion, or read alone to provoke deeper thinking about an issue. All of our Letters are written by people who have a big idea, and want to convince you to join them in it.
Energy is Freedom, Scrap the Equality Act and Islamo-Leftism: New Challenges to Freedom are now live and available to buy on the Letters on Liberty website.
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ISLAMO-LEFTISM: NEW CHALLENGES TO FREEDOM
Writer Dr Tim Black explains the modern relationship between Islamism and Western liberal lefties. Instead of joking about ‘gays for Gaza’, Black argues that this new alliance is a deeply reactionary, illiberal coalition hell-bent on destroying Western civilisation. Self-identifying leftists now march hand in hand with antisemites, he writes, while pledging support for those who advocate theocratic violence and repression. In order to understand why this is, we need to look back at the birth of Islamism itself and the turn to Third Worldism among leftie intellectuals. Only then, he writes, can we begin to combat this threat.
SCRAP THE EQUALITY ACT
Writer and barrister Dr Anna Loutfi invites us to challenge our preconceptions about the Equality Act. The Equality Act is not about equality, whatever it says on the tin, she writes. Instead, the legislation promotes divisiveness and, frankly, legal anarchy. Where individuals used to discuss and dispute, the Equality Act has created the group protected characteristic, drastically changing the way in which the law views us. For Loutfi, the Act must go.
ENERGY IS FREEDOM
Engineer and consultant David Turver reminds us that energy not only powers the things we need to feel free, but is freedom itself. Charting the historical progress of human technological development – and our consumption of energy – Turver argues that humans are hard-wired to try to make life better over time, so regression to using less, lower-quality energy will not happen naturally. Net Zero and other green measures deny the fact that energy makes us free, he writes. Instead, he argues, we should celebrate energy as the master resource that drives everything.
All of our Letters on Liberty are illustrated by the wonderful Jan Bowman. Check out more of her artwork at janbow.com.
About Letters on Liberty
Taking a stand for freedom has always been difficult. Throughout the history of Western civilisation, brave individuals have put everything on the line to argue for the freedom to think, act and organise in accordance with their own beliefs. And though today’s authorities are unlikely to cut out our tongues, burn us at the stake or exile us from the country for daring to voice unorthodox views, sometimes the demand for our freedom, and the desire to defend it, can feel a little weak. Government disinformation units, social-media spies and police criminalising everyday behaviour – alongside the age-old problem of social conformism leading to self-censorship – all suggest that our present moment is hostile to a full-throated defence of liberty.
And yet, perhaps what the contemporary volatility of the political landscape shows is that British citizens still have a freedom-loving bone or two. Unshackled from political loyalties, voters are jumping around all over the political spectrum. Previously untouchable subjects like immigration, Net Zero or trans ideology are now not only up for discussion but dominating much of the news. It turns out that people still want to talk about the big ideas and conundrums of the day, even if it makes the great and the good feel uncomfortable. Indeed, at the Battle of Ideas festival in mid-October, thousands of us did just that.
I quickly perused the Energy is Freedom pamphlet. While a relatively fair critique of coercive policies, it’s completely void of the biophysical realities that would undermine its thesis. The laws of thermodynamics. The finitude of fundamental resources. The principles of ecological overshoot and the planetary boundaries humanity have transgressed. These are not unimportant variables to be ignoring.