Debanking: A Corporate War on the Unwoke

The threat of living under a Chinese-style social credit system looms ever-larger, says Toby Young in Spiked. Here’s an excerpt:

One thing I’ve learnt in the past year is that debanking is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to withdrawing services from people on political grounds. At the FSU, we often go to bat for people who’ve been kicked out of professional associations for wrongthink. One recent case involved a man threatened with suspension from British Cycling for objecting to a racially segregated event.

Another FSU case concerns a Newcastle United fan who has been banned from St. James’s Park for two seasons because of gender-critical opinions she expressed on social media. We’re currently helping her appeal that decision, but we think hundreds – possibly thousands – of football fans have been blacklisted by the Premier League for expressing unfashionable but perfectly lawful views. My hope is that ‘destadiumed’ will be one of the words of the year one day.

The most serious example we’ve come across is that of Teresa Steele, a former solicitor who had her life-saving operation cancelled by a private hospital after she complained about a transgender nurse and asked for assurance that only biological women would be involved in her intimate care.

Discriminating against people because of their beliefs – provided they’re deemed ‘worthy of respect in a democratic society’ – is unlawful under the Equality Act 2010. But one of the reasons services are being withdrawn from so many people whose views fall outside the Overton window is because equalities law is being misapplied, often at the behest of activist lobby groups. The Premier League, which proudly boasts of its relationship with Stonewall, appears to believe it is legally obliged to stop trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) from buying tickets to football games, when the exact opposite is true.

Worth reading in full.