Free speech is clinging on in Wales, and it’s a joy to see that Welsh people are showing signs of rejecting Labour, the party that has dominated politics here for 26 years, but in the Senedd, free speech remains under threat.
In Wales, the Senedd’s Presiding Officer, who oversees proceedings like the Speaker in Westminster, is a Plaid Cymru politician.
Two years ago, she decided that GB News, watched by millions across the UK, was too “offensive” to be seen on the Senedd’s internal TV system.
Those TVs are watched by politicians who are there to represent the views of the people of Wales.
Of course, Plaid Cymru politicians rallied behind the Presiding Officer, offering full support for this decision.
The politicians who spend their days preaching diversity and inclusion, who want to make Wales a Nation of Sanctuary for asylum seekers, believe that diversity of opinion is a step too far.
Free speech is not a priority for them.
The reasoning given was that GB News did not represent “our parliament’s values”.
That phrase alone says it all. Whose values, exactly?
The taxpayers who fund it, or a small political class that cannot bear to hear an opinion they don’t share?
Let’s be clear: no one is being forced to watch GB News. Senedd Members can always change the channel. But the problem I have is with politicians being told they can’t watch it.
That’s censorship, plain and simple. It’s wrong. And the irony is clear for all to see.
GB News remains banned years later, while the BBC, our supposed guardian of impartiality, has just been caught doctoring footage of Donald Trump to make him look like he was urging violence.
In a Panorama documentary, the BBC spliced two separate lines from President Trump’s rally to make it appear he told supporters, “We’ll walk down to the Capitol… and we fight like hell,” as if it were one continuous call to arms.
What they cut out, of course, was the part where Trump urged supporters to protest “peacefully and patriotically”.
By banning GB News, the Welsh Parliament just signed its own death warrant at the ballot box - Gareth Davies | Getty ImagesAn egregious and disgraceful example of what many readers will consider an endemic problem with our supposedly impartial broadcaster.
It wasn’t just sloppy editing; it was blatant manipulation. It took whistleblowers, resignations and a public outcry for the BBC even to admit what had happened.
Yet, where’s the outcry from the Presiding Officer or her Plaid Cymru backers over that?
No one’s banning the BBC from the parliamentary TVs, even though it literally misled millions.
Don’t forget, the reasoning given for the GB News ban was over a single incident, so why hasn’t the BBC been banned here? Double standards, that’s why.
The evidence of bias at the BBC goes beyond the recent controversy. They have also come under fire in recent years for their slant on reporting on the conflict in Gaza, gender ideology, Net Zero and, of course, Brexit.
BBC Wales also has questions to answer. It is important that our national broadcaster is impartial and does not give the appearance of bias. Yet links to Plaid Cymru are rife, and its coverage of the party speaks for itself.
This is what makes the GB News ban so revealing. It’s not about accuracy or decency. It’s about control.
GB News is the only major UK broadcaster that consistently challenges consensus. It gives airtime to voices you rarely hear anywhere else.
Voices that question government groupthink, that stand up for ordinary people, that refuse to bow to fashionable orthodoxies.
That’s precisely why it’s growing. Millions watch, not because they agree with everything said, but because they finally hear something other than the bland echo of out-of-touch, metropolitan opinion.
From net zero timelines, to gender ideology, to Brexit “regret”, GB News offers a different discourse, robust debate and challenge.
Free speech doesn’t mean much if it only covers speech you approve of.
So we find ourselves in this absurd situation: the one channel willing to ask uncomfortable questions is banished from a supposedly democratic institution, while the one that misleads the public still pockets £3.8 billion in licence fees.
GB News offers open debate, ordinary people’s voices and holding the powerful to account. It’s precisely what the Senedd should be defending.
The Welsh Conservatives are clear: free speech trumps the feelings of politicians every single time.
In trying to silence GB News, left-wing politicians have proven exactly why GB News exists, because someone, somewhere, has to keep talking when those in power would rather we didn’t.
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