Free speech no longer exists in Britain

On Monday, five British police officers arrested a comedian at Heathrow Airport for his posts on X that trans "women" shouldn't be allowed in (real) women's bathrooms. Yes, that actually happened.

You can be forgiven for wondering if this story is fake. It isn’t.

On Monday, an Irish comedian named Graham Linehan was returning to Britain from the United States when five police officers arrested him at Heathrow Airport.

His crime: three posts on X about transgenderism from April. In one, Linehan wrote that a woman who found a transgender “woman” in a woman’s bathroom should call for help and “if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”

As he was being arrested, Linehan’s blood pressure soared and he was briefly hospitalized. He has now been released — on the condition that he not post on X.

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(Standing for free speech. In Europe and everywhere else.)

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The details of the arrest make the case even more disturbing.

Linehan wasn’t arrested because he randomly attracted the attention of police as his “crime” happened. Instead, he was taken into custody upon arrival at an international border crossing — for posts five months old.

In other words, this arrest was not an accident.

British authorities “investigated” this “crime” and decided Linehan had broken the law. Then they targeted him as if he were a dangerous criminal who needed to be brought into custody without warning, or the chance to hire a lawyer to represent himself.

Obviously, arresting someone without advance notice sometimes makes sense — if the target is armed and has a history of violence, say. Graham Linehan was getting off an airplane after a trans-Atlantic flight. Body odor was his most dangerous weapon.

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(Or maybe his teeth. Those are a bit of a crime against humanity.¹)

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British police did not dispute Linehan’s posts were the only reason they arrested him.

As a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police, the police department for London and its suburbs, explained, Linehan “was arrested on suspicion of inciting violence. This is in relation to posts on X.”

Linehan’s arrest has now sparked a backlash, led by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, who has battled transgender activists for years.

Yesterday, Rowling posted on X that the arrest was “totalitarianism. Utterly deporable.” Elon Musk quoted Rowling’s post and added that Britain had become a police state.

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But British police and lawmakers continue to defend Linehan’s arrest as proper under current British laws.

The commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Mark Rowley, said in a statement Wednesday that the arrest “was made within existing legislation - which dictates that a threat to punch someone from a protected group could be an offense.” Rowley added that the police “had reasonable grounds to believe an offence had been committed.”

Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, also did not criticize the arrest, saying only that it was “an operational matter for the police.”

Amazingly, Rowley appears to be correct. Linehan’s comment may well have been criminal based on Britain’s 2023 “Online Safety Act” law. The law criminalizes threats of “serious injury” even if the person who posted or sent a message doesn’t mean them seriously — as long as the sender has “recklessly” written something that “someone encountering the message will fear.”

Making matters worse, even the person who saw the “threat” and supposedly fears it doesn’t have to think that the poster intends to follow through on it. If anyone might carry it out, the sender may be guilty of “threatening communications.”

In other words, to violate the act, Linehan didn’t have to threaten to punch any specific transgender “woman.” He didn’t even have to write that he himself planned to punch anyone. He simply had to “recklessly” write something that might lead a transgender “woman” to “fear” being punched “in the balls”² by someone, somewhere.

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(See for yourself)

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Section 181 “has a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment, or a fine, or both.”

Yes, Linehan could theoretically face a half-decade in prison for writing that a woman in a bathroom who feels menaced by a transgender woman should “punch him in the balls.”

This is, for lack of a better word, insane.

Commissioner Rowley, at least, seems to understand as much.

Even though he defended the arrest and his officers, Rowley called for the law to be changed and said police “will be putting in place a more stringent triaging process to make sure only the most serious cases are taken forward in future – where there is a clear risk of harm or disorder."

But unless Starmer and the British government act, the law will remain on the books, even if (some) police will not enforce it.

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(Sanity. And free speech. For pennies a day. With your help.)

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And what is clear to police is not to the legacy media. The Associated Press managed to both-sides its piece on Linehan’s arrest, writing:

Supporters of Linehan say U.K. laws are stifling legitimate comment and creating what “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling –- like Linehan, a critic of trans activism –- called “totalitarianism.”

Others argue that online abuse and hate speech have real-world impact and police have a duty to take it seriously.

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Yes, some people say you should be allowed to make jokes, other people say you should be arrested for them, who are we to judge?

We’re just the Associated Press. It’s not like we’re journalists.

1. Cheap joke, but he’s a comedian, he’d appreciate it. I hope.

2. Assuming that being punched “in the balls” qualifies as a serious injury for a transgender “woman,” who presumably neither wants nor needs testicles anymore.