The retreat of British Liberalism....

Classic liberalism is being swept away....

The exclusion of Geert Wilders, the Dutch MP, raises a disturbing question about Britain’s future. The financial and economic crisis may seem to threaten our institutions, even capitalism itself. But there is a deeper threat. That is the ignominious retreat of the British political class from liberal beliefs – such as the importance of freedom of speech.

The rhetoric is still liberal. But the reality is that we are served with a glutinous mixture of sentimentality, pandering and a crude form of utilitarianism. This emerges in the treatment of Mr Wilders, who was coming to London’s House of Lords for a screening of his film, Fitna . The reasons put forward to deny him entry reveal a sloppiness of thought and expression.

The chief failure is falling back on the argument that there are limits to freedom of speech. There are, but they must be drawn with restraint. To take a position that collapses together “criticism”, “insult”, “offence”, “extreme hate” and “incitement to violence” involves ignoring a legal tradition in which important distinctions are made. It involves conflating the real and the imagined in a way that gives any group with a grievance unacceptable leverage over the political system.

I hold no particular brief for Mr Wilders. But it strikes me as odd to say that he is promoting hate and violence, because his film juxtaposes incendiary passages from the Koran with scenes of Islamist terrorist attacks. His ostensible purpose is to explore textual roots of Islamist violence – which does not make him, ipso facto, an advocate of a different form of hatred or violence. I have no doubt that the passages that Mr Wilders relies on fail to represent the whole of the Koran and that they may be taken out of context. Mr Wilders may also have motives that he does not avow. But that presents critics with an opportunity for debate, not a sufficient ground for exclusion.

What has become of British liberalism? It has lost its nerve. It has been weakened by class conflict, immigration and the muddled thinking associated with multiculturalism. This matters greatly. For in the absence of a codified constitution, and without the etiquette that a class system long imposed, liberal beliefs have provided the core of British identity. Today the rapid erosion of that core often astonishes continental observers of the UK.