Free speech to get legal supremacy, says Dominic Raab as he unveils plan to stop democratic debate being ‘whittled away by wokery’ in major victory over cancel culture

12 comments

  1. Ironically free speech is the kind of subject that gets put in censorship mode (“comments restricted”) on this sub but I thought this worth posting anyway.

  3. Oh great, I look forward to reminding them regularly how shit the British empire was. That won’t get pushed back on whatsoever

  4. So I’ll be able to threaten people? Incite a bit of terrorism? How about a bit of religious extremism? Discuss taking out parliament or the Queen?..

    Our laws already prohibit free speech, so he’s going to have to do a lot of backtracking on existing stuff.

    Or does he just mean the right to be a cunt to minority groups? In which case there’s already free speech, just not free of consequence.

  6. “Free Speech” is pretty poorly defined but the most common definition is the ability to “speak” (or write) without being censored by the Government.

    So it’s not clear what’s happening here as censoring people is one of the UK Government’s favourite things to do, they literally want to ban critiquing capitalism in schools.

    Raab does seem to reference this by saying there are subjects the Government WILL prosecute, but it’s not likely they’ll remove aforementioned bans on lesson plans, superinjunctions, overhaul the UK’s libel laws etc.

    And for fringe cases like the Count Dankula thing (no fan of his but that case was absurd) does this mean the prosecution service will be advised to ignore such cases? Or will it be “there’s a Bill of Rights, say what you want…” only for it to fail in court and be overridden by the Hate Speech clause

    More likely they’re trying a MUKGA playbook of mentioning American things like Trump did for an easy capture of that voter base.

  7. I wonder how this will effect their long held plans to censor the internet.

    Or do they just mean freedom of speech for those that agree with them I wonder.

  8. Fantastic, he’s getting rid of libel laws then. Means I can print and say whatever I want about the Prime Minister and his personal life – his mistresses, his vices, his crimes – without fear of prosecution.

  10. > Only this week, the creator of comedy series Father Ted Graham Linehan declared that he had been ‘thoroughly cancelled’ and that trans activists had cost him his family and his marriage.

    So the new law will force people to stay in a marriage with someone whose views they find abhorrent then?

  11. In the 1990s this would have been the policy of some lunatic right-wing fringe – the National Front, or British Movement. Now, in 2022, this kind of thinking is the actual approach of the government – unthinkable only 20 years ago that ministers would be whining about “too much attention on racial equality” or whatever they think “wokery” is.

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