Perhaps sticking up for Farage is a bridge too far, even for the former human rights lawyer. Perhaps it doesn’t seem worth picking that battle when there are more substantive policy disputes to win.
Preventing right-wingers from being discriminated against by corporate progressives is not going to be top of an incoming Labour government’s list of priorities.
Like any tool, civil rights law and be used for good or ill. Parts of the left are committed to wielding it as a sword; conservative should be prepared, as Kemi Badenoch said of the UK’s Equality Act, to use it as a shield.
Banks should not set themselves up in independent judgement of their customer’s views. The Government is reviewing the issue, but if necessary should make this a regulatory requirement.
You don’t need to buy Nigel Farage’s wild claims about MI5 being behind the closure of his accounts to see that banking is too important to modern life to let people be shut out of it on private whim.
Ministers who have had 13 years to enact change prefer to sound off about problems as if they were in Opposition.
In terms of academic freedom, it is a game-changer. It is already having an impact – as can be seen by the way in which Oxford’s Student Union rapidly u-turned on a decision to bar the Oxford Union from Fresher’s Fair.
Its sponsors wants bosses to be held responsible and punished for things over which they have self-evidently no control.
From the ballooning power of progressive HR politics to the growth of de facto blasphemy laws, thirteen years of Conservative rule have made little impact.
The British authorities’ apparent willingness to go along with Washington on this is politically and legally disastrous for the UK.
The balance between freedom of speech and security is important; wherever the line is drawn, it must be drawn clearly.
From home schooling to free speech on the internet, ministers keep turning good principles into bad law.
A small community radio station with a few thousand listeners requires a license, but a social media channel with millions of individual subscribers does not.
We should be proud that our overseas aid budget is helping to strengthen the capacity of journalists working overseas to hold their Governments to account.
If Suella Braverman wants to restore “common-sense policing”, she should start by overhauling the Public Order Act.