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.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Brilliant. We covid sceptics had bullshine detecting goggles on from the start.
Take google down!
Excellent! Make the lying money grabbing barstools pay back every penny and compensation!
An encouraging development. It’ll be interesting to see how it might work out in different states in the US. Any ideas out there whether the UK legal immunity for Pfizer would hold water if a case like that came up? Would the UK Gov, or the NHS, be accessories to a crime? Separate cases in Scotland? Answers on a postcard.
In my opinion (and I have no legal training) the government issued that immunity based on the data provided by Pfizer.
If that data can be shown to be wrong/fraudulent I would expect the government of the time would be perfectly entitled to void that immunity. There would almost certainly also be political points (because it’ll be a different government/ministers) to be gained by doing so.
I think the government/NHS would more likely be viewed as innocent parties (there’s an irony) to a fraud than be treated as accessories
I agree, although the idea that SAGE members and the Government might be “treated” as accessories is interesting, and could face legal penalty individually. The way that the Enquiry is being managed is equally fraudulent, and I would like some lawyer to crowd fund a similar case against the Government, I will give £50, so we only need a million donations! The SFO should look into the Enquiry costs too, there is no evidence that the money is being spent properly, and supposedly £100 Million and rising is utterly ridiculous, and suggests, along with the treatment of Dr Hennigan, that this is nothing to do with the truth. Just who is getting the money? KC Keith is probably getting a million or two, but that leaves 98 million, so the question “are they paying the witnesses?” seems reasonable, and therefore bribes are being given. Other than “reasonable expenses” that is surely illegal!
The UK Establishment will never admit wrong-doing. They will claim that no-one was forced to have one of the defective gene therapies, they all consented.
By the time this gets as far as court there will be a “new” establishment as people move on and there might be political points to be gained from allowing cases to proceed..
It also wouldn’t be difficult for a “no win no fee” style of lawyer to argue that while people did consent, they did so based on the incorrect/fraudulent data provided and that had they been provided with more accurate data they might (would) have made a different decision.
This is progress and could, in time, snowball into Moderna, Pfizer, J&J and AZ collapsing and a change in regulator oversight.
However, there is a lot of money which willl use every trick in the book to slow this thing down and throw them out on technicalities.
The social media sites will claim ignorance and trust in the official “science.”.
So this is still David vs Goliath stuff and when the financial crisis hits, how much attention will people have for this?
Im quite black/white pilled so, pardon my negativity.
And so it begins.
And soon private law firms will join, assuming they’ve emerged from behind their sofas
Top stuff! I hope they get creamed in court. Safe and effective wasn’t a lie. It was two lies.
If it can be proved in court that the vaccine tests were fudged then their zero liability contracts are null and void. Vaccine injured will be free to sue them directly.
It’s good that the Founding Fathers put in place a federal structure in the US
A sprinkling of red states have been among the only powerful political bodies to resist Covid scam
15k is nothing I would want the companies to be shut down and the Directors and owners of the various businesses jailed and stripped of their assets. That is still letting them get off lightly for what they have done.
It is $15k x about 30 million people. It is not $15k total, it is $$45 Billion!
I wrote this in January (Pfizer closed at $29 yesterday):
The chart and the fundamentals say Pfizer has further to fall, so I’m maintaining my short.
Yes, but it might get to zero when they go bust! What a bonanza!
I hope I live long enough to see the bastards who inflicted the Covid Tyranny and experimental gene therapies hauled up before the Courts and jailed for the rest of their lives.
But sadly, I very much doubt that will ever happen, let alone in the next 25 years. Far, far too many powerful people are involved and they can (and will) buy the judiciary.
Our own so-called Covid Inquiry is a demonstration of it being implemented.