It doesn’t matter if you are a Prime Minister or a student, I will always fight for your right to party, says Bev Turner

Cheers – it’s Saturday night – time to let your hair down after a week on the employment treadmill…But apparently NOT if you’re the Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin who is splashed all over the front pages of today’s Newspapers worldwide for the shocking crime of what

Going out with her mates, drinking and dancing; engaging in some Beyonce-style grinding and having it all caught on someone’s i-Phone. Ah..the morning after.. We’ve all been there Sanna love…except that when someone tries to show me a video of me dancing on a nightclub table the night before I cringe, say, never again and insist it’s deleted.

Sanna Marin, however, had to stand at a lectern in front of the global media in a neat ponytail and a face free from make- up explaining with shame and contrition (plus I bet, a shocking hangover) that she would take a drug test to prove she hadn’t been on cocaine. How have we got to a point in time when a powerful young woman having a boogie can cause the mainstream Western media to do the work of the Taliban?

I rather wish that the 37 year-old mum of a pre-schooler had taken to the lectern and told the press, “This isn’t the Islamic state you buttoned up loons. Now go and write about something more interesting” as she bit into a big mac and necked a bloody mary.

But this is 2022, and covid lockdowns have fostered an environment ripe for the amplification of a puritanical world view, one in which fun – dinner with your family, a walk in the park on a sunny day – was deemed unscientifically but ideologically selfish.

Weirdly, it was traditionally the political right who headed up the fun police: pearl-clutching Mary Whitehouse types lamenting the corrupting power of a pop sing; Republicans and Conservatives steeped in Christian values forever on the edge of a moral panic.

But faced with the so-called pandemic the Left begged Lock me down harder daddy…while Libertarians Said Hold My Beer and joined Freedom Rallies – where they were surprised to stand shoulder to shoulder with men in Make America Great Again hats. Local authority middle-managers bestowed with power beyond their wildest dreams padlocked swing parks and cordoned off picnic benches.

Because you know what fun is – fun is anarchic. Fun is anti-ruling-class. The people in power make the rules; the fun-people have fun by breaking them.

Now more than ever before the rule-makers set the parameters for socially-approved fun; they also seek to quash whatever falls outside them – in this case, a left-leaning media looking at an attractive young woman dancing as though nobody is watching.

A left-wing philosophy believes itself to be at the caring end of the political spectrum - diametric to the free-market, sink-or-swim right with its belief in hierarchies of competence.

The Left must also therefore require top-down control - there is no other way to administer 'equity for all'... It requires more government - not less.

So a philosophy that sees no contradiction in more authoritarian control equalling more care, will all too easily be puritanical in its edicts - our quest to control your behaviour comes from pure intentions. For your own good.

And therein lies the source of the puritanical mission gasping in horror at Sanna Marin. And yet, we have come so far, that even the harmless act of dancing inspires disapproval.

We’ve not sufficiently broken free from a two year long world-view of the most authoritarian control that the western world has witnessed under the claim of health care and the Puritans have never been so emboldened, so fervent, so committed. They have enjoyed that power and control and they do not want to let it go now.

That they are the useful idiots of giant, transnational, pharmaceutical corporations does not seem to have dawned on them.

And the toxic glue that binds these seemingly opposing groups together are the unelected globalists at the World Health Organisation and the World Economic Forum, whose ideas and edicts - the "Agenda 2030 Global Goals" have infected our own national governments and institutions.

Is it a coincidence that the leader of the World Economic Forum Klaus Schwab has a bust of Lenin in his office?

Is it a coincidence that Susan Michie, the chair of the World Health Organisation's so-called Advisory Group on Behavioural Insights (meaning how best can we control people?) has been a member of the Communist Party of Britain for over 40yrs?

No it is not a coincidence at all. Such authoritarians have failed to gain decision-making power at the ballot-box over the last 50yrs, so they have penetrated organisations that now have decision-making power but without needing the pesky process of relying on the free will of you uncontrollable individuals like you. Because you never vote them into power. Because you don't like being controlled. Because you are wise and you like having fun.

A little bit of danger is often the natural bedfellow of a good time – be that swinging on a rope across a stream or dancing in heels so high you might twist your ankle.

Fun is radical, anarchical. We live in an age in which Universities, media outlets and numerous HR departments insist on the dead seriousness of everything. Anything frivolous must be taken seriously, injected with deep urgent meaning; everything fun must be viewed through a prism of danger. Lockdowns brainwashed us to fear literal death in acts of human joy.

I want to see more images of politicians abandoning themselves to the pursuit of happiness. We should all be able to switch off from this constant state of vigilance in case something goes horribly wrong. Therein lies the best of being human.

I only recently learned that the Salem Witch trials arose out of an atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust from the fear of smallpox – it may not be a coincidence that historically it is women who are most heavily beaten by the puritanical stick.

So we need to run as far as possible from a time in which every enjoyable social activity was recast as a vector for the spread of disease and remember that being free of life’s worries – even if only for a few hours on a dance floor – is not a luxury, but a necessity.

It doesn’t matter if you are a Prime Minister or a Student. I, for one, will always fight for your right to party.