Can Free Speech Survive Kier Starmer?

That’s Debatable!’ is the weekly podcast of the Free Speech Union. Hosts Tom Harris and Jan MacVarish – both staffers at the FSU – talk about the free speech controversies that have erupted in the past week. Please like, subscribe and share.

Happy New Year to all our listeners and viewers!

We were immensely proud to see both Toby Young and our Chair, Professor Nigel Biggar, in the New Years honours list – an achievement that’s in no small part thanks to the sustained support of all the members and supporters of the FSU over our nearly five years of operation.

Tuesday 7th January is the tenth anniversary of the ‘Charlie Hebdo’ massacre in Paris during which 12 people were murdered. France 24 reported on the anniversary last week, “Since its founding in 1970, [Charlie Hebdo] has regularly tested the boundaries of French hate-speech laws, which offer protection to minorities but allow for blasphemy and the mockery of religion”. The article continues, “’The idea is not to publish anything, it's to publish everything that makes people doubt, brings them to reflect, to ask questions, to not end up closed in by ideology’, director Riss, who survived the 2015 attack, told Le Monde in November”. Jan was on GB News discussing the anniversary on Sunday and in today’s discussion we think about how depictions of the Prophet Muhammed are frequently dismissed as ‘unwise’ – a recent example being the response of Labour Party advisor Mike Buckley to the Batley Grammar school incident of 2021.

To mark the new year, Toby Young has written a piece in Spiked listing the multiple free speech threats from Sir Keir Starmer’s government. His list includes the looming Employment Rights Bill, the Football Governance Bill and Yvette Cooper’s stated aim to lower the threshold for the recording of non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs).

FSU statistics to the end of 2024 are hot of the press and they show how the FSU has grown from 12,275 at year-end 2023 to 24,279 on at year-end 2024 – an increase of 97.8%. Meanwhile, on the case work side of the house, we have assisted approximately 3,300 individuals since our creation, 640 (or nearly a fifth) of whom reached out to us during the second half of 2024.

Finally, we are delighted to have the opportunity to host a farewell event for Graham Linehan before he heads to the USA to work with Andrew Doyle on a new sitcom. Tickets are on sale at our events page from Tuesday 7th January.

Edited by Jason Clift

[henrycastle]

❤ Great work
Toms face when Charlie Hebdo section starts
Congratulations Toby, Douglas and Jason for the write up in the description

[chimera]

People are now drawing pictures of ‘you know who’ on twitter. Also posting cartoons. Good for them!

[theorganizer]

They're attacking the beautiful game! Is nothing sacred?

[justsomestranger]

Even if (for the sake of argument) Charlie Hebdo was in some way promoting hate speech by satirising aspects of Islamic rules & philosophy, it can never be moral to argue that the people behind Charlie Hebdo deserved to pay for such "hate speech" with their lives

These people had families who will now have to live on without them, all because some people couldn't deal with how angry they were at their faith & world views being mocked