Last night the Financial Times revealed the Cabinet Office is introducing new rules this week, under Jacob Rees-Mogg’s instruction, to vet the social media profiles of all the department’s guest speakers for posts showing “a strong political partiality”, or any “potentially problematic or controversial material that may contravene civil service values”. In other words, checking if they’re about to invite a communist onstage for an hour-long lecture to an entire governmental department. Finally…

Guido’s claiming this as our own policy victory. When Civil Servants aren’t learning about the healing properties of crystals, they’re taking lectures from Green Socialists, hard-left academics, and Boris-hating Guardianistas – all with obvious political agendas they’re more than happy to spread throughout Whitehall. How “racist” Boris is, how evil and damaging the Rwanda policy will be, how important it is to attend “white awareness” courses, you name it…

Labour are already spinning this as a product of “cancel culture”. It isn’t. It’s common sense to bring in people who seek to aid, not hinder the government in advancing policy goals. Why have people who want to thwart government policy brought in to advise the Civil Service? Their job is to implement the elected government’s agenda, not slap each other on the back for hating Priti Patel. This doesn’t mean policy wonks who aren’t bound by collective responsibility should be barred from speaking, it just means mandarins think twice before inviting a witch into the Cabinet Office…