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I’m exactly 249 years and two months late in saying so, but thank god America isn’t Britain.
The unfolding free speech crisis in the UK is a perfect reminder for Americans why their Constitution is so important—and how fragile democratic traditions really are.
Earlier this week, British police arrested Irish comedian Graham Linehan, alleging that comments he’d made online constituted incitement to violence.
Read what he said [ [link removed] ] for yourself.
Distasteful and offensive, absolutely, but it’s hard to argue his words are criminal. And it’s difficult to take the charges leveled by British law enforcement seriously given how wide a net they’ve cast in punishing speech. Those arrested for wrongthink in recent years range from nativist trolls [ [link removed] ] to left-wing pro-Palestinian [ [link removed] ] activists. Linehan is particularly well known, but thousands more have been arrested for speaking out of turn.
Yes, thousands.
More than 30 arrests over social media posts every single day—about 12,000 each year. The situation has gotten so out of control that Mark Rowley, the chief of London’s Metropolitan Police, [ [link removed] ] has called for the British government to update or clarify its speech laws. The police, Rowley correctly points out, cannot be arbiters of culture war debates.
In the United Kingdom, freedom of speech is more of a custom than a rule. America’s mother country has no consolidated, written constitution. Democracy and civil liberties evolved slowly and organically there.
Such a system is ripe for abuse. Politicians can effectively make things up as they go along. A mix of statutes, passed by different British governments, have been leveraged to arrest people over bad tweets. No thought is spared as to what will happen next when a different party or a different leader takes over.
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Linehan’s arrest is being justified via the Public Order Act, introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government. Now, it is Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer who is enforcing that law. Tomorrow, Reform UK’s Nigel Farage could be prime minister and free speech restrictions could be an instrument in his hands.
Don’t write off the possibility: Farage’s hard-right Reform is now the country’s most popular party and outperformed its mainstream rivals [ [link removed] ] in this year’s local elections.
Reform is obviously contemptible, but Britain’s political establishment does not deserve the benefit of the doubt here given how seriously they’ve infringed upon the (unwritten) social contract. They should be subject to the same scrutiny we apply to Farage or Donald Trump. Occam’s razor might suggest that mild-mannered Starmer is probably not trying to impose authoritarian rule in Britain. But can we say the same for Labour’s previous leader, far-left antisemite Jeremy Corbyn?
In the US, freedom of speech is codified as the law of the land. The First Amendment is special, even among liberal democracies. But the United States, like Britain, has its own informal civic traditions too. When we talk about the power of precedent, Americans might do some self-reflection about the powers of the president.
The executive’s mandate grew dramatically over the last half century, especially under Republican George W. Bush [ [link removed] ] and Democrat Barack Obama [ [link removed] ]. This wasn’t the product of one law or Constitutional amendment, but incremental changes. President Trump inherited an expansive interpretation [ [link removed] ] of presidential power from his predecessors.
You might think there’s a good reason for bending the rules or breaking with the democratic tradition—to punish shocking and offensive beliefs, to pursue a policy priority held up in the legislature, and so on.
And you would be wrong.
We can’t be sure that leaders will always adhere to tacit understandings. Goodwill is not a guardrail. A constitution is. In democracy, consistency is the best policy. The thousands arrested for speech in the UK show us what happens when there isn’t a firm rule that applies evenly across the board.
P.S. Whether you agree or disagree, let’s continue the discussion—in the comments, and on a Zoom call. Yes, Zoom! I’ve recently announced new Zoom calls for paid subscribers so that we can have a real conversation. Click here [ [link removed] ] to upgrade and register for our first Zoom call.
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