The UK is not a police state for dealing with hate speech

The arrest of the comedy writer Graham Linehan at Heathrow airport on Monday has triggered a predictable chorus of outrage.

- MARC BURROWS

Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick called it “ridiculous”. Elon Musk branded the UK a “police state”, and JK Rowling asked, “What the fuck has the UK become?” Nigel Farage announced he'll raise the case before the US House Judiciary Committee as evidence of Britain's slide into "authoritarian censorship".

It's right to scrutinise how police use their powers, but strip away the performative outrage and the story gets a lot more straightforward: a man who has spent years allegedly making increasingly inflammatory comments about a vulnerable, marginalised group faced consequences for behaviour that reportedly crossed legal lines.

Linehan, often seen as gender-critical, confirmed in a blog that he was arrested on suspicion of inciting violence, pointing to three posts he'd made on X (Twitter) from April, including one that 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 balls." A specific instruction that encouraged physical violence against a vulnerable group.