Thousands are now worried they may be jailed for posting something un-PC in horror of Starmer's Britain  - Toby Young

But just when you think you’ve reached the bottom, the floor gives way again and you find yourself falling through the collapsing building.

Since the outbreak of public unrest following the murder of three schoolgirls in Southport, we’ve witnessed the greatest assault on free speech in this country since Oliver Cromwell passed a law banning all theatrical performances in 1642.

All too predictably, Sir Keir Starmer has blamed ‘social media’ for the civil disorder, just as pirate radio was blamed for the Brixton riots of 2005 and Blackberry Messenger for the riots of 2011. The cause of the unrest, in his eyes, is not roiling public anger about excessive levels of immigration, but too much free speech.

That’s the rationale behind the wave of recent prosecutions for social media posts, including one man who has been sent to jail for sharing something ‘offensive’ that someone else said on Facebook.

The Director of Public Prosecutions, Stephen Parkinson, has warned that even people posting footage of the riots on social media could be prosecuted.

This threatening language is more reminiscent of a tin-pot dictatorship than the birthplace of parliamentary democracy and it has unleashed a wave of terror across the country, with hundreds of thousands of people now worried that they may be sent to prison for posting something un-PC on social media.

That’s why, at the Free Speech Union, we’ve put a relationship in place with a top firm of criminal solicitors. If you’re a member and you’re contacted by the police in connection with something you’ve said about the recent unrest – either online or in real life – you can contact a criminal lawyer at this firm and we will pay for a telephone consultation about your case and may, at our discretion, pay for a solicitor to attend a police interview, as well as further legal work on your case, including your entire defence.

One person we’ve already offered to defend is the 55 year-old women from Cheshire who was arrested and held in custody for 36 hours last week for wrongly identifying the Southport attacker as a Muslim asylum seeker on X. This was in spite of the fact that she added the caveat “if this is true” and deleted the tweet when she discovered it wasn’t. She hasn’t been charged yet, but she’s a member of the Free Speech Union and if she is we will pay for her defence.

I worry that prosecuting people for social media posts is just the opening salvo in an ongoing war on free speech. The Government has already said it intends to introduce a ‘full, trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices’, which could make it a criminal offence for a parent to try to talk their gender-confused child out of having irreversible, life-changing surgery.

What other horrors has Sir Keir Starmer got in store for us? I wouldn’t be surprised if he criminalises ‘Islamophobia’, as Sadiq Khan is pressuring him to do, and passes a Westminster version of the Scottish Hate Crime Act, which would make it a criminal offence to ‘stir up hatred’ against ‘intersex’ people, i.e., say you don’t think genetically male boxers should be able to compete against women at the Olympics.

Finally, I think Starmer could lean on Ofcom, the broadcast and social media regulator, to silence anyone criticising controversial policies in public, including GB News. That would include immigration policy, Net Zero and teaching schoolchildren there are 27 different genders.

We are facing the greatest attack on free speech in this country for almost 500 years. If we’re going to defend it, we need to band together. If we don’t, Sir Keir Starmer will have a free hand to pick off his critics one by one.

Toby Young is the General Secretary of the Free Speech Union. To join, go to freespeechunion.org/join/. Membership starts at £4.99 a month.