Musings of a Libertarian

  Ed Davey took to the stage at the Liberal Democrat conference yesterday, waxing lyrical about “British values” – citing tolerance, decency, the rule of law, and individual liberty. Yet this sermon on freedom comes in the very same week his party proposed dropping their opposition to a national Digital ID system. The hypocrisy is glaring. Digital ID represents one of the clearest threats to individual liberty in the modern era: an infrastructure for surveillance, centralised control, and the slow erosion of personal privacy. To champion “freedom” while embracing such tools of state power is not just inconsistent: it is dishonest. The mask has slipped. The Liberal Democrats, once a party that at least paid lip service to civil liberties, now line up with Labour and the Conservatives in offering nothing but different shades of the same statist authoritarianism. The rhetoric may differ, but the trajectory is the same – more control, less autonomy. British values worth defending are n...

With the dust beginning to settle on the latest reshuffle, it’s time to take a closer look at our new—and not so new—overlords in the Whitehall bureaucracy. David Lammy – Deputy Prime Minister & Justice Secretary In David Lammy we now find the roles of Deputy PM and Justice Secretary rolled into one—a troubling centralisation of power given the intellectual faculties of the man behind the position. Lammy’s record on Mastermind speaks volumes: Henry VII succeeding Henry VIII, Marie Antoinette winning a Nobel Prize, and Red Leicester identified as a blue cheese. But while comic ignorance might once have been harmless, Lammy’s authoritarian instincts are not. He has long championed restrictions on speech and openly called for a second Brexit referendum. Under his stewardship, expect an even deeper politicisation of the judiciary. Shabana Mahmood – Home Secretary On Mahmood’s very first day as Home Secretary, 1,000 illegal migrants crossed the Channel in small boats. Yet we are e...

Tomorrow will see the closing arguments in the sham trial of Hong Kong democracy activist and British citizen Jimmy Lai. The 77-year-old has been kept in solitary confinement since December 2020. His preferred foreign lawyer, Tim Owen KC, was barred from representing him under new requirements of Hong Kong’s “National Security” Law, and the Department of “Justice” has systematically denied him his choice of counsel. Until December 2024, Lai was not even permitted visits from his family; the communists now allow him thirty minutes a month, through a glass screen. Before the fist of the CCP fell on Hong Kong, Lai ran Apple Daily, a pro-democracy newspaper and outspoken critic of Beijing. He joined the anti-extradition protests and funded opposition groups in his fight for freedom. His “crimes” under the Hong Kong “National Security” Law — which, in violation of international law to which the UK is a signatory, made toilet paper out of “One Country, Two Systems” and was imposed on Hong Ko...

  ONLINE "SAFETY" ACT PROTEST SATURDAY 23RD AUGUST Following unprecedented and worse-than-expected State overreach under the newly enforced provisions of the Online "Safety" Act last week, the Libertarian Party NCC has resolved to reframe our upcoming event as a protest directly opposing the State censorship enabled by this legislation. To quote Wessex Co-ordinator and newly elected Nominating Officer Ben Allsop in Friday’s article: the Act is “one of the most dangerous attacks on free speech and privacy in modern British history.” Writing just three days ago, Ben warned that the Act would be used to suppress disagreement, discourage protest, and shut down the very essence of a free and open society. Tragically, these predictions have already proven true: Within hours, content began disappearing from social media — including Katie Lam’s speech in The Commons on grooming gangs. 𝗔𝗻 𝗼𝗽𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗠𝗣’𝘀 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗶𝗻 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗼𝗿𝗲𝗱 ...

Yesterday the Commons heard about the “collective failure” to address concerns about the ethnicity of grooming-gang members. Casey’s report states: “Child sexual exploitation is horrendous whoever commits it, but there have been enough convictions across the country of groups of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds to have warranted closer examination. Instead of examination, we have seen obfuscation.” For libertarians, a defendant’s ethnicity or cultural background is of no concern. Individuals are individuals; the circumstances of their birth need not dictate their own actions or how they should be treated by the state. The problem with the grooming-gang crisis—as the full inquiry will no doubt uncover—is that concerns over the ethnicity of perpetrators resulted in the shameful white-washing, victim-blaming and inaction we have seen on one of the most horrendous crimes in recent history. This is a direct result of the woke left’s dominance in our judiciary and police forces—those like L...

Earlier this month, a group of Labour MPs—backed by "Labour Together"—publicly endorsed the introduction of a smartphone-based “BritCard.” On Saturday, reports indicated that the government, influenced by Starmer and Yvette Cooper, is “exploring” adopting the BritCard plan to tackle illegal migration and welfare fraud. Frankly this should come as no surprise given Starmer's authoritarian leanings and the fact that plans for Digital ID have been sitting quietly on the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology's website since the last election. Slightly more novel, most likely in response to Reform's positions in the polls, is Labour's illegal migration justification - though this too falls neatly into the Statist strategy of utilising crises to legitimise further control of citizens. Many people think a Digital ID is just your driving licence on a screen. It’s not. It’s your entire life—tax records, medical history, travel movements, social media, emplo...

As of Sunday, it is now illegal to purchase disposable vapes in the UK (though, somewhat perversely, it de facto remains perfectly legal to cross the Channel in a dinghy or publicly call for the murder of Conservative MPs). This latest instance of state overreach, arriving hot on the heels of Sunak’s progressive increases to the legal smoking age, prompts one to ask when legislation last – in this country – made people more free. There are, however, some strong arguments in favour of the ban: these small plastic sticks of joy (usually flavoured in revoltingly sweet “fruit” varieties) each contain a lithium battery — a finite resource that is costly and difficult to recycle. Virtually all disposable vapes end up in landfill (leaking toxins into the soil or catching fire during processing) or littering the streets like bright, tubular gutter flowers. Five million are thrown out every week. It is possible, of course, to manage them more effectively, but reality dictates that the average t...