Even by its own recent standards, the latest investigation from the anti-extremism group Hope not Hate was fabulously, joyously, Rizla Micron-thin. People with “a broad opposition to liberal orthodoxies,” Hope not Hate “can reveal,” meet in rooms in Westminster.

It’s not quite clear what Hope not Hate sees as the actual problem here

That’s it. It’s not quite clear what Hope not Hate sees as the actual problem here. Should people with a broad opposition to liberal orthodoxies only be allowed to meet in, say, caves? Or is it the Westminster bit that’s the difficulty? Would it be all right for them to meet in rooms, so long as the rooms were in, for instance, Perivale?

The man who controls the guilty rooms, in a place called The Sanctuary, is a crypto billionaire, Ben Delo. Delo’s other work (as Hope not Hate forgot to mention) includes funding a scholarship programme at King’s College London to build the skills of mid-career civil servants from the Commonwealth, an institution he praises as “a global community built on liberal ideas.”

Those hosted at The Sanctuary include Rupert Lowe MP, who launched a paper there demanding the mass deportation of illegal immigrants. But they also include the feminist group Sex Matters (whose Christmas party there, full disclosure, I attended) which believes strongly in such cornerstones of liberal orthodoxy as same-sex marriage. As even HNH is forced to admit, “some Sanctuary projects appear to have contradictory missions, and seemingly disagree.” Sex Matters, of course, has recently done far more than Hope not Hate to protect ordinary people, especially women and gay men, against extremists. Its reward is to be described by the (Hope not) Haters as “anti-trans.”

Could it be that Delo, in giving space to people with widely divergent views, some of which he will not agree with, is by far the truer liberal than Hope not Hate? Of course it could. For a while now, Hope not Hate has epitomised the left’s retreat from liberal values.

The lightbulb moment for me was its 2024 “State of Hate” report, what it called “the most comprehensive and analytical guide to the state of far-right extremism in Britain today”. Hope not Hate has suggested that scepticism about net zero is hateful and far-right. Solely on that basis, Hope not Hate listed in this report, among others, the former Tory MP Andrew Tyrie – who, it will be remembered, ran Ken Clarke’s leadership campaigns, and was by 2024 sitting as a crossbench peer.

It was then I realised, perhaps a little late, that Hope not Hate seeks to police not merely extremism, but the general political debate. Part of the purpose of describing opposition to net zero as “hateful” is to narrow the bounds of acceptable discourse, defining views beyond a tiny centrist range as impermissible. Indeed, that same year, Hope not Hate explicitly said: “We use ‘progressive’ as a direct contrast to ‘hateful.’”

Well, I use Hope not Hate as a direct contrast to trustworthy.