What I Told ARC

Ladies and gentlemen, it is great to be back at ARC. If we haven’t met, my name is Konstantin. I was born in Soviet Russia and moved here when I was a teenager. I love this country and I say so publicly, which is how you know I still haven’t integrated into British culture.

Last time we were here, I opened my speech with this quote from Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

I bring this up because it’s still true but also because, afterwards, one of my many critics claimed that in quoting him I was comparing myself to Solzhenitsyn. That is, of course, ridiculous: Alexander Solzhenitsyn spent years in a hard labour camp, where he endured a starvation diet, brutal punishments and a complete deprivation of his liberty. I went to a British boarding school. That’s where the similarities end.

So what has happened since we were last here?

On the positives, let’s call it what it is: the tide turning. Our American friends are leading the way.

DEI, a system of anti-meritocratic discrimination, is being dismantled. Not just in the American Government but, much more importantly, across the global corporate world. We can once again dream that our children will be judged on the content of their character and not the colour… of the square they post on Instagram.

Government profligacy and corruption is being exposed on an industrial scale. DOGE may not be perfect but according to one report, USAID gave $3 million to a rapper in Gaza who makes anti-semitic songs. Whatever your politics, we can all agree that is a waste of taxpayer’s money. Kanye West would have done it for free!

Thanks to the end of censorship on Twitter, we have the ability to express reasonable and widely held views. Because of this, other social media companies are wary of being so aggressive in their censorship too.

Now, it’s true we haven’t yet won the argument on freedom of speech here in Europe. The most hilarious example of that was last week when JD Vance gave a speech in which he criticised European leaders for trying to shut down opinions they don’t like and a German politician stood up and went “This is unacceptable!”

So that’s the positives but there has been lots of bad too: