The Overton Window and the European Convention on Human Rights

Change is gonna come

One of the aspects of modern politics (“modern” being defined pretty much as everything that has happened since I left parliament in 2015) that most intrigues me is the extent to which certain topics have become legitimate subjects of debate, subjects that, only a few years ago, would have been considered toxic to even raise in polite company.

The ethnicity of certain grooming (rape) gangs across the country is a good example. Just yesterday, the news bulletin of a popular commercial radio station began by referring to an “Asian grooming gang” being sentenced. A few years ago such a pronouncement would have been met with universal condemnation and accusations of racism, not to mention immediate investigations by Ofcom. Yesterday? Nothing.

The trans issue is another one. Although it’s still all too common for news organisations, especially our beloved national broadcaster, to refer to trans women inaccurately as women, there is starting to appear more frequently the caveat and clarification that trans women are biologically male (even if one BBC presenter, Justin Webb, was recently reprimanded by his bosses for pointing out this inconvenient fact).

Immigration has always been one of those topics floating dangerously close to the “danger” demarcation line: remember when the Conservatives, during the 2005 general election, actually had to run a series of posters insisting that “It’s not racist to talk about immigration”, which in itself was something of an admission that for many people, it really was.

That has obviously changed, with even a Labour prime minister attacking the previous Conservative government for conducting an “open borders experiment” and allowing too many new arrivals into the country, risking the creation of “an island of strangers”. There’s the Overton Window and then there’s jumping headlong through the Overton Window.