Musings of a Libertarian

  Last week, Keir Starmer took to X in a bizarre series of short posts promoting Digital ID, chirping out a supposed benefit of the Orwellian idea every few hours from Thursday and throughout the weekend. Apparently impervious to being ratioed worse than Labour’s candidate for the Caerphilly Senedd by-election, our Dear Leader continued to churn out classics such as “Digital ID will be a huge help in tackling illegal immigration,” alongside platitudes like “Digital ID will make our lives easier.” The result? Four community notes in just 24 hours — a spectacle both comical and telling. According to Big Brother Watch: “Keir Starmer has already lost the public’s trust on digital IDs. Within hours of the Prime Minister selling the mandatory national ID scheme to the public on the basis of tackling illegal working, government documents emerged touting sprawling uses for digital IDs in our everyday lives and even suggested they could be rolled out to children.” Perhaps the most disturbin...

As it becomes increasingly apparent that Reform UK is willing to lean towards socialism in a bid to capture disillusioned Labour voters, the party continues to reveal its growing comfort with state interference in private life. In an interview with The Telegraph this weekend, Reform leader Nigel Farage proposed that second-home owners be banned from purchasing property in tourist hotspots — a policy that closely mirrors long-standing Green Party proposals to the same effect. This latest announcement follows on from earlier suggestions to lift the two-child benefit cap, thereby entrenching in Reform’s platform not only the notion that the state should subsidise the upbringing of children at taxpayers’ expense, but also that it has the moral authority to dictate how and where citizens may invest their own money. These are not the policies of a party committed to individual liberty or free markets, but of one increasingly comfortable with paternalism and state control. The Libertarian ...

Last week the saga of Sino-British relations took yet another twist as The Telegraph revealed that Labour deliberately scuppered an investigation into two civil servants accused of spying for the Chinese Communist Party. Christopher Cash, 30, a former Parliamentary researcher, and Christopher Berry, 33, of Witney, Oxfordshire, were cleared earlier this month at the Old Bailey of offences under the Official Secrets Act. The case was dropped because Labour refused to brand China an “enemy” power, therefore ensuring the case did not meet the threshold for prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. While bandying about the term “enemy” is not necessarily conducive to friendly international relations, one might be forgiven for arguing that a foreign power that actively spies on us, keeps our citizens in solitary confinement in Hong Kong and uses consulate staff to assault activists on the streets of Manchester - might meet the threshold.  Buried in this story is also the jaw-dropping r...