Islam gag is Labour ploy

FREEDOM of expression is the lifeblood of democracy. George Orwell wrote that a free society should uphold "the right to print what one believes to be true, without having to fear bullying or blackmail from any side".

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But in modern Britain, traditional liberty is under unprecedented threat from the appeasement of religious extremism, state authoritarianism in defence of its ideology and a widespread belief that we have a right not to be offended.

As a result, the cancel culture now flourishes across the public sector, while officialdom has created a climate of censorship on a scale not even seen in wartime.

According to one study, every day in 2017, nine citizens were arrested by the police for comments they made online. It's incredible that, last year alone, the police recorded no fewer than 13,000 so-called "non-crime hate incidents", many of them trivial, such as the case of the nine-year-old child reported for calling a classmate "a retard" or the motorist who had allegedly sounded her horn in a racist manner at a petrol station.

Far from feeling embarrassed by such absurdities, officialdom wants to go even further. Earlier this month, a Home Office internal review urged that the scope of noncrime hate incidents be widened.