Waving a red flag at the system

Is democracy now in the terminal ward? And does it matter?

Pericles's Funeral Oration; Philipp Foltz, 1852

This is an expanded version of my column in today’s Times of London (£)

It’s been reported that the owner of X, Elon Musk, and Whitehall’s former enfant terrible and nemesis, Dominic Cummings, have been conspiring to destroy Britain’s political system.

Musk’s fusillade of tweets on X a few days ago that (falsely) accused the Labour prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, of being “complicit” in Britain’s appalling 25-year scandal of the child rape and pimping gangs — mostly composed of Pakistani-heritage Muslim men — were said to have been influenced and even composed by Cummings.

This alleged plot between the two men may have been the overheated result of putting two and two together and making five. Both Musk and Cummings appear to share the same aim of sabotaging the British government. That doesn’t mean, however, that they are necessarily acting in cahoots with each other; that sounds implausible. But they are both saying something fundamentally important, and are waving a red flag in front of anyone who values democracy and western society.