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UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer took aim at Nigel Farage in Parliament today for not being present. In fact, the Reform leader is on the other side of the Atlantic, testifying to the House Judiciary Committee on the state of free speech in the UK. The timing couldn’t have been better for Farage, what with the release of Lucy Connolly from prison (after she was incarcerated over a social media post) and the arrest of comedian Graham Linehan providing extraordinary case studies.
And Farage was not holding back. First saying that he would have brought Connolly with him, had she not been restricted by travel rules following her conviction, he launched into quite the speech about freedom of expression in Britain. Using Linehan’s case as a warning for American travelers, Farage fumed:
He put out some tweets months ago when he was in Arizona. And months later, he arrives at Heathrow Airport to be met by five armed police. Armed police. Not a big deal in the USA, a very big deal in the United Kingdom. Five of them. And he was arrested and taken away for questioning. He’s not even a British citizen. He’s an Irish citizen. This could happen to any American man or woman that goes to Heathrow, that has said things online that the British government and British police don’t like.
He went on, taking aim at legislation that allows police to monitor social media posts in the first place:
It is a potentially big threat to tech bosses to many, many others. This legislation we’ve got will damage trade between our countries, threaten free speech across the West because of the knock-on rollout effects of this legislation from us or from the European Union. So I’ve come today as well to be a klaxon, to say to you, don’t allow piece by piece this to happen here in America, and you will be doing us and yourselves and all freedom-loving people a favor. If your politicians and your businesses said to the British government, you’ve simply got this wrong. At what point did we become North Korea?
Strong stuff! And it seems even politicians for the incumbent Labour party are rather perturbed by Linehan’s arrest, with Health Secretary Wes Streeting this morning suggesting that the law could be amended to ensure police focus instead on more serious crime. But given the outrage whipped up at the treatment of both Linehan and Connolly, even this could be too little too late…
Watch the clip here:
