British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has seen his approval rating in the United Kingdom plunge to around 50 points underwater, boasted about his country&#8217;s decision to stay out of the conflict in Iran to a group of Muslims on Tuesday.
Starmer <a href="https://x.com/Suffragent_/status/2028949451490881950">spoke</a> to Muslims at a Ramadan ceremony held at Westminster Hall on Tuesday night and was applauded when he said, &#8220;On Iran, I want to make clear that the U.K. was not involved in the offensive strikes of the U.S. and Israel, and that remains the case.&#8221;
&#8220;As many of you know, I never supported the Iraq war back in 2003, and I&#8217;m determined that we learn and follow the lessons today,&#8221; he added. &#8220;However, Iran has attacked countries like us who played no role &#8230; the attacks are indiscriminate. And so what we are now doing is allowing our bases to be used for the defensive purposes of preventing those attacks and protecting innocent lives.&#8221;
After President Donald Trump authorized the U.S. military to conduct joint strikes with Israel on Iran last weekend, Starmer immediately <a href="https://x.com/Keir_Starmer/status/2027756559304966356">made clear</a> that while Iran &#8220;poses a direct threat&#8221; to many Brits, especially Iranian dissidents and Jewish people, the United Kingdom was not involved in the strikes targeting Iranian leaders, military infrastructure, and nuclear sites. Starmer also initially refused to allow American forces to use British bases to conduct strikes.
After Trump <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/02/uk-airbases-us-attack-iran-trump-starmer">ripped</a> Starmer over the refusal to grant the United States military permission to use U.K. bases, the prime minister backed down and allowed American forces to use the United Kingdom&#8217;s base in Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean. Trump said Britain &#8220;took far too long&#8221; to agree to the U.S. military&#8217;s request to operate out of Diego Garcia for &#8220;Operation Epic Fury.&#8221;
Trump argued that Britain should have been fully on board with the Iran strikes, saying that Iran has been responsible for killing a &#8220;lot of people from your country.&#8221;
Starmer&#8217;s remarks at the Ramadan ceremony on Tuesday were criticized by conservatives who have warned that Britain&#8217;s lax immigration policies are moving the country away from its traditional Western values, as scores of Muslim migrants have moved to London and the surrounding area in recent years. England&#8217;s Muslim population has jumped to around four million from less than three million in 2011. Muslims now make up around 6% of the United Kingdom&#8217;s total population.
England has also reportedly been a haven for Mojtaba Khamenei, the man poised to take over as Iran&#8217;s Supreme Leader following the death of his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Bloomberg <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-01-28/how-iran-supreme-leader-khamenei-s-son-built-a-global-property-empire">reported</a> in January that Mojtaba Khamenei is part of a vast Iranian network that has bought property throughout Europe, including &#8220;more than a dozen properties in London.&#8221;
Mojtaba Khamenei reportedly acquired the properties through Iranian businessman Ali Ansari, who has been sanctioned by the United Kingdom and the United States. One of Mojtaba Khamenei&#8217;s properties is on The Bishops Avenue, considered to be one of the most affluent streets in the world.
U.S. diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks in 2008 also <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/03/04/world-news/ayatollah-khameneis-son-now-tipped-to-be-supreme-leader-was-apparently-treated-for-impotency-in-uk-hospitals-report/">report</a> that Mojtaba Khamenei made multiple trips to London to receive medical treatment for impotence after struggling to conceive a child with his wife.

Keir Starmer

LONDON FALLEN: Keir Starmer Brags To Muslims That Brits Didn’t Help Strike Iran

Donald Trump

England

Iran

London

U.K.

When President Trump addresses the nation tonight, Jimmy Lai’s daughter, Claire Lai, will sit in the chamber as a reminder that the Chinese Communist Party is still punishing dissidents who dared to believe in freedom. Earlier this month, we learned of the <a href="http://google.com/search?q=jimmy+lai+sentence&amp;sca_esv=190a96a9d156750b&amp;rlz=1CAGZLV_enUS889&amp;tbm=nws&amp;sxsrf=ANbL-n4Gq5fmGsUjNbcnkqRKkx3Ey-n_Pw:1771015882615&amp;ei=yo6PafujJYSlqtsPu-XyiQc&amp;start=10&amp;sa=N&amp;ved=2ahUKEwj7sMykrNeSAxWEkmoFHbuyPHEQ8NMDegQIBhAW&amp;biw=1536&amp;bih=695&amp;dpr=1.25">near-life sentence</a> handed down to the Hong Kong democracy advocate. But Lai is not merely a symbol of Beijing’s repression. He is a British citizen. And if it takes an American president to elevate his cause before the world, it raises an uncomfortable question for Prime Minister Keir Starmer: what, exactly, is British citizenship worth?
Jimmy Lai’s life reads like a true rags-to-riches story. Born in mainland China, a 12-year-old Lai traveled by boat to what at the time was British Hong Kong with no money to his name. Finding work in the garment industry, Lai climbed his way up from the factory floor to achieve billionaire status. He could have rested on his laurels and gone quietly into retirement, but that is not who Jimmy Lai is.
Lai recognizes that his rise is thanks to the rights and freedoms Hong Kongers grew accustomed to, thanks to years as a British colony. Promising decades of autonomy and freedom under the handover, the CCP gradually whittled down the freedoms enjoyed in the city. Jimmy Lai refused to take these encroachments lying down, engaging in memorials of the Tiananmen Square Massacre and publishing pro-democracy content in the Apple Daily, the newspaper he founded. Therefore, it was no shock that Lai incurred the wrath of the CCP in the form of the National Security Law (NSL), under which he was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/10/hong-kong-media-tycoon-jimmy-lai-arrested-over-alleged-foreign-collusion#:~:text=%E2%80%9CToday%27s%20police%20action%20upends%20those,in%20protest%20against%20his%20arrest." target="_blank" rel="noopener">arrested</a> in 2020 for allegedly colluding with foreign forces.
Enter Keir Starmer, the British prime minister. While Starmer’s government has voiced opposition to Lai’s imprisonment, it has thus far been unsuccessful in securing Lai&#8217;s release. So why is the conviction of a Chinese citizen the business of Starmer or Great Britain in general? After all, a spokesman for the Chinese government <a href="https://www.bastillepost.com/global/article/5598459-jimmy-lai-should-be-severely-punished-by-law-spokesman">denounced</a> criticism of Lai’s conviction as interference in an internal affair. However, there are several reasons why this issue matters to the British Government.
First, Hong Kong is not just a former British colony — it is a city in which Britain has treaty obligations. As a signatory to the Sino-British Joint Declaration, the UK is responsible for ensuring that China fulfills its promise to allow autonomy in Hong Kong. For Jimmy Lai specifically, he is a British passport holder and therefore a British citizen. Keir Starmer is as responsible for Jimmy Lai’s safety as he is for any other British citizen unjustly detained abroad.
Jimmy Lai is not the only British citizen being held in a foreign prison. Estimates are that there are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/24/its-about-political-will-is-the-foreign-office-failing-britons-detained-abroad">thousands of Brits</a> detained or arrested in foreign countries. Jagtar Singh Johal has been imprisoned in India since 2017 after he confessed to involvement in a murder after police tortured a confession out of him. Every day that Jimmy Lai, Jagtar Singh Johal, and many others sit in prison is a day that Starmer is failing his citizenry.
What can Starmer do to help people like Jimmy Lai? For starters, he can stop treating the Chinese government like a friendly nation. The Jimmy Lai conviction is one of many examples where Starmer has been soft on China. His recent visit to Beijing <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2j04lk83zo">focused</a> on trade and tourism, but Starmer claims that he <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15543421/Keir-Starmer-accused-monumental-diplomatic-failure-China-jails.html">raised</a> the issue of Lai’s release when he was in China. This casual approach isn’t going to cut it. Unjust imprisonment is not some tertiary issue in diplomacy. What good are reduced tariffs on whiskey if British citizens aren’t safe when they travel to China?
If Keir Starmer wants to free Jimmy Lai and the other dissidents in Hong Kong, he needs to get tough on the Chinese government. First, trade negotiations need to stop until Lai is released from prison. The UK is failing its obligations to Hong Kong; now is the time to change course. Second, Starmer needs to shut down the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/20/world/europe/chinese-embassy-london-starmer.html">Chinese mega-embassy</a> project in London. Not only does the mega-embassy put critical communication cables at risk, but its construction will also allow the CCP to expand the transnational repression of other Hong Kong democracy advocates living in London. If Britain can’t protect its citizens abroad, the very least it can do is protect them on British territory.
Keir Starmer’s tenure at 10 Downing Street has been a disaster for a <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-epstein-files-threaten-to-topple-keir-starmers-labour-government/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">variety of reasons</a>, but his handling of the Jimmy Lai arrest only adds fuel to the fire. While Starmer’s days as PM might be limited, he can right this wrong if he acts quickly. By securing Jimmy Lai&#8217;s freedom, Keir Starmer will establish Britain’s diplomatic influence and potentially serve as a deterrent to other regimes hoping to illegally detain British citizens.
* * *
<a href="https://www.joinyv.org/talent/matthew-cookson" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Matt Cookson</a> is an alumnus of the Young Voices Contributor Program and was a Middle East History and Policy Fellow with Young Voices. He also works in the supply chain for a U.S. Defense Contractor. His commentary has appeared in the Mises Institute, Real Clear Politics, the National Interest, Providence Magazine, China Source, and the Idaho Freedom Foundation. You can follow him on X @<a href="https://x.com/MattCookson95" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MattCookson95</a> and Substack @<a href="https://substack.com/@thewaythecookiecrumbles?utm_source=user-menu" target="_blank" rel="noopener">thewaythecookiecrumbles</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Activists In L.A. Rally Outside Chinese Consulate For Imprisoned Hong Kong Media Entrepreneur Jimmy Lai

As Jimmy Lai’s Daughter Attends Trump’s Address, Britain Faces An Uncomfortable Question

China

Great Britain

Hong Kong

Jimmy Lai

Prison

State of the Union

United Kingdom

The following is an edited transcript excerpt from <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1917-assassin-storms-mar-a-lago-to-try-to-kill-president-trump">The Michael Knowles Show</a>.
* * *
One of the most common talking points you hear from the Left — and you’re going to hear it a lot heading into the midterms — is that America has terrible health care. We’re told that every civilized country in the world has universal, socialized medicine, and that we’re backward, retrograde, clinging to some barbaric capitalist system while enlightened Europeans enjoy cradle-to-grave care.
You hear it constantly: America is a disgrace. We need socialized medicine.
Now, before we go any further, let’s acknowledge something the Left rarely does: we already have a substantial amount of socialized medicine in this country. We have it for illegal aliens. We have it for the very poor. We have it for the elderly through Medicare. We have a massive social safety net.
But here’s the part they leave out: the only reason any of that works at all is because it’s sitting on top of a heavily capitalist health care system that funds the entire apparatus. The “free” part only functions because something productive underneath it is paying the bills.
Still, we’re told we should scrap the whole thing and go full European.
How about we take a little look at some of the socialist health care systems around the world? Let&#8217;s start with Europe.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1917-assassin-storms-mar-a-lago-to-try-to-kill-president-trump">WATCH: The Michael Knowles Show on DailyWire+</a></h3>
A horrifying story recently came out of the United Kingdom. According to <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15582277/Woman-dead-floor-home-told-wait-ten-days-ambulance.html?ns_mchannel=rss&amp;ns_campaign=1490&amp;ito=social-twitter_mailonline">The Daily Mail</a>, a 97-year-old woman, Babette Burge, was found nearly dead on the floor of her home after being told she would have to wait ten days — ten days — for an ambulance. Not ten days for surgery. Ten days just to be transported to a hospital.
<blockquote>Just five days earlier, a paramedic from a local GP surgery had attended Ms Burge&#8217;s home to assess her condition and found that her leg was &#8216;shortened and rotated&#8217; &#8211; a sign of a fractured hip.</blockquote>
She was nearly 100 years old, lying on the floor with a broken hip, and was told she’d need to wait ten days for an ambulance.
She was later discovered barely breathing. Then she died.
This is what we’re supposed to envy? “Everybody gets health care” in the UK — assuming you can get to the hospital. The catch is that no one comes to get you. Universal coverage is lovely in theory. In practice, however, if you can’t secure transportation, it doesn’t matter how free the surgery is.
Meanwhile, in Canada, a prominent Canadian writer — very much on the Left, by her own description — recently admitted something chilling. She said she was offered medical assistance in dying (MAID) instead of care.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
I’m about as far left as you can get… but we do have problems with MAiD in Canada.
How do I know? It was “offered” to me in lieu of care.
I’m disabled, I was alone, my conditions expensive.
Yes I was allowed to say “No”, but no alternative care was offered.
That’s coercion. <a href="https://t.co/LvCWd55esk">https://t.co/LvCWd55esk</a>
— Kelly (@broadwaybabyto) <a href="https://twitter.com/broadwaybabyto/status/2025364112348188828?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 22, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Credit: @broadwaybabyto/X.com
That’s not compassion. That’s coercion.
And this isn’t an isolated anecdote. Canada has dramatically expanded medical assistance in dying, or MAID. In parts of Europe — particularly in countries like the Netherlands — similar policies are spreading. Elderly people, disabled people, chronically ill people, and even young people struggling with “seasonal depression” are increasingly being told that death is a “treatment option.”
Think about that.
In a system where the government is paying the bills, patients are not just patients — they’re line items. They’re costs. And when waitlists grow long and budgets grow tight, the incentives get dark very quickly. The cheapest patient is the one who isn’t there anymore.
On the one hand, American leftists insist we’re the only country in the civilized world without socialized medicine. On the other hand, you look at some of these “civilized” systems and see 97-year-olds waiting ten days for an ambulance and disabled citizens being nudged toward suicide because their care is expensive.
That’s not health care. That’s the opposite of health care.
Now, is the American system perfect? Of course not. It’s expensive. It’s complicated. It’s frustrating. But it is also the system that produces the vast majority of the world’s pharmaceutical innovation. It is the system that subsidizes global research and development. It is the system that people from all over the world come to when they need cutting-edge treatment.
It is not, however, a system where the government routinely suggests that you kill yourself because you’re inconvenient. There’s a reason that countries with fully socialized medicine struggle with wait times and rationing.
So before we swallow the talking point that America is uniquely cruel because we don’t have cradle-to-grave government medicine, it’s worth looking at what that actually looks like in practice. A nearly 100-year-old woman dying on the floor because no ambulance is available. A disabled Canadian writer being offered euthanasia in lieu of care.
Beware the supposedly greener grass on the other side of the fence. Especially when that fence is our northern border, separating us from the snow Mexicans.

Motion blur ambulance United States

Waiting 10 Days For An Ambulance — The Dark Side Of ‘Free’ Health Care

Waiting 10 Days For An Ambulance — The Dark Side Of 'Free' Health Care

Assisted Suicide

Canada

Death

Europe

Health Care

Hospitals

Michael Knowles

In 2026, Britain will hit three grim milestones.
First, it will see the number of deaths <a href="https://www.the-independent.com/news/uk/home-news/resolution-foundation-deaths-births-economy-b2894591.html">exceed</a> the number of births for the first time in modern history.
Second, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/01/15/abortions-at-record-high-in-over-35s-because-babies-are-too/">a third</a> of the babies conceived will be aborted.
Third, the number of migrants in its population (10.9 million) will roughly equate to the total number of children aborted (10.7 million) since the procedure became legalized in 1968.
In other words, by ending unborn lives on an industrial scale, the native British population has created a demographic vacuum it now plugs with immigration, and in doing so, has brought itself to the brink of quiet obliteration.
For Brits, the question of abortion is no longer only an ethical one. A nation that does not reproduce itself must import its future. That is not a moral judgment on immigrants, but a mathematical reality. A critical shortage of young people means a critical shortage of recruits for the armed forces, workers in critical industries, and taxpayers to fund defense, healthcare, pensions, and other social services.
If it cannot “grow our own” workforce, it must import one from elsewhere.
Of course, relying on mass immigration to plug a demographic hole of our own making is not a neutral solution. It carries serious national security implications. As has been clear in recent years, weak, strained border controls, over-used and under pressure, give way to criminal gangs, swept in undetected alongside the key workers we need.
Yet while Right-wing politicians fall over themselves to condemn mass migration, hardly anyone in Westminster will risk breathing a word about the abortion crisis that has brought our nation to the point of requiring large-scale human importation. Meanwhile, Members of Parliament <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/world/europe/uk-abortion-law.html">recently voted</a> to exacerbate abortion culture by decriminalizing the procedure up to birth.
Britain is a prime example of why the abortion debate, though emotive and divisive, is worth having. Though some Americans may roll their eyes at the March for Life or the pro-life rhetoric being championed by Republicans, they’d do well to look overseas at a nation which has let abortion destroy them. 
The consequences of abortion, of course, are not only macro-economic. The loss of life alone is devastating, in the case of every child. Broadly, our collective failure to focus on family has left Brits lonelier and more depressed than ever. And as for those women who have undergone an abortion, physical complications, mental health struggles, and silent grief ripple through our healthcare system and society. &#8220;Pro-choice&#8221; psychology professor David Fergusson <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23553240/">published evidence</a> that women who have abortions are significantly more likely to suffer from anxiety, suicidal ideation, and drug and alcohol abuse. Pretending this is a “cost-free” procedure helps no-one.
What makes Britain’s situation especially tragic is that it was avoidable. Marriage &#8211; one of the greatest proximate predictors for adults to have children &#8211; is punished by the UK tax system, discouraging family formation and making it harder to depend on one salary. In the workplace, motherhood is treated as a liability. Poor maternity leave provision and the constant push of government-sponsored “free childcare” pushes women who do have kids back into taxable desk jobs, rather than encouraging them to invest in time at home with their children. All the while, the culture champions the idea that babies are inconvenient competitors to the luxuries of modern life. Abortion is the far cheaper, easier policy option in many ways. But in the long-term, it leads to a nation collapsing from within.
This is why abortion is no longer just a moral issue, but one of national survival. A society cannot abort a third of its future generation and expect to remain intact. Britain is not simply declining, but aborting itself out of existence. America should take note, and continue to fight for a culture supportive of bringing babies into the world. Once a culture decides children are optional, the future becomes optional too.
* * *
Lois McLatchie Miller (@LoisMcLatch) is a writer and commentator from Great Britain.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

British flag burning

Britain Is Aborting Itself To Death

Abortion

Children

mass migration

Pregnancy

Pro-Life Movement

Women

Pictures of bikini-clad women have been known to cause strain in marriages. But could skimpy swimsuits trigger a threat to the United States&#8217; and Great Britain&#8217;s “special relationship?&#8221;
In recent weeks, young women have been targeted on X by individuals using Grok’s AI technology to manipulate their image without their consent. I, myself, was a victim in this scandal: an anonymous user replied to a perfectly normal post I had written about puberty blockers and instructed X’s AI to generate a sexualized deepfake of me: “put her in a micro-bikini, on her knees, knees out, tongue out.”
I have never taken, shared, or consented to anything remotely like that. The ability of a stranger to weaponize my face and turn it into public pornography is a profound violation. It strips you of your dignity, your identity, and your sense of personal control in a way few things can.
So, I reported it. And X acted: fast. The comment was removed, the image was deleted, and the account responsible was, as far as I can tell, permanently suspended. Soon after, X restricted Grok’s image-generation features for non-subscribers, effectively shutting down the anonymous abuse that had driven most of this trend. Within days, the phenomenon had largely disappeared.
It was a negative experience, but it was handled. The platform corrected course. We moved on.
Or at least, most of us did. The British government did not.
Instead, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s administration has chosen to escalate the incident into something far bigger: floating the possibility of <a href="https://www.bigissue.com/news/social-justice/uk-x-ban-grok-ai-elon-musk/">banning X entirely</a> in the United Kingdom. This has triggered an extraordinary diplomatic row with the United States, whose State Department has now openly warned Britain that such a move could provoke retaliation.
State Department spokesmen have <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/us-state-department-threaten-uk-probe-elon-musk-x-grok/">made clear</a> that Washington would view such a ban as an unjustified attack on freedom of speech, behavior more typical of an authoritarian state than a Western democracy. Some American officials have even hinted at travel restrictions or legal pressure against British officials involved in enforcement.
That kind of terse language is almost unheard of between Britain and America. But it didn’t come out of nowhere. Tensions have been building over the last few years as the United Kingdom persistently flouts respect for free expression. Mothers are <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3nn60wyr6o">jailed</a> for months on end for long-since deleted tweets. Christians are <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2025/02/14/adam-smith-connor-abortion-campaigner-jd-vance/">convicted</a> for praying silently near abortion facilities. The examples are racking up at an extraordinary pace.
The recent government targeting of X is ostensibly meant to prevent women and children from porn-related crime. But if ministers were genuinely driven by concern for female dignity and child safety, X would be nowhere near the top of their list.
Pornhub, one of the largest pornography platforms in the world, has a documented history of hosting child sexual abuse material, rape videos, and non-consensual content. In 2025, American regulators <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/09/ftc-takes-action-against-operators-pornhub-other-pornographic-sites-deceiving-users-about-efforts">concluded</a> that Pornhub&#8217;s parent company had misled the public about safeguards and failed to prevent the re-uploading of illegal material.
And yet Pornhub remains accessible in Britain. No threats or bans from the government. Just quiet assurances about age verification and “compliance.”
The same is true of other AI platforms. Gemini, ChatGPT, and countless image-generation tools have all faced cases where non-consensual deepfakes were produced. None have been threatened with national expulsion. None have been treated as existential threats to public safety.
So, why X?
X is not primarily a sexual platform. It is a political one. It hosts journalists, dissidents, activists, and cultural critics. It is messy, chaotic, and often offensive — but it is also one of the last major spaces where unfiltered political disagreement still happens at scale.
That is why this fight has become transatlantic. The United States understands something the British government seems either unable or unwilling to admit: a wholesale ban on X would be a gross attempt to control and shut down public conversation, including views the government simply dislike.
If Starmer truly believes in protecting the vulnerable, his government should be relentlessly targeting the platforms that profit from sexual abuse and exploitation. Until that happens, the sudden ferocity directed at X will remain impossible to read as anything other than ideological.
And now, thanks to America’s spotlight, the world is watching.
* * *
Lois McLatchie Miller (@LoisMcLatch) is a writer and commentator from Great Britain.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Deep fake hoax and manipulation news titles on screen in hand 3d illustration

Someone Made AI Porn Of Me. Could That Kill America’s Relationship With Britain?

I Was Targeted By An AI Deepfake. Now My Country Wants To Ban X.

Artificial Intelligence

Deepfake

Pornhub

Pornography

Social Media

Twitter

The BBC is in dire straits. 
The BBC is a state-funded enterprise in much the same way that NPR is a state-funded enterprise. The BBC has been the dominant broadcast platform in the United Kingdom for decades, going all the way back to World War II.
For the last several decades, they have just been a left-wing agitprop organization. But now they are absolutely falling apart thanks to their extraordinarily dishonest attacks on President Trump.
According to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/bbc-chairman-apologizes-for-error-in-edit-of-trump-speech-0fe74118?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=AWEtsqf781o2BxWmESpy94akpjS_SOnvktxokVenvnnMPy6tJ-fywHqZCCn9uJ3C1xM%3D&amp;gaa_ts=69138fec&amp;gaa_sig=kc-AZqr5Ns4_DEx0ceuxv-1KbM20bCfSonvth9cyYdEk3d0ZpXL-gT6wLovg8uQpQ_IJ8IQY6HUYgz6HF0v35Q%3D%3D">The Wall Street Journal</a>:
<blockquote>President Trump has threatened to file a $ 1 billion lawsuit against the BBC over the way the U.K. state broadcaster edited one of his speeches in a documentary last year. BBC Chairman Samir Shah apologized Monday for the controversy, which has plunged the broadcaster into crisis. The apology came a day after BBC Director-General Tim Davie and BBC News Chief Executive Deborah Turness said they were leaving the organization following criticism from the White House. </blockquote>
What happened? There was an episode from the BBC’s flagship investigative series called Panorama, which ran one week before the 2024 United States election.
You may ask, did that affect the election? It doesn&#8217;t matter. The job of the BBC is to cover the news, not make the news up. 
One week before the election, they ran a piece in which they spliced together things that President Trump said on January 6, 2021, to make it look as though he himself personally was leading an armed insurrection at the Capitol building.
That was not true.
In order to achieve this effect, they had to cut out 24 pages of material. They cut from one part of the speech, and then they fast-forwarded 50 minutes and cut together the last part of the speech to clip them together, and then basically put in ellipses in order to make it seem as though President Trump himself was personally calling on people to follow him to the Capitol building and to assault the Capitol building.
If you watch that original clip, they had a music bed underneath, which connected the first part of the statement to the last part of the statement. It is not as though they had some sort of interpolation from a narrator explaining that much later in the speech, President Trump made the second part of the statement.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2315-member-exclusive?elementPosition=4&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
The Journal continued:
<blockquote>According to a letter from Trump’s lawyers, the BBC faces a legal claim for at least $1 billion unless the documentary is retracted, an apology published and compensation paid to the president. The letter set a deadline of Friday. The broadcaster said in a statement that it would “respond in due course.”</blockquote>
This follows hard on a <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/06/read-devastating-internal-bbc-memo-in-full/">19-page memo</a> that was put out by a top staffer at the BBC named Michael Prescott. He was an independent adviser to the BBC&#8217;s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Board, and he wrote a 19-page memo pushing the idea that the BBC had become a biased and ridiculous organization. He wrote: 
<blockquote>Dear Board Members,
You may know that I have been one of the two independent external advisers working alongside the EGSC. I held this role for three years and stood down in the summer.
I departed with profound and unresolved concerns about the BBC. Since leaving, I have thought long and hard about what, if anything, to do about this.
My conclusion is that these concerns are serious enough for me to draw them to your attention, in your oversight role of the BBC.
What follows is a summary of what were, in my view, some of the most troubling matters to come before the EGSC during my term.
My view is that the Executive repeatedly failed to implement measures to resolve highlighted problems, and in many cases simply refused to acknowledge there was an issue at all. </blockquote>
Prescott pointed out that there was tremendous bias with regard to the U.S. election. He specifically pointed out that edit in the Panorama program. He said, “This was one of the most shocking sets of issues uncovered during my time with the EGSC. If BBC journalists are to be allowed to edit video in order to make people ‘say’ things they never actually said, then what value are the Corporation’s guidelines, why should the BBC be trusted, and where will this all end?&#8221; 
And yet top members of the staff said, “There was no attempt to mislead the audience about the content or nature of Mr. Trump’s speech before the riot at the Capitol. It’s normal practice to edit speeches into short form clips.”
These kinds of shenanigans occurred repeatedly. They did this with comments that President Trump made about Liz Cheney. There are reports in which the BBC routinely ignored its own guidelines, giving excessive coverage, for example, to that rogue Iowa poll that suggested that Kamala Harris was going to win the state by a substantial margin. Of course, President Trump won the state pretty easily.
“During my time as an advisor to the EGSC it became clear the BBC fell too easily for putting out ill-researched material that suggested issues of racism when there were none,” Prescott wrote. Then he listed chapter and verse across the BBC in which they basically manufactured a bunch of racial issues where no racial issue existed.
They went out of their way to promote idiocies about biological sex and gender. Prescott noted:
<blockquote>I was told that time and time again the LGBTQ desk staffers would decline to cover any story raising difficult questions about the trans-debate. The allegation made to me was stark: that the desk had been captured by a small group of people promoting the Stonewall view of the debate and keeping other perspectives off-air. Individual programmes had come to lack their own reporters as a counterweight. &#8230; 
There was also a constant drip-feed of one-sided stories, usually news features, celebrating the trans experience without adequate balance or objectivity. &#8230; There&#8217;s a constant drip feed of one sided stories, usually news features celebrating the trans experience without adequate balance or objectivity.</blockquote>
One example of this might be a report that happened in 2024 from the BBC, in which they reported that male breast milk was just as nutritious for babies as female breast milk. You may be asking yourself, what is male breast milk? The answer is that if you pump men full of estrogen, you will get some secretions from the nipples that are not actually like female breast milk.
But the BBC had an interest in pretending that males can become females. And so <a href="https://x.com/millihill/status/1987836199969382892">they ran with this report</a>.
This is what the BBC is. It’s true on a wide variety of issues.
It&#8217;s particularly true about the Hamas-Israel war. According to the UK Telegraph, the BBC was forced to correct two stories every single week about the Gaza conflict since the October 7 attacks on Israel.
That’s insane. How many stories can you retract before you finally lose all credibility? BBC Arabic had to make 215 corrections and clarifications over the past two years on stories that were found to be biased, inaccurate, or misleading.
The BBC despises Israel, and it’s not possible for them to make it any clearer. For example, in November 2023, BBC editor Jeremy Bowen falsely reported that Israel had blown up the Al Ahli Hospital in the Gaza Strip.
That wasn’t true. He later <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/bbc-jeremy-bowen-admits-got-194844026.html">admitted he got it wrong</a>, but said he didn’t feel bad at all that he got it wrong, saying, “I don&#8217;t regret one thing in my reporting, because I think, I think I was measured throughout. I didn&#8217;t race to judgment.” 
Interviewer: “But you said that the building had been flattened.”
Bowen replied, “Oh, yeah. Well, I got that wrong because I was looking at the pictures and like, what I could see was a square that appeared to be flaming on all sides. And there was a, you know, sort of a void in the middle. And it was, I think it was a picture taken from a drone. And so, you know, we have to piece together what we see. And I thought, ‘Well, that looks like the whole building&#8217;s gone.’ And that was my conclusion from looking at the pictures. And I was wrong on that. But I don&#8217;t feel too bad about that.”
It doesn&#8217;t feel bad at all, because this is the way the BBC operates. They start with the conclusion, and then they backfill the news in order to reach that particular conclusion.
So, is it any surprise that the BBC is a disaster area or that they&#8217;re in serious trouble now?
It is long past time for the BBC to admit what it is, which is an agitprop organization on behalf of the political Left. They have been for decades. Nothing has changed.
And this latest brouhaha is just more evidence that the government should not be subsidizing media organizations such as NPR, PBS, or the BBC in Britain, because you wind up with left-wing media sponsored by taxpayers.

Trump Threatens $1b Lawsuit Against BBC Over ‘Defamatory’ Coverage

How Bias And Dishonesty Brought Down The BBC

Ben Shapiro

Lawsuit

Legacy Media

Media Bias

Opinion

Television

Syrian-born terrorist Jihad Al-Shamie was awaiting trial on rape charges when he killed two people in a Yom Kippur synagogue attack in England on Thursday, U.K. outlets reported.
Al-Shamie, 35, was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/yom-kippur-carnage-knife-wielding-attacker-kills-2-outside-synagogue?author=Leif+Le+Mahieu&amp;category=undefined&amp;elementPosition=29&amp;row=3&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+News&amp;rowType=Vertical+Carousel&amp;title=Yom+Kippur+Carnage%3A+Knife-Wielding+Attacker+Kills+2+Outside+Synagogue">shot</a> dead by law enforcement minutes after he rammed his car into a crowd outside the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in Manchester and attacked worshippers with a knife during the holiest Jewish holiday of the year, leaving two dead and three seriously injured.
The Syrian native, who moved to the U.K. as a teenager, was due to appear in court for a rape understood to have taken place earlier this year in Manchester, according to the Telegraph.
“He was on nobody’s radar for terrorism, but he definitely had a criminal record, though nothing to suggest he was going to do anything like this,” a police source <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/oct/03/manchester-synagogue-terrorist-was-on-bail-for-alleged">told</a> The Guardian.
But Al-Shamie had sent death threats to Conservative parliament member John Howell in 2012 after the MP defended Israel’s right to self-defense, requiring Howell to employ police protection. One email from Jihad Al-Shamie read, “It is people like you who deserve to die,” the Telegraph <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/10/03/manchester-synagogue-attack-latest-news-victims-named/">reported</a>.
Al-Shamie’s father had previously praised Hamas after the terror group’s October 7, 2023, massacre of 1,200 Israelis, the New York Post <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/10/03/world-news/uk-terrorist-jihad-al-shamie-was-on-bail-for-rape-when-attacked-synagogue-on-yom-kippur/?utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_campaign=nypost&amp;utm_medium=social">reported</a>.
In the hours and days following the attack, Islamists and anti-Israel activists flooded U.K. streets, calling for Israel’s destruction and setting off fireworks.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
Pro-Pals took over the streets of central London last night. Set off fireworks in the busiest parts. Chanted for Israel’s destruction. And I don’t see a single police officer. So do racist thugs run our capital now? It’s like a nightmare dystopia. <a href="https://twitter.com/metpoliceuk?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@metpoliceuk</a> <a href="https://t.co/AA6VqwNQ4K">pic.twitter.com/AA6VqwNQ4K</a>
— Heidi Bachram 🎗️ (@HeidiBachram) <a href="https://twitter.com/HeidiBachram/status/1973643068789154215?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 2, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The synagogue attack comes weeks after the U.K. Labour government <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/29/labour-party-conference-vote-israel-genocide-gaza?utm_source=chatgpt.com">accused</a> Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, a move many have pointed to as potentially <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-attack-is-on-you-fury-at-britains-security-boss-after-synagogue-bloodshed?author=Hank+Berrien&amp;category=undefined&amp;elementPosition=11&amp;row=3&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+News&amp;rowType=Vertical+Carousel&amp;title=%E2%80%98This+Attack+Is+On+You%E2%80%99%3A+Fury+At+Britain%E2%80%99s+Security+Boss+After+Synagogue+Bloodshed">fueling</a> further hatred toward Jews.
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Leader of the U.K. Reform Party Nigel Farage echoed these sentiments, condemning both the street celebrations and the Starmer government’s weak response.
“The whole Jewish community in Britain [is] now deeply fearful. Within just a few hours of this horrific incident, we saw … pro-Palestinian flags on the streets, people out, previously unplanned, demonstrating. But here’s the truth of it, they weren&#8217;t demonstrating, they were actually celebrating,” Farage <a href="https://x.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1974050674980606056">said</a> on X. “I can&#8217;t even imagine we’ve ever seen such vile scenes on our streets, certainly not in my lifetime.”
Farage blasted British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, a staunch anti-Israel activist, for her tepid response to the violence against Jews.
“In response to this, the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, says she’s disappointed. Disappointed. That’s the most the Home Secretary can say,” Farage continued. “Well, I hope all of you watching this video are outraged, outraged, and frankly frightened. This is broken Britain. This is evidence of societal breakdown. It is deeply worrying and very frightening.”
Farage also criticized Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s recent recognition of a Palestinian state and warned about an upcoming protest planned for Saturday in London.
“There is a big, big march planned in London this Saturday. And I think the only way we can describe it is a hate march,” Farage said. “I must admit, saying this now to you today, I feel more worried about the state of broken Britain than I ever have before.”

Stabbing At Manchester Synagogue

Terrorist Jihad Al-Shamie’s Synagogue Attack Came While Out On Bail For Rape

antisemitism

Crime

Hamas

Jews

Manchester

News

Nigel Farage

Synagogue

Terrorism

terrorist attack

World

Yom Kippur

A deadly car and knife attack outside a synagogue in England left two people dead Thursday, coinciding with Yom Kippur observances worldwide.
The killings took place outside the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in Manchester. At least three other people were seriously injured, and the suspected assailant is believed to have been shot dead by law enforcement. <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/10/02/manchester-synagogue-stabbing-police/">According</a> to The Telegraph, &#8220;Police said it had &#8216;declared Plato&#8217; &#8211; the national code-word used by police and emergency services when responding to a &#8216;marauding terror attack.'&#8221;
Police <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/10/02/manchester-synagogue-stabbing-police/">said</a> they could not currently confirm the attacker&#8217;s death “due to safety issues” surrounding “suspicious items on his person.” The attacker appears to have been wearing a suicide vest, and a bomb squad responded to the scene. He was reportedly lying on the ground outside the synagogue after being shot by police. 
Witnesses described a man driving his car into the synagogue’s gates before getting out and stabbing people around him. The doors to the synagogue were barricaded, and the attacker was unable to enter, The Telegraph reported. 
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“I’m appalled by the attack at a synagogue in Crumpsall,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer <a href="https://x.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1973691472235925514">said</a>. “The fact that this has taken place on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, makes it all the more horrific.”
He <a href="https://x.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1973708343714652546">said</a> that additional police resources would be deployed to synagogues nationwide. Starmer also added that he was leaving a meeting in Denmark to return to London for an emergency cabinet meeting. 
&nbsp;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
This morning&#8217;s attack is absolutely shocking.
I’m on my way back to London to chair an emergency meeting, and additional police assets are being deployed to synagogues across the country.
We will do everything we can to keep our Jewish community safe. <a href="https://t.co/bNUfGbWwfq">pic.twitter.com/bNUfGbWwfq</a>
— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) <a href="https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1973708343714652546?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 2, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The Israeli Embassy in the United Kingdom said that it was in close contact with the Jewish community in Manchester. The northwest English city is home to around 30,000 Jews. 
“That such an act of violence should be perpetrated on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, in a place of prayer and community, is abhorrent and deeply distressing,” the embassy said. “We thank the Greater Manchester Police for their swift response. The safety and security of Jewish communities in the United Kingdom must be guaranteed.”
King Charles also condemned the killings. 
“My wife and I have been deeply saddened and shocked to learn of the horrific attack in Manchester, especially on such a significant day for the Jewish community,” he said.

Manchester synagogue incident

Yom Kippur Carnage: Knife-Wielding Attacker Kills 2 Outside Synagogue

King Charles

President Trump became the first American president to be hosted at a second state visit to Great Britain this week. The President was greeted with a parade of British soldiers wearing dress red uniforms and marching in perfect unison while ragtag American soldiers popped up from behind rocks and trees and shot at them until they surrendered.
Trump and his wife Melania were given a lavish state dinner at Windsor Castle. Trump told the other guests that he was astounded by the beauty of the castle, and said it was absolutely amazing what you could do with Legos.
The dinner was attended by many British dignitaries including Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who gave a brief toast in which he pledged to continue lowering the British voting age until the electorate was ignorant enough to keep the Labour party in power. 
Also at the Dinner was Education Minister Mohammed Fatwa Fatwa Mohammed Fatwa, the founder of the Fatwa Pre-School for the Grooming of Naughty but Strangely Alluring Little White Girls. The Education Minister presented Trump with a ceremonial scimitar which, luckily, just missed when the president turned his head at the last minute to point at a chart showing just how many Islamists he plans to deport after meeting Mohammed Fatwa Fatwa Mohammed Fatwa.
The dinner was also attended by the mayors of several major British cities, including Mayor Fatwa Mohammed Mohammed Fatwa, the mayor of Birming-al-hambra, and, of course, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan Mohammed Fatwa Fatwa followed by several more Fatwas and Mohammeds.
The dinner began with a grace said by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was then arrested for praying within 300 miles of an abortion clinic. Kemi Badenoch, the leader of Britain’s Conservative Party, called the arrest absurd, saying Britain was a Christian nation, after which she was arrested for violating the blasphemy laws. Keir Starmer explained that the U.K. absolutely has free speech but only as long as you talk silently to yourself and are not within 750 miles of an abortion clinic, where such talk could be mistaken for praying to the God of love and life, which would be offensive to the nation’s terrorists. Fortunately Mohammed Fatwa Fatwa Mohammed Fatwa did not hear Kemi Badenoch’s offensive remark because he was busy on the phone, arranging the sale of some of his pre-school students.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-andrew-klavan-show"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974739 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/d8cec229c8de40eca355910d6e114663-1024x171.webp" alt="" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/d8cec229c8de40eca355910d6e114663-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/d8cec229c8de40eca355910d6e114663-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/d8cec229c8de40eca355910d6e114663-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/d8cec229c8de40eca355910d6e114663-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/d8cec229c8de40eca355910d6e114663-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
King Charles III then gave a speech, in which he spoke warmly of the special relationship between the U.S. and the U.K., saying that the two nations shared many values, although he couldn’t name them for fear of being arrested. President Trump then rose and also gave a speech, saying that Great Britain was one of his favorite places in the middle east, even though he’d gotten a much nicer present from Qatar, who gave him a jet, while the British only gave him some cheap oil painting of Winston Churchill, which was then confiscated for spreading imperialist ideas that were offensive to the Muslims who were conquering the country.
The affair ended with Princess Kate and Melania Trump trying to decide who was more glamorous with an arm wrestling match. Princess Kate managed to pin the First Lady, but Melania responded by taking off that gigantic circular hat she wears and spinning it at Kate as if it were Oddjob’s derby in &#8220;Goldfinger.&#8221; Fortunately for relations between the two nations, Kate managed to duck, and the hat sailed past her and beheaded Mohammed Fatwa Fatwa Mohammed Fatwa, who congratulated the First Lady on mastering the essentials of sharia law.
After the dinner, Trump accompanied Prime Minister Starmer on a tour of factories and businesses that Labour has destroyed by their socialist policies. Trump said he was delighted to make the state visit, but said next time he had to come to one of these crap-hole countries, he hoped it would be someplace like Haiti, so at least he could get some sun.
* * *
This excerpt is taken from the opening satirical monologue of “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-andrew-klavan-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Andrew Klavan Show</a>.”
Andrew Klavan is the host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” at The Daily Wire. Klavan is the bestselling author of numerous books, including the Cameron Winter Mystery series. The fifth installment, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/After-That-Cameron-Winter-Mysteries/dp/1613166869/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3EGZUC370LG46&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Y_NI0mDOKeowShheDQTVx5NH-fAeimJoCD56_T0Acpl8C0mup7uJf-nGGSRLEItaaekoDnvS2vWLMa4Zd2UBXQ8Y-g-P502jOWz-Y8IX3ZQsdlO7WMLrg1xIhNoKmjCorSWUR4C2l_RbiZ7apJ1MfPzGOrrEf7AdAXX6xwnJRVP_XqUfWuMuVthTWscaU3P4vgmS86-96n-721enHfX12CFQWTajqFbVnrsDkexfUf4.6_gTH6h1Bb9Pn375QdF_VAVZSayDvjQBBKGXE-MTiFo&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=klavan&amp;qid=1754049918&amp;sprefix=%2Caps%2C80&amp;sr=8-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">After That, The Dark,</a> is now available for Pre-Order. Follow him on X: <a href="https://x.com/andrewklavan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@andrewklavan</a>
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

UK Hosts President Trump And First Lady Melania Trump For State Visit – Day Two

Trump Visits Great Britain, His Favorite Place In The Middle East

Andrew Klavan

Humor

King Charles III

President Trump

Satire

Thank God we fought a revolution in this country so that we are not ruled by the idiotic rules of the modern United Kingdom.
Graham Linehan is a comedian and comedy writer who was just arrested in the UK — for his tweets.
Unfortunately, this is not uncommon in the UK. In mid-August, the New York Post <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/08/19/world-news/uk-free-speech-struggle-30-arrests-a-day-censorship/">titled an article</a>, “UK free speech crackdown sees up to 30 people a day arrested for petty offenses such as retweets and cartoons.” The Post wrote:
<blockquote>Bernadette Spofforth lay in jail on a blue gym mattress in a daze, finding it difficult to move, even breathe. “I just closed down. But the other half of my brain went into Jack Reacher mode,” she said, referring to the fictional action hero. “Every single detail was in this very vivid, bright, sharp focus.”
She remembers noticing that you can’t drown yourself in the toilet, because there’s no standing water in it and the flush button is too far to reach if your head were in the bowl. She’d end up being detained for 36 hours in July 2024. Three girls had just been <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/01/20/world-news/uk-teen-pleads-guilty-to-murder-of-three-girls-at-taylor-swift-themed-dance-party/">murdered in Southport</a>, England, at a Taylor Swift-themed dance party. But Spofforth was not under suspicion for the crime.
Instead, horrified, and in the fog of a developing tragedy, she’d reposted on X another user’s content blaming newly arrived migrants for the ghastly crime — clarifying in her retweet, “If this is true.” Hours later she realized she may have received bad information and deleted the post — but it had already been seen thousands of times. &#8230;
Her story is one repeated almost hourly in the UK, where data suggests <a href="https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for-offensive-online-messages/">over 30 people a day are arrested</a> for speech crimes, about 12,000 a year, under laws written well before the age of social media that make crimes of sending “grossly offensive” messages or sharing content of an “indecent, obscene or menacing character.”</blockquote>
Four police vehicles arrived at her home days later.
Linehan <a href="https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/i-just-got-arrested-again">wrote on</a> Substack:
<blockquote>The moment I stepped off the plane at Heathrow, five armed police officers were waiting. Not one, not two—five. They escorted me to a private area and told me I was under arrest for three tweets. In a country where paedophiles escape sentencing, where knife crime is out of control, where women are assaulted and harassed every time they gather to speak, the state had mobilised five armed officers to arrest a comedy writer for this tweet (and no, I promise you, I am not making this up.)</blockquote>
The tweet read: “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the ba**s.”
Linehan was arrested for that tweet. He was also arrested for another tweet in which there was a gigantic trans protest in London, of which he tweeted a photo, captioned, “A photo you can smell,” followed by a tweet in which he wrote, “I hate them. Misogynists and homophobes. F*** em.”
“At Heathrow police station, my belt, bag, and devices were confiscated,” he wrote. “Then I was shown into a small green-tiled cell with a bunk, a silver toilet in the corner and a message from Crimestoppers on the ceiling next to a concave mirror that was presumably there to make you reflect on your life choices. &#8230; At one point, I said ‘I bet I know who made this complaint. Lindsay Watson’ (demented ex-copper troon who was fired for his online conduct). Then, lo-and-behold, one of my lawyers sent me this reply to the ‘bollocks’ tweet.”
The reply stated, “That weird ex-copper claims he has reported this to police and is trying to get other troons to do so. Just FYI.”
Welcome to England, the birthplace of the Magna Carta, where they are tearing down the institutions that make a functional society.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2272-the-uk-s-free-speech-crackdown?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=The+Ben+Shapiro+Show&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
It&#8217;s not just that these folks in the UK are interested in tearing away free speech and saying you’re not allowed to tweet a bad thing, that bad tweets might land you in jail: They are importing people from parts of the planet who hate and despise all of the centralizing Western principles, such as free speech.
I write in “Lions And Scavengers” about the coalition of scavengers, about the idea that you have barbarians — the people from outside who hate our civilization — who join forces with the lechers inside our civilization who believe that they are marginalized by our traditional institutions and values, and then they make common cause together. 
That&#8217;s the UK in a nutshell.
It is no coincidence that on Tuesday, the Home Secretary of the UK, Yvette Cooper, said that the UK is going to take in refugees from Gaza. She stated:
<blockquote>I confirm that the Home Office has put in place systems to issue expedited visas with biometric checks conducted prior to arrival for children and their immediate accompanying family members. We have done the same for all the Chevening scholars and are now in the process of doing so for the next group of students from Gaza who have been awarded fully funded scholarships and places at UK universities so that they can start their studies in autumn this year.
Later this year, we will set out plans to establish a permanent framework for refugee students to come and study in the UK so that we can help more talented young people fleeing war and persecution to find a better future, alongside capped and managed ways for refugees to work here in the UK.</blockquote>
Congrats to the people of Great Britain. They don&#8217;t just have to contend with the insanity inside their borders, but out of some sort of misplaced sympathy, they are going to be importing people who almost certainly do not share their values.
There are plenty of other countries on planet Earth that are more akin ideologically and culturally to the people of Gaza, but according to the wonderful folks in the UK, those countries don’t exist.
There&#8217;s been some opposition within Westminster to taking in refugees from Gaza.
Conservative shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick expressed apprehension at the idea of resettling Palestinians in the UK. He wrote in The Telegraph, “The truth is that Gaza&#8217;s Arab neighbors are prepared to offer humanitarian support, but consider the idea of inviting Gazans into the country at any scale a risk only a fool would take.”
Which, of course, is true.
This is a misapplied sense of guilt directed at the Third World by the Labor Party in the UK, a belief that in the oppressor/oppressed matrix, the UK is an oppressor; Israel is an oppressor; the people of Gaza are the oppressed, and therefore the people of the UK must accept people who believe that Western civilization is in and of itself wrong and terrible.
As a side note, we should point out at this point here that Qatar — which is essentially Hamas with nicer suits — owns much of London.
“A cursory look at Property Week shows that the Qatari Investment Authority, Qatari Holding and Qatari Diar own 23,253,699 square feet of London, making Qatar the largest owner of London property. Reports vary about the sum invested, alleged to be £35 billion. Qatar’s square footage is more than HM The Queen’s Crown Estate,” Sunday Guardian Live <a href="https://latest.sundayguardianlive.com/world/10394-qatar-largest-owner-london-property?utm_source=chatgpt.com">reported</a>.
If you ever wonder why Europe is so warm toward importing people who truly hate their civilization, a big part of the reason is this — money.

Demonstrations Held Outside Migrant Accommodations Across The UK

The UK’s Free Speech Crackdown

airport

Comedy

Free Speech

Jail

Social Media Censorship

Transgender

Around a decade ago, when viral videos were just starting to become commonplace, a woman uploaded a video entitled, &#8220;10 hours of walking in NYC as a woman.&#8221; Like many viral videos, it wasn&#8217;t actually as spontaneous as it looked. It was the brainchild of an anti-harassment organization by the name of &#8220;Hollaback!&#8221; along with an ad agency called Rob Bliss Creative.
The premise, as the name of the video implies, is that a young white woman named Shoshana Roberts would walk around New York — &#8220;all areas of Manhattan,&#8221; they said — wearing jeans and a crewneck. She wouldn&#8217;t say anything to anyone. In front of her, someone would be carrying a hidden camera, which would capture all of the misogynistic men who would inevitably catcall her. It was intended to be feminist propaganda, in other words. You might remember the video, but if not, here&#8217;s some of it. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/b1XGPvbWn0A?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Credit: Rob Bliss/YouTube.com
According to the caption on the video, to her horror, this woman was catcalled more than 100 times in just 10 hours. And after releasing this piece of groundbreaking investigative journalism, the feminists who created it were convinced that they had a winner on their hands. It was being shared everywhere. People were horrified by the plight of women in New York City.
But very quickly, the mood changed. Leftists noticed that, inconveniently enough, pretty much every single catcaller in the video was black or Hispanic. There was one white guy who said something like &#8220;Nice,&#8221; although it wasn&#8217;t even clear he was talking to her. In any event, he&#8217;s clearly respectful and keeps things moving. He simply compliments her and continues walking.
By contrast, there were dozens of black and Hispanic catcallers in the video. And they went far beyond saying &#8220;nice.&#8221; One black guy follows her down the street for five minutes, staring at her the entire time. Another &#8220;person of color&#8221; tells her to &#8220;say thank you more.&#8221; Another guy says &#8220;God bless you, Mami.&#8221;
And you know what this means. The video was determined to be highly racist. NPR and Slate, among many other Left-wing publications, ran lengthy pieces on how problematic the video was. The author Roxane Gay, for example, wrote: &#8220;The racial politics of the video are [f*****] up.
Like, she didn&#8217;t walk through any white neighborhoods?&#8221; Never mind the fact that she walked all over Manhattan, which the footage clearly shows.
As the hysteria grew, the organization that produced the video released a groveling (and very confusing) statement of apology, which threw their <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/11/01/360422087/hollaback-video-calls-out-catcallers-but-cuts-out-white-men">own video</a> under the bus: 
<blockquote>We regret the unintended racial bias in the editing of the video that over represents men of color. &#8230; We are committed to showing the complete picture. It is our hope and intention that this video will be the start of a series to demonstrate that the type of harassment we&#8217;re concerned about is directed toward women of all races and ethnicities and conducted by an equally diverse population of men.</blockquote>
On Reddit, the ad agency <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/11/01/360422087/hollaback-video-calls-out-catcallers-but-cuts-out-white-men">added</a>: 
<blockquote>We got a fair amount of white guys, but for whatever reason, a lot of what they said was in passing, or off camera.</blockquote>
Obviously, one of the biggest issues with this claim is that everything in the video was said &#8220;in passing, or off camera.&#8221; So it doesn&#8217;t make sense to claim that the white people were &#8220;edited out&#8221; for that reason. Nor does it make any sense to state that, in the future, they&#8217;ll be committed to demonstrating that catcallers come from a, &#8220;equally diverse population of men.&#8221; After all, they just captured video evidence demonstrating, via a recorded experiment, that catcallers are not in fact diverse. So what&#8217;s the basis for saying that, in the future, they&#8217;ll prove that white people are just as likely to catcall women?
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1641-the-matt-walsh-show?contentProgram=The%20Matt%20Walsh%20Show&amp;contentType=ShowEpisode&amp;elementPosition=2&amp;location=Home%20Tab&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Home%20Featured%20Carousel">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
They don&#8217;t have any basis for saying that, of course, because it&#8217;s not true. Catcalling women to the point that they become uncomfortable — sort of like playing music loudly on a Bluetooth speaker at the park, or committing armed robbery — is one of those behaviors that, from a statistical perspective, simply isn&#8217;t perfectly distributed among various ethnic groups. Even if you tried to stack the deck by conducting this experiment in a neighborhood that’s nearly 100% white, it still wouldn’t work. In fact, that would only prove the opposite conclusion, because we all know that a woman can walk through a predominantly white suburb not just for 10 hours but for 10 years and never get catcalled at all.
That was the real lesson of &#8220;10 hours of walking in NYC as a woman,&#8221; even though the ad agency would never admit it. They proved, rather publicly, that different demographic groups engage in catcalling at very different rates. And so, ever since the publication of this video, in the name of racial justice, Leftists have mostly stopped talking about catcalling. They&#8217;ve left the topic alone.
But as we all know, every lesson of history must be re-learned at some point. It&#8217;s sort of like the old maxim, &#8220;Never fight a land war in Asia.&#8221; Everyone agrees it&#8217;s a bad idea. But eventually, someone else tries again, to disastrous results. And indeed, that&#8217;s the case with catcalling. Once again, Leftists are trying to make a big deal out of it. Specifically, in England, the Surrey Police Department recently sent undercover policewomen out on the streets, in jogging clothes, in an attempt to elicit catcalls. And then, when the policewomen were catcalled, back-up cars swoop in, sort of like a drug bust. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="How these joggers are tackling catcalling | LBC" width="422" height="750" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CbcXB4jY_g4?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Credit: @LBCOfficial/YouTube.com
Well, they&#8217;ve convinced me. This policewoman is constantly being told by strangers that she&#8217;s attractive. And that&#8217;s a horrible, horrible thing. It&#8217;s hard to imagine anything worse than receiving unsolicited compliments, frankly. And indeed, you can just see the abject pain and horror in her voice as she&#8217;s having to process all of this. Last week I upset some people by suggesting that female cops shouldn’t be out on patrol because they lack the strength and other attributes necessary for that job. But I guess I should revise my statement. This is one job — walking around and fishing for compliments — that female cops are highly suited for.
It’s enough to make you wonder what would happen if some police officers are assigned to this detail, and they get no cat calls whatsoever. Would they be giving interviews about how happy they are about the fact that no one in the entire city, during their 8-hour shift, bothered to compliment them? Is that the conversation that would take place, back at the station? It seems doubtful, but at this point, we can&#8217;t say.
In any event, in the video, they admit that catcalling isn&#8217;t even criminal, which raises the obvious question of why the police are doing this. They explain that, in truth, they&#8217;re just trying to wag their finger at people who catcall, because catcalling is like a gateway drug to more criminal activity. Apparently, people who catcall are more likely to commit murder, tax evasion, arson, and so on. But even if that&#8217;s true — and there&#8217;s not much evidence that it is — it still doesn&#8217;t come close to justifying a police stop. If the police are allowed to pull you over because you might commit a future crime, in their judgment, then you effectively have a police state. And of course, that&#8217;s exactly what the UK has become.
But as it turns out, contrary to what&#8217;s stated in that video, some people are indeed being arrested in the UK as part of this sting operation. 
The Telegraph <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/12/undercover-officers-pose-as-joggers-to-stop-catcalling/">reports</a>: 
<blockquote>Surrey Police said the approach was designed to protect women and girls in public places. According to the force, the [operation], which lasted a month, led to 18 arrests for offences such as harassment, sexual assault, and theft.</blockquote>
The implication, I guess, is that they picked up people with outstanding warrants for assault and theft, since there&#8217;s no indication that these officers were actually attacked during their runs. But what&#8217;s notable about this report, and every other report like it, is that we don&#8217;t have any information about the identities of the offenders. They also don&#8217;t explain what conduct constitutes &#8220;harassment&#8221; exactly. Instead, they simply state that this was a one-month trial for a sting operation, which has now concluded. So there was more transparency from a viral video produced by feminists a decade ago in New York City, than the British police are willing to provide about their taxpayer-funded catcalling bust.
We can all draw the obvious conclusion here. It&#8217;s almost certain that this particular sting operation backfired, just like that viral video did. They came up with this plan in order to entrap heterosexual white men who shout compliments at attractive women. That&#8217;s the great crime that British police decided to spend their time on — something that isn&#8217;t even a crime at all. In fact, it&#8217;s not even morally objectionable in many cases. And yet, in their bid to criminalize heterosexuality and lock up white men for non-crimes, the British police probably realized, to their horror, that the worst and most aggressive catcallers — the real menaces of the catcalling community — were not white at all. And therefore, this operation will end, and it will never be resumed again.
That&#8217;s not really a guess. This is how things work in Britain. For many years, the British government concealed the systematic sexual abuse of children that was being committed, right out in the open, by foreign gangs in England and Wales. 
According to one recent <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clynyyqdnrdo">report</a>, prepared by UK government official Louise Casey: 
<blockquote>We found that the ethnicity of perpetrators is shied away from and is still not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators. &#8230; We found many examples of organisations avoiding the topic altogether for fear of appearing racist, raising community tensions or causing community cohesion problems.</blockquote>
With the protection of the government, so-called &#8220;grooming gangs&#8221; have operated with impunity in the UK. The normal tactic that these gangs used, as Casey&#8217;s report notes, was for men to target vulnerable adolescent children — &#8220;often those in care, or children with learning or physical disabilities.&#8221; Those children were then drugged, passed among various men and transported via taxis throughout the country to other clients.
The total number of victims is unknown, because most of these perpetrators have never been caught. But a recent <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2r2ejlvm1o">estimate</a> suggests that a minimum of 700 children were victims of &#8220;group-based child sexual exploitation&#8221; in the UK in 2023 alone. Roughly <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn9y0lvpyqvo">1,400 children</a> were sexually abused by men in the UK town of Rotherham between 1997 and 2013. In several cases, the police also <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn9y0lvpyqvo">participated</a> in the sexual assaults. They also made it clear that they were extremely uninterested when victims came forward. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="007 UK Grooming Gangs" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/82_vZrv78E8?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
Credit: The Free Press/Honestly/YouTube.com
In response to the latest government report on this scandal, police in South Yorkshire <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn9y0lvpyqvo">told the BBC</a> that they had, &#8220;a dedicated team of detectives working on this case who have worked diligently to explore all lines of enquiry.&#8221; That was their response just a few weeks ago, in July of this year So they&#8217;re claiming it&#8217;s a top priority for them. And yet, just a couple hours away in Surrey, the police are busy trying to arrest catcallers. They&#8217;re chasing down men who honk at women, even though there&#8217;s nothing criminal about it.
Not that we should really be surprised by this. Sociopathic sting operations, in the service of extremely dumb policies that happen to target native white citizens, are becoming the norm in police departments all over the country. In Canada, they&#8217;re <a href="https://x.com/JeffEvely/status/1953971918312251707">rounding</a> up people who try to hike in the woods, and handing out $30,000 fines. In Australia, as we <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5MA8S3ugXQ">discussed</a> a few months ago, they&#8217;ve essentially outlawed prayer. If you try to pray with a man who thinks he&#8217;s really a woman, or vice versa, you could face a decade&#8217;s worth of prison time. In fact, parents can&#8217;t even pray with their children, under that law.
There&#8217;s no way to make sense of any of these crackdowns without recognizing that the governments of the West harbor a deep and abiding disdain for the native populations of their respective countries. And these governments have realized that, if they can&#8217;t completely eliminate the police force and leave the population defenseless, then they can discredit the police, at the very least. They can turn law enforcement into laughing stock and eliminate its legitimacy that way. It&#8217;s the same reason the police chief in D.C. can <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-insanely-incompetent-dei-hire-running-one-of-americas-most-dangerous-cities?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Matt+Walsh&amp;category=Opinion&amp;elementPosition=2&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=The+Insanely+Incompetent+DEI+Hire+Running+One+Of+America%E2%80%99s+Most+Dangerous+Cities">barely understand</a> English. In other words, the latest war on policing, incredibly enough, is one that the police themselves are participating in. Police departments can either realize what&#8217;s going on, and refuse to participate in the charade. Or they can continue to contribute to their downfall, one extremely ill-advised sting operation at a time.

As Migrants Terrorize Britain, Police Wage War On Catcalls

Child Sex Abuse

Immigrants

Matt Walsh

Rape

Teenagers

There is something chilling about watching Angel Studios’ documentary “Live Not By Lies!” 
It is not merely a recounting of history, though it does that with remarkable clarity — testimonies of men and women who survived totalitarian communism in Eastern Europe echo across the decades with a resonance we ignore at our peril. 
What is most unsettling about the adaptation of Rod Dreher’s bestselling work, however, is the gnawing realization that their warnings have already become our reality.
The film introduces us to brave Christians who, under Soviet rule, faced surveillance, intimidation, and prison — simply for refusing to pretend that evil was good. As they share their stories, one can’t help but feel the familiarity of it all: the demand to affirm ideologies we know to be false, the punishment for dissent, the slow corrosion of the conscience. The question is no longer “Could it happen here?” but “How far has it already gone?”
The same dynamic Dreher exposes—state and cultural forces colluding to crush dissent — is alive in the contemporary West.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Live Not By Lies | Official Trailer | Streaming April 1 | Angel Studios" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lJh8wJKAnm8?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Consider Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, a woman who was arrested not for vandalizing property or committing acts of violence, but for the silent crime of praying in her head near an abortion facility in Birmingham, England. No slogans, no placards — only the private communion of her thoughts with God. She was questioned by police, searched, charged, and brought before a court. She was found innocent – but promptly arrested again weeks later for the very same thoughts in the very same place. Thankfully, after a long and grueling investigation, Isabel won compensation from the police with support from ADF International.
Then there’s Adam Smith-Connor, an army veteran who stood silently and imperceptibly in prayer near another facility in Bournemouth in memory of his lost son. He too was interrogated by police and criminalized for the contents of his conscience – worse, leading to a conviction and a criminal charge. Adam was ordered to pay £9,000 to the court – amounting to perhaps the most expensive three minute prayer in history.
<div id="attachment_624329" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-624329" class="size-large wp-image-624329" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/09/Screen-Shot-2023-09-22-at-12.25.15-PM-1024x574.png" alt="Credit: Alliance Defending Freedom." width="1024" height="574" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/09/Screen-Shot-2023-09-22-at-12.25.15-PM-1024x574.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/09/Screen-Shot-2023-09-22-at-12.25.15-PM-300x168.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/09/Screen-Shot-2023-09-22-at-12.25.15-PM-768x431.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/09/Screen-Shot-2023-09-22-at-12.25.15-PM-1536x861.png 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/09/Screen-Shot-2023-09-22-at-12.25.15-PM-2048x1148.png 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Credit: Alliance Defending Freedom.</div>
These cases are the canaries in the coal mine. They warn us of what happens when the state arrogates to itself the power to police interior conviction. In the novel “1984,” George Orwell called this “thoughtcrime.” Today in Britain, it is called a “buffer zone,” but the principle is identical: certain beliefs must not merely be suppressed — they must be eradicated from the public square.
“Live Not By Lies!” is a clarion call to rediscover moral courage. Dreher draws on the legacy of Vaclav Havel, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and countless ordinary Christians who refused to live by the lie. They were forced to pretend that the Party was infallible, that Marxism was inevitable, that the State was God. Today, our cultural commissars demand our allegiance to a different set of dogmas — that biological sex is a construct, that unborn life is disposable, that faith belongs behind closed doors and never in public life. But the impulse is the same: bow, or be broken.
The documentary is a reminder that resistance begins not with grand gestures, but with the refusal to speak untruth. When the authorities came to interrogate believers in Prague, they demanded not only compliance but confession: “Say that you agree. Say that you believe.” Many would not. For this, they lost jobs, were blacklisted, even imprisoned. Yet their refusal to say what they did not believe was the seed from which freedom eventually grew.
<div id="attachment_943085" style="width: 417px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.angel.com/watch/live-not-by-lies"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-943085" class="size-large wp-image-943085" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-04-Jul-2025-12-53-PM-1283-407x576.jpg" alt="Angel Studios" width="407" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-04-Jul-2025-12-53-PM-1283-407x576.jpg 407w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-04-Jul-2025-12-53-PM-1283-212x300.jpg 212w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-04-Jul-2025-12-53-PM-1283-768x1086.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-04-Jul-2025-12-53-PM-1283-1086x1536.jpg 1086w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-04-Jul-2025-12-53-PM-1283-1448x2048.jpg 1448w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-04-Jul-2025-12-53-PM-1283-scaled.jpg 1810w" sizes=" (max-width: 407px) 100vw, 407px" /></a>Angel Studios</div>
How many today are willing to pay that price? We like to imagine ourselves as different — more sophisticated, more democratic, more tolerant. But the evidence mounts that our culture is simply addicted to a softer form of totalism: enforced conformity through the threat of professional ruin, reputational assassination, or — if you dare to pray silently — criminal prosecution.
There is no more potent illustration of this drift than the prosecutions of Vaughan-Spruce and Smith-Connor. In each case, the state claimed to be protecting “vulnerable women,” yet no evidence was presented that these individuals harassed or intimidated anyone. The real issue was that their mere presence — and their silent prayers — expressed a conviction the state deems intolerable. The Soviets called it “anti-Soviet agitation.” We call it “interference.” In both cases, the thought itself is the crime.
Some will say these comparisons are overwrought. They are not. For the Christian who believes God is Lord of both conscience and public life, there is no partition between belief and expression. The attempt to criminalize that wholeness — to tell a person they may think but not manifest their convictions — is precisely what totalitarian systems have always done. Dreher’s work, and this film, make clear that it begins with a creeping fear to speak, and ends with a culture that cannot remember how.
If we are to resist, we must start by telling the truth. No law should compel a citizen to lie — whether about the humanity of the unborn, the nature of marriage, or the sanctity of prayer. And no government has authority over the secret dialogue of the soul with its Creator. To surrender this is to surrender everything.
* * *
Lois McLatchie Miller (@LoisMcLatch) is a Scottish commentator and Senior Legal Communications Officer for Alliance Defending Freedom UK.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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