Reacting to reports that the White House “is considering offering political asylum to British ‘thought criminals’,” free speech advocates say the consideration is a “damning indictment of the state of free speech in the UK”.
The Free Speech Union was responding to a report in The Telegraph which said the Trump administration “is exploring the possibility of extending refugee status to free speech activists who have been prosecuted for their words or for taking part in silent protests outside abortion clinics”.
The censoring of pro-life campaigners Livia Tossici-Bolt and Adam Smith Connor raised particular concerns among the president’s key allies. “There are some people inside the administration that are actively scouting for cases,” a source with knowledge of the decision making said.
“That the United States—our closest ally—is even contemplating asylum for British citizens is a damning indictment of the state of free speech in the UK. It also undermines the Prime Minister’s hollow claim that there is no free speech crisis in this country,” the Free Speech Union (FSU) said.
“This is the latest sign of concern from the Trump administration regarding the decline of free speech in the UK. In March, Vice President JD Vance expressed his personal alarm about the free speech crisis engulfing the UK—and Europe more broadly—during the Munich Security Conference. The criticism has since continued in quick succession,” they added.
“Over the past year, several egregious free speech cases have caught the attention of our American allies. Among them is the case of Lucy Connolly, which Nigel Farage MP highlighted before the US House Judiciary Committee in September,” the FSU said.
“Another notable case is that of Father Ted creator and US resident Graham Linehan, who was arrested upon landing at Heathrow Airport over three gender-critical tweets,” the free speech advocates pointed out.
“It is worth noting that since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, his administration has drastically reduced refugee admissions,” they added.
“This latest development follows another troubling report: the White House is reportedly considering revoking the visa of the Chief Executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a censorship-focused organisation founded by the embattled Chief of Staff to Sir Keir Starmer.”
“A major concern for the Republican president and his team is the treatment of pro-life campaigners. Their concern is significant enough that the administration sent US state officials to London in March in an effort to “affirm the importance of freedom of speech in the UK and across Europe”, FSU said.
“At the start of the year, free speech became a major point of contention in trade deal discussions between the UK and US. The case of Ms. Tossici-Bolt particularly alarmed the Trump administration; she was prosecuted for holding a sign near a Bournemouth abortion clinic that read: “Here to talk if you want”. ”
“The government must get a grip on the erosion of free speech in the UK. Britain is beginning to look like a joke on the world stage—both to allies and adversaries.”
Earlier this year, British Prime Minister Kier Starmer denied any free speech crisis, saying that the UK “fiercely” protects free speech, but that a limit needed to be imposed when speech was used to incite real harm to children and vulnerable people.
“Free speech is one of the founding values of the United Kingdom, and we protect it jealously and fiercely and always will,” Starmer told reporters. “I draw a limit between free speech and the speech of those that want to peddle paedophilia and suicide (on) social media to children,” he said.
However, free speech advocates say that accusations of hate speech are used to dampen debate and silence critics.
“Our definitions of what constitutes hate speech, and I think a very broadened definition of what constitutes harm, is meaning that people feel like they are walking on eggshells and they’re frightened – not just that they’ll have the police around, but that they’ll be cancelled if they say the wrong thing,” Baroness Claire Fox told the BBC’s The World Tonight earlier this year.
The Trump administration has, in turn, been accused of supressing speech, with the International Bar Association writing in May that the federal government had been “weaponised” to “suppress speech” and punish the President’s adversaries.
“In what many experts have challenged as a violation of First Amendment rights, a cornerstone of US democracy, President Trump has threatened protestors, banned news outlets from covering White House events and used executive orders to sanction law firms who he believes attacked him unfairly in the past. Subsequent court cases will test America’s most fundamental checks and balances on executive power,” the IBA said.