Robin Wright, longtime member of the Hollywood glitterati, tells The Times that she feels “liberated” in fleeing the United States for the “freedom” of England. 

“America is a s—show,” the leftist House of Cards star told the London publication, declining to fully go into what she believes to be the present state of American politics.  

Wright, who says she’s found Mr. Right after three failed marriages, including her ill-fated union with “Marxist moron” Sean Penn, loves the “freedom of self” she has found in the United Kingdom. 

The Times’ gushing profile was published on Saturday, just two days before five Metropolitan Police officers arrested Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan at London’s Heathrow Airport on charges of expressing an opinion.

Linehan, co-creator of the popular sitcom Father Ted, was returning from the U.S. to the land of “freedom of self” when the speech police grabbed him “on suspicion of inciting violence via his posts on X.” What violence did he incite? The violence of thought, which in no small part has effectively become outlawed in leftist Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Jolly Old England. 

‘Arrested for Jokes’

“They escorted me to a private area and told me I was under arrest for three tweets,” Linehan wrote Tuesday on his Substack account. He included a photo of himself from the hospital where he was transported after his blood pressure reportedly spiked during the ordeal. “The stress of being arrested for jokes was literally threatening my life!”

“In a country where paedophiles escape sentencing, where knife crime is out of control, where women are assaulted and harassed every time they gather to speak, the state had mobilised five armed officers to arrest a comedy writer for this tweet (and no, I promise you, I am not making this up,” Linehan added.

That doesn’t sound like spoiled American Robin Wright’s idealized version of a nation where the people are really “living.” You can live freely in the United Kingdom these days — if you say and think the right things. 

Linehan, an outspoken opponent of the rabid trans agenda, just happened to post the “wrong” things — more than four months ago — in contravention of the U.K.’s speech codes. He included in his Substack post screenshots of the three tweets that turned him into a suspected criminal. 

“If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls,” the award-winning sitcom writer opined in April on his X account. 

He also joked about a protest by transgender activists, describing the aerial shot as “a photo you can smell.” Linehan followed up that post with his thoughts on the activists. “I hate them. Misogynists and homophobes. F – – – em”, he wrote. 

For his thoughts, Linehan reported that he was escorted into the Heathrow police station, where his bag, belt, and devices were taken and he was placed in a “small green-tiled cell with a bunk, a silver toilet in the corner and a message from Crimestoppers on the ceiling next to a concave mirror that was presumably there to make you reflect on your life choices.”

Questioned about his social media posts, Linehan told his interrogator that men pretending to be women that enter into women’s bathrooms and other private spaces are “abusers and they need to be challenged every time.” 

The police officer asked him about “trans people.” Linehan asked him what he meant. The officer responded, “People who feel their gender is different than what was assigned at birth.” 

“I said ‘Assigned at birth? Our sex isn’t assigned.’ [The officer] called it semantics, I told him he was using activist language. The damage Stonewall has done to the UK police force will take years to mend,” Linehan wrote, referring to the strident trans-activist group. 

The Irish wit made bail. His release came with a gag order. He’s banned from going on X while in the U.K. For now it’s the silent treatment followed by more interrogation next month. 

‘Favorable Toward Censorship’

Linehan has lost much in his crusade against the deranged trans movement — and for real free expression in the island nation that once treasured it. The home of Shakespeare and Locke has become a citadel of newspeak, a speech police state. Linehan and so many others have been tripped up by speech codes their proponents hail as the means to creating a safe space for all. 

Article 10 in the UK’s 1998 Human Rights Act declares that “everyone has a right to freedom of expression” but … That “freedom” comes with “conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society.” And the kingdom’s lawmakers have pushed all manner of restrictions on fundamental rights U.S. citizens often take for granted.  

Starmer is no doubt a product of his time with the speech police, the Crown Prosecution Service. In 2012, Starmer defended his stern policing of online language. 

“Look, if an offensive message is taken down very swiftly and there is remorse then it may not be proportionate to have a criminal prosecution,” he said in announcing guidelines for the prosecution of people who “misuse social media.” 

“This is the person who is now leading the government in the U.K. So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that it would come to this given that Kiers Starmer has always been someone who has been very favorable toward censorship of speech,” Ryan Bangert, senior vice president for strategic initiatives and special counsel to the president at Alliance Defending Freedom, said last month on The Federalist Radio Hour.

The Crown Prosecution Service warned on its X handle, “Think before you post!” following last year’s riots across England and Northern Ireland over the stabbing deaths of three girls, the latest in a string of attacks against the native U.K. population. 

“Content that incites violence or hatred isn’t just harmful — it can be illegal … Remind those close to you to share responsibly or face the consequences,” the speech police declared. In short, Big Brother is watching. 

‘Two-Tier Keir’

Starmer has earned the derisive nickname “Two-Tier Keir,” denoting his ruling Labour Party’s two-tiered system of speech policing. 

“On one hand, we see groups like environmental protesters, such as Stop Oil activists, or pro-Palestinian, and even in some cases, pro-Hamas protesters being given a wide berth to express their beliefs, sometimes using very violent language,” Lois McLatchie Miller, Senior Legal Communications Officer for Alliance Defending Freedom U.K., told Fox News Digital in September 2024. “Yet, when we consider different types of protests, for example, Christians going out to pray near places of worship, they often face much stricter restrictions.”

The speech purge has only gotten worse. U.K custody data from April showed police making 30 arrests a day on suspicion of “offensive posts,” according to The Times. That adds up to about 12,000 arrests annually “under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988.” 

Thousands have been detained and interrogated for messages that have reportedly led to “annoyance,” “inconvenience,” or “anxiety” to others, the news outlet reported.  

Starmer’s spokesman told the BBC the prime minister’s policing priorities are in the right place, “and that’s tackling anti-social behaviour, shoplifting, street crime, as well as reducing serious violent crimes like knife crime and violence against women.” The continuous crime wave suggests otherwise. 

“This is totally disproportionate — especially given police often don’t bother to follow up shoplifting, phone theft and car theft properly,” Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp wrote on X in response to The Times’ breaking news on Linehan’s arrest. “This strikes me as an absurd infringement of free speech. The police should focus on catching real criminals.”

‘This is Totalitarianism’

This isn’t Linehan’s first encounter with the speech police. In 2018, the acclaimed sitcom creator was verbally warned for “deadnaming” or “misgendering” a trans activist. In his 2023 memoir, Tough Crowd: How I Made and Lost a Career in Comedy, Linehan details the costs he’s paid for standing up to and writing about “the current all-out assault on woman’s rights.” 

Like Linehan, free speech-defending Brits are not going gently into that good night. 

Author J.K. Rowling, who has experienced her share of slings and arrows for speaking out against the trans movement, called Linehan’s arrest “totalitarianism.” 

“What the f- – – has the UK become? This is totalitarianism. Utterly deplorable,” the Harry Potter series creator wrote on X. 

Tesla head and X owner Elon Musk wrote on his social media platform that the United Kingdom has turned into a “Police state.” 

This is what America-hating celebrities like Robin Wright are escaping to? This is where they are discovering “freedom of self?” Sounds more like a “s- – – show” to anyone who values freedom of speech. 

Graham Linehan is now cast as a villain in this silencing drama. 

“I was arrested at an airport like a terrorist, locked in a cell like a criminal, taken to hospital because the stress nearly killed me, and banned from speaking online — all because I made jokes that upset some psychotic crossdressers,” he wrote on his Substack. “To me, this proves one thing beyond doubt: the UK has become a country that is hostile to freedom of speech, hostile to women, and far too accommodating to the demands of violent, entitled, abusive men who have turned the police into their personal goon squad.”