"Immortality doesn't lie in eternal life, but in the Iegacy of our actions, that will live on in the memory and in the hearts of others."
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I have seen many ugly things on social media. But after the murder of Charlie Kirk, something new and disturbing appeared.
My feed was filled with people celebrating his death with grotesque glee.
Videos of Kirk were chopped, twisted and repurposed by users, making him appear to say things he never said – all to justify their hate.
Influencers and Left-wing ‘journalists’ joked about the father-of-two’s assassination, reducing his death to a sinister meme.
This is not just cruelty. It is the normalisation of violence against those who dare to think differently. A culture that cheers when opponents are silenced by force is one that is heading towards catastrophe.
Yes, Kirk’s murder is a personal tragedy for those who knew him.
But it is also an attack on everything Western civilisation stands for: free debate, peaceful dissent and the ability to speak the truth even when others find it offensive.
The assassination alone will have a chilling effect on free speech – and not just in America.
In Britain we may not have the menace of guns, but we face the same threat from Leftist activists trying to silence and persecute their political opponents. And, chillingly, our rulers are following their lead.
Take Graham Linehan, the comedian and writer who gave us Father Ted and who was arrested by five armed officers at Heathrow airport last month for three tweets challenging the presence of males in women’s changing rooms.
He had made no threats. He broke no moral code. He said what millions of ordinary people believe.
Yet the thought police came for him, because someone disagreed with Linehan’s belief that men cannot be women and called them in. That should terrify anyone who values living in a free country.
There are several ways in which free speech is being eroded in Britain, and the @Conservatives are going to fix them all. Two of them stand out.
First is the criminalisation of speech. Laws meant to prevent harm are now being used to police people’s own opinions. Offending someone has effectively been turned into a crime. That is wrong.
Second is politicised policing. Real and appalling crimes – like shoplifting, burglaries and rape – are going unsolved, yet police are being sent after comedians like Linehan for what they post online.
Justice is being twisted into a weapon against ordinary people while violent offenders and abusers walk free.
At a time when bakeries are locking up sausage rolls for fear of theft, this is a waste of police time and a betrayal of voters who expect officers to protect public safety rather than for them to arbitrate on personal disputes.
Of course, what happened to Charlie Kirk and to Graham Linehan are on different scales. But both are symptoms of the same sickness: a culture that seeks to silence, not debate.
Worse, we have a government that sneers at those who dare raise the alarm about the erosion of free speech.
That is why I have asked Lord Young, founder of the Free Speech Union, to lead a review into the laws now being abused to stifle expression.
He will bring together the sharpest legal minds, parliamentarians and campaigners to identify where reform is needed.
Because this is bigger than one case – free speech is the foundation of democracy. Without it, there is no accountability, no creativity, no freedom.
I have never flinched from that fight. As equalities minister, I challenged Stonewall’s attempts to rewrite the law, defended academic freedom and said what too many feared to say: there is no right not to be offended. Protecting people from satire or criticism is not the job of the state.
Charlie Kirk paid the ultimate price for expressing his beliefs. And Graham Linehan is being dragged through the courts for sharing his.
Free speech is not negotiable. It is the bedrock of a free nation and one of the values true liberals and true conservatives share.
It is now the duty of all of us to defend it.