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Should we care here in America that the Brits and the Europeans appear to be taking a sinister turn toward limiting freedom of speech? They have always been more socialist than we are, which has traditionally meant they have suffered higher taxes and some repression of liberties we consider sacred. Why should we care?
Under Prime Minister James Callaghan in the late 1970s, for example, the top marginal tax rate on investment income in the United Kingdom was 98%, and on earned income it was 83%. Yes, you read that right.
THE FALL OF BRITAIN IS ALSO A TRAGEDY FOR US
Even during the parlous tenure of U.S. President Jimmy Carter, the top marginal income tax rate in America was 70%, which Carter tried to reduce to 50%.
But the Callaghan-Carter comparison makes the point that we should be attentive to events in the U.K. and Europe. Callaghan’s government was so bad on numerous issues, such as taxes, inflation, and productivity, that the country was dubbed “the sick man of Europe.”
That was why Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher won a resounding victory in the 1979 general elections. She cut the earned income tax to 60%, still high but much better than 83%, and ushered in an 11-year rule.
A year after Thatcher’s victory came U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s victory over Carter. To many of us around then, Thatcher played the role of John the Baptist. She didn’t just announce that horrible Keynesian economics was killing the West; she showed voters on both sides of the Atlantic that voting out the bums and starting down a different path was possible.
After that, we had eight years of Morning in America. Thatcher and Reagan, working together with other leaders, went on to defeat communism and bring down the Soviet Union.
What happens over there has an effect over here. The arrest of a comedian by five armed police officers for merely posting on X that men should not be allowed into women’s bathrooms or to compete with women has touched a nerve here in America, as it should.
And many Americans are also paying attention to demonstrations against a hotel where asylum-seekers are being housed in Epping, in Essex, northeast of London, after an illegal immigrant from Ethiopia sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl.
Hadush Gerberslasie Ketabu, 38, was found guilty last week after a court heard he had asked the girl to go with him to his hotel and “make lovely African babies.” The demonstrations in that forest town and throughout the U.K. have attracted a lot of attention here.
But the arrest of the Irish comedian Graham Linehan at Heathrow Airport on Sept. 1 has garnered the most attention. Five officers converged on Linehan after he exited a flight from the U.S. and arrested him on suspicion of “inciting violence.”
After his blood pressure shot up (whose wouldn’t?), the police took him to the hospital. He was later released on bail. One of his bail conditions was that he was “not to go on Twitter,” the old name for X.
The posts date back to April. The first one said, “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”
The second accompanied a post of a protest and said, “A photo you can smell.” The third post said he hated “misogynists and homophobes.” For these posts, Linehan was arrested and had his right to post on X taken away.
The arrest came at a very timely moment for Britain’s Reform party, which is quickly becoming the leading opposition party, eclipsing the Tories. Leader Nigel Farage testified at the U.S. House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee last Wednesday on Britain’s increasingly repressive status regarding the right to free expression.
“It doesn’t give me any great joy to be sitting in America and describing the really awful authoritarian situation that we have now sunk into,” Farage said to the committee. The committee’s chairman, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), invited him.
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, sensing a public relations avalanche gathering speed toward him, hit out at Farage and said he was lobbying the U.S. to hit Britain with sanctions. But his Cabinet started criticizing the arrest, too.
“You cannot get more unpatriotic than that,” Starmer said of Farage’s testimony. Starmer was referring to reports that President Donald Trump may be getting ready to hit the European Union with sanctions because of its Digital Services Act, which compels tech companies to police “hate speech.”
The issue, as we are seeing with the sudden backlash against Linehan’s arrest, is that “hate speech” is, of course, in the eye of the beholder. All of us in the public arena are criticized now and again for our policy positions.
These actions are harder to take in the U.S. because we have robust protections of free speech and other liberties, such as the right to property, free association, and the right to own guns. These protections don’t exist in Europe. The U.K. does not even have a written constitution; Britons refer to their constitution constantly, but what they mean by that is the existing laws, practices, and traditions.
But the Starmer government knows that the Linehan arrest has crossed a line. Author J.K. Rowling, a fierce defender of the rights of women against encroachments by transgender people, wrote on X the day after the arrest, “What the f*** has the UK become? This is totalitarianism. Utterly deplorable.” Tesla CEO Elon Musk quoted her post, adding, “Police state.”
John Cleese of Monty Python fame, not a conservative, posted on X, “I see that it took five London policemen to arrest a comedian. Meanwhile, people in Chelsea have learned not to waste their time reporting burglaries. Is this an intelligent use of resources?”
Metropolitan police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley defended his men, saying, “Officers involved in the arrest had reasonable grounds to believe an offence had been committed” under the Public Order Act, which is similar to the EU’s DSA.
But Cabinet members have been backtracking as fast as grace will allow. To their credit, they are saying it’s not the officers’ fault. Parliament has clearly written a bad law.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting said ministers need to “look at” these laws policing online speech, as they have “diluted the focus and priorities of the public.”
Starmer said, “We must ensure police focus on the most serious issues. That includes tackling issues like anti-social behavior, knife crime, and violence.” Answering the opposition at the prime minister’s questions — British leaders must subject themselves weekly to grilling by the opposition — Starmer added, “We have a long history of free speech in this country. I’m very proud of that and I will always defend it.”
That last part is clearly open to interpretation, but it makes clear that criticism over this arrest in his own country and here in the U.S. is making a mark.
Farage’s appearance as a witness came after Jordan led a delegation to the U.K. in July to discuss the law’s effect on the U.S. It was bipartisan, a rare thing these days. “When foreign governments try to export their speech codes to the United States, it undermines our First Amendment values,” Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI) said during the trip.
A bonus was that Farage got to call Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) the “most pig-headed person” he had ever met, after Raskin started to accuse Trump of stamping out free speech protections. “We’re not here to talk about Trump,” Farage shouted, according to witnesses.
Britain’s Online Safety Act, misnamed, misguided, and dangerous, has transnational pretensions, too. Last month, Britain’s media regulator tried to impose fines on the online message board 4chan for supposed violations of the OSA. 4chan’s lawyer, however, told the BBC that the American platform would just ignore the British action.
“[The U.K. Office of Communications’s] notices create no legal obligations in the United States,” Preston Byrne, managing partner of law firm Byrne & Storm, told the BBC. The investigation, he said, was part of an “illegal campaign of harassment” against U.S. tech firms.
And Europeans seeking to quash free speech have their U.S. allies. Nina Jankowicz, former President Joe Biden’s infamous “disinformation czarina,” traveled to Brussels in April to urge the EU to hold firm with the DSA, accusing the Trump administration of allowing tech giants to gain traffic on hate speech and disinformation.
So what happens over there has an effect over here. For many reasons, Europeans will always have fewer liberties. They are democracies; if they want to trade freedom for illusory safety, that’s up to them. But, yes, what they do matters to us.
