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MELANIE PHILLIPS

We need leaders to fight cultural groupthink

The new social orthodoxies are governed by fear but the desire to resist them is growing

The Times

This article is the subject of a complaint from Cambridge University and Professor Toope.

When the social injustice group Stop Funding Hate launched its campaign of intimidation against the fledgling TV station GB News, whose mission is to resist uniformity of thought, it got more than it had bargained for.

As the group attempted to strangle the station at birth, a number of companies such as Ikea, Vodafone, Nivea and the Swedish cider company Kopparberg pulled their advertising. The station’s founder, Andrew Neil, then threatened to turn the tables by boycotting them, for which viewers cheered him on.

Institutions are going down like ninepins in the face of this coerced cultural conformity. The Royal Academy of Arts has removed from its gift shop the work