The conviction of Joey Barton is an Orwellian outrage

Is it now a crime in the UK to take the piss out of DEI? The chilling conviction of former footballer Joey Barton for his ‘grossly offensive’ social-media posts suggests it might be. In one of the tweets for which he was dragged to the dock to answer to m’lud, he made a rude swipe at Eni Aluko, the black female football commentator. She’s only on TV ‘to tick boxes’, he wrote. ‘All off the back of the BLM / George Floyd nonsense’, he continued. For that, he’s been convicted. He’s been branded a ‘malicious communicator’, a criminal menace.

Good people of Britain, you’ve been warned – never again wonder out loud if someone is a token hire or you, too, might find yourself hauled before the new inquisition of correct-speak.

This isn’t about whether you like Joey Barton, the former Man City midfielder turned angry pod bro. It’s not about whether you think Ms Aluko is a diversity hire or someone who stormed the broadcasting world as a result of her experience and talent. I’m sure it’s the latter, though I must confess I’m a little scared to say it’s the former in case I get a knock on the door from the boys in blue. No, it’s about freedom of speech. It’s about the liberty to utter. It’s about the right to free expression that is so essential to the flourishing of public life. It’s about this: if it is now a potential crime in Britain to ponder how someone got their job, then Britain is not a free country.

The Barton case is an outrage. It was in Liverpool Crown Court on Friday that the brash Scouser was found guilty on six counts of penning ‘grossly offensive’ social-media posts. Barton has become infamous in recent years for his pithy ire and daft outbursts on X. He fires insults at journalists and has a real bee in his barnet about female football pundits. He thinks these women are ‘not qualified’ to talk about football – they should ‘stick to knitting’.

Everyone with a brain, or a heart, agrees that some of what he writes is nasty, or certainly dumb. He notoriously referred to veteran broadcaster and cycling enthusiast Jeremy Vine as a ‘bike nonce’, an insult that the High Court has already ruled to be libellous. He superimposed the faces of Aluko and Lucy Ward, another female football pundit, on to a photo of serial-killer couple Fred and Rose West, to drive home his point that these women ‘murder’ people’s ears with their thin analysis. Not nice, and in one case defamatory. But crimes? Literal offences against the person for which Mr Barton must now face stiff punishment by the state? Are you serious?

The words for which Barton was convicted – how mad to have to say ‘words’ and ‘convicted’ in the same sentence – included rants aimed at Vine. He suggested Vine had visited ‘Epstein island’. ‘If you see this fella by a primary school, call 999’, he tweeted. He was also convicted for his ‘only there to tick boxes’ comment about Ms Aluko. And while he was cleared for calling Aluko and Ward ‘the Fred and Rose West of football commentary’, he was convicted for putting their faces in that Fred and Rose photo.

None of this is very grown-up. But to make mere words, however hurtful, into a matter of law is to lay waste to the entire ideal of freedom of expression. Barton was convicted under the 2003 Communications Act of posting ‘grossly offensive electronic communications’ with the ‘intent to cause distress or anxiety’. Then the law is an ass. For freedom of speech, by definition, must include the freedom to be grossly offensive. It must even include the liberty to cause distress with your words. Indeed, words are often designed to be cutting, stinging, a source of anxiety for those with power or influence. If we are not free to offend, we are not free.

The Barton case sums up how the modern British state’s policing of ‘communications’ ends up policing moral beliefs. Consider the fact that he was in a literal court of law for saying Ms Aluko is in the ‘Joseph Stalin / Pol Pot category’ because she has ‘murdered hundreds of thousands if not millions of football fans’ ears’. He was cleared for that comment, but the very fact it became a matter of law is scandalous. For what Barton was doing there was giving fruity, intemperate expression to his deeply held belief – namely that this female pundit in particular, and female pundits more broadly, are not very good. To arrest and charge someone for what they believe is an Orwellian affront to the very first principle of liberty – that our minds are our own, and our words should not be punished.

The chilling effect of cases like these is to tell the public: think before you post. Don’t call anyone a token hire. Don’t say someone ‘murdered’ your ears with their blather. And definitely don’t give voice to any antiquated thoughts on men, women and football. In fact, just stay schtum on DEI, sport, sex and all the rest of it, in case someone feels grossly offended by your ideas. Every case like this is a punishment not only of the person in the dock but of the nation at large. It’s a stern reminder to watch your words, curb your humour and bin all bawdiness, and instead be safe and grey like the correct-thinkers who rule over us. The impact of this case will be to tighten the already suffocating muzzle on speech in 21st-century Britain.

Our free-speech crisis is out of control. Lucy Connolly jailed for a tweet. Graham Linehan grilled by armed cops at Heathrow Airport over jokey posts. Thirty people arrested every day for things they say online. And now a man convicted for crossing ‘the line between free speech and a crime’ by being a tad too offensive according to the overlords of thought, belief, humour and tone. If courts can convict us for being too offensive, then we don’t have the freedom to speak, we have a licence to speak. We are permitted to say only things that the state has deemed to be within the bounds of good taste or upstanding morality, and if we say anything else then our licence to speak will be revoked. Now that’s what I call gross.

Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His latest book – After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation – is available to order on Amazon UK and Amazon US now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy.