The British state is crushing free speech
When US vice-president JD Vance criticised the 'infringements on free speech' that are rapidly coming to define the UK's international reputation, few were more offended than Sir Keir Starmer. The Prime Minister – who in his previous role as Director of Public Prosecutions oversaw the unsuccessful prosecution of the Twitter joke trial – insisted that Britain was 'very proud' of its 'free speech'.
He would have done better to caveat his statement with 'politically approved'. A string of cases have shown that free speech in Britain is under severe threat from an overbearing state, with little apparent appetite in Westminster to rein it in. The most recent entry in a long and dispiriting series has seen a retired special constable wrongly arrested and jailed for a social media post condemning anti-Semitism.
Shocking body-worn footage shows officers searching the home of Julian Foulkes, 71, pointing to 'Brexity' material on his shelves, prior to his being held in a police cell for eight hours then released with a caution.
This latest incident – as with the hounding of Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson, the investigation of Labour MP Ian Austin for calling Hamas 'Islamist' and the police visiting writer Julie Bindel without explaining which tweet had triggered their visit – follows a familiar and worrying pattern. In each case, the initial legal wrong has to date been redressed; the chilling effect of the investigations remains.
The thought that a loosely worded comment could result in massive legal bills, the shame of arrest, a stint in jail and potentially a criminal sentence is understandably exerting an unwelcome force on public discourse, limiting necessary criticism and discussion.
Some in Westminster may see this as a feature rather than a bug. Over time, the meaning of 'policing by consent' has shifted from the support of a singular British community, to the buy-in of multiple communities with conflicting interests and opinions. And as the set of overlapping interests has narrowed, so too the model of policing has shifted to managing and suppressing 'community tensions' rather than protecting and upholding the rights and liberties of the individual.
This is a poor model. Rather than instructing police officers to act as glorified social media moderators, we should free their time to work on serious crimes, and free the public to engage in frank conversation without the creeping fear of an early morning knock on the door. As things stand, Britain's dismal record on free speech deserves every criticism Mr Vance had to offer. If we dislike this, we should work to fix our laws rather than object to being shown a mirror.
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