Free Speech With a Cover Charge

JD Vance has been at it again, poking his nose into Britain with the delicate touch of a man trying to tune a violin with a claw hammer.

This time it is Henry Nowak’s murder, which Vance has tried to fold into the usual grand theory of European collapse, mass migration and weak liberal elites. There is something quite squalid about it. A young man is dead, his family are grieving, the police response deserves serious examination, and along comes the American vice-president to turn the whole thing into another exhibit in his travelling culture-war museum.

And this is the same Vance who likes to lecture Britain about free speech.

Now, irritatingly, he is not entirely wrong about Britain. We do have a free speech problem. We have too many vaguely worded speech offences, too much policing of the ugly and obnoxious, and a grim little national habit of treating adults as if words might make them burst into flames. We have somehow arrived at the point where a rude tweet, a daft placard or a tasteless joke can acquire the solemnity of a major incident, provided someone official can file it under harm.

So yes, Britain deserves criticism. We have become far too comfortable with the idea that the state should step in when people are offended, distressed or theatrically endangered by words. There is a censorious streak in modern Britain and it is not healthy. It is also not particularly liberal, however often it dresses itself up in the language of safety, dignity and inclusion.

But then along come Musk and Vance, wagging their fingers at Britain as if Trump’s America is some gleaming citadel of liberty. And this is where the whole thing starts to smell strongly of imported snake oil.

America does have stronger legal protection for speech. The First Amendment is a serious constitutional barrier, far stronger than anything we have here. But Trump’s instinct is not free speech as a principle. It is power wearing a free-speech rosette. He likes speech when it praises him, excuses him, funds him or attacks his enemies. When speech annoys him, the machinery starts whirring.

Under Trump, the threat is not always a policeman at the door. It is a visa problem. A grant review. A federal investigation. A regulator suddenly taking an interest. A funding stream put at risk. A university told to behave itself. A broadcaster discovering that free expression becomes much more complicated when the people overseeing licences and mergers have received the political weather report.

That is not liberty. That is lawfare.

The Trump administration has used funding pressure and investigations against universities over campus protest, DEI, transgender policy and antisemitism rules. It has moved from grumbling about individual campuses to trying to reshape the rules of higher education itself. That is not a neutral defence of free expression. It is state power leaning on institutions until they learn which opinions are administratively expensive.

The same pattern has appeared with pro-Palestinian students and academics. The message is not simply that some speech is wrong, or offensive, or poorly judged. It is that if you are foreign, junior, precarious or institutionally exposed, political speech can become an immigration problem. A right you can only vindicate after lawyers, hearings, risk, fear, delay and expense is not enjoyed equally.

That is how chilling effects work. The state does not have to win every case. It only has to make the process frightening enough.

Musk’s position is especially rich. He complains, sometimes with reason, about British speech policing, but his own free speech absolutism has always looked rather more absolute when the speech suits him. This is the man whose platform suspended journalists who had reported on him and the ElonJet row, then sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate after it criticised hate speech on X, only for a judge to throw the case out and say the suit was plainly aimed at punishing criticism.

He has also gone after advertiser groups for choosing not to spend money on his platform. So when Musk talks about free speech, one is entitled to check whether he means free expression as a principle, or free applause as a business model.

Vance is more polished, but the trick is the same. He is right that Britain and Europe have been too casual about restricting speech. There is enough truth in that to make it uncomfortable. But he then tries to use that truth as camouflage for a much uglier politics: one where the state should apparently stop censoring speech, except when the speech is pro-Palestinian, anti-Trump, too academic, too liberal, too foreign, or just inconvenient to the people currently holding the levers.

So yes, let us criticise Britain. We should. The Online Safety mindset, the public order creep, the policing of offensive expression and the bureaucratic urge to manage dissent all deserve a kicking. Britain has too much censorious speech law and too many officials who seem to think liberty is a risk-assessment category.

But Trump’s America is not the cure. It is a different disease.

The British problem is that speech too easily becomes a police matter. The Trump problem is that speech becomes a federal punishment matter. You may still have your constitutional rights, but first you may need to survive the process. And if you are rich enough, connected enough or institutionally protected enough, perhaps you can. If not, good luck. Liberty is available at the counter. Solicitors not included.

So when Musk and Vance lecture Britain about free speech, the answer should not be defensive. It should be brutally simple.

Britain has too much censorious speech law.

But Trump’s America has the First Amendment for those who can afford it, and the federal punishment process for those who can’t.

To be fair, Biden used lawfare too.