The only holiday the Youngs had this summer was a week in Norfolk for the Hunstanton tennis tournament. I’m too hopeless to enter myself, but my friend Nell, who has a house nearby, organised a different competition that I was more suited to. It involved making an ‘elevator pitch’ for a policy that would fix broken Britain. What made it challenging was the panel of judges was chaired by Lord Butler, a former cabinet secretary who is also Nell’s dad. The problem I focused on, needless to say, was the free speech crisis.
My proposal was to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, repeal the Human Rights Act and replace it with a Bill of Rights Act incorporating the first ten amendments of the US Constitution into UK law. Instead of the European Court of Human Rights, the ultimate guarantor of our civil liberties would be the US Supreme Court. Henceforth, British citizens would enjoy the protection of the First Amendment.
The objections from the panel came thick and fast. To begin with, the US Constitution, unlike the European Convention, isn’t designed to apply to more than one country. The First Amendment begins: ‘Congress shall make no law…’ How would that constrain our parliament? Wouldn’t making our courts subordinate to the Supreme Court involve a surrender of sovereignty? And was I really advocating a right to bear arms? No, the only way to make this work would be for Britain to become the 51st state. I was tempted to reply: ‘Yeah, and?’ But I could see I’d lost the room.
However, running this up the flagpole gave me another idea – a more modest way of harnessing the might of the US to defend free speech. Why not include a joint commitment to upholding freedom of expression in a future trade agreement? Something like: ‘We the undersigned reaffirm our shared commitment to democracy, the rule of law and the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms of individuals, including the long-standing guarantees of freedom of expression and association as set out in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.’
Believe it or not, there is a precedent: the European Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the EU and the UK, ratified in 2021, includes the following wording: ‘The basis for cooperation under this part is the parties’ long-standing respect for democracy, the rule of law and the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms of individuals, including as set out in the European Convention on Human Rights, and the importance of giving effect to the rights and freedoms in that Convention domestically.’
Why not include a joint commitment to upholding freedom of expression in a UK-US trade agreement?
Admittedly, those words have a legal meaning that a comparable commitment to upholding the principles of the First Amendment in a US-UK trade agreement would not. And there’d be no equivalent international court capable of holding our feet to the fire. Nevertheless, it would have huge political significance. The Americans could argue they took this to be a binding promise and any resiling from it would therefore jeopardise the Atlantic alliance. It would be a way of giving effect to J.D. Vance’s warning that if European countries want to continue to enjoy the military protection of the United States they need to do a better job of upholding free speech.
Would the Labour government baulk at making such a commitment? I don’t think Keir Starmer would have much choice if the Trump administration held out the carrot of a free trade agreement. God knows he needs some good news on the economic front, and it would enable him to claim a victory that eluded his Conservative predecessors. No, the leader who would need convincing would be Donald Trump, particularly if it meant scrapping the 10 per cent tariffs on British imports.
But, oh, what a prize. If Starmer’s government committed to upholding ‘the long-standing guarantees of freedom of expression and association as set out in the First Amendment’, we could lobby for the repeal of all those laws fettering our free speech, such as the Malicious Communications Act, as well as stymie Labour’s efforts to prohibit ‘Islamophobia’ and impose a ‘banter ban’ in Britain’s pubs. It would be the beginning of alignment between America’s free speech protections and ours. We wouldn’t become the 51st state, but our shared commitment to freedom of expression could be the basis for deeper cooperation and the strengthening of economic and social ties.
America, it’s time once again for the new world to come to the rescue of the old. Do not let Britain become the North Korea of the North Sea.
Comments