Free Speech My Arse

Apparently, Lucy Connolly’s jailing marks the end of free speech in Britain. That’s the latest screech from the usual quarters – those who think liberty means being allowed to spray petrol around the public square and then get uppity when someone takes away the matches.

Let’s be clear. Free speech doesn’t mean you can shout “set fire to the hotels!” after a racially charged stabbing and expect nothing to happen. That’s not opinion. That’s incitement. And if you get caught doing it, you haven’t been “silenced” – you’ve been held accountable.

In America, you can more or less say anything short of handing someone a detonator. The law stands back until the damage is done. There, it’s not illegal until there’s blood on the pavement – and sometimes not even then. That’s the American model: let it burn, then send in the thoughts and prayers.

Here in Britain, we do things differently. If your words look likely to whip up violence or racial hatred, the law steps in before someone gets hurt. Not because we’re fragile – but because we’ve learned that words, left unchecked, lead to bricks through windows and worse. It's not about offence – it's about harm.

Cue the chorus: “I thought this was a free country!” From the same people who want drag story time banned and libraries purged of anything more nuanced than Enid Blyton. Funny how their belief in free speech always seems to stop at other people’s throats.

Lucy Connolly wasn’t jailed for having a view. She was jailed for crossing a legal line that exists to stop racist violence before it starts. She wasn’t brave. She wasn’t silenced. She was reckless, and she was convicted.

And now we’ve got Trump’s State Department – under his second term, no less – “monitoring” the case. Not because they care about British justice, but because they smell an opportunity. Trump’s America doesn’t defend free speech – it brands it. Uses it as a slogan while crushing protest, gagging the press, and handing power to zealots. If you speak up for equality or climate action, you're a traitor. If you call for mass deportation, you're a patriot. That’s their idea of liberty – selectively applied, violently defended.

So no – I’m not going to wring my hands over a hate-filled keyboard warrior facing consequences. I’ll save my concern for the real threats: governments that pretend to love free speech while quietly criminalising dissent. Like the one currently occupying the White House.

If you want the American model – where bile flows freely and consequences only arrive in body bags – be my guest. Go there. Just don’t pretend it’s freedom. It’s chaos wrapped in a flag.

I’ll stick with a system that tries to stop the fire before the spark takes hold. That’s not censorship. That’s grown-up government. And if that makes me a snowflake, I’ll melt proudly – all over your hateful little bonfire.