Andrew Tettenborn

The US government’s threat to scupper any trade deal with the UK unless we commit to widening free speech not only looks like a naked attempt to interfere with our internal affairs – it is one. On Sunday, the US State Department unusually released a statement saying it was ‘monitoring’ the case of Livia Tossici-Bolt, who was

Amidst the U-turns, if there is one thing on which Labour has remained almost rock-solid until now, it is human rights and the UK’s continued participation in the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights). But even here things are changing. ECHRexit, like Brexit once did, looks increasingly respectable On Saturday, a group of Red Wall

Is it about to become illegal for parents to smack their child? We might have known that the already top-heavy Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill would be hijacked by those with an agenda to push. Labour MP Jess Asato has tabled an amendment, backed by 26 MPs (including surprisingly one Tory), that would abolish the

The John Smyth affair in the Church of England has already claimed the scalp of Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and may yet engulf Stephen Cottrell in York. Earlier this week, it became clear that its reverberations will go much further. The Church has applied to arraign ten other clergy, including an ex-Bishop of Durham, under the

There are worrying signs in Britain that a blasphemy law – abolished in 2008 – might be sneaking in through the back door. Last week, a Turkish man allegedly set fire to the Quran as part of a protest against the Turkish government outside its consulate in Rutland Gate, London. He was then attacked by

Finally, some good news on the free speech front: a Christian school worker who lost her job after sharing posts about gay relationships has won a crucial legal battle. Seven years ago, Kristie Higgs, a pastoral worker and mother at a primary school who held firm Christian views, used her private Facebook account to complain

There is something of an anti-climax in the naming of the judges involved in the Sara Sharif case. It’s true that Judge Alison Raeside, Judge Peter Nathan and Judge Sally Williams oversaw Family Court hearings involving Sara in the years before she was murdered in 2023 by her father Urfan Sharif and stepmother Beinash Batool. But

A change in the law letting people demand help from the state to kill themselves is the sort of thing any government ought to take a great deal of time over. It’s an area where thoughtful delay is entirely desirable, with committees of the great and the good encouraged to take a deep breath, hear

There’s more than meets the eye to today’s story of a leaked Home Office report calling for police to be encouraged to file ever more reports of non-crime hate incidents (NCIHs). The word “report,” suggesting work by scrupulously impartial civil servants, seems a strange description of what looks like a pretty blatantly political document, which at one

No one came out very well from the government’s High Court defeat yesterday morning over planned changes to long-term sickness benefit. A botched, hasty, penny-pinching wheeze, promoted by the Tories but ultimately backed by Labour, came unstuck. But there is a rather more profound difficulty with this episode. Even after reading the news, most people

There’s always something that seems clinically compelling about a claim that we need yet more equality laws. Mary Prior KC, chair of the Criminal Bar Association and a proud working-class Potteries girl, has demanded that regional accents and social deprivation should be legally protected characteristics. At first sight it’s difficult to argue with the icy logic. If

Hidden in the hot air of Angela Rayner’s devolution white paper published just before Christmas – there are promises, for example, to empower councillors to ‘convene local people to engage in their community as respected leaders’ – there lurk some proposals which need careful investigation. By-laws currently passed by local authorities are subject to confirmation by central

Stories of two-tier justice are back. On Monday, Victoria Thomas Bowen, the model who doused Nigel Farage with milkshake on the Clacton campaign trail earlier this year, received a three-month suspended sentence for assault at Westminster magistrates’ court (plus 120 hours of unpaid work and a compensation order.) Farage was very unhappy: ‘We now live in

It is clear who is the unnamed target of Labour’s rule change over political nominations to the House of Lords. When two bright but relatively unknown political advisers aged 29 and 30, Charlotte Owen and Ross Kempsell, were elevated to the Lords last year after being nominated by Boris Johnson, there were loud complaints. Critics

There was something predictable in the government’s agreement last week to accept defeat in the Belfast High Court. The overtly republican Irish band Kneecap had brought a judicial review over the withdrawal of an offer of a £14,500 state grant to support artists overseas, alleging unlawful political discrimination. The government lawyers caved at the door

It’s grim up north in Scotland, we’re told. A mission from Edinburgh has produced a report about the woes of life in the Highlands and Islands, and a demand for measures to deal with them. Problems include a high incidence of poverty; a lack of affordable housing and public transport; long trips to the nearest hospital or

Education Minister Bridget Phillipson wants to make our schools engines of ambition and social mobility. Good for her. Unfortunately, some of the the advice she has received as to how to do this demonstrates one thing more than anything else: when it comes to class prejudice, it’s earnest bourgeois reformers who habitually head the pack.

It’s police overreach season again on free speech and non-crime hate incidents, or NCHIs. On Remembrance Day morning, we had Essex police’s surreal doorstepping of journalist Allison Pearson, demanding an interview about a long-forgotten Tweet by her they refused to identify. Pearson has said the police told her it was a NCHI, though the force says it