Starmer’s war on banter

The British state’s war on free speech often seems sinister and absurd in equal measure. Posting a meme can lead to your arrest. Playground spats between schoolkids are recorded as ‘non-crime hate incidents’. The chief prosecutor issues stern warnings to social-media users to ‘think before you post’. Yet as incredible as it may sound, the prospects for free speech in the UK could be about to get even worse in 2025. Toby Young, general secretary of the Free Speech Union, warns that several bills proposed by the new Labour government, on everything from employment rights to football regulation, are set to further stifle our free speech and sanitise public life.

Toby was the latest guest on The Brendan O’Neill Show. What follows is an edited extract from the conversation. You can listen to the full thing here.

Brendan O’Neill: In a recent piece for spiked, you said you were pretty scared of Labour from a free-speech perspective. How bad have things been since they came to power?

Toby Young: We all had low expectations, but Keir Starmer has underperformed even by those low standards.

Starmer’s reaction to the Southport attack and its aftermath betrayed his authoritarian character. Lots of people were arrested and charged just because of things they had said on social media. Nearly all of them, I regret to say, pleaded guilty.

People are now terrified that they are going to get their collars felt for things they have said, often in the distant past. That’s not an unrealistic fear, as we saw in the case of Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson, who was investigated by police over something she had tweeted, and immediately removed, more than a year ago.

Then, there was that awful moment in the House of Commons, when Labour MP Tahrir Ali asked Starmer whether the government wanted to reintroduce blasphemy laws. And Starmer didn’t rule it out.

But the worst could be yet to come. It’s in the form of the Employment Rights Bill, which wants to extend employer liability for all forms of harassment. Under the Equality Act, this means that if an employee is offended by a conversation they overhear, and it relates to a protected characteristic, they will be able to sue their employer. What will happen to bars and pubs? Will publicans have to employ ‘banter bouncers’, and instruct them to kick people out for telling a dirty joke? What about an over-excited football fan who shouts, ‘Are you blind?’, at a linesman? Football stadiums would become libraries.

O’Neill: Last year, home secretary Yvette Cooper expressed a desire to lower the threshold for the recording of non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs). Can she really get away with this?

Young: One of the good things to come out of the Allison Pearson ordeal was that it brought the issue of NCHIs into the national spotlight. People are horrified, particularly because so many people have had experiences where police, citing a lack of resources, have done nothing about a car being broken into, or a child mugged on their way home from school. But the police can send two officers to the house of a journalist on Remembrance Sunday because someone has reported them for a hate crime.

The implication is that, if your house is burgled in the UK, you should probably get a can of spray paint and write ‘transwomen aren’t women’ on your front door. Instead of telling the police that your house has been burgled, tell them you have been the victim of a hate crime. There will be a police helicopter circling overhead in 30 seconds.

O’Neill: The Free Speech Union is appealing the decision by education secretary Bridget Phillipson to shelve the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act. What is the culture like on campuses in the UK now?

Young: The Free Speech Act, had it been implemented, would have made it much easier for students and academics to hold universities’ feet to the fire when it came to upholding free speech and academic freedom on campus. That’s where the act would have had its biggest impact.

As you say, Labour has squashed this bill. At the Free Speech Union, we say this is unconstitutional and therefore unlawful, because it breaches the fundamental constitutional principle that a minister of the Crown cannot defy the will of parliament. The bill was passed by both houses of parliament and enjoyed cross-party support.

The Free Speech Union has its day in court on 23 January. It’s a judicial review, which is incredibly risky and expensive, but if we win Labour will either have to implement the bill in full or use its majority to repeal it.

We decided to take the risk because this was the one piece of legislation in the last parliament that would have made a positive difference in regards to free speech. We fought for it at every step of the way. We felt we had to do whatever we could to save our biggest and most important achievement from the last parliament.

If we want our universities to remain world-class, we need to do a better job protecting free speech and academic freedom on campuses. Otherwise, they’re just going to turn into woke madrassas.

O’Neill: There’s been lots of chatter, particularly since the re-election of Donald Trump, that the end of wokeness is in sight. Is wokeness dying, in your view?

Young: Trump’s victory, Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and the Cass Review have all contributed to a feeling that the zeitgeist has shifted. But radical, progressive ideology is so deeply embedded in our institutions and culture that it will take more than one election to make any difference. If anything, Trump’s victory in 2016 turbocharged the woke movement.

Let’s not underestimate the forces amassed on the other side. They have much more money and they are much better supported. Winning one battle does not mean that you’ve won the war.

Toby Young was talking to Brendan O’Neill on The Brendan O’Neill Show. Listen to the full conversation here: