Stephen Pollard in the Spectator on the Graham Linehan affair:
What we are seeing is the congruence of two dangerous developments. First, is the idea that giving offence is something which should be banned. The government’s current move towards adopting a definition of Islamophobia is part of this, and has rightly been labelled by Fiyaz Mughal, the founder of Muslim anti-prejudice group TellMAMA, as introducing a blasphemy law by the back door. Similarly, the onward march of the trans ideologues may have been stopped in its tracks by the Supreme Court’s ruling on the definition of ‘woman’, but the ideology has already taken hold of many institutions and spaces.
Which leads to the second development – the police’s capture by this and other ‘woke’ ideologies. Linehan describes how in his police interview a police officer mentioned trans people: “I asked him what he meant by the phrase. ‘People who feel their gender is different than what was assigned at birth.’ I said: ‘Assigned at birth? Our sex isn’t assigned.’ He called it semantics, I told him he was using activist language.’
This is the nub of it. The police, supposed guardians of the law, have become players in the activists’ capture of the institutions. It is not that they are no longer concerned with crime, but that they are redefining what crime is. It is terrible that Linehan should have had to go through this. But if it wakes more of us up to what is happening in Britain, his arrest will have served our country well.
Certainly there's been a huge uproar. I might be more optimistic about this if the BBC hadn't made such an effort to feature those, like newly-elected head of the Greens Zack Polanski, who think it was right for Linehan to have been arrested:
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Also the R4 Today interview with Max Hill and Shami Chakrabarti which, as Seen in Journalism point out, was notable for its "general obeisance to the official Overton window of any controversial story" – that is, a "careful now" discussion of the free speech debate, bemoaning its toxicity, but no mention – god forbid – of the huge disparity between the police response here, when trans people are supposedly threatened, to the total lack of concern when horrific threats are made to women, and particularly gender-critical women like JK Rowling, by trans activists.
Added: after mutterings from Starmer, now it's Streeting:
Wes Streeting has suggested that the law should be changed after the arrest of the comedian Graham Linehan over gender critical social media posts, to stop police wasting their time….
Wes Streeting, the health secretary, said that police should be “policing streets, not just policing tweets”. He said that it was ultimately up to the government to change the law to ensure that police do not waste their time.
Not sure about that. The police need to change – and someone needs to lose their job. This looks more like performative wibbling from the Labour front bench – seeing the furore and making the right noises before moving on to the next thing, having done absolutely nothing. At the very least the Home Secretary should be summoning the Met chief for some very strong words, and maybe the threat of dismissal. The police have lost the plot.
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Mick Hartley 