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
Except for Maggie, what passes for conservative in the UK is liberal in the U.S.
Keir will be gone before 2029.
Correct.
The Labour Party tends to support their PM, historically.
Correct. Time will tell.
The UK must decide, Is the UK Muslim or Christian?
If they decide in favor of Christianity, Starmer (a liberal and Muslim enabler) will be gone.
I believe there will be blood in the street (hat tip to Enoch Powell) before the decision is reached. And it will result in an expulsion of Islam.
If not, the UK will become the world's mortar and pestle of this Islam vs Christianity battle.
It's their decision to make. The Church of England is pretty much irrelevant now.
But no more. I am worried about them.
Ain’t that the truth. Damn shame too.
Hopefully, I'll get to go there one day. Like you, my ancestors are from there.
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