As an Anglo-Scot, I had a dog in the fight that was the Scottish independence referendum 12 years ago. I was a visceral opponent of the dismemberment of the United Kingdom, which, I believed, would damage everyone in the British and Irish Isles. As the UK’s ambassador to the UN in 2014 put it, ‘it […]
Below is a speech incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham could give – one that would unite the country around a shared vision of prosperity. Prosperity for All My fellow citizens, Today, as I stand before you as your Prime Minister, I want to cut through the political noise and give you the unvarnished truth about […]
After 17 months of drift following the Government’s January 2025 reset of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, the free speech complaints scheme administered by the Office for Students (OfS) is at last going ahead. The Government has now signed the commencement regulations needed to bring the scheme into force. From 1 September […]
Over the past year, my pastime has been defending Americans from Ofcom, the UK’s internet censorship agency, while parrying demands from regulators in Australia, the EU and Brazil. Most readers will know about this work because of a cartoon hamster. That hamster, sent in a letter to Ofcom on behalf of my client 4chan, illustrated […]
Keir Starmer has announced the most un-British of proposals. Despite mandatory ID schemes having been rejected at every attempt to introduce them since 1950, Labour will require every adult in the UK to use a state-mandated digital ID to prove their identity. It is central to the British liberal tradition that those who live in […]
Today’s censors wield cudgels with the word ‘information’. Content they don’t like they call ‘misinformation’ or ‘disinformation’. The justification is fake. The protection is faux protection. Pretending to protect people from bad information by means of censorship may be called infaux thuggery. The cudgels are hidden, of course, but it is not hard to see […]
It is still early days for the Starmer Government, and at this stage, we can only really judge it on the basis of vibes rather than specific policies. But with that caveat in mind, it already looks as though, from a classical liberal perspective, this administration is going to be very much a mixed bag. […]
Tragedies make for bad policy. The recent killing of three girls in Southport and the subsequent riots are not exceptions. Since the attack, riots and violent protests have taken place across England, with many participants chanting anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant slogans. Some of the rioters attacked hotels where asylum seekers were staying and we have seen […]
It would not be unreasonable to say that the last Labour government had a chequered history on civil liberties. What started with a Human Rights Act, designed to protect our rights and freedoms, ended with ID cards, the mass rollout of CCTV cameras, the introduction of new and punitive civil orders like ASBOs, attempts to […]
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