We need MPs to tell unvarnished truth and make Britain tougher not woker - BERNARD INGHAM

Could there be any clearer confirmation of this than Ed Miliband, Labour’s climate spokesman, pontificating ahead of the UN environmental summit - COP27 - about the developed world’s “historical responsibility” to help poorer countries cope with the consequences.

Could there also be any clearer confirmation that Labour would throw money around like confetti to prove its’ virtue, regardless of the undeniable fact that the UK is having to cope with record illegal immigration from badly governed third-world countries?

You might reasonably have thought that with Britain facing anything up to half a trillion pounds (£500billion) debt from the pandemic and Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine our politicians would be more careful with our brass.

Instead, we propose to give it away without any cast-iron guarantee that I know of that it will be spent on reducing carbon emissions rather than lining the pockets of grasping dictators like so much of our existing foreign aid.

But that is not the end of it. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak opened the way to reparations on arrival at COP, offering global green grants of totalling £226m.

He called it a “global mission” after Mr Miliband had bridled at the word “reparations”. Earlier Mr Sunak had reimposed the ban on fracking, conditionally lifted by his predecessor, Liz Truss, and embraced unreliable renewables, though not apparently any more wind turbines on land.

All this tells me is that our politicians have “gone wayk in t’ yed”, as they used to say where I come from in Yorkshire. In plain English they have “gone weak in the head”, Indeed, the softening of the brain is there for all to see, The UK is not now as soft as putty; more like mousse. And anyone like Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, who exhibits a certain strength of mind is harried and hounded

The besetting sin of Britain today is the abuse of freedom in the name of kindness. It has invaded every part of our Establishment, our national institutions and worse still our universities. I find it difficult to believe that an entire branch of management – human relations – can be allowed to spend its time dreaming up codes of practice to avoid disturbing the hyper-sensitive.

Even more difficult to imagine is the impression given by the re-writing of colonial history and race and gender issues implies that our young people have become sensitive plants. If they are, then God help us.

Everywhere you look the right to free speech is being stifled by the wokerati who are bent on imposing their will upon us. And if they can do it by pressuring weak politicians – as with the global environment – or glueing themselves to roads so much the better. Activism is dangerously on the march. It has to be stopped before it destroys our values and the very freedom which allows the activists to develop their totalitarianism.

I have reached the conclusion that, with notable exceptions such as Mrs Braverman, we cannot expect the current crop of politicians- Tory, Labour or Lib Dem and least of all the Scot Nats – to change course to produce a nation that is proud of its efficiency rather than its drift.

We are regularly told that Britain is in a relatively good place economically just as it ranks high in the league of climate change virtue. But if there is any truth in this, it is a poor outlook for Western democracy.

We urgently need a new movement across Europe and the USA that stops trying to be all things to all men and women, tells the unvarnished truth about the perils we face and rallies the people to tougher, resolute government dedicated to freedom with responsibility. President Joe Biden and Donald Trump are not the answer; they are the problem. So, too, are Emmanuel Macrons and Olaf Scholz in France and Germany.

I had hopes of Rishi Sunak until COP came along and showed he was as wet as the others. Next week’s budget also sounds to be trouble in the making with debilitating orthodoxy now in command in Westminster and Whitehall. It is all so frustrating, especially when the danger in these circumstances is the emergence of what is called a strong man but in fact a dictator. We have enough dictatorship already from the wokerati. Where is the true democrat who will speak the bald truth to the nation?