Harry Richer is the director of Fighting for a Free Future, under Chairman the Rt Hon Steve Baker. He has worked as a senior aide in the British Parliament and has also co-written multiple publications on Austrian School economics, including the 2024 Springer book The Age of Debt Bubbles.
Britain in 2026 faces a real and growing problem: the collapse of tolerance. This isn’t about us being ‘nicer’ to each other. It is far more serious than that. We are seeing the rise of political Islam as a significant force in our public life, and we have seen the emergence of genuine no-go areas for Jewish people in our own country.
Is an orthodox Jew safe in 2026 walking through parts of Birmingham, Luton or Bradford? Horrifically, the answer is no. The solution is not a more muscular and militant Christianity in British politics. This is a mistake that is dressed up as a remedy – and it is merely the same mistake in reverse. We do not need to adopt a new settlement to see the results of politics and religion colliding; our history tells us the consequences. Our history also tells us what is necessary to begin tackling this problem.
Recently, the Fighting for a Free Future Book Club read John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration. It is a fascinating piece. Locke, one of the great fathers of British classical liberalism, writing in exile in 1685, was clear that the state has no business policing souls, but he was also clear about where toleration stops. His piece must be read in its historical context, and so several of the exclusions Locke made would not be appropriate in modern society. However, Locke’s general framework should be used and updated for modern Britain. Locke argues that the state and its courts exist to protect civil peace, life, liberty, and property; the church exists to protect the soul.
Coercion belongs to the first, but it has no business in the second. As Locke writes, “Neither Pagan, nor Mahumetan (sic), nor Jew, ought to be excluded from the Civil Rights of the Commonwealth, because of his Religion“. Here we read the founding sentence of British liberal toleration, and it is a Protestant Englishman writing it, three centuries before anyone had invented the phrase ‘diversity and inclusion.’ Tolerance is not a twenty-first-century innovation, and it long predates those on the British left who now try to claim ownership of it. It is and has been an essential component of civil society, but today we have seen the Left use political grievances to toxify it.
We have also recently seen, in some sections of the right, the rise of an identitarian Christianity that seeks to place itself in a privileged position at the heart of British politics. This is both wrong in principle, and it will not solve the problems 2026 Britain faces today.
Locke wrote that sentence within living memory of the last Englishman burned at the stake for heresy, and the inclusion of followers of Islam was deliberate. He insisted that the Commonwealth is not, in its nature, Christian.
This matters because it is, I think, the strongest available argument for the equal civil rights of all Britons, including religious minorities, and it is a classical liberal one rather than a communitarian one.
It is an argument that all of us can support. If we were to apply this to high-density British Muslim communities, it does not try to claim that Muslims constitute a structurally oppressed group who require special accommodation; it does not try to push the idea that criticism of Islam or Islamism is prejudice. It makes its case for liberalism of the old kind and equal rights for all on the view that the law has no business policing speculative religious opinion, however unorthodox it may seem to the majority, as long as it does no civil injury to thy neighbour.
We often confuse toleration with approval; they are not the same thing. You do not need to approve of someone’s practices to tolerate them. Indeed, this distinction formed the basis of much of the political establishment’s eventual willingness in the 1960s to accept the demands of the gay civil rights movement. Like it or not, nobody’s civil rights are impeded by a British Muslim who prays five times a day, fasts during Ramadan, or wears a hijab.
This view of tolerance is a British constitutional principle, one that emerged from our proud history of British classical liberalism. It has no time for causes like blasphemy laws, but it passes no judgement on the unorthodox practices of religious communities and individuals, provided they do not impinge on the civil rights of others.
Unfortunately, much of the current defence of Muslim civil rights in Britain tends not to use Locke’s argument at all. We now face a struggle where some believe that tolerance means that criticism of Islam or Islamist movements is in fact prejudice, that Muslim community institutions should not be subject to scrutiny due to their status as an oppressed group, and that tolerance falls entirely on the shoulders of the non-Muslim majority.
Framing toleration as something granted to Muslims because they are an ‘oppressed minority’ turns this principle of equality into a revocable privilege. Suggestions that ‘extra tolerance’ is necessary for oppressed groups turn the general principle of equal tolerance into one of levels of tolerance – where some groups are treated with more scrutiny and some with less. Tolerance is not an issue to which equity can apply; this undermines tolerance itself, and this is the kind of conditional arrangement of tolerance that Locke was writing against.
Conflating criticism of political Islamism with anti-Muslim prejudice makes it harder, not easier, to name real prejudice when it happens: a woman who is refused a job for wearing a hijab to the interview, a mosque that is vandalised, or a community collectively blamed for an attack by one of its own are clear violations of civil rights. This is the same for those who blamed the Sikh Community for the recent horrific murder of Henry Nowak or those who have blamed the Jewish Community for the situation in Gaza.
A true British classical liberal theory of tolerance would not accommodate political Islamism nor any form of anti-Muslim prejudice, whether casual or from the state. It would not accommodate identitarian Christianity driven by the state or political leaders, nor would it accommodate the persecution of Christians in any realm of British life. It would not accommodate the persecution of critical free speech, nor the shutting down of open debate. It would allow all religious communities to live their lives as they see fit, knowing that the state will only intervene if they begin to impinge on the civil rights of others.
The examples before are clear and easy violations of civil rights; we need no theory of structural oppression to identify them. All we need is the basic Lockean rule that religion in and of itself is not a lawful ground for civil discrimination.
I want to place alongside all of this my own recent piece on what it is like to be Jewish in 2026 Britain: I am British, I am Jewish, I am Fearful, and I am Angry. As I write in my piece, “for the first time in my entire life, I would now not answer honestly if asked by a stranger if I was Jewish. I am not obviously identifiable as Jewish, so I have a choice. Many of my friends do not have that luxury, and I fear for their safety every day.”
In the one country that did arguably more than any other to build this liberal framework of tolerance, how can it be that there are effectively no-go zones for visibly Jewish people in parts of Britain? How can it be that there are now areas where it is simply not safe to be a Jew in orthodox clothing? For those who say this is an overreaction, are you really telling me that an orthodox Jew would currently be safe walking through parts of Birmingham or Bradford?
Locke’s argument for civil tolerance was never unconditional. He draws a sharp distinction between “speculative opinion”, that which should always be tolerated, and “antinomianism”, which is the claim that religious truth overrides ordinary moral law and the equal civil rights of others. Writing at times of intense religious debate within the Christian tradition, Locke applied that distinction to his own time. He argued that contemporaneous Catholic claims that the Pope could depose heretic princes and Calvinist claims that the elect should rule were both antinomian. They both forfeited tolerance’s protection, but this was because of their political consequences, not the result of their theology.
We should apply this to political Islamism as a political project today. This is not a conclusion that should concern British Muslims – the majority of British Muslims reject political Islamism and understand the damage political Islamist movements have done. The Fighting for a Free Future podcast had an excellent conversation on this very issue with Muslim Conservative MP Saqib Bhatti.
However, there is clearly a significant minority who push political and sometimes even radical Islamism. Whether it has been the aggressive and sometimes violent antisemitism that has emerged after the October 7th massacre, the Birmingham protests against the teaching of LGBT identities in schools, or the efforts to undermine our democratic system that we have seen in areas such as Tower Hamlets, and to a lesser extent Wycombe. Tolerate the intolerant for long enough, and you end up tolerating nothing at all.
We must combine a Lockean view of tolerance with Karl Popper’s paradox that unlimited tolerance extended to the intolerant eventually gives them the means to end tolerance. While there is clearly a significant problem with community cohesion in certain parts of the UK, this must be applied equally to all – Islamist antinomianism, Christian nationalist antinomianism, and secular identitarian antinomianism.
It is not about whose banner is flying. It is about applying a classical liberal view of toleration to all communities in the UK. Does a doctrine claim a right to override the equal civil rights of others? If it does, then we cannot tolerate it. If it does not, then however unorthodox or different it may be to us, we should and must tolerate it. True tolerance rests on these principles.
We have seen a debate about what “British values” are and how we can reassert them in modern society. British values are the practical output of our rich history of classical liberalism: free speech, equality before the rule of law, the protection of private property, and tolerance as the means by which people who profoundly disagree still share a street without either side reaching for the state or violence to settle it. Tolerance is a foundation of British values.
To attack free expression as violence or prejudice as some on the British left enjoy doing is not tolerance but an attack on true tolerance itself. Many will say that free speech and equality before the law have collapsed in Britain. An assessment of the extent of this is not what this article is about, but the collapse of true tolerance is part of the reason these values are under threat.
I am not going to end this piece with a policy plan to redefine and reinstitute tolerance in Britain: we have not yet had the honest conversation that would make any plan legitimate. What is needed first is a national conversation about community cohesion: about what Locke’s antinomian test actually rules out, applied equally rather than selectively; about why the Lockean argument for equal civil rights is stronger than a group-oppression narrative; and about how full toleration of belief while at the same time zero tolerance for any doctrine claiming a right to override the equal civil rights of others can still be sustained in a country as diverse as ours. We should be under no doubt that this national conversation will be uncomfortable; it should be.
Comfortable conversations rarely fix anything, and Britain has been avoiding this uncomfortable conversation for twenty-plus years while some who have benefitted from our current version of tolerance have started to decide that it no longer applies to them. It is time for that conversation. We should no longer tolerate the intolerant, whatever banner they may carry. Locke gave us these principles three centuries ago. All that is left is for us to have the courage as a nation to apply them.
Harry Richer is the director of Fighting for a Free Future, under Chairman the Rt Hon Steve Baker. He has worked as a senior aide in the British Parliament and has also co-written multiple publications on Austrian School economics, including the 2024 Springer book The Age of Debt Bubbles.
Britain in 2026 faces a real and growing problem: the collapse of tolerance. This isn’t about us being ‘nicer’ to each other. It is far more serious than that. We are seeing the rise of political Islam as a significant force in our public life, and we have seen the emergence of genuine no-go areas for Jewish people in our own country.
Is an orthodox Jew safe in 2026 walking through parts of Birmingham, Luton or Bradford? Horrifically, the answer is no. The solution is not a more muscular and militant Christianity in British politics. This is a mistake that is dressed up as a remedy – and it is merely the same mistake in reverse. We do not need to adopt a new settlement to see the results of politics and religion colliding; our history tells us the consequences. Our history also tells us what is necessary to begin tackling this problem.
Recently, the Fighting for a Free Future Book Club read John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration. It is a fascinating piece. Locke, one of the great fathers of British classical liberalism, writing in exile in 1685, was clear that the state has no business policing souls, but he was also clear about where toleration stops. His piece must be read in its historical context, and so several of the exclusions Locke made would not be appropriate in modern society. However, Locke’s general framework should be used and updated for modern Britain. Locke argues that the state and its courts exist to protect civil peace, life, liberty, and property; the church exists to protect the soul.
Coercion belongs to the first, but it has no business in the second. As Locke writes, “Neither Pagan, nor Mahumetan (sic), nor Jew, ought to be excluded from the Civil Rights of the Commonwealth, because of his Religion“. Here we read the founding sentence of British liberal toleration, and it is a Protestant Englishman writing it, three centuries before anyone had invented the phrase ‘diversity and inclusion.’ Tolerance is not a twenty-first-century innovation, and it long predates those on the British left who now try to claim ownership of it. It is and has been an essential component of civil society, but today we have seen the Left use political grievances to toxify it.
We have also recently seen, in some sections of the right, the rise of an identitarian Christianity that seeks to place itself in a privileged position at the heart of British politics. This is both wrong in principle, and it will not solve the problems 2026 Britain faces today.
Locke wrote that sentence within living memory of the last Englishman burned at the stake for heresy, and the inclusion of followers of Islam was deliberate. He insisted that the Commonwealth is not, in its nature, Christian.
This matters because it is, I think, the strongest available argument for the equal civil rights of all Britons, including religious minorities, and it is a classical liberal one rather than a communitarian one.
It is an argument that all of us can support. If we were to apply this to high-density British Muslim communities, it does not try to claim that Muslims constitute a structurally oppressed group who require special accommodation; it does not try to push the idea that criticism of Islam or Islamism is prejudice. It makes its case for liberalism of the old kind and equal rights for all on the view that the law has no business policing speculative religious opinion, however unorthodox it may seem to the majority, as long as it does no civil injury to thy neighbour.
We often confuse toleration with approval; they are not the same thing. You do not need to approve of someone’s practices to tolerate them. Indeed, this distinction formed the basis of much of the political establishment’s eventual willingness in the 1960s to accept the demands of the gay civil rights movement. Like it or not, nobody’s civil rights are impeded by a British Muslim who prays five times a day, fasts during Ramadan, or wears a hijab.
This view of tolerance is a British constitutional principle, one that emerged from our proud history of British classical liberalism. It has no time for causes like blasphemy laws, but it passes no judgement on the unorthodox practices of religious communities and individuals, provided they do not impinge on the civil rights of others.
Unfortunately, much of the current defence of Muslim civil rights in Britain tends not to use Locke’s argument at all. We now face a struggle where some believe that tolerance means that criticism of Islam or Islamist movements is in fact prejudice, that Muslim community institutions should not be subject to scrutiny due to their status as an oppressed group, and that tolerance falls entirely on the shoulders of the non-Muslim majority.
Framing toleration as something granted to Muslims because they are an ‘oppressed minority’ turns this principle of equality into a revocable privilege. Suggestions that ‘extra tolerance’ is necessary for oppressed groups turn the general principle of equal tolerance into one of levels of tolerance – where some groups are treated with more scrutiny and some with less. Tolerance is not an issue to which equity can apply; this undermines tolerance itself, and this is the kind of conditional arrangement of tolerance that Locke was writing against.
Conflating criticism of political Islamism with anti-Muslim prejudice makes it harder, not easier, to name real prejudice when it happens: a woman who is refused a job for wearing a hijab to the interview, a mosque that is vandalised, or a community collectively blamed for an attack by one of its own are clear violations of civil rights. This is the same for those who blamed the Sikh Community for the recent horrific murder of Henry Nowak or those who have blamed the Jewish Community for the situation in Gaza.
A true British classical liberal theory of tolerance would not accommodate political Islamism nor any form of anti-Muslim prejudice, whether casual or from the state. It would not accommodate identitarian Christianity driven by the state or political leaders, nor would it accommodate the persecution of Christians in any realm of British life. It would not accommodate the persecution of critical free speech, nor the shutting down of open debate. It would allow all religious communities to live their lives as they see fit, knowing that the state will only intervene if they begin to impinge on the civil rights of others.
The examples before are clear and easy violations of civil rights; we need no theory of structural oppression to identify them. All we need is the basic Lockean rule that religion in and of itself is not a lawful ground for civil discrimination.
I want to place alongside all of this my own recent piece on what it is like to be Jewish in 2026 Britain: I am British, I am Jewish, I am Fearful, and I am Angry. As I write in my piece, “for the first time in my entire life, I would now not answer honestly if asked by a stranger if I was Jewish. I am not obviously identifiable as Jewish, so I have a choice. Many of my friends do not have that luxury, and I fear for their safety every day.”
In the one country that did arguably more than any other to build this liberal framework of tolerance, how can it be that there are effectively no-go zones for visibly Jewish people in parts of Britain? How can it be that there are now areas where it is simply not safe to be a Jew in orthodox clothing? For those who say this is an overreaction, are you really telling me that an orthodox Jew would currently be safe walking through parts of Birmingham or Bradford?
Locke’s argument for civil tolerance was never unconditional. He draws a sharp distinction between “speculative opinion”, that which should always be tolerated, and “antinomianism”, which is the claim that religious truth overrides ordinary moral law and the equal civil rights of others. Writing at times of intense religious debate within the Christian tradition, Locke applied that distinction to his own time. He argued that contemporaneous Catholic claims that the Pope could depose heretic princes and Calvinist claims that the elect should rule were both antinomian. They both forfeited tolerance’s protection, but this was because of their political consequences, not the result of their theology.
We should apply this to political Islamism as a political project today. This is not a conclusion that should concern British Muslims – the majority of British Muslims reject political Islamism and understand the damage political Islamist movements have done. The Fighting for a Free Future podcast had an excellent conversation on this very issue with Muslim Conservative MP Saqib Bhatti.
However, there is clearly a significant minority who push political and sometimes even radical Islamism. Whether it has been the aggressive and sometimes violent antisemitism that has emerged after the October 7th massacre, the Birmingham protests against the teaching of LGBT identities in schools, or the efforts to undermine our democratic system that we have seen in areas such as Tower Hamlets, and to a lesser extent Wycombe. Tolerate the intolerant for long enough, and you end up tolerating nothing at all.
We must combine a Lockean view of tolerance with Karl Popper’s paradox that unlimited tolerance extended to the intolerant eventually gives them the means to end tolerance. While there is clearly a significant problem with community cohesion in certain parts of the UK, this must be applied equally to all – Islamist antinomianism, Christian nationalist antinomianism, and secular identitarian antinomianism.
It is not about whose banner is flying. It is about applying a classical liberal view of toleration to all communities in the UK. Does a doctrine claim a right to override the equal civil rights of others? If it does, then we cannot tolerate it. If it does not, then however unorthodox or different it may be to us, we should and must tolerate it. True tolerance rests on these principles.
We have seen a debate about what “British values” are and how we can reassert them in modern society. British values are the practical output of our rich history of classical liberalism: free speech, equality before the rule of law, the protection of private property, and tolerance as the means by which people who profoundly disagree still share a street without either side reaching for the state or violence to settle it. Tolerance is a foundation of British values.
To attack free expression as violence or prejudice as some on the British left enjoy doing is not tolerance but an attack on true tolerance itself. Many will say that free speech and equality before the law have collapsed in Britain. An assessment of the extent of this is not what this article is about, but the collapse of true tolerance is part of the reason these values are under threat.
I am not going to end this piece with a policy plan to redefine and reinstitute tolerance in Britain: we have not yet had the honest conversation that would make any plan legitimate. What is needed first is a national conversation about community cohesion: about what Locke’s antinomian test actually rules out, applied equally rather than selectively; about why the Lockean argument for equal civil rights is stronger than a group-oppression narrative; and about how full toleration of belief while at the same time zero tolerance for any doctrine claiming a right to override the equal civil rights of others can still be sustained in a country as diverse as ours. We should be under no doubt that this national conversation will be uncomfortable; it should be.
Comfortable conversations rarely fix anything, and Britain has been avoiding this uncomfortable conversation for twenty-plus years while some who have benefitted from our current version of tolerance have started to decide that it no longer applies to them. It is time for that conversation. We should no longer tolerate the intolerant, whatever banner they may carry. Locke gave us these principles three centuries ago. All that is left is for us to have the courage as a nation to apply them.