The Social World

Author: Toby Young

  • Lord Young goes to Washington

    Lord Young goes to Washington

    I’m writing this from Washington, DC, where I’ve spent the best part of a week talking to politicos and think-tankers about the state of free speech in the mother country. Don’t believe our Prime Minister when he says it’s in rude health, I’ve been telling them. It’s on life support and any pressure that can be brought to bear on His Majesty’s Government to protect it would be hugely appreciated. Once again, it’s time for the new world to come to the rescue of the old.

    Not that they need much convincing. The view of Britain among Washington’s political class isn’t informed by diplomatic cables or articles in the Economist, but by viral videos on X. The impression these give is of a country rapidly descending into lawlessness in which the police are too busy arresting people for hurty words to protect them from violent criminals. “What the hell’s going on over there?” is the constant refrain.

    When I tell them the footage they’ve seen is just the tip of the iceberg and the police are detaining more than 30 people a day for speech offenses – outdoing Russia – they’re anxious to help.

    But what can they do? I had hoped that the US-UK trade deal might provide Donald Trump’s administration with some leverage. Could a preamble be included in which both sides affirm their shared commitment to the long-standing guarantees of freedom of expression and association as set out in the First Amendment? That wouldn’t be legally enforceable, but would be politically significant and might make Keir Starmer think twice before further eroding free speech, lest he be accused of jeopardizing the deal.

    However, the people I met in the State Department said the President is anxious to get the trade agreement over the line and unlikely to countenance anything that would delay it. The sense I got from meetings with members of the administration, which probably won’t come as a surprise, is that Trump is very much in charge and no one wants to do anything to irritate him. Indeed, they were careful to refer to the “Department of War” and the “Secretary of War,” even to me, although occasionally they stumbled and said: “The Department of Defense… I mean War.” A Washington Post editor I had lunch with confirmed this was an important loyalty test, with WaPo journalists getting into bad odor with the President because the newspaper insists on continuing to use “Defense Department.”

    Trump’s iron grip was often contrasted with the chaos of the previous administration, with Joe Biden portrayed as a drooling idiot. I met with staffers at the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee, which has just published a report accusing a group of senior Democrats in the last administration – the “Politburo” – of covering up the President’s cognitive decline and effectively ruling in his place, signing off executive orders – and pardons – using an autopen. The Committee’s view is that all the clemency actions taken by the Biden administration were illegitimate.

    Does this mean Anthony Fauci, pardoned by Biden in one of his final acts before leaving the White House, can now be prosecuted? I asked an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services over dinner and he laughed but declined to answer. Incidentally, I was reliably informed that Health Secretary RFK Jr is the second most popular member of the administration after Trump. The reception he gets from the MAGA faithful is rapturous, apparently.

    Another possibility I discussed with officials was withholding visas from UK citizens who work for censorship bodies such as Ofcom, which is currently trying to take enforcement action against US tech companies that refuse to comply with Britain’s new “Online Safety Act.” But after kicking around that idea we concluded it would probably be politically unhelpful. If Dame Melanie Dawes, the CEO of Ofcom, was refused a travel visa, she’d spin it as Trump doing the bidding of his buddy Elon Musk when all she’s trying to do is keep children “safe.” A better alternative, we thought, would be for the White House to offer political asylum on human rights grounds to British thought criminals. That would be a piece of epic trolling, given that our PM is Mr Human Rights. If any Christian street preachers are facing prosecution for misgendering some pro-abortion activists, do get in touch.

    Even that might not fly. The overall impression I got is that, for reasons no one was quite able to explain, the President still thinks of Sir Keir as a useful ally. So our best hope of harnessing the might of the US to protect free speech in the UK is if Starmer is replaced by someone more antagonistic to Trump. It surely won’t be long.

  • What can we learn from Singapore?

    I was in Australia last week, having been invited to give the annual oration by the Robert Menzies Institute, and stopped off in Singapore on the way home. I’ve always been curious about this Southeast Asian city state, having read so much about Lee Kuan Yew, its Cambridge–educated founding father, who holds the record of being the world’s longest-serving prime minister.

    When he assumed office in 1959, Singapore was a fading outpost of the British Empire, seemingly destined to be swallowed up by one of its larger neighbors. The population was impoverished, illiterate and riven with racial conflict. It had no natural resources and most of its 224 square miles was swampland. Yet by the time Lee stepped down 31 years later, it had been transformed into an Asian tiger with the second-highest GDP per capita in the region. Today, it is arguably the most successful, best–governed country in the world.

    For someone like me, who believes western liberal democracy is the best system of government, Singapore poses a challenge. Lee ruled with an iron fist, exiling political opponents, muzzling the press and introducing severe penalties for low-level anti-social behaviour such as spitting, littering and – famously – chewing gum. Like many post-colonial countries, only one party has been in power since independence and Singapore is dominated by a dynastic ruling family: the previous prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong is Lee’s son. The model has been described as “enlightened authoritarianism” but it’s not that enlightened. Caning is a regular occurrence, drug traffickers are executed, and homosexuality was only decriminalized in 2023.

    Lee Kuan Yew boasted of being unburdened by ideology and was ruthlessly pragmatic

    Yet you only have to set foot in the place to realise just how well run it is. It took all of 20 minutes to get to my hotel from the airport, not because it was close but because traffic jams are virtually unheard of. If you look at the quickest way to get from A to B on Google Maps, buses are often a better option than the subway, although the metro is remarkably clean and reliable. The carriages are decorated with posters featuring smiling cartoon characters telling you how to behave – cute authoritarianism – and among the verboten activities are feet on seats, loud music and consuming food or drink. Hard to argue with that.

    Singapore is a low-crime, high-trust society, which is remarkable given that it’s largely made up of different immigrant populations. Lee Kuan Yew put various measures in place to end the racial tension that threatened to boil over in the 1950s and 1960s, the most important of which was to desegregate neighbourhoods. He recognised the dangers of multi-culturalism, insisting that the schools teach children to be proud of their country and introducing national service. It helps that annual growth has averaged about 7 percent since 1965. Widespread home ownership was made possible by the Housing and Development Board, a state agency responsible for swamp clearance, land reclamation and building tower blocks.

    Lee boasted of being unburdened by ideology and he was ruthlessly pragmatic, with a suck-it-and-see attitude to public policy. If something worked, great, but if it didn’t he’d abandon it. Everything was subordinate to transforming Singapore into a modern economic powerhouse. That inevitably meant he was drawn to conservative measures, even though he originally described himself as a socialist. The highest rate of income tax is 24 percent, there’s no capital gains tax and inheritance tax was scrapped in 2008. He ensured that education and health, while heavily subsidized, are not 100 percent free. Social security works differently, too, with employees able to keep track of their payments in different pots and even use some of the money to put down a deposit on a flat.

    I could go on. Singapore is a powerful argument not just for one–party rule, but for centralised planning – every technocrat’s dream. Yet I’m not convinced we should abandon democracy quite yet. The 20th century is littered with less successful examples of this model, from Stalin’s Russia to Mao’s China. It works in Singapore because it’s a city state and Lee Kuan Yew was a political genius. The test will come when one of his less gifted successors comes to power, which could turn out to be the current PM. As Aristotle pointed out, the problem with the best kind of rule – a virtuous and wise monarch – is it can devolve into the worst: tyranny. Democracy is more limited, but also less risky.