When Islamists on horseback can intimidate and chase down anti-regime protesters on British streets without consequence, it raises a question no modern Briton ever expected to ask: is this still a country confident enough to protect dissent?
That is the question behind the startling <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/67f5fe6bb82cd78e3cd235719ccff719148d83a7?u=11850803">suggestion</a> from U.S. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers to the Telegraph — Britons may soon be justified in seeking asylum in America. She was not being casually provocative for effect. She was serious — and each passing day strengthens her case.
With war now raging between the United States, Israel, and Iran, Britain is confronting a humiliating question: what does it say about our country when anti-Ayatollah Iranians can be harassed on British streets while police stand idly by? In Manchester, rival demonstrations erupted after the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and reports circulated — alongside <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/da2384697c47993ad15de8bdc876420559a23a03?u=11850803">widely shared footage</a> — that pro-regime Islamists on horseback were intimidating and chasing away Iranians near the Islamic Centre.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
UK: Pro-regime Iranian enforcers chased anti-Ayatollah Iranians near the Islamic Centre in Manchester. The police declined to intervene. <a href="https://t.co/HNkOOLH75p">pic.twitter.com/HNkOOLH75p</a>
— @amuse (@amuse) <a href="https://twitter.com/amuse/status/2030231214171255001?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 7, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Source: @amuse/X.com
To the shock of bystanders, police made no arrests. The astounded man filming the giant steeds and their bearded Islamic riders pleaded with police to know why the men weren’t being “nicked” (that’s arrested, in Northern parlance). “They’ve just chased people with their ‘orses!” he shouts; his broad Manchester accent starkly at odds with the Middle Eastern politics playing out on his streets.
“What are we supposed to do?” shrugs the short, young police officer, “Pull him off his horse?”
“Yes!” exclaimed the terrified onlooker.
This is the state of affairs in Britain: if your safety, social norms, or free speech are being compromised by Islamic agitators, the police stand by. Our accidental documentary-maker behind the cell phone summed it up nicely, “If he had a Union Jack on, he’d be off the horse.” He’s right.
Over the past thirty years, the United Kingdom has <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/c4330ffdf28b092bd3a9ded3c05868fc52d57f3f?u=11850803">quietly</a> redefined the social contract that underpinned British society. But even those of us who have watched a stream of Trojan horses sneak in cultural change didn’t foresee it morphing into actual horses on our streets.
And as Rogers correctly identifies, it is all underpinned by the demise of free speech. This has fallen off a cliff: not through dramatic constitutional rupture, but via bureaucratic growth under both Left and Right-wing governments. Millions of Brits, many of whom are my viewers on GB News, are relieved that the Trump Administration has been ringing the alarm bell on our behalf.
A growing number of ordinary citizens are being swept into the criminal justice system for social media posts, venting frustration on WhatsApp groups, and even uttering <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/c2bceac0258a441bd433e922797e28875d0bf888?u=11850803">unkind</a> words at protests. There were more than 12,000 <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/62470ed4abde1015105311facb04948e43d91009?u=11850803">arrests</a> in 2023 under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988 — laws that criminalize posting messages deemed &#8220;grossly offensive,&#8221; &#8220;indecent, obscene,&#8221; or causing &#8220;annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety.&#8221;
That&#8217;s roughly 33 arrests <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/a979482f8ee61bcacaa182549ce7da9ecb858cf5?u=11850803">per day</a> in a country where shoplifting is practically decriminalized, and less than 5% of home burglaries are solved.
While the laws curtailing speech were originally intended to deal with serious threats and targeted harassment, in practice, they can be applied far more broadly. Civil liberties groups <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/1cf9edb8541540b412d62c86505cf0d8ee16552f?u=11850803">argue</a> that the vagueness of what constitutes &#8220;offensive&#8221; content allows authorities to monitor or detain people for expressing controversial political opinions, satire, or clumsy humor.
Things became more extreme with the 2023 Online Safety Act, one of the most significant legal changes of the decade, granting the communications regulator (Ofcom) wide authority to compel platforms to remove content. It also creates new criminal offenses for incidents of &#8220;false and threatening communications.&#8221; But the act&#8217;s overly broad, subjective definitions and heavy penalties will lead to the censorship of lawful and harmless speech by tech firms trying to avoid multi-million dollar fines. Hundreds of people have already been <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/8bcf7660c7ddc8842b69fe45491a3fd9daa62bc6?u=11850803">charged</a> under the new regime for &#8220;illegal fake news&#8221; and &#8220;threatening communications,&#8221; with dozens convicted just months after it came into force.
Rogers is right to observe that this environment has produced something historically novel: a liberal democracy in which citizens increasingly self-censor not out of politeness, but out of fear.
Comedy writer Graham Linehan was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/irish-comedian-recounts-shocking-arrest-over-anti-trans-social-media-posts">arrested</a> last September at London&#8217;s Heathrow Airport after traveling from America, where he had <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/ed17a91d8bdab33570b575f3018e8c7d96f65a97?u=11850803">posted</a> on X about protecting women&#8217;s spaces from trans-identified males.
2023 also saw the arrival of enforcement <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/e1d16dc331f341b4db26779377550dfa0d97d162?u=11850803">against</a> &#8220;non-crime hate incidents,&#8221; a uniquely British invention that allowed police to record speech as hateful even when no law had been broken. The message is unmistakable: speech is tolerated only so long as it causes no discomfort to those empowered to define harm.
Contrast this with the American approach Rogers implicitly praises — the First Amendment as the cultural spine of American life. It protects speech precisely because it is offensive, destabilizing, or unpopular. American courts do not ask whether speech might cause emotional unease; they ask whether the state has any business interfering at all.
Critics will argue that Britain&#8217;s model is merely more &#8220;civilized&#8221; and that Americans fetishize absolutism. But balance presumes a neutral arbiter, and Britain no longer has one. When regulators, universities, employers, and police all share the same ideological assumptions, moderation becomes enforcement by another name.
What Rogers understands — and what many in Britain still resist — is that free speech is not primarily about manners: it is about power and control. Once the power to determine acceptable opinion shifts decisively to institutions, citizens become subjects in all but name. You may still speak, but only at your own risk.
This is why talk of asylum, literal or not, resonates deeply.
Asylum is sought not only when bombs fall, but when rights erode so completely that dissent becomes untenable. We are not quite there yet — but the trajectory is headed nowhere good. How could it? The British government is currently <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/93424203e35ae34cb4276d0c03f8932f0045fee0?u=11850803">proposing</a> the abolition of jury trials for all but the most heinous crimes.
America&#8217;s free-speech culture survives not because Americans are uniquely virtuous or diplomatic but because their system assumes fallibility — of governments, of majorities, of individual morality. Britain, by contrast, increasingly assumes moral consensus and builds enforcement mechanisms around it.
Sarah Rogers has done the UK a service by saying the quiet part aloud. If Britain wishes to remain a nation of free speakers rather than shy whisperers, it must relearn a lesson America never forgot: the price of liberty is not silence, but tolerance of speech we would rather not hear.
* * *
Bev Turner is a host of &#8220;The Late Show Live&#8221; for Great Britain&#8217;s GBNews, based out of Washington, D.C. Follow her on X <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/6a872d0bbc65de7ea63572b544b18a7c29887860?u=11850803">@BeverleyTurner</a>
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Anti-migrant Hotel Protest And Counter-Protests Take Place In Newcastle

Saying The Quiet Part Out Loud About Britain’s Free Speech Crisis

Free Speech

Great Britain

Manchester

Opinion

United Kingdom

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

Donald Trump

England

Hong Kong

Jimmy Lai

Keir Starmer

Prison

State of the Union

President Donald Trump tied disgraced former British royal Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to the late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein during a 2015 interview, advising reporters to question &#8220;Prince Andrew&#8221; if they wanted to know what went on at Epstein&#8217;s notorious private island.
Trump, who was asked to comment on Epstein, said at the time that it was clear the disgraced financier had &#8220;a problem&#8221; — and that Andrew, who has since been stripped of his royal title and status, was in a position to know more about Epstein&#8217;s behaviors than most.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨 FLASHBACK: President Trump calling out Prince Andrew 11 years ago!
<a href="https://t.co/KCrHSHvy33">pic.twitter.com/KCrHSHvy33</a>
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) <a href="https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/2024484363950248448?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 19, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;You raised the question of Jeffrey Epstein in your remarks about her — in the Q &amp; A with Sean,&#8221; a reporter said.
&#8220;Well, I think he’s got a problem,&#8221; Trump replied. &#8220;I mean, I’m hearing —&#8221;
&#8220;What do you think the problem will be?&#8221; the reporter pressed.
&#8220;I don’t know, but that island was really a cesspool,&#8221; Trump said. &#8220;There’s no question about it, just ask Prince Andrew. He’ll tell you about it. The island was an absolute cesspool.&#8221;
Within the next few years, Epstein became the subject of a federal investigation into child-sex trafficking and was ultimately arrested and jailed in New York City. The investigation dug into Epstein&#8217;s powerful connections, in addition to a previous sweetheart plea deal Epstein had secured in Florida in 2008 — which allowed him to plead to lesser state offenses and avoid federal sex trafficking charges.
According to a 2019 ruling, however, the plea deal was a violation of the Crime Victims&#8217; Rights Act because the victims were not informed when it was struck.
Epstein died that same year by suicide in a jail cell in New York City&#8217;s Metropolitan Correctional Center, but the investigation into his network and powerful connections continued. His longtime partner Ghislaine Maxwell was tried and convicted of sex trafficking.
Mountbatten-Windsor, in the years that followed, was stripped of his titles and royal duties. And on the morning of his 66th birthday — February 19, 2026 — he was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/former-prince-andrew-arrested-over-epstein-files-faces-life-in-prison">arrested</a> by British law enforcement officers who accused him of misconduct while serving in public office in connection with his ties to Epstein. Reports suggest that he could face life in prison, if convicted.
King Charles issued a rare public statement following the arrest, saying, &#8220;Let me state clearly: the law must take its course. As this process continues, it would not be right for me to comment further on this matter.&#8221;
President Trump also addressed Mountbatten-Windsor&#8217;s arrest, saying that it was a horrible thing for the royal family as a whole.
Saying that the document releases thus far have &#8220;totally exonerated&#8221; him, Trump made it clear that he felt bad for Britain&#8217;s King Charles — a &#8220;fantastic man&#8221; — to have to deal with the fallout of Andrew&#8217;s ties to Epstein.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
President Trump on Prince Andrew arrest &#8211; It’s a shame <a href="https://t.co/sDMnBTOL46">pic.twitter.com/sDMnBTOL46</a>
— Karli Bonne’ 🇺🇸 (@KarluskaP) <a href="https://twitter.com/KarluskaP/status/2024576309465125146?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 19, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Andrew Mountbatten Windsor

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Watch Trump Toss Prince Andrew Under Epstein Bus 11 Years Ago

Epstein Files

Jeffrey Epstein

Politics

Prince Andrew

Sex Trafficking

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is under mounting pressure after acknowledging that he knew of ties between his former U.S. Ambassador, Lord Peter Mandelson, and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein before appointing Mandelson to the post.
Starmer’s admission has triggered backlash from across the British political spectrum, forced a partial reversal on the release of government documents, and raised fresh questions about the vetting process behind one of the United Kingdom’s most sensitive diplomatic appointments.
At Prime Minister’s Questions this week, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch pressed Starmer on whether official security vetting had flagged Mandelson’s continued association with Epstein after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor. “Yes it did,” Starmer replied, confirming that the relationship had been reviewed and that “various questions were put to him” during the appointment process.
Starmer, however, claimed he was unaware of what he described as the “sheer depth and the extent” of Mandelson’s ties to Epstein, accusing the former Labour power broker of lying repeatedly about the relationship. Starmer told Parliament, “He lied about that to everyone for years. When the new information came to light, I sacked him.&#8221;
Mandelson, a political appointee rather than a career diplomat, was removed from his role as ambassador to Washington in September following the release of new material tied to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Epstein files. Those documents appear to show Mandelson sharing potentially market-sensitive information with Epstein during the 2008 financial crisis, when Mandelson was serving as business secretary in Gordon Brown’s government.
The relationship between Mandelson and Epstein, including Mandelson’s stays at Epstein’s residences after the conviction, had been reported publicly prior to Mandelson’s 2024 appointment. Starmer acknowledged that some of those details were known to Downing Street and reviewed during due diligence and security vetting.
“What was not known was the depth and extent,” Starmer repeated.
The controversy has escalated beyond partisan criticism, with Labour MPs, led by former deputy leader Angela Rayner, pushing back against Starmer’s initial plan to allow the Cabinet Secretary to determine which appointment documents could be withheld on national security grounds.
Under pressure from his own party, Starmer agreed instead to allow Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee to oversee decisions on what material can be released, a move widely seen as an attempt to calm the waters amid growing unrest on Labour’s back benches.
The Conservative Party has tabled a “humble address” motion in the House of Commons, a rarely used parliamentary tactic designed to compel the government to release internal documents. The motion seeks disclosure of vetting materials and communications involving Mandelson and the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, Morgan McSweeney, a close Mandelson ally who remains under scrutiny.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has also called for a public inquiry, pressing Starmer on whether he considered Epstein’s victims when appointing Mandelson to such a senior role.
Lord Mandelson has resigned from the Labour Party and stepped down from the House of Lords. Starmer has announced plans to introduce legislation to prevent Mandelson from retaining his peerage title and confirmed that Mandelson has been stripped of his status as a Privy Counsellor with the consent of King Charles.
Mandelson has reportedly argued that he sought Epstein’s financial expertise in what he believed to be the national interest. Starmer, however, offered an unusually blunt condemnation of his former ally, saying, “Mandelson betrayed our country, our Parliament, and my party. If I knew then what I know now, he would never have been anywhere near government.”
Documents relating to Mandelson’s appointment are expected to be released later today, with material referred to police as part of an ongoing investigation.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer Gives Speech On Plan To Cut NHS Waiting Times

Keir Starmer In Hot Seat After Admitting He Knew Appointee Was Close To Epstein

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

It&#8217;s Christmas break, so it seems like an appropriate time <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-251222-member-exclusive?elementPosition=3&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">to discuss</a> one of my favorite books: “The Screwtape Letters,” by C.S. Lewis.
The book is all at once a deep rumination on religion, a high comedy rooted in the hilarity of both humanity&#8217;s flaws and Satan&#8217;s foibles, a tragedy about the nature of death, and a tale of redemption and everlasting life.
It is a spectacularly good book.
When you read “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Screwtape-Letters-Deluxe-C-Lewis/dp/0063487764/?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_w=hmHqX&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.048a6e3c-8d40-4302-8312-26c626af6738%3Aamzn1.symc.050ea944-f1cf-4610-b462-3b604f2f4082&amp;pf_rd_p=048a6e3c-8d40-4302-8312-26c626af6738&amp;pf_rd_r=KNCVRDB5MGRR1B4K95QR&amp;pd_rd_wg=iizDa&amp;pd_rd_r=4e52d04f-0a0b-4d38-95e4-749c6da85b95&amp;ref_=pd_hp_d_btf_ci_mcx_mr_ca_id_hp_d">The Screwtape Letters</a>,” there are a lot of truly funny moments. Lewis himself said, though, “Of all my books there was only one I did not take pleasure in writing,” calling it ‘dry and gritty going.’ &#8220;At the time, I was thinking of objections to the Christian life and decided to put them in the form ‘That’s what the devil would say.’ But making goods ‘bad’ and bads ‘good’ gets to be fatiguing.”
The book is wildly entertaining because he is obviously writing in the voice of one of Satan&#8217;s minions. In Christian theology, Satan has a will of his own, and he&#8217;s rebelling against God, which makes him a really fascinating character.
Lewis opens the book with a couple of epigraphs, one by Martin Luther: “The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield the texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn,” and one by Sir Thomas More: “The devil, the proud spirit, cannot endure to be mocked.”
The book is written from the perspective of Screwtape as letters to his nephew, Wormwood. Wormwood has been given the on-the-ground task of convincing a young man away from his incipient Christianity and Screwtape’s job to advise Wormwood on the best way to procure the young man&#8217;s soul.
This gives Lewis extraordinary leeway to stick and move with Satan, to make fun, to mock, to play with the entire idea. And what emerges is a great work of literature.
There are a bunch of large-scale arguments that Lewis makes in “The Screwtape Letters.” The first one is that Satan&#8217;s best weapon is the “real world.”
That is correct.
If you talk to secular people, they&#8217;ll always say that the spiritual world and God are unreal. The real world is the material world. But then, when you ask them about what&#8217;s important to them, they&#8217;ll talk about their feelings, which, of course, are inherently unreal in the same way the spiritual world is unreal.
This is a point that Lewis makes: the definition of “real” is capacious and changing on a regular basis among secularists. Lewis believes that man&#8217;s draw to the divine can be rooted in reason, and that reason actually guides you toward something beyond yourself. It guides you toward the transcendent.
That&#8217;s an idea that I heartily agree with. I believe that the notion of free will and free choice in the universe guides you toward the idea that there must be something beyond us, that there&#8217;s a logic to the universe that guides you to the question of questions: Who is the Chief Logician, who made the rules?
<div id="attachment_1018735" style="width: 391px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Screwtape-Letters-Deluxe-C-Lewis/dp/0063487764/?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_w=hmHqX&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.048a6e3c-8d40-4302-8312-26c626af6738%3Aamzn1.symc.050ea944-f1cf-4610-b462-3b604f2f4082&amp;pf_rd_p=048a6e3c-8d40-4302-8312-26c626af6738&amp;pf_rd_r=KNCVRDB5MGRR1B4K95QR&amp;pd_rd_wg=iizDa&amp;pd_rd_r=4e52d04f-0a0b-4d38-95e4-749c6da85b95&amp;ref_=pd_hp_d_btf_ci_mcx_mr_ca_id_hp_d"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1018735" class="size-large wp-image-1018735" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/71NsTMMQuGL._SL1500_-381x576.jpg" alt="Credit: HarperOne" width="381" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/71NsTMMQuGL._SL1500_-381x576.jpg 381w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/71NsTMMQuGL._SL1500_-199x300.jpg 199w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/71NsTMMQuGL._SL1500_-768x1160.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/71NsTMMQuGL._SL1500_.jpg 993w" sizes=" (max-width: 381px) 100vw, 381px" /></a>Credit: HarperOne</div>
Lewis makes the same point, and then he says that the job of the secular materialist is to get you to focus on the thing-in-itself.
Screwtape says,
<blockquote>Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favour, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it real life. Don&#8217;t let him ask what he means by real.</blockquote>
Thus, keep the person focused on the immediate and the now. There&#8217;s nothing that&#8217;s done this more than the internet age, where our attention spans have been reduced to the next 15 seconds. Sitting and ruminating on life leads you to higher ideas, and if you can prevent people from doing that sort of stuff, you end up with a very materialistic society.
So what exactly does reality mean? According to Screwtape,
<blockquote>People ought to be taught that in all experiences which can make them happier or better, only the physical facts are real, while the spiritual elements are subjective and in all experiences which can discourage or corrupt them, the spiritual elements are the main reality, and to ignore them is to be an escapist.</blockquote>
The idea is that when you&#8217;re thinking about death, the only thing that is real is the death itself. You&#8217;re not supposed to look at the spiritual element of death. Or, if you do look at something that makes you very happy, you&#8217;re not supposed to look at the spiritual element of what makes you very happy. Instead, focus on the pure materialism of the thing. The goal is to enmesh mankind in the world.
Screwtape says,
<blockquote>How disastrous for us is the continual remembrance of death with which war enforces. One of our best weapons, contented worldliness, is rendered useless in wartime. Not even a human can believe that he is going to live forever.</blockquote>
The material world, then, is the chief ally of Screwtape because people desire not to think of God. God is a distraction. God has obligations. God has duties. 
Screwtape says,
<blockquote>Human beings hate every idea that suggests Him just as men in financial embarrassment hate the very sight of a passbook. (meaning a checkbook.)</blockquote>
The idea is that if you&#8217;re not thinking about duty, and then you&#8217;re forced to think about duty, you don&#8217;t like it very much.
The other thing that Screwtape tries to get you to focus on is the future — at all times. If you can focus on the future at all times, then people will be very neglectful of the present.
So says Screwtape,
<blockquote>It&#8217;s far better to make them live in the Future. &#8230; The Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time — for the Past is frozen and no longer flows and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. Hence the encouragement we have given to all those schemes of thought like Creative Evolution, Scientific Humanism or Communism, which fix men&#8217;s affections on the Future, on the very core of temporality. Hence, nearly all vices are rooted in the future.</blockquote>
The idea is, if you&#8217;re thinking about the future, then you&#8217;re not thinking about the spiritual consequences of the things you do in the here and now. You&#8217;re thinking about the material consequences of the things that you do in the here and now, and that allows you to do bad things in the name of a “better future.”
Screwtape says the best thing you can do is convince people that their utopian thoughts are the things that are mandated by God. So on the one hand, you try to get people sunk in reality, and this drives them away from God.
On the other hand, Screwtape advises Wormwood that people should be led to examine their own emotions constantly; if you can be narcissistic, checking yourself all the time, you&#8217;re going to end up without God.
Lewis teaches that very often in life, we engage at the beginning of a task with great enthusiasm, and then the enthusiasm wears away. This happens all the time with a variety of tasks, and once that happens, that is when you encourage people to look into being morose, look into being depressed, to reject the spiritual aspect of their duty, to stop trying to take joy in the spiritual aspect of what they&#8217;re doing, and instead focus on the fact that it&#8217;s just sheer drudgery.
Screwtape says that the rule of thumb for seducing mankind away from God is to encourage people to be unselfconscious when considering sin — to be unabashed, unashamed, blasé about your sin, but to be self-conscious and awkward when you consider acts of faith.
This is modern society in a nutshell. The more you sin, the prouder you should be. You should engage in festivals celebrating your sin. When it comes to going to church, you should be shy: “I don&#8217;t want to be judgmental; I&#8217;ll make you feel ashamed. But when it comes to my sin, man, I will tell you about my sins all day long because we can all be comfortable; we can be the boys when we&#8217;re talking about our sins.”
Screwtape also points out that one easy way to hell is to get people to disregard the individual human beings in front of them in the name of Mankind, writ large. This, obviously, is the project of the Left, which is willing to completely run over its neighbors in order to pursue a &#8220;better world&#8221; for everybody else.
The book has wonderful pieces of advice, even for people who are not totally religious, about how to act better in your inner world, how to treat other people better, and how to have better relations with your spouse.
It&#8217;s a beautifully written book.
* * *
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CS Lewis writing

One Of My Favorite Books: ‘The Screwtape Letters’

One Of My Favorite Books: 'The Screwtape Letters'

Ben Shapiro

Bible

Books

C.S. Lewis

Christianity

Judeo-Christian Values

Literature

World War II

Just in time for the holidays, Brighton and Hove Museums is redefining Christmas for modern sensibilities — but not in a way anyone celebrating the season might enjoy. The museum, which was granted <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/37706714/woke-museum-decolonises-father-christmas/">over $1.2 million</a> in taxpayer dollars earlier this year, has a guide on “decolonizing” Father Christmas, claiming that the jolly old man is too white, too male, and far too judgmental for contemporary audiences.
According to the museum, Santa’s traditional “naughty and nice” list teaches children that a Western figure has the power to judge everyone, imposing colonial assumptions and erasing Indigenous cultural practices.
The museum’s Joint Head of Culture Change, Simone LaCorbinière, published a blog post in 2023 that <a href="https://brightonmuseums.org.uk/discovery/history-stories/decolonising-father-christmas/?utm_source=chatgpt.com">stated</a>:
<blockquote>
&#8230; the tale of a white, Western Santa who judges all children’s behaviour has problems &#8230;  who decided Santa should be the judge of children’s behaviour in every community? How can he assess, for example, Indigenous children practicing their own cultural traditions? Told like this, the story presents Santa as the ultimate authority of all societies. This asks us to accept colonial assumptions of cultural superiority. It doesn’t recognise the complex realities colonised people face.
And it can erase Indigenous cultural practices and sovereignty. For example, in many Santa storybooks of my youth, and later when exploring the story with children in the family, other cultures appeared simply as backdrops for Santa’s adventure. There might be a flag, and illustrations of children in their national costume, but we learned nothing about those places and people.
This perpetuates the harmful ‘colonial gaze’. Non-Western cultures are ‘othered’. It says that the coloniser has the power to judge all people. And it ignores many communities’ histories and traditions. Telling the story like this teaches new generations that the coloniser knows best.
And what do we say by having an old white man supervise the elves’ work? Is it something entirely innocent – elves are magical, mythical beings completely separate from the real world – or is there more to it? Are they representative of other groups? How do they reinforce how marginalised groups view not only ‘father figures’ but also themselves?
Mythical maybe, but elves are identifiably different to what is often presented as ‘normal’, which is white, male and non-disabled. And in the stories, the ‘different’ ones make the toys and the white, non-disabled man supervises them.
</blockquote>
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The post, which remains on the museum’s website, also included suggestions such as these:
<ul style="font-weight: 400;">
<li>Remove Santa rewarding children based on a Western binary of ‘naughty/nice.’ Focus on bringing joy to kids of all backgrounds rather than judging them.</li>
<li>Put Santa to work in the factory alongside the elves. This shows him and the elves as equal.</li>
<li>Have Santa be a more diverse character who celebrates cultural exchange. Avoid promoting one culture’s dominance. An inclusive adaptation could include many Santas from different regions.</li>
<li>Include some Mother Christmases. Patriarchy and colonialism went hand in hand. Show the next generation that men don’t have to be in charge.</li>
</ul>
Critics were not impressed. Senior Tory MP Sir Alec Shelbrooke called the initiative “the worst possible use of taxpayer funds,” while Lord Young of Acton of the Free Speech Union <a href="https://www.thetimes.com/article/santa-claus-decolonised-diversity-3l73qxcc2">derided</a> the museum as “po-faced,” sarcastically questioning whether children in non-Christian countries should now demand Santa leave a note apologizing for centuries of white supremacy.
The museum defends the project as “prompting reflection” rather than prescribing behavior, claiming it’s intended to teach children about historical narratives and cultural perspectives. In practice, it reads more like a manual for scrutinizing Christmas traditions through a lens of social justice, replacing timeless family fun with guilt and ideology.
Meanwhile, taxpayers are footing the bill.

Preparations are Underway at Santa School

Woke Christmas: Taxpayer-Funded British Museum Argues For ‘Decolonizing’ Father Christmas

Christmas

Santa Claus

Wokeness

In 1946, not too long after the end of World War II, Winston Churchill famously spoke of a “special relationship” between the United Kingdom and the United States — not only as a bond of history and language, but as a partnership grounded in shared principles and moral duty. That same sense of duty must guide us today as we confront the world’s leading state sponsor of terror: the clerical regime in Iran.
Historically, when facing totalitarian regimes, Britain, the US, and other Western powers have placed local dissidents at the center of any discussion about the future of oppressed nations. Yet Iran remains a glaring exception. For reasons that defy logic and morality, successive governments have marginalized the voices of Iranian democrats.
I am one of a growing number of Western politicians on both sides of the Atlantic who believe this should change and to this end, I will speak at the Free Iran Convention in Washington, D.C., on November 15, where more than one thousand Iranian experts, professionals, and academicians from all over the US, will present their vision for a free, democratic Iran.
For nearly half a century, Western policy toward Tehran has prioritized negotiation over accountability, assuming the clerical regime’s grip on power was unshakeable. Many believed Iran’s rulers would never meet the same fate as the Shah — at least not without chaos in the absence of a viable alternative.
That assumption was flawed from the outset. In the immediate aftermath of the 1979 revolution, the forces that helped topple the Shah — chief among them the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) — remained active, popular, and determined to oppose the theocracy that hijacked the revolution’s promise. The regime responded with brutal repression throughout the 1980s, culminating in the horrific 1988 massacre of around 30,000 political prisoners, most of them MEK members and supporters.
This atrocity was meant to eliminate organized opposition once and for all. It failed. The MEK survived and went on to form the backbone of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a broad coalition advocating regime change and democratic transition. Yet, tragically, the massacre convinced much of the international community that internal resistance had been extinguished — and that engagement with Tehran was the only realistic path forward.
Encouraged by that misperception (echoed by the regime’s protagonists and lobbyists), the regime deepened its repression at home and aggression abroad. It became the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, the nation with the highest per-capita rate of executions, and the only non-nuclear-armed state enriching uranium to 60% purity — just short of weapons-grade.
Ironically, by assuming the regime’s permanence, Western leaders helped create a situation where regime change has become essential for global security and human rights. Some progress is evident: the UK, France, and Germany recently triggered the re-imposition of UN sanctions following Washington’s return to a “maximum pressure” strategy.
But it remains unclear whether today’s policymakers grasp how profoundly their predecessors misread the regime’s vulnerability.
That misunderstanding can no longer be excused. Three nationwide uprisings — in 2018, 2019, and 2022 — have shown the Iranian people’s enduring commitment to democratic change. The unity and persistence of their demands reveal the strength of an organized opposition that, despite deadly crackdowns and decades of dismissal by Western analysts, continues to challenge the regime from within.
The Free Iran Convention in Washington builds on this momentum. It follows major gatherings in Brussels and across Europe, where Iranian youth and dissidents reaffirmed their readiness for a democratic transition. The movement’s supporters will call for a coherent Western policy — one that recognizes the NCRI as a credible alternative and supports the Iranian people’s right to determine their future.
Many of us in public life have already joined this cause. In parliaments on both sides of the Atlantic, lawmakers have endorsed resolutions recognizing the NCRI as a legitimate democratic alternative to the current regime and affirming the Iranian people’s right to establish a secular, non-nuclear republic. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the NCRI, has articulated a ten-point plan as a roadmap for a future democratic republic of Iran. It has gained cross-party support of the majority of members of both the US House of Representatives and the UK House of Commons.
It is time for policymakers to act accordingly. The UK and European Union must designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization, and democratic governments should hold Tehran’s leaders accountable for crimes against humanity. Most importantly, the West must acknowledge the Iranian people’s right to overthrow tyranny and build a democratic future.
Appeasement has never delivered stability. Courage, clarity, and solidarity with the Iranian people just might.
* * *
Rt. Hon. John Bercow was the Speaker of the UK House of Commons from 2009 to 2019.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Protest Against U.S. Attacks On Iran

It’s Time To Challenge Tehran’s Illusion Of Strength With Reality

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Democracy

European Union

Iran

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

Middle East

Radical Islamic Terror

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

Lawsuit

Legacy Media

Media Bias

Television

Alec Penstone, a 100-year-old Royal Navy veteran who swept the seas for mines during the D-Day landings, has issued a blistering indictment of modern Britain, saying flatly that winning the Second World War “wasn’t worth the result.” Appearing on “Good Morning Britain,” Penstone’s voice carried the weight of a century — and the heartbreak of a man who watched his comrades die for a freedom he now believes has been squandered.
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“My message is,” Penstone told the hosts, “I can see in my mind’s eye those rows and rows of white stones — all the hundreds of my friends who gave their lives. For what? The country of today? No, I’m sorry, but the sacrifice wasn’t worth the result of what it is now.”
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This was no casual complaint from a disillusioned pensioner. It was the lament of a man who, at fifteen, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/07/winning-second-world-war-not-worth-it-d-day-veteran/#:~:text=A%20100%2Dyear%2Dold%20veteran,Good%20Morning%20Britain%20on%20Friday.">joined the war effort,</a> later serving on the HMS Campania, searching for U-boats and mines under constant threat of torpedo fire. He called himself “one of the lucky ones” simply for surviving. Yet after returning home, marrying his sweetheart Gladys, and watching Britain rebuild, he now looks upon a nation that no longer resembles the country that once stood defiantly against tyranny.
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“What we fought for was our freedom,” he said. “But now it’s a darn sight worse than when I fought for it.”
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&#39;What we fought for was our freedom, even now [the country] is worse than it was when I fought for it,&#39; says 100-year-old World War II Veteran Alec Penstone. <a href="https://t.co/M9HSsS5sIW">pic.twitter.com/M9HSsS5sIW</a>
&mdash; Good Morning Britain (@GMB) <a href="https://twitter.com/GMB/status/1986715254869332096?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 7, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Penstone’s comments land in a Britain that appears almost determined to erase the very memory of the heroes who saved it. Earlier this year, under the Labour government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, portraits of Winston Churchill and the Duke of Wellington — the men who defeated Adolf Hitler and Napoleon — were quietly <a href="https://www.gbnews.com/politics/keir-starmer-winston-churchill-portrait-parliament-labour-party-history">removed</a> from Parliament. GB News reported that the purge extended across Westminster, with Churchill’s image even taken down from Portcullis House, where he was once photographed standing at the Cenotaph in 1945.
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The Cenotaph, that sacred monument to the fallen, now stands in stark contrast to a political class eager to distance itself from the nation’s own history. To Penstone’s generation, Churchill embodied courage, conviction, and the defense of liberty. To today’s ruling elite, he is an embarrassment — an inconvenient reminder of British greatness.
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The moral decay goes deeper still. This year, Starmer dismissed calls to investigate the widespread rapes of young girls by Pakistani grooming gangs, smearing those who demanded justice as “jumping on a far-right bandwagon.” When Elon Musk called out the cover-up to his 210 million followers, Starmer called it “misinformation.” Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1876245946348208601">shot back</a>: “What an insane thing to say!” accusing Starmer of ignoring “vast numbers of little girls and their parents” for political gain.
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For a man like Alec Penstone, who risked his life so that truth and freedom might endure, such cowardice and corruption cut deep. His sorrow is not nostalgia — it is recognition. The Britain he fought for has traded courage for cowardice, truth for propaganda, and honor for convenience.
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The white stones still stand in silent rows. But the nation they represent, Penstone fears, has forgotten why they are there.
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The Mayor Of Arromanches Leads A Parade of British Veterans With A Royal Guard Of Honour

100-Year-Old D-Day Vet Condemns The Britain He Sees Today: ‘The Sacrifice Wasn’t Worth The Result’

General

World

In a dramatic courtroom rebuke of politicized policing in Britain, journalist and activist Tommy Robinson won a decisive legal victory this week when Judge Sam Goozee ruled that law enforcement officials unlawfully targeted him because of his political beliefs. Robinson credited Elon Musk for financing his defense, declaring that “free speech won.” He <a href="https://x.com/TRobinsonNewEra/status/1985663828378464466">added</a> that without Musk’s intervention, “I’d probably be in jail.”
The case stemmed from Robinson’s July 2024 arrest at the Channel Tunnel in Folkestone, where he was charged under the Terrorism Act after refusing to give police the passcode to his phone. Officers claimed suspicion after observing him driving a friend’s Bentley to Spain. Robinson countered that the phone contained confidential sources and the identities of victims tied to his reporting.
Judge Goozee dismissed the charge outright, ruling that the stop and subsequent prosecution were politically motivated. “I cannot put out of my mind that it was actually what you stood for and your beliefs that acted as the principal reason for the stop,” Goozee <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2025/11/tommy-robinson-cleared-of-terror-charge">said</a> from the bench. The verdict underscored that political belief is recognized as a protected characteristic under the U.K.’s Equality Act, making discrimination on that basis illegal.
The judge eviscerated the police testimony, finding it riddled with inconsistencies and evasions. Officers admitted destroying key notes, contradicting each other on major details, and issuing confused or deceptive statements. Goozee <a href="https://www.rebelnews.com/tommy_robinson_reports">described</a> police witnesses as unreliable and lacking credibility. The ruling affirms that Robinson was not suspected of terrorism; instead, the police appeared to have used counterterrorism powers as a pretext to harass a high-profile critic of the establishment.
Video statements released by Robinson afterward showed him both grateful and angry. “I should be happy, but I’m not,” he said. “It shouldn’t take an American billionaire to defend British free speech.” His comments echoed a recurring theme: that the British state, aided by a complicit media, has sought for years to silence dissent by blurring the lines between journalism and extremism.
Robinson highlighted how major British outlets sat through the trial and failed to report that the police admitted wrongdoing. “They all knew the evidence was corrupt and unlawful,” he said. “They just hoped I’d get another bent judge.” His frustration grew from the financial and emotional toll of years of legal battles — cases costing tens of thousands of pounds, only to end with him repeatedly exonerated.
Musk, now openly positioning himself as a defender of free expression worldwide, became a central player in turning the tide. His support for Robinson’s case has reignited debate over the role of private citizens in defending rights the state itself seeks to erode.
For many observers, the verdict represents far more than one man’s acquittal. It stands as an indictment of Britain’s weaponized bureaucracy and its two-tier justice system — one that has pursued a single journalist with ferocity while ignoring the crimes he has exposed. As Robinson put it, “I was arrested and prosecuted under counterterrorism legislation for being Tommy Robinson.”
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I WAS TARGETED BECAUSE OF MY POLITICAL BELIEFS!!
Thank you <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@elonmusk</a> for fighting in my corner, you&#8217;re an absolute legend!!! <a href="https://t.co/vx405cCP6d">pic.twitter.com/vx405cCP6d</a>
— Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧 (@TRobinsonNewEra) <a href="https://twitter.com/TRobinsonNewEra/status/1985661754131530134?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 4, 2025</a></blockquote>
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WOW!!!
I am so humbled, and I can&#8217;t thank all of you enough for your support and engagement.
And not forgetting the main man himself <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@elonmusk</a> who gave me back my voice and saved freedom of speech in the west.
I am eternally grateful to all of you. <a href="https://t.co/37EYpaJZzB">pic.twitter.com/37EYpaJZzB</a>
— Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧 (@TRobinsonNewEra) <a href="https://twitter.com/TRobinsonNewEra/status/1985336721546821743?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 3, 2025</a></blockquote>
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