Free speech isn’t a one-sided conversation

I AM pleased to say that Toby Young, founder of the Free Speech Union, has protested against the creepy sanctioning, without any sort of trial, of the unlovable video-blogger Graham Phillips.

Mr Phillips’s reports from the Ukraine front, which don’t follow the widely accepted view, have annoyed the Government. Toby points to the danger here, saying that the same punishment without trial ‘could easily be applied to another video-blogger who is a thorn in the side of one of our allies – Saudi Arabia, for instance – making it a sinister precedent. Indeed, had Jeremy Corbyn won the last General Election and frozen the assets of a dubious journalist taking sides against a Communist country he had declared an ally, such as Cuba, we’d be justifiably outraged’.

Toby has grasped that if you go around claiming to be in favour of free speech – as so many do these days – then you are in favour of it for people you don’t like, saying things you may even hate. A lot of prominent people produce a lot of wind on the subject, especially in the transgender and woke wars, but until they condemn the sanctioning of Mr Phillips, they aren’t in favour of free speech at all.