Britain is careening toward a chilling new normal where ordinary online posts can land citizens in custody and peaceful displays of patriotism are treated like public-order threats. Police forces are now making thousands of arrests every year for so-called “offensive” messages online, a staggering shift that turns words into criminal risks and hands the state broad discretion to silence dissent. This is not law enforcement protecting the public so much as bureaucratic speech policing, and it should alarm anyone who believes free debate is the oxygen of a free society.
Just this week, human-rights officials publicly urged a review of UK protest laws after arrests tied to the proscription of Palestine Action—many detentions reportedly stem from people displaying placards or voicing support at demonstrations, with authorities invoking terrorism legislation. When governments start using terrorism powers to police protest banners and placards, they cross a dangerous red line between public safety and political repression. Britain’s proud tradition of vigorous protest is being shrunk into an anxiety about content control, and that comes with a heavy cost to democratic legitimacy.
The state’s heavy hand shows up in high-profile cases as well: people who make threats or praise violence should face consequences, but the line between criminal conduct and mere offensive speech has become alarmingly thin. Courts recently sentenced a man to prison for a TikTok death threat against a public figure, underscoring that genuine threats are rightly punished while reminding us how social media can magnify both real danger and the temptation for overreach. The real problem is when the same machinery used to lock up violent offenders is repurposed to chill political expression that merely makes officials or activists uncomfortable.
At the same time, patriotic acts like the grassroots “raise the colours” flag campaign have been met with hysteria and calls to brand ordinary flag-hoisters as extremists, even as councils and media decide which expressions of national pride are acceptable. What began as citizens putting up flags to express love of country has been spun into evidence of far-right mobilization by some, and the result is selective enforcement that fuels resentment and erodes trust in institutions. If the state or media get to choose which nationalism is legit and which is dangerous, then freedom of cultural expression is dead in practice.
International watchdogs and civil-liberties groups are sounding alarms about the pattern: a raft of new laws and policing practices across Western democracies is making legitimate dissent riskier, while enforcement often appears politicized. When officials lean on vague speech statutes or counterterrorism tools to clamp down on protest or unpopular opinions, they hand power to unelected bureaucrats and give the powerful a weapon to silence critics. This trend should worry everyone who values constitutional norms and the old liberal principle that bad ideas are best countered with better arguments, not with arrest warrants.
Conservatives who cherish free speech must call out both genuine threats and the creeping, bureaucratic impulse to criminalize dissent. Defending free expression isn’t a partisan favor; it’s the only firewall against arbitrary state power—one that protects speech conservatives cherish as much as speech their opponents prefer. Britain’s slide offers a sobering lesson: once a government convinces itself that it can safely decide which speech is “dangerous,” liberty becomes the first casualty, and every citizen loses.