I’ve written a piece for Spiked about the attacks on free speech by the Labour Government we can expect in 2025. Here’s how it begins:
The unrelenting assault on this essential human right since Sir Keir Starmer entered Downing Street in July has shocked even the most jaundiced of observers. Who could have predicted this time last year that scores of people would be prosecuted for offensive speech on social media following a brutal knife attack? That two police officers would turn up at the door of an award-winning journalist on Remembrance Sunday to interview her about a year-old tweet that she’d deleted within hours? That Britain’s record on freedom of expression would be so bad that it has turned us into a global laughing stock? All of which means that when speculating about what will become of free speech in 2025, we should assume the worst.
Let’s start with the threats already in the pipeline. The Employment Rights Bill, which will almost certainly receive royal assent next year, contains a clause that will extend employers’ liability under the Equality Act to third-party harassment – i.e., the harassment of employees by customers and the like. That means that owners of pubs, bars, restaurants, hotels, sports stadia, concert venues, etc., will have a legal obligation to take ‘all reasonable steps’ to protect their employees from ‘harassment’ by anyone they come into contact with in the course of doing their jobs.
When you bear in mind that under the Equality Act ‘harassment’ includes overheard conversations that might upset or offend someone with a protected characteristic, the implications of this are deeply sinister. Pubs will have to employ ‘banter bouncers’ to police the conversations of customers to make sure no one is saying anything risqué that could be overheard by a member of staff. Hotels will have to stop anyone entering the lobby wearing a “Woman: Adult Human Female” t-shirt. Football clubs will have to ban anyone who shouts “Are you blind?” at a linesman, in case they’re overheard by a partially sighted steward. In short, the chilling effect that the Equality Act has had on workplaces, in which everyone is constantly looking over their shoulder to make sure they’re not overheard, will be extended to every area of our lives.
Then there’s the Football Governance Bill, another piece of legislation bound to go through next year. It includes several clauses that will require football clubs to promote equality, diversity and inclusion even more aggressively than they do at present. When you consider that Newcastle FC has already given a gender-critical feminist a two-season ban for saying on X that she doesn’t think transwomen are women, the mind boggles.
We already have Kick It Out and Rainbow Laces. Stonewall hovers over every boardroom in the Premier League. Not long ago, footballers would religiously take the knee before each match. Does the Labour government want fans to produce a certificate proving they’ve had unconscious-bias training before being allowed into a stadium? In future, when visiting fans at the Emirates chant “Is this a library?”, Arsenal supporters will be able to point to Sir Keir in his executive box and then put their fingers to their lips. If Starmer has his way, every stadium in the country will be a library.
Labour also promised a “full trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices” in its manifesto and it’s a racing certainty that this will happen in 2025 as well. What does that mean, given that what’s commonly thought of as ‘conversion therapy’ is already illegal in Britain and, in any event, all but disappeared about 25 years ago? The answer is that Labour wants to criminalise parents and health professionals who deviate in any way from the ‘gender-affirming care’ approach, whereby any adolescent suffering from gender confusion is encouraged to embark on an irreversible medical pathway rather than pause and reflect, or undergo a course of psychotherapy.
Finally, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has said she wants to lower the threshold for the recording of ‘non-crime hate incidents’ (NCHIs). Yes, you read that correctly. Police forces in England and Wales have recorded about a quarter of a million of these since the concept was introduced by the College of Policing in 2014, which is an average of 65 a day. Already they have been recorded against playground taunts, un-PC jokes and political speeches about immigration. But Cooper thinks this isn’t nearly enough. By the time Labour is turfed out in 2029 – please God! – newspapers will be running news stories about those rare and exotic creatures who haven’t had an NCHI recorded against them.
Okay, so those are the anti-free-speech measures we know are heading towards us next year. What about the stuff that wasn’t in Labour’s manifesto?
Worth reading in full.
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Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Let’s wait for the “reporting restrictions” on a certain couple of trials starting (or at least planned to) in the next few weeks… Will we even find out details after the case?
In the event of (in my opinion very possible) run on the pound will that be “misinformation” and prohibited?
If we ever manage to get rid of this wholly anti British so-called government vengeance must be wrecked. For all members of the Cabinet, serving and ex the sentence must be life. For Kneel and his clique something worse as befits traitors.
Leftism is like a cancer and we all know the best way of dealing with that.
But… it’s not just Starmer. There are plenty of sanctimonious pecksniffs that would jump on the opportunity to demonstrate their self-righteousness with allegations of harassment.
Starmer should take care… there will be plenty of people willing to take on even Labour luminaries for a careless remark.
Finally, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has said she wants to lower the threshold for the recording of ‘non-crime hate incidents’ (NCHIs)
Tories are the same. Have the same policies.
Thinking will be a crime.
Oh wait, it already is, if you think, or say a silent prayer outside the baby-murder clinic. One of the icons of ‘health care’ and beloved by all.
PC Fascism. All part of the plan.
It can and will.
There are more of us than them and they’re terrified we might understand that fact.
The wokusts have to abolish free-speech because reality refuses to conform to their deranged fantasies. But our problem is not only the formal abolition of free-speech which our anti-white government is carrying out – just as dangerous is the anti-white government’s imposition of Orwellian lies. For example:
Anti-whitism is called “anti-racism”
Conformity to the anti-white agenda is called “diversity”
Exclusion of truth-tellers is called “inclusion”
These lies are framed within the wokusts’ over-arching lie of “equality” – which is a thing that simply doesn’t exist.
For a moment I thought you were reading the Kings Speech!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2KyAUSqqmZY
Nigel Farage’s New Year message filmed at Blenheim Palace. Calm, considered, thoughtful.
Nice place that, went there as a youth.
I wonder if the current Duke of Marlborough was aware that Nigel would be recording his NY message there?
Depends if he was in the public part of the building i suppose.
Thinking about the banter police business in pubs.
Yes some places may become dystopia but only the places you wouldn’t normally go anyway, like airports and chain hotels.
In most decent pubs I suspect the reaction would simply be not to employ the kind of woke twats that could be offended.
“Pubs will have to employ ‘banter bouncers’ to police the conversations of customers to make sure no one is saying anything risqué that could be overheard by a member of staff.”
They really are tying to create a Stasi 2.0 but I would like to see how that works in reality, not that I go to pubs much these days but this can include any public place.
I doubt they can afford them after the Rachel from Accounts budget.
The way to get around this is to defy all of the above. Keep saying are you blind etc and see if they can control our speech.
“ The answer is that Labour wants to criminalise parents and health professionals who deviate in any way from the ‘gender-affirming care’ approach,”
You mean deviate to the Cass Report, that long awaited report, a bit like that Danish study on masks in 2020 that the media didn’t shut up about, until that is the report came out that went against their narrative. After that, radio silence as if they just all forgot to report on its findings. Very convenient.
‘all reasonable steps’
Define reasonable. Defining things is not the forte of the Student Union government. Women? Pass. Working People? Pass.
Never mind, we’ll loath him and his party even more.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/nigel-farage-addresses-the-nation-from-blenheim-palace/
A short precis of Nigel Farage’s New Year speech from Blenheim Palance. The full film of the speech is embedded.
Strong, polite, thoughtful and considered.
“Let’s make Britain Great Again.”
“Pubs will have to employ ‘banter bouncers’ to police the conversations of customers to make sure no one is saying anything risqué that could be overheard by a member of staff….”
The problem here is that the bouncers will also be employees of someone so should also be protected by bouncers who should also be ………..!