I see Lucy Connolly has discovered the joy of calling the police about social media posts. “Yas Nige”, she trills, as Nigel Farage reports Alaa Abd el-Fattah to counter-terrorism police over tweets from 2010. Free speech, it turns out, is a flexible concept. Stretchy. It fits best when worn by people you agree with.
This is the same Lucy Connolly who was jailed for urging people to set fire to hotels housing asylum seekers during live public disorder. Not an abstract opinion. Not a historical rant dredged up years later. A direct call for arson while tensions were already high. She was convicted under the Public Order Act and sent to prison. Entirely orthodox. Tedious, even, if you understand how criminal law works.
At the time, Farage and Reform howled about tyranny. Two-tier justice. Thought crime. Prison for online speech, they insisted, was the mark of an authoritarian state.
Fast forward a few months and prison for online speech is suddenly a public service. Report him. Deport him. Strip his citizenship. Lock him up. Preferably on arrival. The only thing that has changed is who is speaking.
Graham Linehan is the awkward control case they would rather forget. Arrested at a port, questioned, released. No charge. No jail. Five armed officers, not six, for those who enjoy numerical embellishment. The system investigated, applied the threshold, and decided there was no case to answer. That is what due process looks like when it is allowed to function.
Alaa Abd el-Fattah sits in the same legal lane. Historic posts. No live disorder. No arrest. A police review, not a prosecution. Condemnation without pre-emptive punishment. Again, entirely orthodox, however unsatisfying that may be for people who think the law should move at the speed of social media fury.
There is a deeper irony here that rarely gets mentioned. The same Conservative governments now demanding action spent years campaigning for Alaa’s release from an Egyptian prison. They did so because the principle was simple - British citizens should not rot in foreign jails for political speech. That principle does not magically expire at Heathrow passport control.
The law has not shifted an inch. Thresholds, context and due process remain exactly where they always were.
What has collapsed is the right’s claim to believe in free speech.
They do not oppose prison for online speech.
They oppose prison for their online speech.
Everyone else can burn.
The banner in the photo at the top of this blog says “POLICE OUR STREETS NOT OUR TWEETS”. It presents itself as a universal principle. Yet when Alaa Abd el-Fattah’s historic tweets resurfaced, the Free Speech Union had nothing to say. No ringing defence of free expression. No warning about chilling effects. No concern about police involvement over speech alone. Just silence.
That silence matters. Because the FSU has been vocal, energetic and litigious when speech cases involve people they sympathise with. They mobilise press releases, crowdfunders and court cases with impressive speed. Here, nothing. Which tells you what the banner really means. Not “don’t police tweets”, but “don’t police our tweets”. Others can be reported, reviewed, investigated and quietly written off as exceptions.
The law, inconveniently, does not work on selective outrage. Context, intent and harm still apply. And slogans photographed outside the Royal Courts of Justice do not become principles just because no one asks the awkward follow-up question.
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