Not About The Budget

It is more or less pointless to form any ideas about a Budget until several days after it has been presented. Absolutely central figures are often concealed in the Treasury 'Red Book', the full version of the document , from which the Chancellor selects what he hopes will be his Greatest Hits in his actual speech. Even though the book is now pretty swiftly online, it takes some sleuthing and experience to work out exactly what it is the government are trying to conceal. There will always be something.

Personally, I have for many years ignored the instant appreciations of Budgets, and waited a day or two, or even a week or two, and sometimes a month or two, for the full picture to emerge. One thing I can promise you. Anyone who believes that this government is making deep cuts in total spending, and any newspaper which gives the impression (the cartoonists, notably that fine draughtsman and political simpleton, Peter Brookes, are particularly bad about this) that the Liberal Democrats are the crushed and pliant victims of a ruthless George Osborne and a cunning, lordly David Cameron, hasn't a clue what is going on, and belongs with the horoscopes and the alternative medicine pages.

So instead let's have some general conversation. First, here's a last examination of the word 'insult'. I know that these days people write to me to say they are 'insulted' by some opinion I have expressed (usually about the non-existent complaint 'ADHD'). But that's not an insult. They don't understand English, any more than they know how to argue. An insult is a piece of personal abuse, usually an epithet, of the sort that might once have provoked a duel. It is the verbal equivalent of the slap in the face, or the pulling of the nose (a wonderful description of what this actually involved is given in one of the Patrick O'Brian books about Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, and the Napoleonic wars. Maturin pulls the nose of a Whitehall official who speaks to him as if he is a paid mercenary, when in fact he undertakes terrible risks for reasons of principle. It's extremely messy, and ends with Maturin wiping his hand on the victim's neck-cloth.

I might say, for instance, that Julian Assange 'insulted' me with his use of the t-word in his response to what I said in the drugs debate. I had always had (and still do have) some sympathy for Mr Assange's actions, and for his predicament. I don't think he knows anything much about drugs and their legalisation, so his attack on my position has no weight, and, since he is so prominent (as I told my companions at the time, and friends later), I was rather proud of having attracted his schoolyard rudeness. I might also say that Geoffrey Robertson was pretty gratuitously rude about me .

I didn't in fact respond to either of these sallies, and why should I? I have learned to expect such things, and while I don't like them, or approve of them, I don't mind them. (Yet another of my 'Hitchens is always wrong' contributors, a Mr 'Think', cannot grasp the distinction between complaining about being insulted, which I am not doing, and pointing out that this treatment in large, supposedly respectable public forums has a meaning for society as a whole. When I refer to 'we aren't there', I'm talking about all those who oppose drug legalisation, such as Theodore Dalrymple [present on that occasion], Kathy Gyngell, Mary Brett and the few others still prepared to make this case unequivocally. I am not referring to myself in the plural, as he knows.)

The alleged comedian Russell Brand is in no position to be sensitive about the way in which he is addressed. His behaviour on the BBC, with Jonathan Ross, was quite extraordinarily bad (Those who doubt this should look up 'Sachsgate'. I do wonder if they are aware of just how nasty this episode was). Mr Brand is still very annoyed that my newspaper, the Mail on Sunday, discovered and then prominently told the story. If we hadn't, he might have got away with it  (note, as evidence of this that he didn't get the name of my paper wrong and say 'Daily Mail' as such people normally do). We got him into a lot of trouble, and we were right. I have also criticised him (and his friend Jonathan Ross) for this behaviour in my column. I don't think he has forgotten that. I think I can promise that, even had I addressed him as 'sir', and told him how much I admired his comic skills, he would have let fly at me with a river of vituperation.

If someone wants to call me an 'alleged journalist' , I couldn't care less. And were I to appear on TV in a hat, and someone called me 'the alleged journalist in the hat', I likewise couldn't care less.  Anyone who wants to know what people actually do say about me can find out by using any decent search engine. 'Alleged Journalist in the Hat' would be like balm in Gilead compared with most of that stuff.

And who would be talking about this debate at all, had it not been for this clash, in which it seems to me that Mr Brand (except in the minds of a tiny few unshakeable partisans) made a prize fool of himself?

The idea that I 'derailed myself' or prevented a rational discussion with this yelling, incoherent person with a bit of light teasing, is nonsensical. I drew attention to his unreasonable attitude. His ludicrous accusation of racial prejudice, baseless and irrelevant, exposed him more than anything else he said. Mr 'Think' presumably imagines I was in some way wounded by this. I wasn't, as my response at the time shows.

Just as with the Stalingrad of same-sex weddings, the Christian conservative propagandist has to calculate how best to say what he wants to say and teach what he wants to teach. Rather than let others tempt him into exposing his flank, he should tempt his opponents into exposing theirs.

I take as my text the Gospel According to St Matthew, the sixteenth verse of the Tenth Chapter:

'Behold , I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves'.

I tend to think this means that we (that is to say, Mr 'Think', I and my allies, it's not a royal 'we') are not required to be naïve and guileless in our actions or our speech.

If it wasn't a comedy gig, by the way, what was it?  It certainly wasn't a Parliamentary debate. Why was Mr Brand there at all? I know of no books he was written on the drugs issue, or learned articles he has written on the subject. Do my critics think I would have got as much time as I did (not very much) by sitting quiet and being restrained? They are mistaken, if so.

The general point remains the same. Conservative opinions are becoming marginal in our society, and harder and harder to express. I am used to the hurly-burly of the arena, and quite enjoy it. That's why I am one of the last to survive. But this scoffing at my simple point about the narrowing of the spectrum of free speech is interesting and, er, paradoxical coming from anonymous contributors who fear even to be named, and whimper piteously about that fear when I urge them to use their real identities.

I'm not myself frightened or intimidated by this narrowing. But others not so lucky and not so confident, especially in the many workplaces where 'Equality and Diversity' speech codes make it an employment risk to express many opinions, see what happens to me and decide it is best to stay silent and anonymous. And what cannot be said, sooner or later cannot be thought either.

This is how soft totalitarianism works. I suggest those who think I am imagining the problem make a note with themselves to keep a record of this conversation, and re-examine it, say, five years hence.

My side has lost this battle, and is, as far as I can see, defeated in this country. My main concern now is to ensure that the truth continues to be told for as long as possible. I still find very funny the idea that if I 'gave up drinking' (the very word 'drinking' suggesting a vast and rollicking debauch, rather than my trivial and finicky consumption of the occasional small glass) anyone would care in the slightest. My angry opponents among the drug liberalisers would find another excuse (as this is an excuse) to hate me. Don't be silly.

I write about plenty of subjects here. But careful readers of my columns and blogs over the past few weeks will have noticed a particular concern with the growing limits of freedom of speech in this country following the takeover of the Conservative Party by politically correct liberals. I happen to think this change has how become particularly noticeable and pervasive. If some inimical, or slow-thinking persons mistake this for some sort of personal complaint about my own treatment,  I cannot help it. I cannot make people understand things they are determined to misunderstand, as I well know. But they are wrong.