Since Churchill’s time, America and Britain have spoken of their “special relationship” – even if the affection has been somewhat unilateral in recent years, as the US has recognised the UK’s increasing irrelevance on the world stage as it descends into economic decay, social disintegration, and democratic suppression.

You might think this an exaggeration – and I do not intend to imply that dissenting British voices receive the same treatment they might receive in China or Cuba. But that is not the right question. The question is whether dissenting voices in Britain are free.

We have all seen the evidence that they are not. The first act of Bridget Philipson, Keir Starmer’s Education Secretary, was to try and revoke the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, even after it was passed by Parliament. That this is not merely a position, but even the top priority, of our new government is chilling. This, despite the fact that nearly half of UK students are scared to express their views.

Whether people are fired from their jobs, referred to terrorist watchlists, secretly put on registers for “non-crime hate incidents” (even as children), or even arrested, freedom of speech is increasingly a luxury commodity in Britain – and saying what you think is increasingly seen as criminal. “Hate speech” is increasingly seen as a legitimate constraint – with 1 in 4 young people open to banning the Bible itself if they believed it included “hate speech”.

Yet free speech is not the only casualty of recent years. Multiple people have been arrested or charged merely for praying silently in their heads in the vicinity of an abortion clinic (which, in one case, was not even open), with an army veteran recently convicted for silently praying for his unborn son. Thoughtcrime is no longer Orwellian fiction.

When asked if the UK should be included among other human rights abusing regimes, however, congressmen in the US ordinarily reply that “we are allies, we can’t do that”. The UK is enough of a friend to the US that it escapes any significant accountability.

But true friends do not let each other make serious mistakes without challenge: that is politeness, not friendship. So the question is: can the UK be enough of a friend to receive accountability?

We all know what tough love means: that if you really seek the best for someone, you confront them with reality, whose content or consequences may be acutely painful – but ultimately needed for our flourishing. And the reality in this case is clear: the British people desperately need a restoration of their civil liberties before we are too far down the slippery slope. If the US really cares for our country and its citizens, you must speak – and act – in favor of our freedom, whoever you offend in the process. Vance’s speech in Munich was a fantastic start – but now action is needed.

There are many ways to achieve this, but here is one idea: the freedom tariff. The UK is desperate for a trade deal with the US after Brexit. Trade is one of the few areas where nations can be genuinely held accountable beyond stern letters or phone calls – which are routinely ignored. Freedom tariffs would provide genuine leverage over the UK with a simple addition: include a clause stipulating that insofar as the UK restricts the most basic freedoms – speech, assembly, conscience, religion, and thought – it will pay for those restrictions with tariffs.

This is hardly coercive: why should America give us free trade when we won’t give our own people free speech? We either believe in freedom or we don’t. If we don’t, we can hardly expect its benefits from others. The deal is up to us to take or not.

America imposing “freedom” on other countries has understandably come under fire in recent decades. But rather than intervening militarily in intractable Middle Eastern political disputes, tariffs are entirely non-violent. And here’s the extra good news: this tough love need not be painful at all. All the UK would have to do is stop firing, blacklisting, and arresting people for thinking and saying the wrong things. Give free speech, get free trade. It is really that simple.

Of course, this problem is not unique to the UK. In France, a TV channel was fined 100,000 euro for stating that abortion is the leading cause of death worldwide, while in Finland, a sitting parliamentarian has been on criminal trial under the War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity sections of their penal code – launched by the attorney general – for years, simply for tweeting a Bible verse (a bishop has faced similar persecution).

The European Union’s deleterious approach to open discourse on social media has been widely publicized by Vance and Musk, among others. Perhaps freedom tariffs are benefits that can be extended beyond the Special Relationship.

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Calum Miller is a research fellow at University of Oxford and a registered medical doctor.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.