Shabana Mahmood continues to ban foreigners from travelling to Britain to speak on political issues. Or indeed give musical performances…
Last night Mahmood revoked travel authorisations for leftist podcasters Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker, both of whom were booked to speak at the SXSW London conference on Thursday. They have allegedly been banned for their pro-Palestine views and Uygur’s dismissal of reporting on rape gangs as “Islamophobic”…
Guido is running a rolling tracker of prominent figures banned for speech reasons:
- Kanye West, 7 April. Rapper.
- Valentina Gomez, 20 April. US hard-right activist.
- Eva Vlaardingerbroek, 16 May: Dutch national-conservative influencer.
- Ada Lluch, 16 May: Spanish influencer/commentator.
- Filip Dewinter, 16 May: Belgian MP, Vlaams Belang.
- Dominik Tarczyński, 16 May: Polish ME, Law and Justice Party.
- Cenk Uygur, 1 June: Left-wing podcaster and onetime Democratic nominee attempter.
- Hasan Piker, 1 June: Uygur’s cousin with similarly distasteful views on the Middle East.
Free speech? I hardly knew ‘er…
Preston Byrne, known to co-conspirators as the 4chan lawyer who last week trolled Ofcom with a picture of a giant hamster, has co-authored a model ‘Free Speech Bill’ that would function as a British First Amendment.
Published by the Adam Smith Institute, the bill would repeal the Online Safety Act, Public Order Acts, and Malicious Communications Act in their entirety. In their place, it would establish a broad statutory right to expression including speech that is “offensive, grossly offensive, insulting, abusive, shocking, blasphemous, indecent, or otherwise objectionable”. It would also gut Ofcom’s content regulatory powers. Basic protections you’d expect in a free society…
Byrne has published an overview of the bill here. The key lines:
“In a free society, fools, bigots, and assholes get to speak and remain free men. That is not the price of liberty. It is liberty, and the rest of us get it too. The Model Bill’s authors are aware that this Model Bill, if enacted, would decriminalise expression that we find morally repugnant.
We accept and embrace that consequence. But we ask the reader to consider who these laws actually catch. Overwhelmingly, victims of the UK’s censorship state are not hardened extremists, who operate in encrypted channels beyond the reach of any statute, but ordinary people. The present state of the UK, where expressing an opinion that gives rise to even mild offence may result in arrest, and does result in arrest, for tens of thousands of people per year, is a heavy price that this country has been paying for two decades.”
Spot on. Good luck convincing Labour to listen…
Read the full bill below…
Continue reading “ASI Publishes First Amendment-Style British Free Speech Bill”
The Free Speech Union has successfully forced Thames Valley Police to drop an investigation after they demanded that an American woman, Deborah Anderson, apologise for her social media posts. Officers turned up at her out house following a complaint in June. When Anderson, a Trump supporter, asked what her offending posts were, the police refused to tell her…
Free Speech Union founder Toby Young told Guido:
“I hope the fact that this happened to a US citizen means President Trump will raise Britain’s free speech problem with Sir Keir Starmer later today. The Prime Minister is in denial about it and it needs someone of Trump’s stature to shake him out of his complacency. We need a complete overhaul of our free speech laws if we’re to avoid becoming the North Korea of the North Sea.”
As day two of Trump’s state visit kicks off, this is an almighty bad look for Starmer. British police hassling a US citizen over “thought crimes” on social media is exactly the kind of story that goes down like a lead balloon in America. The perfect storm…
Nigel Farage is appearing before the US House Judiciary Committee to speak about Europe’s threat to free speech in America. He’ll talk about the Online ‘Safety’ Act. He’ll also bring up comedian Graham Linehan’s arrest…
Farage will call on the US to sanction countries that restrict freedom of speech. He says Britain has “lost her way”…
Wes Streeting has suggested Labour should change the law to stop police arresting people for tweets they’ve sent. Five armed officers hauled Graham Linehan in…
Farage is raising the case and others in front of the House Judiciary Committee in D.C. today. Starmer stopped short of full criticism of the police’s actions yesterday. Streeting told the Today Programme that the police are enforcing badly written legislation:
“We want the police to focus on policing streets rather than tweets… if over the years with good intentions parliament has layered more and more expectation on the police and diluted the focus and priorities of the public, that is obviously something that we need to look at.”
A gauntlet thrown for Yvette Cooper. If the government was serious about its newfound commitment to free speech it would also dismantle the vast architecture it employs to monitor and report on the online activity of the public. Chance would be a fine thing…
Graham Linehan reports he was arrested at Heathrow for tweets he has sent. By five armed police officers…
The Father Ted creator and gender critical activist reported on his Substack today that he was removed to a station by van before being questioned. After a nurse measured his blood pressure at over 200 he was taken to hospital. The tweets in question included the below. Another was a photo of some trans rights protesters accompanied by: “a photo you can smell”…
Shadow minister Neil O’Brien said “Britain is now a total laughing stock – a country where we arrest the authors of light comedies and interrogate them about their tweets. It would be laughable it it wasn’t so serious.” Labour MP Jonathan Hinder has come out in support of Linehan, saying: “cases like [Linehan’s] airport arrest show that we need a serious reset to get the priorities right.” Free speech battle coming up…
The Free Speech Union is taking up Linehan’s case. He is set to appear at Westminster magistrates’ court on Thursday over two charges of social media harassment against trans activist Sophia Brooks and damaging Brooks’ phone. A Met spokesman said:
“On Monday, Sept 1 at 13.00 hrs, officers arrested a man at Heathrow airport after he arrived on an inbound American Airlines flight. The man, in his 50s, was arrested on suspicion of inciting violence. This is in relation to posts on X. After being taken to police custody, officers became concerned for his health and he was taken to hospital. His condition is neither life-threatening nor life-changing.”
Five armed officers…
UPDATE: Starmer’s spokesman said: “You have got the previous words that the Prime Minister’s used in relation to free speech. It’s up to police to make operational decisions.” Farage will raise the issue more stridently in Washington tomorrow…
Former leader of the SNP in Westminster Ian Blackford told Times Radio why he believes Nicola Sturgeon’s claim that she spent no time in the kitchen and therefore didn’t see any of her husband’s purchases:
“She doesn’t have a passion for cooking.”
