The UK’s free speech crisis

Labour’s pushing forward with the same thing that enabled the rape gangs

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Last week will forever be remembered as the week in which Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the Labour government jumped on what they once dismissed as a “bandwagon of the far-right”.

In recent months, one Labour MP after another lined up to dismiss people calling for a national inquiry into the mass rape of British children as “far right”, “extremist”, or, in the words of Labour MP Lucy Powell, blowing a “little trumpet” and “dog-whistle”.

But now, after months of relentless pressure, Labour has finally been forced to recognise what was always obvious to everybody else in this country —we need answers to the question of how the rape gang scandal was ever allowed to happen.

But if you think this is where the story ends, that Labour has finally come to its senses, then think again.

Because, as I’m about to show you, on the very same day Labour committed to hold inquiry into the rape gangs, they committed themselves to something that enabled the rape gangs to begin with.

Here’s everything you need to know.

What am I talking about?

I’m talking about how, while hoping nobody would notice, last week Starmer’s Labour quietly pushed forward with a plan to impose a dogmatic and dangerous new definition of “Islamophobia” on the country and its institutions.

And now this definition looks set to do the very thing that allowed the rape gangs to operate in the first place, by stifling free speech, reframing people’s legitimate concerns as “racist” and “Islamophobic”, and imposing speech codes and censorship on institutions that will encourage public officials to stay quiet, rather than speak out.

While everybody was distracted last week, Labour’s secretive new working group on “Islamophobia” quietly launched a “call for evidence”, asking people to help it develop a new definition it says “will help Ministers and other relevant bodies understand what constitutes unacceptable treatment and prejudice against Muslim communities”.

But this call for evidence was leaked —it was not made public.

We do not know who is being consulted. Nor do we know if the public will be invited to share their thoughts, or if those who are sceptical if not opposed to this attempt to police our language will be able to contribute.

What we do know, based on what we’ve seen so far, is that contrary to Labour’s talk about tackling the rape gang scandal and getting its victims the truth and justice they deserve …

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… Labour is continuing to push us into a deeply authoritarian, Orwellian society where our speech and views about Islam will now be heavily policed and curtailed.

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Labour's crackdown on "Islamophobia" is yet another crackdown on free speech

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To fully make sense of this, we need to return to the definition of “Islamophobia” that was put forward by an All Party Parliamentary Group of MPs, in 2018, and backed by the Labour Party.

Involving the likes of Tory grandee Dominic Grieve and Anna Soubry, who were so committed to free speech they spent years campaigning to overturn the vote for Brexit, that earlier report defined “Islamophobia” as being “rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness”.

But what on earth does this mean, you might ask? What counts as targeting ‘expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness’?

Anything that is perceived to be ‘Islamophobic’ by Muslim campaigners and their allies on the political left, that’s what.

In fact, astonishingly, that earlier definition specifically mentioned discussing the rape gang scandal, as an example of so-called “Islamophobia”.

It actually describes the rape gangs, which we now know are disproportionately more likely to involve men of Pakistani Muslim origin, as a “subtle form of anti-Muslim racism”, and “a modern-day iteration” of “age-old stereotypes and tropes about Islam and Muslims”.

In fact, as the Free Speech Union points out, one of the working group’s members, Baroness Shaista Gohir, in 2013, wrote a report expressing concern about the “disproportionate media coverage of Asian offenders” which, she claimed, enabled “right-wing populist groups” to “fuel racism and Islamophobia”.

The original APPG also involved a man named Muhbeen Hussain who, as the think-tank Policy Exchange notes, played a prominent, and to many in the town deeply unhelpful, part in events around the rape gang scandal, leading a boycott of the police for “scapegoating” Muslims and being related to officials involved in the cover-up.

This should not come as a surprise because for much of the last 16 years countless left-wing activists, journalists, and politicians argued that even discussing the rape gangs was an example of so-called “anti-Muslim hatred” or “Islamophobia”.

This, alongside Keir Starmer’s personal crusade to brand anybody who opposes mass immigration and supports a rape gang inquiry as “far right”, is precisely why so many local councils, police officers, and social workers deliberately shied away from investigating the scandal to begin with, because they feared being tainted with the “Islamophobic” or “racist” brush.

And this is not just about the rape gangs. The dodgy definition of “Islamophobia”, pushed forward by Labour, also suggests talking about the alleged “demographic threat” some people feel is posed to the West by Islam could also be “Islamophobic”.

So, what are we to make of the recent forecast that by the year 2100, only seventy-five years from now, roughly one in five people in the UK and potentially close to one in three young people, under the age of 40, will be following Islam? Are we not to debate these profound shifts because doing so might be considered “Islamophobic”?

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Britain in 2100. My exclusive presentation on the trends reshaping the nation

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In fact, the original definition backed by Labour specifically says discussing “conspiracies about Muslim entryism in politics, government, or other societal institutions” could be considered “Islamophobic”, too.

So, again, what about pointing to the negative effects of these changes that we can already see emerging, such as the rise of sectarian Muslim MPs in Westminster who appear to spend more time focusing on what is happening in Gaza, or campaigning for a new airport in Pakistan, than wanting to fix problems here in Britain?

Or what about people wanting to express their concern about the fact, as surveys show, that 40% of British Muslims would support a “Muslim-only” party, while one-third would back the imposition of a parallel Sharia legal system in Britain?

Won’t public officials and citizens now also be warned off discussing all this because of fears they might also be branded “Islamophobic”, much like those early brave officials who called out the rape gangs were decades ago?

The key point is that what all this is pushing us into is a dark, Orwellian world where we will increasingly be unable to criticise Islam, or point to negative changes that are happening within our society because of these surrounding demographic shifts.

Look, too, at how the freedom to criticise Islam is being restricted through the case of Hamit Coskun, a man who burned a Koran and was found guilty of committing a “racially aggravated public order offence” during what was a peaceful protest.

In this case, the Public Order Act was essentially used to crack down on legitimate protest and criticism of Islam, reviving blasphemy laws and undermining the notion, long central in our culture and way of life, that no religion is above the law.

Though nobody in Westminster ever talks about it, you might remember, too, that we still have a schoolteacher in this country, from Batley, in hiding after he happened to upset local Muslims by showing a picture they happened to find “offensive”.

I wonder if this was on JD Vance’s mind when he recently had to sit and listen to Keir Starmer assure America “there is no free speech problem” in Britain.

Clearly, the war on free speech isn’t just about this dodgy definition of Islamophobia; it’s also about the proliferation of hate laws and so-called ‘non-crime hate incidents’, which are used to suppress free speech by encouraging people to report their fellow citizens to the police when they perceive their ‘protected characteristics’, such as their religion, race, or sexual orientation, to have been “offended” in some way.

Think I’m exaggerating?

Since 2014, the Free Speech Union estimates more than 200,000 of these dystopian measures have been logged by the authorities.

And it’s about how terms such as “far right” and “Islamophobia” are now being inflated and expanded by the ruling class to such an extent they have not only become utterly meaningless but are used to shut down debate and discredit anybody who challenges failing policies like mass uncontrolled immigration, our broken borders, and, as we saw earlier this year, the Pakistani Muslim rape gangs.

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No. It is not "far right" to care about the mass rape of young white children

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This is why I support the suggestion, from Policy Exchange, that all government activity on “Islamophobia” now be paused until the forthcoming national inquiry into the rape gangs has concluded, at which point we will be able to see, fully, what damage these efforts to police our language have really done.

These islands used to be the home of free speech, free expression and individual liberty. They were a place where people could join together and debate what is happening in their country, even if this risked offending others.

But increasingly, today, we are ruled by people who can sense their grip on power is weakening and under threat and so they are using whatever is at their disposal to try and control and curtail the national conversation, narrowing the parameters of what is considered acceptable and legitimate to discuss.

I don’t know about you but this is neither the Britain I recognise nor the kind of country I want to live in. If the rape gang scandal has taught us anything then it is that we must strongly and openly reject all these speech codes and get back, fast, to the traditions of free speech and free expression that encourage people to speak up, not stay silent, when they see an obvious injustice.

I would like to think Keir Starmer and Labour have finally grasped this basic lesson but given the events this week it seems they have not learned anything at all.

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