Delay drives home free speech threat

IMAY be massively disappointed with the way Boris Johnson has handled both Brexit and Covid, with his endless flip- flop and chaos, with the internecine strife in Downing Street and with his abysmal failure to take any stand on free speech but I do still believe that at heart he is a libertarian and reject utterly the conspiracy theories that he is a totalitarian, who is using Covid- 19 to assert greater state control over our lives.

Nevertheless, one of the biggest threats yet to the liberty of the individual is hovering on the horizon and Boris is silent. The Law Commission proposes that people be prosecuted for hate speech uttered in their own homes.

Many of us would argue that hate laws have already gone too far without spying on dinner table conversation.

In every other branch of the law intention is a major consideration. If you kill unintentionally the charge will be manslaughter, not murder. If you accidentally pick up somebody else’s handbag instead of your own, you will not be charged with theft.

In the case of hate law, however, if the victim thinks your motivation was racist or homophobic or sexist, then that is enough to make it so in the eyes of the law.

UNTIL now, what we do and say in our homes has been our own business unless we are breaking other laws such as plotting a criminal enterprise or an act of terrorism. Privately expressed views, carelessly- phrased statements or arguments concern the police only in states such as North Korea or China. “I think it but these days you cannot say that,” is all too common a statement in the workplace, in pub discussions, at the school gate.

RIP free speech and now it is solemnly proposed that the one place in which you could say anything you liked, your very home, might as well be bugged by the Kremlin. The Prime Minister should have repudiated the suggestion the moment it was published. Why didn’t he?