The treatment of Charlie Mullins proves that there's no free speech if you're Right-wing

Telegraph

25-03-2025

Should people be penalised for supposedly harming an institution's reputation? How, exactly, is that harm to be measured? Does it only count if it brings an institution into disrepute in the eyes of right-thinking people?
Two people this week have run afoul of this standard. One is Charlie Mullins, the founder of Pimlico Plumbers, who got away with a warning. The other, Ben Woods, who ran the wine counter at the Henley branch of Waitrose, was not so lucky. He was fired yesterday after working there for 25 years.
The difficulty with applying this rule is that, because it's so subjective – what counts as 'harm'? – the investigators' political bias inevitably intrudes, with the threshold of what constitutes 'gross misconduct' rising or falling according to whether the social media posts in question – and it nearly always is social media posts – express robust Right-wing or robust Left-wing views.
If you doubt this, ask yourself whether Charlie Mullins would have received a letter from the honours forfeiture committee informing him it was minded to rescind his OBE if he had criticised Boris Johnson rather than Sadiq Khan. Would Ben Woods have lost his job if, instead of posting supposedly offensive memes about Muslims, he had done so about Christians?
At the Free Speech Union, the organisation I founded five years ago, we've fought over 3,500 cases – people who've found themselves in trouble for exercising their right to lawful free speech. Not all of them have been placed under investigation – or fired – for dissenting from radical progressive orthodoxy. We've defended a handful of people for their outspoken defence of the Palestinian cause since October 7. But it's not an exaggeration to say that 95 per cent of them have got into trouble for saying something coded as 'Right-wing', including feminists who believe in the biological reality of sex, who make up about 40 per cent of our case load.
In the metropolitan echo chambers where these investigations into reputational harm take place – with KCs often being pressed into service – the same double standards apply as they do in our criminal justice system. Post something criticising the Rwanda policy or Big Oil or Nigel Farage, and you'll suffer no penalty, however many people complain.
Criticise illegal immigration or net zero or Jess Phillips, and you're for the high jump, even if just one person complains. Indeed, one complaint from a woke activist is often all it takes. 'See,' the equity, diversity and inclusion officer will say. 'What this person said has lowered our reputation in the eyes of this complainant. We have no choice but to launch a six-month investigation.'
In one recent FSU case, a man lost his job at Severn Trent water company after describing Hamas as 'violent and disgusting'. Had he said the same about the IDF, I believe he may still have his job.
This punishment of people with unfashionable opinions is particularly egregious when it comes to the honours system, since honours flow from the monarch who is supposed to stand above partisan politics. The investigation of Charlie Mullins sends a message to all the other MBEs, CBEs, OBEs, Sirs, Dames and Peers out there – express an unequivocally Right-wing view on social media and your honour may be taken away. In the birthplace of parliamentary democracy, a nation that prides itself on inventing free speech, this is not how it should be. If anyone has brought the honours system into disrepute it is not Charlie Mullins. It is the forfeiture committee.