On April 26, Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, threatened to organize protests against President Trump on Twitter: “If he comes to London, President Trump will experience an open and diverse city that has always chosen unity over division and hope over fear.” He’ll also see, the mayor boasted, that they “hold their liberal values of freedom of speech very dear.” We understand the mayor’s angst about a Trump visit, but he might bear in mind that the Donald is from New York, a place where openness and diversity are not unknown.
We wonder, though, just how dearly the mayor’s countrymen hold those “liberal values of freedom of speech.” Three days before Khan posted his tweet-boast, the North Yorkshire Police tweeted out a grainy photo of an older gentlemen making a rude gesture at a traffic camera. The police attached this warning: “Top tip: If you want to stay out of trouble, don’t do what this driver did and swear at our mobile safety cameras while driving past in a car fitted with a laser jammer. Today he’s beginning 8 months in jail for perverting the course of justice.”
Even for an illegal laser jammer, eight months in jail plus shaming on social media sounds like a headline out of Singapore. As one might expect in the age of Twitter, the North Yorkshire Police force brought enormous and condign invective on itself for its draconian conception of justice, but that’s of little comfort to Timothy Hill, the now world-famous gesturer languishing behind bars.
That same day, April 23, British courts also decided that a Scottish comedian who goes by the nom de Internet “Count Dankula” was guilty of a hate crime and fined him £800 ($1,100) for uploading a YouTube video of his girlfriend’s pug doing a Nazi salute. Count Dankula has already raised over £162,000 to bankroll his appeal.
Far more consequential was an English judge’s decision, in consultation with doctors at a hospital in Liverpool, to deny a plea by the parents of terminally ill 23-month-old Alfie Evans to take him to Rome for treatment. The little boy’s treatment was stopped, and he died a few days later. The case drew international outcry and moved locals to protest at the Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool. Again, though, the local cops were on the case. The Merseyside Police issued a statement on April 25 that “social media posts which are being posted in relation to Alder Hey and the Alfie Evans situation are being monitored and may be acted upon.”
Jailed and shamed, punished with a stiff fine for a YouTube video, threatened for posting complaints about a grave injustice . . . Great Britain is a marvelous place with an ancient and honorable history, but it was perhaps not the best week to boast of its liberal values.
