All year, the sense has been growing that freedom of speech is broken in Britain, and that it must be fixed. US Vice President JD Vance was one of the first to draw attention to it. In a meeting with British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in the Oval Office in February of this year, the vice president expressed his concerns directly to the prime minister. Later that month, Vice President Vance expanded on the theme as he addressed the Munich security conference in Germany. There, he said that Europe’s greatest threat was posed not by Putin’s Russia or by Middle East radicalism, but “from within,” as European leaders ignored voter concerns on matters such as free speech. He cited as an example the recently enacted ban in Britain on all protest—even peaceful protest—within the bounds of an abortion clinic. Even silent vigil and prayer have been banned in Britain within so-called “abortion zones.” Those caught in breach of such a ban are committing a criminal offence and may be fined or even jailed.
Britain’s friends in the United States are right to draw attention to the challenging state of free speech in the UK, even if some of them are at the same time posing problems for free speech in America. The vice president’s (and others’) reaction to those who appeared to celebrate—or not sufficiently to condemn—the recent murder of Charlie Kirk is seriously troubling, from a free speech point of view. When we seek to cancel those whose speech we loathe, we undermine any credibility we might otherwise have as a free speech champion, for the test of our commitment to free speech lies in our willingness to defend speech we hate.
Be that as it may, the points about British free speech Vice President Vance (and others) have been making this year demand attention and careful scrutiny. Let us focus on the message, not the messenger. Four recent issues shine light on the issues.
Take Allison Pearson, a well-known newspaper columnist and cultural commentator in Britain. She tweeted a picture of police officers standing next to people she believed were pro-Hamas protesters. She asked: “How dare they?”—implying that the police should be arresting the protesters for supporting Hamas rather than standing alongside, apparently facilitating them. She described the people in the picture as “Jew haters.” When it was pointed out that the people depicted were in fact demonstrating about a matter relating to Pakistan, and that the picture had nothing to do with the Israel-Hamas conflict, the tweet was deleted. But this did not stop police officers from visiting her family home one Sunday morning to warn her that she may have committed an offence in posting the tweet and that, if she did it again, she was liable to be arrested.
Or take Lucy Connolly, the wife of a Conservative councillor. In July 2024, three children were stabbed to death and ten other people (eight of them children) were injured in a horrific attack in Southport, Merseyside (near Liverpool). Misinformation about the attacker spread immediately on social media, claiming (falsely) that the perpetrator was a Muslim asylum seeker. Riots spread across the north of England, as anger erupted over the murder and maiming of children. More than one thousand arrests were made in connection with the riots, which saw serious public disorder and damage to property. In this climate, Lucy Connolly posted a tweet expressing anger at immigration policy and saying “set fire to all the [expletive deleted] hotels full of the bastards for all I care,” referring to hotels in Britain housing asylum seekers. She was arrested and charged with the offence of inciting racial hatred. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 31 months’ imprisonment. She was released in August 2025 after serving 40 percent of her sentence, whereupon she described herself as Sir Keir Starmer’s “political prisoner.”
As bright a line as possible needs to be drawn in the criminal law between speech which is threatening or abusive, and speech which is merely offensive.
Thirdly, consider Graham Linehan, well-known both as the creator of the hit 1990s TV show Father Ted and, more recently, as an outspoken and sometimes intemperate critic of gender self-identity. Linehan has moved to Arizona, quitting Britain, not least because he considers it a country where freedom of expression is no longer protected. Returning to Britain in September 2025 to face trial on charges of harassment and criminal damage, he was arrested by armed police officers at Heathrow Airport over tweets he had posted five months earlier, in which he had said, among other things, that if you meet a trans man in a female-only space (such as a women’s toilet) and they refuse to leave, you should “punch him in the balls.” Linehan was arrested for inciting violence. He was so enraged by this that he had to be taken to hospital to be treated for dangerously high blood pressure.
Finally, consider Palestine Action, a direct-action group that agitates against British government, military, and commercial support for or collaboration with Israel. In July 2025, when two Palestine Action activists unlawfully entered a military base in Oxfordshire and spray-painted two RAF aircraft, the Government proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation. Demonstrating support for a proscribed organisation is a criminal offence in Britain. In September 2025, during public protests against the decision to proscribe, 890 arrests were made. The decision to proscribe Palestine Action is controversial and is currently being challenged in the courts.
If these four episodes form (at least part of) the case for the proposition that free speech is broken in Britain, how does that case stack up? What should we make of the evidence so far?
The Allison Pearson and Lucy Connolly cases concerned the same law—the offence of stirring up racial hatred. This is not a new offence: it has been on the statute book since 1965. The offence is to use “threatening, abusive or insulting” words or behaviour which are either “intended or likely” to stir up racial hatred. This offence, first enacted in the Race Relations Act 1965, was the UK’s first hate crime. Since then, hate crimes have been extended to cover not only racial hatred, but hatred on grounds of religion, sexual orientation, and other such characteristics. However, the offence of stirring up racial hatred is broader than these later, newer offences in two regards. First, outside of the context of race, it is only threatening or abusive words or behaviour that are prohibited, not “threatening, abusive or insulting” words; and secondly, outside of the context of race, the offences can be committed only intentionally, not where it is either “intended or likely” that hatred will be stirred up.
The narrower formulation, I would argue, is to be preferred. No one should be criminalised solely because they have insulted someone, and no one should be criminalised because their words are merely “likely” to stir up hatred. If you use threats or abuse and if you intend to stir up hatred, there is a good argument that such action should expose you to criminal liability. After all, you cannot use your fists to threaten or abuse, so why should you be able to use your words to do so? Even in the United States, what the Supreme Court refers to as “fighting words” are afforded no protection under the First Amendment (see Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 US 568 [1942]).
This, then, is the first fix that the Allison Pearson and Lucy Connolly cases suggest is required for Britain. The scope of the offence of stirring up racial hatred needs to be narrowed, so that it covers only threats and abuse (and not mere insult), and so that it can be committed only intentionally. The second matter that the case of Lucy Connolly in particular throws up is the length of the sentence. I do not consider that Connolly was any sort of free speech martyr; still less, that she was a political prisoner. What she posted to X was appalling: if calling for asylum seekers to be burnt to death in the hotels which house them does not constitute “fighting words,” nothing does. That said, however, the length of her prison sentence struck many observers as hard to justify, notwithstanding that England’s Court of Appeal upheld the sentence as appropriate in the circumstances.
The Graham Linehan case is similarly controversial. Making an arrest for inciting violence five months after the alleged offence took place, when no evidence appears to have been presented that any violence against trans men in female spaces was actually carried out under the inspiration of Linehan’s messaging, seems hardly a proportionate use of police resources. Of course, Linehan has form when it comes to speaking out: his Twitter account was permanently suspended in 2020 for repeated allegations of hate speech and was reinstated only after Elon Musk acquired Twitter two years later. Even in the Musk era, Linehan’s X account has been (temporarily) suspended for breaching X’s terms of service. That his “punch him in the balls” tweet is far from the first occasion when Linehan’s speech has been called into question may lead some to think the September 2025 arrest was inevitable. Others may take the view that the fact that Linehan was returning to the UK to face what, on any account, are more serious criminal charges—albeit charges he denies—suggests that the arrest was simply over the top. If Linehan sues for wrongful arrest, as he has indicated he might, the matter may yet end up requiring judicial resolution.
The Palestine Action case is different. It concerns not offensive (or hateful) speech, but speech which the authorities have deemed to be contrary to national security. Under the UK’s anti-terrorism legislation, the Government has the power to proscribe any terrorist organisation. Terrorism is given a broad definition in UK law: it extends to action “designed to influence the government” which entails, among other wrongs, “serious damage to property.” A proscribed organisation is an illegal organisation. Membership of a proscribed organisation is a serious criminal offence, as is expressing support for a proscribed organisation. This latter offence is similar to, albeit broader than, the provision of US law upheld as compatible with the First Amendment in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project 561 US 1 (2010), in which advocacy for a “foreign terrorist organisation” was held to be capable of constituting “material support” as long as the advocacy was co-ordinated with the organisation in question and not offered independently of it.
For all these reasons, my plea would be that our American friends keep holding our feet to the fire.
I would draw three conclusions from the episodes narrated here. The first, and most important, is that as bright a line as possible needs to be drawn in the criminal law between speech which is threatening or abusive, and speech which is merely offensive. Threats and abuse, whether physical or verbal, may well attract criminal liability, but the criminal law should have nothing to do with speech that is merely offensive. The answer to offensive speech is not to criminalise (or cancel) the speaker but to speak back, showing with your own words why the offensive speaker is mistaken or wrongheaded. This is a line that the law in the UK does not always respect. The over-breadth of the offence of stirring up racial hatred—the offence about which Allison Pearson was warned and of which Lucy Connolly was convicted—is but one example. There is also an offence in the UK of “grossly offensive” electronic communications. The Law Commission recommended in 2021 that this offence was unfit for purpose and should be repealed, but Parliament declined to act on this advice, and the offence remains on the statute book.
Secondly, the protection the law accords to freedom of expression depends in practice not only on what Parliament writes into legislation, but also on police and prosecutorial discretion and, indeed, on the discretion of judges handing down sentences. The Linehan saga reminds us of this. Many will think that there is little wrong with a law against inciting violence. Many will, at the same time, think that sending five armed officers to Heathrow Airport to arrest Linehan for a five-month-old tweet is a disproportionate and unreasonable way to proceed.
Thirdly, whilst the focus of much of this year’s criticism about free speech and its limits in Britain has been on hate speech and offensive speech, the proscription of Palestine Action and the 890 arrests which followed it are a reminder that this is far from the only restriction on freedom of expression which demands, as Thomas Jefferson and Oliver Wendell Holmes famously insisted, “eternal vigilance.” National security, official secrets law, contempt of court—all these, as well as “offensiveness” remain as legal restrictions on free speech.
I would add one final remark. In these observations, I have been concerned with criminal law. Yet this is not the only area of law we need to be mindful of. The regulatory reach of the administrative state also demands our “eternal vigilance.” In the UK, broadcasting continues to be licensed—regulated—in ways US courts would rule to be contrary to the First Amendment. News reporters continue to be under obligations as to “due impartiality,” for example, whereas the like restrictions in the US were lifted in the 1990s. Until 2025, no challenge to regulatory rulings on broadcast political speech had been upheld in the British courts, but this year, such a challenge was finally upheld—a belated sign, perhaps, that UK lawyers are waking up to the manifest unfairness of continuing to impose strenuous licensing conditions on broadcast speech which do not apply to other forms of media.
That cherished freedom—of speech free from licensing—is under renewed threat in Britain when it comes to the Internet. Social media platforms and search engine services are now regulated in the UK, as they are also in the EU, in ways that have no equivalent in the US. Yet the Westminster Parliament is not content. A House of Commons committee recommended in July 2025 that the new regulatory demands of Britain’s Online Safety Act be extended, to curb yet more speech. The clear direction of travel in Britain is that speech—particularly online speech—is likely to come under greater regulatory challenge, not less.
For all these reasons, my plea would be that our American friends keep holding our feet to the fire. It was two Britons who wrote, in the 1720s, that freedom of speech is “the great bulwark of liberty.” Three hundred years on, in the 2020s, let Britain never forget the truth of it.