The UK is the censorship capital of the West

When US vice-president JD Vance stood before the Munich Security Conference in February, he warned that free speech was ‘in retreat’ across Europe. He said the decline of this most vital of democratic liberties was ‘most concerning’ in the UK. British elites balked, scoffed and denied everything Vance said. But it is almost impossible to deny the accuracy of his statements.

Indeed, subsequent events have emphatically vindicated Vance’s concerns. Little more than a month after his speech, The Times revealed that 30 people every day are being arrested in England and Wales for things they post online or in private conversations, almost invariably on the grounds of ‘causing offence’. The arrest of Graham Linehan earlier this month by armed police at London Heathrow was undoubtedly the most high-profile example. Linehan, the legendary comedy writer behind Father Ted, was detained for three gender-critical tweets he had posted in April. While he hasn’t been charged (yet), police said he was arrested on the grounds of ‘inciting violence’.

The age-verification phase of the Online Safety Act has also come into effect since Vance’s speech. Presented as a law to protect children from harm, in practice, it hands sweeping powers to regulators to decide what speech may be seen by adults, and what should be censored. Since July, internet users in the UK have been blocked from viewing famous European artworks, accessing criticisms of the Labour government and – perhaps most egregiously – reading testimonies from victims of grooming gangs. It’s as though UK authorities took Vance’s words as a blueprint, rather than a warning.

The assault on free speech is almost as big a problem offline as it is online. Indeed, we have now become accustomed to a steady stream of video footage appearing on social media, usually showing a group of uniformed police officers explaining to a confused citizen why they are being arrested. One recent example is perhaps the most dystopian. In a viral video published last week on X, a man was arrested under the Public Order Act for calling someone a ‘muppet’. ‘You caused them alarm and distress’, the officer said. Yet again, the illiberalism that Vance warned about was playing out in the UK’s streets.

It hardly matters that JD Vance has been proved right after his Munich speech. Such was the ferocity of the UK’s censorship that no reasonable person could have doubted his comments’ accuracy, even back in February. The case of Lucy Connolly, who spent nine months in prison for an intemperate tweet during last year’s Southport riots, was a perfect case in point. Connolly, a first-time offender and the sole carer for a disabled child, even received a harsher sentence than many people who took part in the rioting.

Yet it wasn’t Connolly’s case, terrifying as it was, that appeared to inspire Vance. Instead, it was that of Adam Smith-Connor, a 51-year-old army veteran who was convicted not for what he did or even said, but for what he thought. In Bournemouth in 2022, Smith-Connor silently prayed on a street opposite an abortion clinic. The video of his interrogation records a question that would hardly be out of place in Nineteen Eighty-Four. ‘What is the nature of your prayer today?’, he was asked. Smith-Connor was found guilty of ‘breaching a safe zone’ and ordered to pay the court £9,000 – making it perhaps the most expensive prayer in history.

It is no exaggeration to say that, when it comes to criminalising speech, the UK is now leading Europe in the race to the bottom. Indeed, Britain seems more determined than ever to prove JD Vance right.

Paul Coleman is a lawyer and executive director of ADF International. He is author of Censored: How European Hate-Speech Laws are Threatening Freedom of Speech.