Nigel Betteridge 🇬🇧

Thank you to James O’Brien @mrjamesob for the free advertisement on LBC this morning. The Free Speech Union was founded by Toby Young in 2020, two years after his own cancellation. In 2018, shortly after he was appointed to the board of the Office for Students on the strength of his work in education, the offence archaeologists launched a campaign against him. He was forced to resign from five posts, losing half his income and much of his reputation. He wished there had been an organisation he could turn to for help. The FSU now has more than 50,000 members and has taken on more than 7,000 cases in six years. We receive between 40 and 70 new requests for help every week, and we have saved countless people from losing their jobs, their university places or their liberty simply for exercising their lawful right to free speech. Often, the process is the punishment — we offer mental health support to our members who need it. The prospect of losing your job and livelihood over something you said can be extremely distressing. You can read the first report ever published on the mental health effects of cancellation by Carole Sherwood and Andrew MacLeod with a forward from Lord Young below. It was in recognition of Toby’s work defending free speech that Kemi Badenoch nominated him for a peerage. That means the FSU can now do more than ever to protect free speech in Britain, at a time when it is under attack from all sides. More than 60,000 people were arrested for “communications offences” between 2021 and 2025, a @BigBrotherWatch report found. If the police turn up at your door and haul you into a cell for hours over something you’ve said online — as they did to Maxie Allen (@MaxieAllen) and Rosalind Levine — an FSU membership will be the best money you ever spend. We provided their lawyers, covered their legal fees and secured £20,000 in compensation and an admission of wrongful arrest from Hertfordshire Police. Join today. You never know when you might need us!👇

Andy Burnham has met Muslim community leaders in Downing Street and accused his political rivals of using “unacceptable” language when discussing Islam. This is not the first time senior Labour politicians have accused their political opponents of crossing the line when discussing Islam, its history and its practices. Labour MPs have repeatedly branded opposition politicians who criticise Islam “Islamophobic”. Earlier this year, 26 Labour MPs reported Reform UK to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) over its comments about Islam. Labour MPs also reported the Conservative Shadow Justice Secretary, Nick Timothy, to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and accused him of being “Islamophobic”. He even faced calls for his sacking from the then Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, after criticising a mass Muslim prayer event in Trafalgar Square. In a free country where blasphemy laws were abolished 18 years ago, politicians and private citizens must be free to criticise, question and debate any religion — including Islam. But that was not the only revelation to emerge from the Downing Street meeting. It has been reported that Angela Rayner told Muslim community leaders she was preparing to announce the appointment of an “anti-Muslim hostility” tsar. Given that Rayner appointed five individuals to the Working Group tasked with drafting the “anti-Muslim hostility” definition, all of whom had troubling links to Islamist organisations, and that her department falsely claimed to have deleted all responses to its consultation on the definition, who on earth will she appoint? Read more from FSU Campaigns Officer @MaxHThompson 👇