12-05-2025
I am reading Douglas Murray. Should I expect the police to come knocking?
I have a confession to make, and I do hope Police Scotland are taking notes. I am currently reading Douglas Murray's new book: On Democracies and Death Cults. There, I've said it. My God, it feels good to get that out there after so many days of trying to hide it! It feels like a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders.
So all I have to do now is await the knock at the door. Will they send two police officers or more than that? What will the neighbours think as I'm cuffed and put in the back of the police car, its blue lights illuminating the neighbourhood, almost as a warning to others not to go down the same dark path down which I've trod?
It's the same path taken by retired special constable in the Kent constabulary, Julian Foulkes, who was arrested in 2023 for a tweet (what else?). Such an arrest, in a country where young people are detained for speculating about the sexuality of police horses, would not in itself be headline news. Who hasn't been arrested and detained for a tweet?
What made Mr Foulkes's experience even more bizarre was the search of his home by six police officers (obviously the physical threat this 71-year-old posed to others was thought to be considerable) during which one officer, rifling through his book case, was heard to mutter in astonishment that Mr Foulkes's reading material was 'a bit Brexity'.
The other surprising thing about this incident is that Mr Foulkes has now received a personal apology from Kent's chief constable. A British police force accepting it made a mistake? We live in strange times indeed.
So it occurs to me that, once in the dock and formally charged with possessing, reading – and I might as well admit this now and get it over with – enjoying Murray's latest work, I might have to ask for other offences to be taken into account.
There's a scene in the classic Hollywood comedy, Robin and the Seven Hoods, a Rat Pack vehicle full of memorable tunes and funny one-liners, where a sleazy speakeasy is instantly transformed into a gospel hall whenever the police arrive to raid it: bottles of wine and whisky are replaced by Bibles and prayer books, the patrons' tables and chairs become pews, and the strippers and burlesque dancers are replaced on stage by a pulpit, complete with Bing Crosby delivering a sermon on the evils of 'Mr Booze'. In our new, puritanical times, I have started to yearn for a similar device that will instantly transform my own home library.
With a pull of a single lever, my copy of Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life would be whisked away, to be replaced by Greta Thunberg's The Climate Book, while my library of the very un-PC Flashman books by George Macdonald Fraser could be instantaneously placed on a chute leading to the recycling bin outside while their vacant space on my shelves could be filled instead by the collected works of Oprah Winfrey.
May the court have mercy on my soul if its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion officer (who is bound to be a trans ally) discovered either of my copies (hardback and paperback) of The Women Who Wouldn't Wheesht or the autobiography of gender-critical comedy writer Graham Linehan. Better surely to at least wrap them in the dust jackets of a George Monbiot book or, in extremis, an Owen Jones one.
And should I voluntarily divulge my greatest crime – leading the Scottish Vote Leave campaign back in 2016? You can't get more 'Brexity' than that. True, some of my Labour Party friends still haven't forgiven me for that act of political apostasy, but even they would draw the line at a prison sentence. Most of them, anyway.
If Mr Foulkes was handcuffed and interrogated for hours at his local nick for the 'crime' of publishing a tweet with the word 'Jews' in it, then what treatment can I expect from Police Scotland, now operating under Humza Yousaf's infamous hate speech law?
Claims of restrictions on free speech, not least by America's vice-president, JD Vance (I've got his book too!) are often overblown. But for six police officers to conduct a search of someone's home, to comment disparagingly about a citizen's taste in literature and to describe it pejoratively as 'a bit Brexity' – Brexit, let's remember, having been the choice of a majority of those officers' fellow citizens nine years ago – only serves to give ammunition to those who compare the UK in 2025 to Orwell's dystopia of 1984.
Maybe it was plain stupidity on the part of the officers and their chief constable, in which case, why do they still have jobs? That is doubly so if their motivation was political spite. If even police officers haven't got a clue about the law, shouldn't we all be scared?
Anyway, I've prepared my defence and informed my wife of the visiting hours at the local prison. I just hope my cell has Wi-Fi otherwise this column will be a bit sporadic in the months ahead. And now I've just realised that I also have Charles Moore's three-volume biography of Margaret Thatcher. Signed by the author! They're going to throw away the key, aren't they?
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