Why Britain’s moral fibre needs toughening in 2022 in Covid’s costly aftermath – Bernard Ingham

A Prime Minister on probation. A deeply divided Government. A token Opposition. The Scottish Nationalists still suicidally demanding independence. Can Wales be far behind?

A pandemic still with us in spite of an almost heroic vaccination programme.

A ravaged economy deep in a Covid-induced deficit and debt that will constrain governments for years, while the NHS and education and law and 
order systems are in urgent need of reform.

The EU foaming at the mouth over Brexit and trying to annex Northern Ireland.

Perhaps the weakest US president since the Second World War in Joe Biden.

And Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping playing on the West’s disarray with threats to the independence of the Ukraine and Taiwan.

After that little lot you may conclude it is better late than never that I get out of the New Year resolution business.

Instead, I am sticking with my hopes for 2022 – my 90th year.

My first hope is that by next Christmas we shall see progress on all these fronts and the world a safer place.

Otherwise – and I am trying to be realistic – despair may set in.

But at the root of all my other hopes is that we shall see a determined fight back in Britain against the cancerous neglect, wetness, sensitivity and preoccupation with human rights that is damaging our society.

Far too many people are far too self-obsessed for their own good – and everybody else’s.

I hope to see under way a vigorous campaign to instil a new sense of personal responsibility in the populace.

That has to start with the nuclear family.

It is perfectly clear that sparing the rod, spoiling the child and indulging their every whim has not worked any better than such ideas as comprehensive education.

I am only too well aware and sorely pained by the brutality meted out to innocent children as reported in recent trials.

But there is a big difference between brutality and correction. The job of parents is to educate, train and correct the next generation so that it strengthens not weakens society.

I hope I am not sounding like a Cromwellian Puritan. My intention is not to be a spoilsport.

But we have to end the comprehensive corruption of our children and grandchildren by the internet, or anti-social media, as I describe it.

Could there be any greater misnomer than social media when it is bombarding youngsters with drugs, gambling, violence, sex, pornography and the daftest ideas yet devised such as anti-vaccination?

Moving up the age scale, my third hope is that every responsible citizen lends their weight to any serious attempt to recapture schools, colleges and universities for education instead of indoctrination.

Some might put it differently: to end the domination of the left in the education system.

That does not mean handing it to the right but to people dedicated to opening not closing minds.

Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung must be lost in admiration for the zeal with which the reality of human progress is being consigned to the dustbin with the assault on anyone and everything connected with empire and slavery.

The National Trust has now convicted Bonnie Prince Charlie of some remote connection with them. And yet William Wilberforce and the British Parliament abolished slavery, the Royal Navy enforced its abolition and the empire is now the Commonwealth.

My fourth hope is that the facts of biology prevail and that allowing anyone to determine their sex, regardless of the body they were born with, is abandoned in the interests of women.

It follows that I hope we shall all rally to the support of women such as J K Rowling, of Harry Potter fame, and Professor Kathleen Stock, who was hounded out of her Sussex University post.

I may sound like an old codger fixed in his ways but current trends in society will sound its death knell unless arrested.

Much of the movement is at base totalitarian. It seeks to impose its will on the nation, apparently oblivious of the lessons taught by the progress of history and experience.

In short, my hope for 2022 is for a toughening of the UK’s moral fibre. For more self-discipline. For more self-responsibility. And for more realism.

Is all that too much to hope for?

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