A course in Rod Liddle studies

As someone who has always had a grotesquely inflated sense of his own importance, my experience speaking at Durham University again last week almost tipped me into fully blown, delusional megalomania. On the way to the venue a student informed me that in the big hall nearby several hundred people were crammed into a debate about whether Rod Liddle should be allowed to speak at Durham. Yes, only a matter of yards from another building where Rod Liddle was actually speaking. I had, for a moment, a wonderful daydream about an entire university given over to studying Myself, or listening to Myself, three-year courses on the subject of Rod Liddle and what one might learn from Him, or how one should deal with Him, earnest young readers debating His latest utterances, emeritus professors pontificating affectionately on His early works, His juvenilia. My ego was already pretty monstrously priapic before I arrived, as I had been sent photographs of stickers placed in strategic locations on the campus reading ‘I love Rod Liddle’ and adorned with a big pink heart. Nope, not kidding. Weird, isn’t it?

A sense of proportion returned later when I realised I was merely a cipher for the student body’s love of and commitment to freedom of speech. Last year, when I spoke at the place, students had staged a protest and screamed blue murder about how they didn’t feel safe, the little poppets. The craven and pusillanimous university authorities took it out on the chap who had invited me, Professor Tim Luckhurst, and he was effectively suspended until Toby Young’s excellent Free Speech Union got in on the act.

This, then, was the kickback – and it was rather glorious. First the invitation itself, from the Durham Union Society (which is different from the students’ union), despite a certain amount of pressure from the feeble academics to rescind the invitation and warnings of all manner of trouble. Then the debate itself – packed out, good-natured, humorous, with excellent contributions from a local MP, Richard Holden, and some very articulate and witty students. And then later, down the pub, chatting to scores of young people – some of whom agreed with me about stuff, some who didn’t, but all of whom agreed that maybe listening to all sides of an argument was quite a good idea. They despised the students’ union and the faculty for restricting freedom of speech.

It all rather gave me faith in humanity, for a while. I would bet that those stickers were the consequence of someone from this silent majority simply goading those lefties. As well as having a grotesquely inflated sense of my own importance, I have also always considered myself a tool – and it was a pleasurable sensation being used as a tool by these excellent young people. There were no protests at all.

So suffused with this euphoria, listening to Any Questions? on BBC Radio 4 the following day only slightly dampened down my renewed belief in humankind, despite the contributions from Sir Howard John Davies. Howie is an economist and a fully paid-up member of the Great and the Good, as well as being chairman of the NatWest Group. He had been castigating the government for its failure to address climate change when the presenter, Alex Forsyth, asked about NatWest’s financing of oil companies. Ah, said the sanctimonious Howie, we don’t do that any more. No more financing of any oil or gas companies. The purpose of NatWest was to ‘promote climate transition’, he said, and that it aimed for ‘net zero in our lending’.

No, Howie, that is not NatWest’s purpose. NatWest’s purpose is to look after money and lend it to people – don’t gull the public by insisting that your job is actually to save the bloody world. More to the point, does he believe that oil and gas companies should have no recourse for financing? Does he think they should all go bust tomorrow? That is surely the implication of his own bank refusing to lend money to the likes of BP and Shell. Or does he think it’s OK for other banks to lend them money?

Let us go further. Does this smug banker have central heating in his own house? How will he keep warm this winter – by lighting his own flatus? Does he put petrol in his car? Does he use plastic? Unless he is an off-grid hermit with several heat pumps and a car powered by distilled unicorn tears, he is as dependent upon those companies as the rest of us. You hypocrite, Howie. Maybe you should fine private customers if their lofts are insufficiently insulated, or they drive a petrol car or work at a service station.

How should we deal with grandstanding greenwashy sententiousness and hypo-crisy like this? I feel that the best way is probably to play NatWest at its own woke game. Let’s get the message out about NatWest’s origins. It began in Nottingham in the mid-17th century, but its most important figure was Abel Smith, who developed the bank in partnership early on with the grandfather of William Wilberforce. The Smith and Wilberforce families were entwined for a century and profited from slavery even while they opposed it: since William Wilberforce acceded to slavery taking place in Sierra Leone, he has consequently been ‘cancelled’ as a hero of the abolitionist movement. So there you are. Boycott NatWest and throw Howard in the river.

Oh – and then there is the laundering of money by Russian criminals with links to the Russian government and the KGB, which NatWest (along with 16 other banks) cheerfully took part in during the previous decade. Some £20 billion was moved out of Russia, and our high-street banks – including NatWest – were not too concerned about the suspicious cheques coming their way.

All that should get the juices flowing of our social justice warriors, no? You see, you can be sure of Shell – NatWest not so much.