Hugely enjoyable evening at the IEA on Thursday.
The first Forest event of the year attracted a full house. Actually it was significantly over-subscribed and we had to stop accepting registrations in case the room got seriously over-crowded.
However, a combination of poor weather and the usual no shows (normal for a free event like this) meant that numbers stayed on the right side of what was comfortable.
Appropriately, given the subject was prohibition, there was a faint speakeasy feel to the evening, with a makeshift bar serving drinks before and after the discussion.
Our panel - Chris Snowdon, Reem Ibrahim (IEA), Henry Hill (ConservativeHome), and Kara Kennedy (The Spectator) - were uniformly excellent.
Reem, who is in her final year at the London School of Economics, is 20. Kara, a staff writer at The Spectator World (the US edition of the magazine), is 24. Collectively it was the youngest panel we’ve ever had.
It was also one of the most entertaining.
If more politicians attended events like this they might be less inclined to ban things that many people enjoy, but it cheers me to know that in 2023 there is still opposition to the fun police.
The difficulty is uniting and organising that opposition into a coherent political force when most consumers, young and old, just want to be left alone.
Kara, btw, was invited to take part after I read her article ‘An ode to smoking’.
The tone of her piece in this week’s Spectator is somewhat darker but it’s equally arresting - ‘The killer next door: growing up in the murder capital of Wales’.
Do read it if you can.
Alternatively here’s another article, written, she told me, that very afternoon - ‘An ode to good breasts’.
Take your pick.
PS. According to The Sun, IEA director-general Mark Littlewood is to be made a peer in Liz Truss’s resignation honours list.
If and when the story is confirmed I may comment further. In the meantime I am keeping every finger crossed that it’s true!
Below (clockwise from top left): Chris Snowdon, Kara Kennedy, Henry Hill, Reem Ibrahim. Photos: Stuart Mitchell
