Who will defend free speech in this election?

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Free speech has come under sustained attack in Britain in recent years. New hate-crime legislation criminalises an ever wider range of views. People are hounded out of workplaces and organisations for expressing their beliefs. And dissent from woke orthodoxies on gender and race can all too frequently lead to cancellation.

What’s more, freedom of speech could come under further assault depending on who we vote for at the upcoming General Election. That is why I and some like-minded friends have just launched Just Answer The Question (JATQ), a new campaign designed to establish the extent to which our prospective MPs support free speech. To this end, JATQ has asked all contactable candidates standing at this election to answer five questions that directly address key issues of free speech and democracy. We are challenging them to give the electorate a straight answer on free speech, that most fundamental of rights.

We are asking candidates whether they agree with the following: (1) that the police should stop recording certain speech acts as ‘non-crime hate incidents’; (2) that psychotherapists should be free to advise young persons and others not to change sex / gender; (3) that teachers should stop telling school kids that Britain is a ‘structurally racist’ society; (4) that the government adopting the All-Party Parliamentary Group definition of ‘Islamophobia’ would curtail our right to be critical of a religion; and (5) that everyone should be free to speak their mind even if some deem their speech offensive.

So far, 150 candidates have responded ‘yes’ to the five questions, showing themselves to be clearly in favour of free speech. Tellingly, the vast majority of these free-speech champions are from the SDP, Reform UK, the Workers Party of Britain and Alba. Only five Conservatives have answered yes to the questions. Not a single candidate from Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the SNP or the Greens has even bothered to respond.

These questions are far from abstract. Labour, for instance, is planning to make it a criminal offence to engage in so-called LGBT conversion therapy. This would prevent psychotherapists from advising young persons and others not to change their gender. When Anneliese Dodds, the shadow minister for women and equalities, announced this ban on conversion therapy at Labour’s 2023 conference, she said there would be ‘no loopholes’. In other words, therapists, counsellors and others will only be permitted to ‘affirm’ a child, friend or patient in their stated intention to ‘change’ gender.

We have challenged both Dodds and Labour leader Keir Starmer on whether all adults could potentially have their collar felt for not affirming young people’s ‘gender identity’ and what exactly they mean by ‘conversion therapy’. They have not responded yet.

Similarly, two of the most enthusiastic Tory advocates of a ban on conversion therapy, Alicia Kearns and Caroline Nokes, have also been invited to answer the extra questions we posed to Starmer and Dodds. No answer so far.

Political support for critical race theory also poses a significant threat to free speech. Public bodies have already been bringing in, at taxpayers’ expense, ‘diversity’ training companies to inculcate their employees in the belief that Britain is structurally racist. For example, in Brighton in 2022, Green and Labour councillors provided teachers with ‘Racial Literacy 101’ sessions so that they could better instruct their pupils about ‘white supremacy’. One of the teaching slides asserted as fact that ‘Between the ages of three and five, children attach value to skin colour; white at the top of the hierarchy and black at the bottom’. That is why we are asking our prospective political representatives if they think it is wrong for teachers to tell school kids that Britain is a ‘structurally racist’ society.

We hope that JATQ will provide voters concerned about the assault on free speech with a vital tool – not only at this election, but beyond it, too. Because if and when Labour forms the next government, our speech and other democratic rights will be firmly in the firing line.

Marc Glendening is a co-founder of Just Answer The Question.