Newsletter #46: The reshuffle that wasn't

PLUS: The Online Safety Bill has created the biggest opportunity for free speech in decades

Good afternoon.

This newsletter’s agenda: The Online Safety Bill has created the biggest opportunity for free speech in decades (free); Shadow Cabinet: the reshuffle that wasn’t (paid).

The Online Safety Bill has created the biggest opportunity for free speech in decades

I will keep this fairly brief, but campaigners for free speech must recognise the Online Safety Act as their greatest opportunity in decades. Temperamentally, the British public are not especially sympathetic to free speech causes. Nor are Europeans; in fact, in many cases (and not just in Germany) their speech laws are even worse than ours. Indeed, I think even in America, people are not very sympathetic — it’s just that, luckily, the courts over there have overruled the general public on this point due to their somewhat novel and ahistorical interpretation of the First Amendment becoming canon, as explained in a previous article.

It should never be taken for granted, then, that people will not be convinced against restricting their own rights because of mere ‘offensiveness’, or even more spurious grounds than that. Think, for instance, of the ceaseless calls to criminalise offensive football chants, under the thin justification that they pose a threat to public order. We will only have a few opportunities to make our case, and this is one of them.

We have been very lucky indeed. The Online Safety Act, as it was presented, was primarily a matter of preventing children from accessing pornography and secondarily something to do with ‘extremism’ (which, in practice, means ‘being mean to our wonderful MPs’). Most people support children not being able to access pornography. They don’t really see that this is the thin end of the wedge to much broader censorship — and that’s the point for certain cynical supporters of the Bill. And of course, for most people, ‘extremism’ is a bad thing (though it is unspecified how the Act will do much on this point). They were even willing to cynically use the murder of David Amess by an Islamic extremism to advance their goal of never being criticised online ever again.

Alas. The inept decision to frame the Act so broadly that virtually anything could get caught by it (thanks to the entirely nebulous category of ‘content harmful to children’), thus risking huge fines on global revenue, meant that social media companies would naturally take a very cautious approach. This sudden, extreme, and blatantly indefensible censorship has been our only hope against pornography being used in a much more long-running campaign against free speech online, tightening the screw slowly but surely — something that they surely would have succeeded in otherwise. Instead, the British Government has abruptly become much more akin to that of Erdogan’s Turkey than that of a normal, liberal-democratic country.

The efforts of MPs to assert that its only pornography affected have failed spectacularly. Subreddits dedicated to helping victims of sexual abuse or those who want to quit smoking are blocked behind age verification. On X, videos of atrocities in Gaza cannot be viewed unless you change your location. Meanwhile, footage of violence and arrests at recent protests in Britain also cannot be viewed. This has happened at the worst possible time for the Government: public faith in the state has never been lower, and no one trusts Labour to do the right thing on such matters. Since the Tory defeat in 2024, the metaphorical dam of right-wing anger has burst, and there’s no way back. This is where people should focus their campaigning: not on pornography, obviously, but on the question of blatant political repression, both present and future.

MPs, it should be remembered, were repeatedly warned about these risks, even by those who were not unsympathetic to their stated goals, but chose to ignore them. Do not let them wriggle out of this, saying that they didn’t intend what actually happened. Were they simply blinded by the word ‘children’, or was this something more sinister? These people are either stupid, are malign, or just didn’t care. None of this is any good. They must be confronted, and they must be forced to own their mistake, and then apologise profusely and unreservedly for their wilful destruction of the liberties of the British people.

But let’s say you’re less dogmatic than me on free speech. If so, please remember that the British government, even if you think that the stated goals might be theoretically desirable, simply cannot be trusted with these powers. They will use it to force you to give them your identity if you are a dissident of any kind. They will use it to harass first easy targets, like gun-owners and pro-life groups, before then moving to anti-immigration campaigners, and eventually to the Right more generally. No matter how ‘trad’ you are, do not fall for it: you’ll be next.

Our goal should be nothing less than getting Reform, and as many Tory MPs as possible as well, to pledge a near-total repeal of the entire apparatus of speech repression in this country. As we wrote back in January:

If we in Britain want to enjoy American free speech, we are going to have to put the effort in and legislate. We are in no worse a position than the Americans used to be. The lesson from the America of 1919 to 1969 is that concerted effort can beat censorship. We do not have a Supreme Court, but we do have parliamentary sovereignty, and the ability to act swiftly. We should abolish almost all speech legislation, and then adopt the American threshold in cases of harassment. We should abolish libel. We should abolish Leveson and all restrictions on the freedom of the press. We should abolish contempt of court for reporting on trials. Ofcom should go the way of the Star Chamber. The Public Order Act should have every single speech provision removed. Perhaps there was a time when debating the precise thresholds would have been worthwhile. In practice, the judiciary, Parliament, and the police cannot be trusted. The existence of the Online Safety Act, with its absurd provisions for criminalising ‘false information’, is evidence of this.

Shadow Cabinet: the reshuffle that wasn’t

Kemi Badenoch, rather inexplicably, previously pledged that the Shadow Cabinet would remain in place until the next election. Thankfully, she has decided to u-turn on this bizarre commitment. Unfortunately, anyone who was expecting major changes would have been sorely disappointed. My personal metric was that if she did not sack Priti Patel, then the reshuffle must automatically be judged a failure.

But as Rachel Cunliffe at the New Statesman argues, it all seems to have been sparked not by dissatisfaction with her colleagues (which, despite her own failings, would be entirely justified), but by the random event of Edward Argar (coincidentally, one of the Shadow Cabinet’s worst performers) having a ‘health scare’. This provided a convenient opportunity to move another couple of the worst on, and reshuffle a few people as convenient, but not much else. Hardly an appropriate response given collapsing trust in her leadership and the yawning poll lead that Reform have over the Tories.

Nor did she take the opportunity to promote any of the 2024 intake (prominent 2024 intake MPs include Nick Timothy and, above all, Katie Lam). This was believed to be because it would cause problems in the parliamentary party; but at some point, you need to acknowledge that there is not much talent available, thanks to the Tory demolition in 2024, and take some risks.

We’ve not taken a close look at the Shadow Cabinet since they were appointed in November. So to bring us up to date (though trust me, with many of these people, there is basically nothing to update you on), let’s have a look today at what the Shadow Cabinet — or at least those shadowing actual departmental roles — have been up to since then, and give our own assessment.

Mel Stride, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer

Mel Stride is a total non-entity, and was among the most ludicrous of Badenoch’s appointments, probably only beaten by Priti Patel. There really is nothing to him at all. The Guardian’s John Crace says that he ‘…has the air of a rural bank manager who has been moved sideways to a branch scheduled for closure.’ One friend describes him as ‘the sort of Tory MP whose entire reason for being is to be a Tory MP.’

Stride is one of those people who, despite lacking any obvious talent, political or otherwise, seems to have gradually climbed his way up the greasy pole thanks to being vaguely inoffensive and other Tories thinking that he’s a ‘good chap’ — helped along, of course, by the fact that there isn’t much competition for senior positions anymore. He’s also inexplicably popular with Tory members. All very nice, but it’s not exactly an adequate qualification to be core to the Leader of the Opposition’s pitch to the electorate. He’s hardly a Brown, or an Osborne — or even, quite frankly, a Rachel Reeves. (Yes, really.)

No one, not even those who follow politics very closely, heard much of anything from him after Rachel Reeves’ first budget. Recently, after months of near-invisibility, Stride has marginally stepped up his game, making more media appearances, and getting a few more hits in. Much of this has been bogged down by the ghost of Liz Truss, which is hardly his fault — but this is why he should have gotten the issue out of the way earlier. He doesn’t give a wholly bad impression in his appearances, at least according to my father. But this is only enough to prevent him getting an F.

Pimlico Journal’s assessment: D+. Sounds vaguely plausible for those who aren’t paying much attention, but far below the quality required for such an important position.

Priti Patel, Shadow Foreign Secretary

Back in November, we wrote that ‘Patel’s career should be over after she presided over a catastrophic explosion in immigration as Home Secretary’, and described her as being ‘a terrible appointment’. We did, however, argue that she ‘won’t cause much damage in this position’.

How wrong we were! Since her catastrophic interview with Harry Cole, in which she unhelpfully defended her record on immigration (including by making a number of blatantly false claims about the nature of the Boriswave), she seems to have been virtually barred from making any more media appearances by CCHQ. This is sensible enough, given the risk of her blowing herself up again — but why appoint her in the first place? We all make mistakes, you could say. But then why not sack her now? That she is still in post shows a lack of ruthlessness — and indeed, seriousness — for Badenoch.

Pimlico Journal’s assessment: F-. A millstone around Badenoch’s neck. It’s astonishing she hasn’t been sacked yet.