From William Packer
Sir: It is hard to know which is the more depressing: the woolliness of the thinking of John Hayes (‘Muslims are right about Britain’, 6 August) and his young acolyte MPs or the woolliness of their language. Words matter, and the unthinking elision of the liberal with the socialist Left is as mistaken as it is dangerous. There is nothing liberal about socialism, and there never was. High-minded egalitarian ideals are all very well, but in a free society they can only be achieved by social engineering of the most illiberal kind.
It is, after all, not the Conservatives who snipe away at the institution of the monarchy and the authority of Parliament; who play fast and loose with ancient freedoms and the common law; who distrust free speech and freedom of thought — for there is nothing liberal about political correctness; who would selectively do away with habeas corpus and trial by jury; who have brought in hate crime, house arrest and internment without trial; who have corrupted state education and our common sense of history; who have banned hunting, and would ban shooting, smoking and anything else that moves; and who increase the dependency of the individual upon the state at every turn. When socialists vaunt their liberal principles, we should laugh in their faces. Far from unthinkingly blaming our present ills on a ‘liberal establishment’ that does not exist, true Conservatives should rather pride themselves on being the only liberals left.
William Packer London SW4
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