Vice President JD Vance said the Trump administration and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer are discussing how free speech violations affect American citizens, as well as the British.
The Daily Signal asked President Donald Trump to comment on Vance’s accusation of free speech violations in the United Kingdom during Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference in Germany last week.
The president deferred to Vance.
“What I said, which is that, we do have special relationships in the U.K. and also the civilian European allies, but we also know that there have been infringements on free speech that actually affect not just the British,” Vance told The Daily Signal.
“Of course, what the British do in their own country is up to them, but it also affects American technology companies and, by extension, American citizens,” he continued. “So, that is something that we’ll talk about today.”
The British prime minister followed Vance’s statements by asserting that the UK does, in fact, have a long history of free speech.
“We’ve had free speech for a very, very long time in the United Kingdom, and it will last for a very, very long time,” he told The Daily Signal. “Well, no, I mean, certainly we wouldn’t want to reach across, U.S. citizens, and we don’t, and that’s absolutely right. But in relation to free speech in the U.K., I’m very proud of our history there.”
In the United Kingdom, hate speech is explicitly prohibited, and there is no equivalent there to the First Amendment protecting free speech.
The head of police in the U.K. threatened extradition and jail time against U.S. citizens for online posts that he said encouraged a mass stabbing in August.
A 55-year-old woman was arrested for “publishing written material to stir up racial hatred” and “false communication,” and two British men were arrested for similar social media posts.
In October 2022, British authorities arrested a pro-life woman for silently praying outside an abortion clinic in the United Kingdom. Police in Scotland last week arrested a 74-year-old grandmother for silently offering to speak to women outside an abortion clinic.
In his speech in Munich, Vance said the U.S. could not have shared values with countries who jail people for unpopular speech.
“Let’s have free expression, not just in the United States, but all over the Western world. That is the path to strong alliances in Europe,” Vance said. “You’ve got to give the populations of the world the opportunity to speak up and say, ‘We want to be able to speak our own mind in our own country.’”