Britain, it’s a mad, mad, mad, mad nation. Former MP questioned by...

250px-Official_portrait_of_Andrew_Bridgen_MP_crop_2.jpg
Picture shows: Former MP Andrew Bridgen.

Most Britons are now becoming more and more aware of the speech restrictions that plague Britain and which have built up over decades to such an extent that the UK is now a land where speech operates on the exact inverse of how the US First Amendment operates. The phrase ‘you can’t say that now’ has replaced the phrase ‘it’s a free country, I’ll say what I want’ which was something I heard a fair bit when younger.

Whereas even the lowliest American citizen has the right to speak his point of view and say anything short of credibly inciting violence or murder or committing gross acts of libel, in Britain anyone no matter how high or how low their station in life can find themselves in trouble with the police for something they’ve said or written or posted on social media. They can find themselves subject to police investigation or prosecution merely on the grounds that someone, maybe anonymously, had complained to the police about what has been said or written by someone else.

Britain’s anti-free speech culture, one that has grown up piecemeal in its current form since the 1980’s, is a culture that has had negative effects for me and others who I have known as well as those who I will never meet. It has caused problems both for those I may well agree with in whole or in part or those, such as the subject of today’s piece, who on many issues I vehemently disagree with.

Andrew Bridgen is a former Conservative Party Member of Parliament who has led what could be called a ‘colourful’ parliamentary life and although he had some positive achievements whilst an MP he has also been involved in a number of scandals involving ‘Parliamentary standards’ and has also been involved in publicly attacking politicians of his own side. His agricultural products company has also been subject to Environment Agency enforcement action because of foetid pools of rotting vegetable matter sited at his company causing odour problems for the company’s neighbours. He was a Parliamentary loose cannon long before he rose to prominence over his anti-vaccination views and descent into the world of tin-foil hattery.

I don’t share many, if any, of the views that Andrew Bridgen has or obsesses about, but he should have the right to speak his point of view even if some do find his views ‘offensive’. Free speech should apply to both the mad and the sane because it’s only by allowing the insane to speak that their views can be tested in debate and defeated by the sane. If, for example, the sane had been allowed the same speech protections as those promoting the insanity of the Cult of Trans has had then we might not be wondering what to do with all those people who have been harmed by this cult. Free speech might have headed off this particular ideological monster at the pass.

Mr Bridgen has recently been subject to a police investigation about a social media he posted which had within it an ‘Amelia’ reference. Now ‘Amelia’ for those who don’t know was originally a Home Office created cartoon character intended to discourage young Britons from becoming involved with nationalist, right wing or anti-mass migration groups. This Amelia character, which I have written about before and have linked to below, took a life of its own when internet wags realised that the big Home Office mistake with this character was to make her too attractive to the young male target audience. The character got memed to the Moon and back and became something very much different from what the originators of it intended it to be. ‘Amelia’ was, as I said, a ‘Gerald Ratner’ moment’ for the UK government.

Because Mr Bridgen published a social media post featuring Amelia it triggered someone who was offended by it. This anonymous individual then went to Leicestershire Police with their complaint about being offended and this resulted in Mr Bridgen being spoken to by police.

It’s important to note that Leicestershire Police are taking no further action against Mr Bridge. This is good but in my view it shouldn’t even have got this far. Subjective, anonymous complaints and ones maybe based on a person’s political or ideological or personal grudges against an individual, should not involve police action unless the words, text or images in question could credibly incite violence against persons or property. I’ve seen a great many Amelia memes that are circulating around out there and I therefore very much doubt that what Mr Bridgen said or wrote came anywhere near that threshold.

Mr Bridgen declined to cooperate with Leicestershire Police and merely issued a written statement and gave a ‘no comment’ interview to police, which is something that everyone should consider doing, with legal advice, should you be arrested or questioned over a ‘speech crime’. I’ve reproduced Mr Bridgen’s statement below for you to read. Of course it contains his vaccine scepticism nutbaggery but it also contains much that is reasonable such as how Mr Bridgen should have a right to publish on his social media Amelia memes whether or not an anonymous individual was subjectively ‘offended’.

With regards to speech, Britain is clearly NOT a free country any more. In 2023 alone 12,000 arrested under Britain’s speech control laws for social media posts. The vast bulk of these arrests were under Britain’s ‘Communications Acts’. Here’s what the free speech monitor Freedom House says about Britain’s speech control laws:

“According to an April 2025 freedom of information report filed by The Times, over 12,000 people were arrested, including for social media posts, in 2023 under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988. The report also found that the number of annual arrests had more than doubled since 2017 (though in 2023, less than one-tenth of arrests resulted in sentencing).3 A separate report from The Telegraph found that 292 people had been charged for spreading false information and “threatening communications” under the Online Safety Act between when it came into effect in 2023 and February 2025. Some civil liberties groups expressed concern that the laws were being applied broadly and in some cases punished speech protected by international human rights standards (C3).4”
I have linked the Freedom House report below.
Freedom of speech is in a very poor state in Britain today. I’d like some of my very many readers in the United States, where the citizen is protected by the First Amendment, to consider what the sort of numbers mentioned by Freedom House in relation to UK speech crime arrests would be if transplanted to the USA with its greater population. Such a scenario would, if scaled up by a factor of ten times the UK number for the US because of the larger population, could see hundreds of thousands of Americans criminalised for speech or opinions, maybe a similar level of arrests as there is population in cities like Lincoln, Nebraska which is over 200k. Imagine the same number of people living in that city being arrested for words or opinions. That scenario is for Americans, thankfully due to their First Amendment, a dystopian fantasy but in Britain it’s everyday reality for the British people.
Here’s the statement by Mr Bridgen.

Bridgen 1.jpeg