Posted on 01/01/2025 6:56:36 AM PST by MtnClimber
As a free-speech campaigner, I was deeply alarmed by the prospect of a Labour government. But it turns out, I wasn’t nearly worried enough.
The unrelenting assault on this essential human right since Sir Keir Starmer entered Downing Street in July has shocked even the most jaundiced of observers. Who could have predicted this time last year that scores of people would be prosecuted for offensive speech on social media following a brutal knife attack? That two police officers would turn up at the door of an award-winning journalist on Remembrance Sunday to interview her about a year-old tweet that she’d deleted within hours? That Britain’s record on freedom of expression would be so bad that it has turned us into a global laughing stock? All of which means that when speculating about what will become of free speech in 2025, we should assume the worst.
Let’s start with the threats already in the pipeline. The Employment Rights Bill, which will almost certainly receive royal assent next year, contains a clause that will extend employers’ liability under the Equality Act to third-party harassment – ie, the harassment of employees by customers and the like. That means that owners of pubs, bars, restaurants, hotels, sports stadia, concert venues, etc, will have a legal obligation to take ‘all reasonable steps’ to protect their employees from ‘harassment’ by anyone they come into contact with in the course of doing their jobs.
When you bear in mind that under the Equality Act ‘harassment’ includes overheard conversations that might upset or offend someone with a protected characteristic, the implications of this are deeply sinister. Pubs will have to employ ‘banter bouncers’ to police the conversations of customers to make sure no one is saying anything risqué that could be overheard by a member of staff. Hotels will have to stop anyone entering the lobby wearing a ‘Woman: Adult Human Female’ t-shirt. Football clubs will have to ban anyone who shouts ‘Are you blind?’ at a linesman, in case they’re overheard by a partially sighted steward. In short, the chilling effect that the Equality Act has had on workplaces, in which everyone is constantly looking over their shoulder to make sure they’re not overheard, will be extended to every area of our lives.
Then there’s the Football Governance Bill, another piece of legislation bound to go through next year. It includes several clauses that will require football clubs to promote equality, diversity and inclusion even more aggressively than they do at present. When you consider that Newcastle FC has already given a gender-critical feminist a two-season ban for saying on X that she doesn’t think transwomen are women, the mind boggles.
We already have Kick It Out and Rainbow Laces. Stonewall hovers over every boardroom in the Premier League. Not long ago, footballers would religiously take the knee before each match. Does the Labour government want fans to produce a certificate proving they’ve had unconscious-bias training before being allowed into a stadium? In future, when visiting fans at the Emirates chant ‘Is this a library?’, Arsenal supporters will be able to point to Sir Keir in his executive box and then put their fingers to their lips. If Starmer has his way, every stadium in the country will be a library.
Labour also promised a ‘full trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices’ in its manifesto and it’s a racing certainty that this will happen in 2025 as well. What does that mean, given that what’s commonly thought of as ‘conversion therapy’ is already illegal in Britain and, in any event, all but disappeared about 25 years ago? The answer is that Labour wants to criminalise parents and health professionals who deviate in any way from the ‘gender-affirming care’ approach, whereby any adolescent suffering from gender confusion is encouraged to embark on an irreversible medical pathway rather than pause and reflect, or undergo a course of psychotherapy....SNIP
Trump’s elections and his stated policies (which hopefully he will keep) will make for a stark contrast with what’s going on in the insane “woke” countries around the world (Europe, Canada, Australia, etc) and hopefully will wake up the rest of the world as to which system is better.
Today the fight is no longer between communism and capitalism, it’s between sanity and insanity.
And I’m sure that sooner than later reality (sanity) will get its revenge!
“The answer is that Labour wants to criminalise parents and health professionals who deviate in any way from the ‘gender-affirming care’ approach,”
That’s already the case here in California!
The question that keeps recurring to me is this - how have such a small minority of delusionals managed to gain so much power as to compel by law their delusions on everyone?
That pedulum could take 4 years to swing. I don’t see a successful no confidence vote given the parliamentary numbers that exist now.
Several notes: (1) Get a haircut, you look like King Crusty the Clown.
(2) In “Central” Europe? Does the UK consider the former Soviet Union to be “Central”? Ukraine is the easternmost nation that is entirely in Europe.
(3) I’ve always worried that the monarchs of England identify their own city as the New Jerusalem and by doing so deify themselves (see King Henry VIII). And he moves on to suggest that loving people means indulging their false belief rather than merely tolerating them. But aside from that, his Christ-in-Christmas message is present and solid: “As the famous Christmas Carol, ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ reminds us, ‘Our Saviour holy’ ‘came down to Earth from Heaven’, lived among ‘the poor and mean and lowly’ and transformed the lives of those he met, through God’s ‘redeeming love’.”
You may be correct. But I’m not sure the UK can recover if it takes 4 years for the pendulum to swing.
“ Starmtrooper lacks a mandate in the most fundamental way; he governs only because the opposition was deeply divided in first-past-the-post elections. He won an utterly enormous parliamentary majority with only 33% of the vote, and his party’s support is already down massively since then.”
We had an election like that in 1860. Lincoln won with only 39.7% of the vote, taking only the North, with the South being divided into three parties.
The Civil War started shortly afterwards.
The King’s address started out with Bible verses and quickly moved to diversity and you gotta love all the hordes. Yeah it was quite a christmas treat.
He also said something along these lines:
US reporter: In the US we have free speech anyone can call the President a total idiot without fear of punishment.
Russian person on the street: We have that here in the USSR. Anyone can call the US president a total idiot with out fear of punishment.
The UK is gone. Wokeness has crippled it, but middle-eastern followers of the death cult will deal the UK’s final blow.
Wow, I’m talking about British politics, and you manage to find a way to shoehorn loser-insurrectionist whining from the 1860s? Or am I misreading you?
And what argument exactly are you making? That whenever multiple parties prevent a majority, you can just go on a rampage and kill a few hundred thousand people to defend your right to enslave and brutalize millions of people?
My entire point was that Starmer didn’t have a mandate; Lincoln is to this day slandered as NOT having been anti-slavery ENOUGH precisely because he didn’t think he had a mandate to ban slavery.
He will stay in power until 2029. The only way he steps down if King Charles or Prince William demands him to resign. That won't happen because they won't get involved.
They still have the “reserved royal powers” to dismiss the government. They won’t use them. One could say this situation is why those powers still exist.
Elizabeth II was probably the last Monarch who was willing to do that. The current Royal Family is a bunch of actors and they don't really believe in the institution.
You are likely right!
That’s your opinion. I think it is wrong.
These examples illustrate that prime ministers can be forced to leave office due to party dynamics, loss of parliamentary confidence, health reasons, or other exceptional circumstances without being directly voted out in a general election.
- Neville Chamberlain (1940)
Reason: Resigned after losing confidence within his own party.
Chamberlain's handling of World War II and the German invasion of Norway led to pressure within the Conservative Party for him to step down. He was succeeded by Winston Churchill.
- Anthony Eden (1957)
Reason: Resigned due to ill health and political fallout from the Suez Crisis.
Eden’s handling of the Suez Crisis damaged his reputation, and he resigned shortly afterward.
- Harold Macmillan (1963)
Reason: Resigned citing ill health, though also under political pressure.
Macmillan faced growing unpopularity and internal party discontent in the wake of the Profumo scandal.
- Margaret Thatcher (1990)
Reason: Forced out by her party.
After a leadership challenge and losing support from her cabinet and MPs, Thatcher resigned as prime minister and Conservative Party leader.
- Tony Blair (2007)
Reason: Stepped down due to internal party agreement. Blair faced growing pressure from within the Labour Party to hand over leadership to Gordon Brown, which he eventually did.
- Theresa May (2019)
Reason: Resigned after failing to deliver Brexit. May lost support within her party due to her inability to pass her Brexit deal and stepped down as Conservative leader.
- Boris Johnson (2022)
Reason: Resigned after losing party support. Johnson faced a wave of ministerial resignations and lost confidence within his party following numerous scandals, including Partygate.
Just my humble opinion, of course, but Starmer is an abject Woke loser who will go the way of Kamala Harris on this side of the pond.
Interesting, all the PMs you've pointed out were Conservative except for Tony Blair. Blair was well-known for his "Third Way" politics, he wasn't a traditional Labour Party Politician.
And?
Conservatives are less likely to support their PM in a crisis.
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