Well, well, well. The arrest of Graham Linehan this week sparked outrage after the Father Ted co-creator was taken into custody by police after landing in Heathrow on Monday. The comedian was arrested on suspicion of inciting violence in relation to his Twitter posts about transgender people before being bailed pending further investigation. Shadow justice minister Robert Jenrick slammed the move as ‘ridiculous’ – and now this morning Health Secretary Wes Streeting has weighed in.
During his morning round on the airwaves, Streeting was adamant that the police forces should be ‘policing streets, not just policing tweets’. He told Times Radio:
I think the prime minister and the home secretary have been very clear that with the law and order challenges we’ve got in our country we want to see people being kept safe by policing streets, not just policing tweets.
Going further, the Health Secretary even suggested the government could change the law to ensure police were focusing on in-person crime. ‘One thing I would say,’ Streeting added, ‘because it’s always easy for people to criticise the police, the police enforce the laws of the land that we as legislators provide. So if we’re not getting the balance right then that’s something that we all have to look at and consider… If the police are enforcing things that we think are a waste of time or a distraction from more important things, that’s on us to sort out.’ Strong stuff…
Certainly the optics of police forces hauling people in for questioning about social media posts are rather suboptimal – to put it mildly – given that this afternoon Reform leader Nigel Farage will testify in the US to the House Judiciary committee on free speech in the UK. The Reform UK leader has promised to raise both Linehan’s arrest and the imprisonment of Lucy Connolly when he gives evidence to Congress today. A number of senior US figures have already expressed concerns about the policing of speech in Britain, including Elon Musk and even Vice President JD Vance – who earlier this year told the Munich security conference that in Britain free expression is ‘in retreat’.
The whole saga is yet another headache for a beleaguered Prime Minister just weeks out from the Labour Party conference…
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