According to The Spectator this morning, 'Britain is frozen with fear', or so its main headline for the day says.

When, however, you look at the article, it says:

There are three levels of modern political fear. First, and this is serious enough, there is the fear of losing one's social status and career, of ‘cancellation'. Taking a position against the consensus that dominates the progressive establishment still marks you out.

Then there is the fear of facing the truth, because it is overwhelming, and it would also mean accepting that you have been not only wrong, but have been proved disastrously wrong. (And even worse, that the people you despise were correct.) This applies across the board, to the Supreme Court foot-draggers, China avoiders and mass immigration enthusiasts alike.

And third, and this is the big unmentionable: actual physical fear for your life and the lives of others.

As exercises in mistatement, or at least disconnect between a headline and an article go, this is spectacularly wrong.

I agree Britain is frozen with fear right now, but you have to enjoy considerable white male privilege to think that modern political fear is the real crisis we face.

The fear actually suffered in the UK right now is of:

• Poverty
• Homlessness
• Joblessness
• Meaningless existence
• Hopelessness among young people
• Unaddressed climate change
• Discrimination, including by the state
• Physical fear, mainly amongst women and migrants, but also amongst minorities of all sorts
• The military jingoism of politicians
• Rule by politicians utterly out of touch with reality

There are more, but I offer this list to make my point. There are reasons for fear in this country, but the fear politicians are suffering is very largely of their own making, and they have the power to ease it. Their fear-inducing incompetence, from which even they are suffering the consequences, should not be the cause for our concern. We know how to be rid of them. What should worry us is the list I offer. Those politicians appear to have no idea how to address those issues, and that is what we should be worried about.

When the chattering classes begin to notice, we might get politics that matter in this country, but it seems that The Spectator, as mouthpiece for the Tories, has no idea what is required of it, seeking only to preserve its privilege above all else. And that, in a nutshell, is why the Tories deserve the fate they are suffering.