Page 722 - Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Coverage Book 2023-24

As an organisation the Liverpool Philharmonic consists of two venues,
Philharmonic Hall and the Music Room. Dale’s now-cancelled event was an

external booking in the Music Room, this venue has a capacity of 200 and the

event had sold 75 tickets. Dale argued in his statement that the Philharmonic
should "apologise to the 250 people who had bought tickets" to his now-

scrapped event, "all the hotels, whose booking will now be cancelled," and the

local restaurants that will be "slightly less full."

The political commentator stated that he disagreed "with many of the

authors" he published during his publishing career but felt it was not his job
to censor them. He argued that publishing books is about freedom of

expression. "Where organisations like the Philharmonic are so cowed by a

couple of Twitter trolls that they give in to the mob at the first sign of trouble,"
Dale wrote within his lengthy statement. "They should be very ashamed,

anyone seeking to book an event with them should bear in mind their utter

lack of backbone."

He concluded his statement: "Essentially, Lisa Nandy, Jacqui Smith and I have
been cancelled. I see on Twitter that people on the left deny this and say that

we are perfectly able to hold the event elsewhere in the country. What a

pathetic argument. They know they've done a wrong thing, which is

indefensible. And if that's the best defence they have, it tells us all we need to
know."

The Mirror has approached the Liverpool Philharmonic for comment on this
story.