Toby Young Toby Young

Young’s First Law of free speech

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issue 01 July 2023

I’ve always been envious of journalists who give their names to ‘laws’, as in O’Sullivan’s First Law: ‘All organisations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.’ So I’m going to take a stab at articulating Young’s First Law and it is this: ‘The more progressive a country is when it comes to sex and gender, the more authoritarian it is when it comes to speech and language.’

Ireland is about to pass a new hate speech law that will be the most draconian in the EU

The Republic of Ireland is a case in point.

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