Crossing swords with the ‘Secret [and very intolerant] Barrister’

The dogmatic rantings of this pseudonymous account show that when you scratch a member of the liberal intelligentsia, an authoritarian will bleed

We’ve all heard the prevailing narrative in recent weeks. The riots that hit our towns and cities were the consequence of a mix of ‘inflammatory rhetoric’ and ‘disinformation’ from malicious actors. Elon Musk, Tommy Robinson, Andrew Tate, Nigel Farage – all these individuals have been depicted as the James-Bond-style villain responsible for the mayhem.

This misguided theory has repeatedly been advanced by various liberal sophisticates on social media – people who always appear so desperate to flaunt their ‘progressive’, high-status opinions (the better to win kudos from their peers, of course).

It never seems to occur to such individuals that their own brand of politics, as well as their own rhetoric, might occasionally be seen as inflammatory and divisive by others. They are the clever and enlightened ones, you see. So they are imbued with a moral rectitude absent from anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their worldview.

Thus, when, for example, the chief of ‘anti-fascist’ charity Hope Not Hate, Nick Lowles, republished, at the height of the disorder, a false report on social media that a Muslim woman in Middlesbrough had been attacked with acid, most of those who can usually be found railing against ‘inflammatory rhetoric’ and ‘disinformation’ said nothing. Lowles is of their tribe, and so the potential effects of his inaccurate claim weren’t worth bothering about.

I experienced this kind of ideological dogmatism first-hand on social media a couple of weeks ago. Readers active on X (formerly known as Twitter) will probably know of an account there run by someone calling himself – I’m going to stick my neck out and assume it’s a bloke – the ‘Secret Barrister’. This account, which expatiates with great swagger on matters on law and justice, seems to have achieved cult status among certain liberal-left voices, enjoying a following of over half a million on the site. The person running the account has also written a book under the same nom de plume.

My interaction with him began when, during the disorder, he argued on X that ‘Parliament needs to take urgent action against the extremists in its ranks who are seizing the opportunity to fan the flames of far-right hatred and violence.’

This seemed a bit over-the-top to me. I had certainly witnessed what some people might describe as ‘populist’ MPs expressing pretty robust opinions about issues such as immigration and integration, but these MPs were hardly ‘extremists’ (at least not according to any sensible definition of the word) and hadn’t, so far as I was aware, sought to ‘fan the flames of far-right hatred and violence’. The Secret Barrister’s demand for parliamentary action therefore appeared to be a dangerous over-reaction.

I inferred (not unreasonably, I think) that in demanding parliament take ‘urgent action’ the Secret Barrister was suggesting some type of legislative manoeuvre, so I challenged him about it. In a reply to me, he rejected this and, after some back and forth, during which he threw a bit of unnecessary personal abuse my way (I’m a ‘grifter’, apparently), stated that he merely wanted parliament to expel the MPs in question. To another interlocutor, he confirmed that he considered that these MPs should be expelled because they had ‘incite[d] racialised violence’.

So the Secret Barrister was essentially claiming that certain members of parliament had given the green light to members of the public to go out and launch violent attacks against other human beings (or their property) on the basis of their skin colour. And he wanted them kicked out of parliament for that reason.

Did this claim not constitute ‘disinformation’? Was it not just a tad inflammatory to demand, in front of an audience of hundreds of thousands (perhaps more), that democratically-elected public representatives be turfed out of office for doing things (in this case, committing crimes) that they appeared not to have done?

I thought so. So I did that thing that any good barrister would do: I asked for evidence. Specifically, I asked the Secret Barrister to confirm which MPs he wanted expelled and on what evidence.

At this point, he suddenly dipped out of our conversation. That’s convenient, I thought. So a few days later I asked him again. I said, ‘Hi, SB. We had an exchange a few days ago, during which you said that you wanted the MPs who had “incited racialised violence” to be expelled from the Commons. I asked which MPs specifically, and on what evidence. You went quiet after that. Can you give an answer now, please?’

A reasonable and polite way of putting the question, I think you would agree.

This time, he did reply – but only to throw more abuse my way (this time I was a ‘troll’ as well as a grifter). And then he blocked me.

I think the Secret Barrister’s desire for a political purge of MPs whose opinions he doesn’t like (his refusal to substantiate his claim that these MPs had incited racialised violence suggests it can’t be anything more than that) says a lot about him. His own is one of a cacophony of elitist political and media voices demanding draconian actions to silence anyone who dissents from the conventional wisdom in the wake of the riots. Prominent lawyer Jessica Simor has called for X to be banned in Britain; Paul Mason wants Ofcom to remove GB News’s broadcasting licence; Alastair Campbell invited the police to investigate Douglas Murray; and Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian demanded that Elon Musk be put in the dock. I’m sure there must be lots of other examples.   

What it all shows is that if you scratch a member of the liberal intelligentsia, an anti-democratic authoritarian will bleed. We see time and again that, when it comes to the crunch, the liberal ‘good guys’ are as illiberal as the worst despots.  

Separately, I do wonder if it’s appropriate or ethical for someone in the esteemed profession of barrister, and with such influence, to hide behind anonymity when making public interventions on weighty matters of law. It seems plain to me that the ‘Secret Barrister’ feels free to resort to snarling and petty abuse on social media in a way that he would almost certainly not do if he were operating under his real name. For example, when the musician and political activist Winston Marshall questioned why it would take so long for the person accused of the Southport murders to face trial, as compared to the speed with which the courts had processed the rioters, the ‘Secret Barrister’ replied with a perfectly legitimate explanation – but not before prefacing his remarks with the statement ‘You are a moron’. He also signed off with ‘Embarrassingly thick.’

Similarly, when a woman questioned (in entirely temperate terms) something he had written in a recent blog post about the sentencing of the rioters, he couldn’t have been more patronising in his response: ‘Read. What. You. Are. Responding. To. Idiot.’

Would he have done these things under his own name? I very much doubt it – not least because it would almost certainly represent a breach of the barristers’ code of conduct. Indeed, there are several barristers on X who operate under their own names, and they are usually commendably restrained and polite when giving their opinions or advice.

All things considered, then, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the ‘Secret Barrister’ is not just an authoritarian; he is a personal coward, too. The members of his cultish fan club, who seem to hang on his every word, might like to think about that.

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A reminder that you can follow me on X/Twitter: @PaulEmbery