“It’s a communist one party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought… and then Italy did it. And we realised we could.”

Neil Ferguson, December 2020

So came the words of a disgraced professor describing how the onset of the pandemic changed what government cadres thought was possible in a so-called liberal democracy. And he was right.

What we think is possible, politically speaking, is what we separate into the columns of offensive or inoffensive to national sensibilities, but this seemingly has no bearing on reality. When we abandon policy proposals on this basis we impose nothing but an arbitrary self-limiting rule upon ourselves that needn’t be there.

Perhaps we might call this Ferguson’s Rule – it would represent the scoundrel’s only decent contribution to public life throughout his entire career.

I do not wish to give concrete examples of how we might apply Ferguson’s Rule, but it suffices to say that dissidents and political mavericks should study the circumstances around which supposedly free European societies very willingly accepted policies that analysts unanimously believed were unattainable.

“They say; this is not possible, that is not possible. I say; whatever the true interests of our country calls for, is always possible!”

The Rt Hon Enoch Powell MBE