David Vance SubstackRead More
I was glad to see Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, testifying before the Republican-led US House Judiciary Committee in Washington yesterday. The hearing was entitled “Europe’s Threat to American Speech and Innovation,” and it focused on how European online censorship laws—particularly the UK’s Online Safety Act and the EU’s Digital Services Act – could and is impacting American free speech and tech innovation!
Farage rightly argued that the UK has “sunk into an awful authoritarian situation.” He claimed that the UK has abandoned a historic commitment to free expression—a value he traced back to British subjects who signed the American Declaration of Independence.
Nigel added the UK has “lost its way” by adopting a “European way of thinking” through laws like the Human Rights Act, which he said shifts rights from inherent liberties to state-granted privileges that can be revoked at will. Do recall it was Tony Blair who was responsible for that in 1998. He even invoked Voltaire’s principle: “We’ll fight and defend to the death your right to say something that we fundamentally disagree with,” calling it the “absolute foundation” of free speech.
And as if to underline his point and as I reported here yesterday, Irish Citizen Graham Linehan was arrested at Heathrow Airport for social media posts he made IN AMERICA! The outcry has been so intense over this one that UK PM Starmer and the Metropolitan Police have been furiously backpedaling on it but Farage is right – Free Speech around the world is under threat by this UK-EU authoritarianism!
The UK political establishment is very unhappy about Farage exposing these truths and the attack line is to claim he is “talking down” the UK. But this is inversion – he is exposing the reality that the UK and EU want suppressed.
Farage compared the UK’s trajectory to North Korea, asking, “At what point did we become North Korea?” He positioned his testimony as a warning to Americans: “Don’t allow, piece by piece, this to happen here,” emphasising that suppressing speech harms freedom-loving people worldwide.
The US has the power to punish those around the world who threaten free speech and nowhere is this more prevalent than in Downing Street and Brussels.
I don’t always agree with Farage but he is absolutely spot on in this instance.
PS. Nigel Farage’s own commitment to free speech does not extend to allowing any Reform Councillor to say anything positive about Tommy Robinson without fear of suspension.
