The United Kingdom is a totalitarian hellscape. Freedom of speech has been all but abolished. Our police forces are now indistinguishable from the Gestapo. Criticism of the government will soon be illegal under imminent laws against thought crime. It will not be long before artists, political dissidents and other freethinkers will be rounded up and tossed into gulags\u2026<\/p>\n
Even with my love of melodrama, I cannot sustain such histrionics. While it\u2019s enjoyable to momentarily inhabit the caricature of the Andrew Doyle that exists in the minds of my detractors, the truth is far less exciting. On a recent appearance on the Jordan B. Peterson podcast<\/a>, I let it be known that I am leaving the United Kingdom to work with the actor and comedian Rob Schneider on a new production company called No Apologies Media. Some of my friends have assumed that I am flouncing away out of a desperate conviction that all is lost. The reality is a little more nuanced.<\/p>\n While I do not believe that we live under tyranny, there are serious threats to liberty that ought to be addressed. Many members of the ruling class have scant regard for freedom of speech, as evidenced by the existence of hate speech laws, the recording of \u201cnon-crime hate incidents\u201d, draconian jail terms meted out for offensive social media posts and continued calls for online censorship. These are not the hallmarks of an authentically free country, but one in which the authoritarian instinct has not been successfully tamed. As for the artistic industries, they are now similarly beholden to an ideology that demands self-censorship and punishes nonconformity. For creatives, this means finding ways to work within a system that is antagonistic to genuine free expression.<\/p>\n We often hear practitioners in the arts claiming that \u201ccancel culture is a myth\u201d and that \u201cnobody is being censored\u201d. This is an easy claim to make if your views are naturally in lockstep with the prevailing orthodoxies of the time, but it does suggest a degree of solipsism. The energy it must take to studiously ignore the continual stream of reported cases of artists being cancelled would be sufficient to keep the Large Hadron Collider running indefinitely.<\/p>\n Like many of those with unfashionable views, I have been dragged unexpectedly into the culture war. Whereas I once made my living solely from writing plays, musicals and performing stand-up comedy, in recent years I have found myself drawn to punditry. I have hosted a weekly show called Free Speech Nation on GB News for the last three years, written numerous articles and two books in defence of liberal values, and satirised the worst excesses of culture warriors through my satirical character Titania McGrath<\/a>.<\/p>\n But while I feel a compulsion to address the ongoing threats to free speech in our culture, and recognise the importance of challenging a journalistic monoculture, I do miss working in the creative field. It is my hope that relocating to Arizona to work with Rob will bring greater opportunities to focus on writing and producing comedy and drama. Rob\u2019s commitment to freedom of speech is absolute and uncompromising. Under the aegis of his new company, I\u2019ve already begun writing a sitcom with Graham Linehan and Martin Gourlay which we hope to be filming early next year. In addition, we have plans for other television projects with a focus on political and social commentary. This culture war isn\u2019t over yet.<\/p>\n It\u2019s quite the team. And it goes without saying that Graham is one of the foremost comedy writers of our times. If you ever find yourself in a conversation with someone who claims that cancel culture doesn\u2019t exist, it might be worth asking how it is that the creator of hit sitcoms such as Father Ted and The IT Crowd has been unable to work in the UK television industry for six years simply for airing his opinions. You won\u2019t get a coherent answer, but it\u2019ll be entertaining to watch the attempt.<\/p>\n For myself, I\u2019ve never been cancelled. One could even accuse me of finding a way to capitalise on my heterodox perspectives, given that much of my career has depended upon me expressing my views openly and satirising the intolerance of those who would rather I shut up. Yet isn\u2019t it strange that a commitment to freedom of speech, individual autonomy, and equal rights to all irrespective of immutable characteristics, should be considered \u201cheterodox\u201d at all?<\/p>\n