What is the point of ‘Speak’?

Another Neoliberal road to nowhere

I really thought that the hatchet could be buried between myself and Dr Bully XL. That I could keep my powder dry until the sage of Royal Holloway, that ‘hysteric in a threadbare suit’ ran to be Mayor of London in 2028 - to let the good people of London finally and decisively put stop to this orgy of delusion.

So I said nothing when he gathered ‘over 50 leading CEOs, entrepreneurs and experts’ to sign a letter demanding that the government accept the recommendations of a review that the government itself commissioned. Said nothing when the government then, quite predictably accepted their own reviews recommendations, leading Let’s Effing Go to send around an email saying that they had ‘pushed the Government the right way’.

I did not even mock the ‘signatories’ to the offending letter, that floatsam and jetsam of think tankers and ‘Labour YIMBY’ directors who have been esteemed as captains of industry by Master Newport.

“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”

But I have been drawn from this slumber by the sudden emergence of a new project called ‘Speak’, which is apparently campaigning to support the precious liberty of free speech. It’s endorsees on X are a gallery of Mansards past and present.

Its unique selling point, the thing that distinguishes is from already extant free speech organisations - like the Free Speech Union or the Alliance for Defending Freedom - is that they are going to ‘focus on changing the law’, instead of providing legal support to individuals who are arrested over what they say, that they have a ‘different demographic on social media’ who they are going to reach.

In essence, what differentiates this product from the FSU - which actually provides legal support to individuals whose lives are destroyed by cancel culture - is that they will make more snappy videos on the world wide web. It’s an inferior product which will only exist to take donations away from a functional institution, so that the money which could be spent on doing actual work in the real world will instead be spent on social media videos.

As an esteemed ally of J’accuse, Master Larry, has already pointed out - Reform UK already has plans for a comprehensive free speech bill - the actual policy issue is already settled, and if the polls hold the problem will be decisively dealt with, at which point our friends at Speak will no doubt attempt to claim credit for a motion which was already in process. It is straight from the Newportian playbook.

There is an old Andrew Tate monologue which readers should find instructive for their own lives. He says that one of the reasons he dislikes the gym (as opposed to the concept of working out) is that young men mistake the process of going there and exercising for having accomplished something that day. You can see much the same delusion at work when you look at Joe Reeve’s ‘campaign’ to create a new city, where process is confused for outcome. It is not an achievement to take a photograph of people in a room looking at plans for a new city and post it on social media. You have not actually done anything.

Just going to the gym does not make you an alpha male, in much the same way that posting videos on YouTube and ‘drawing attention’ to things does not make you a political operator or entrepreneur. The only thing it achieves is to bamboozle donors into giving you money, money which would be better spent on institutions with the capacity and expertise to actually effect change.

That is not to say you can only provide value if you have millions of pounds, but a small organisation must do something genuinely new and original. Two excellent organisations (whom I endorse independently of the Dragon) are the Centre or Migration Control - which has driven headlines for months through canny use of Freedom of Information requests - and Open Justice UK which recently released its first tranche of grooming gang court transcripts. Neither of these organisations, which are headed by individuals younger than the Newport brothers are selling themselves as being in touch with the yoof. They do not just ‘make videos’. They do not make a performance of being either ‘cross-party’ or ‘not cranky’. They do something difficult and expensive which informs the public debate instead of chasing engagement for the purpose of self-aggrandisement.

If you want your money to further the causes, donate it to either the CMC or OJ instead of shovelling it into the Effective Altruist polycule. Or become a member of the Free Speech Union, which is taking a more robust approach to the organisations which support censorship.

I must also take this opportunity to wholeheartedly endorse the new X account ‘Tempest Visa’ which has been doing thorough work digging through old newspaper archives (which show, as an example, evidence of grooming gangs in the North of England in the 1950s). This exercise in puncturing historical revisionism around immigration and ‘Windrush’ is absolutely vital.

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The Director of Speak, from what I understand, is in his ‘early-career’, so let us finish with some sincere advice to a young man. It is not too late for you to change course. You do not have to be like the geriatric Effective Altruists who are stuck paddling through the limbo of Narcissus into their early 40s, claiming credit while getting no actual work done.

Beg Toby Young on your hands and knees to give you a job at the Daily Sceptic. Or sign up to work for Reform UK. Absent any actual expertise in the legal sector, but with some enthusiasm and spirit, you will do much more to advance the cause of free speech in these purposeful institutions. Get over any preconceptions about being ‘normal’ or being associated with ‘cranks’ - nobody normal has anything to do with Effective Altruism - and throw yourself headfirst into helping a cause you truly believe in.

Sixty years from now, when your time shuffling through this vale of tears has come to an end, and you are on your deathbed - you will think back on this article. And your lips will either turn to a smile, or twist into a frown.

Either way, you shall know that I was right.