Keir Starmer warned of 'free speech crisis' as 'Orwellian' policing sparks Nigel Farage crackdown: 'Farce!'

Addressing US Congress, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage compared Labour’s Britain to "North Korea" in how it polices free speech.

Mr Farage said: "At what point did we become North Korea? This is a genuinely worrying, concerning and shocking situation."

Warning of a "long-running encroachment of free speech" by Labour, Mr Slater explained: "What Keir Starmer's kind of presiding over here is a long-running encroachment on freedom of speech.

"Yes, laws have changed in recent years, most recently with the Online Safety Act, which on top of kind of piling pressure on social media companies to censor, also introduced new offences around false communications and so on."

He added: "But I think the problem is the politicians have basically been looking the other way as police officers and as police forces across the country have not only been enforcing the laws as they are, but kind of wildly over interpreting them.

"The number of times that you see cases where police officers are quoting offences that don't exist to people, where they're taking it upon themselves to basically adjudicate social media debates."

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:

• Politics LIVE: Nigel Farage compares Labour’s Britain to North Korea in blistering attack on Keir Starmer over free speech during US Congress address
• Nigel Farage to expose Keir Starmer's 'war on freedom' to America in dire free speech warning
• Wes Streeting opens door to law change after Graham Linehan arrest: ‘It’s on us to sort out’

As host Nana Akua highlighted the most recent cases of policing free speech involving Lucy Connolly and Graham Linehan, Mr Slater stressed that these are not "isolated cases".

He said: "It really wouldn't surprise me if this particular case against Graham Linehan doesn't end up getting to the point of prosecution, because the police were once again slightly over their skis. So there's a lot of blame to go around here.

"If the Graham Linen case was an isolated incident, that would be one thing, we all know that it isn't. There's also more than 30 arrests that are happening a day, at least in England and Wales, for offensive things that people post on the internet."

Criticising Britain's justice system with policing non-crime hate incidents, Mr Slater told GB News that the country has gone in "completely the wrong direction".

He said: "We in Britain and much of Europe have gone in completely the opposite direction via this experiment, primarily with policing hate, with policing hate speech, and what began with the best of intentions of trying to protect people from violence or kind of extreme demonisation, has become a farce.

"And I think the fact that even Labour having to admit that was pretty telling. I think we need to rip up much of what is there, we need to look at the Public Order Act and incitement to religious and racial hatred, I think those things should go."

Mr Slater concluded: "But very finely, I would say that the police have a lot of the blame here as well. They have been wildly open for interpreting those laws, things like non-crime hate incidents is basically a creation of the College of Policing, this very Orwellian collecting of non-crime incidents by the police.

"So there's a lot of blame to go around, but let's hopefully make this the start of a discussion as to how we clear up this mess."