Torpedo in the Free Speech Act is prosecuting the culture war.

Bridget Phillipson, the rest of the Labor Cabinet, they drunk the woke Kool-Aid.

This act would have made it more difficult to no platform anti-woke speakers on campus,

anti-woke students, gender critical feminists, conservative intellectuals. They don't believe that those points of view deserve an

airing on university campuses and the best way to deal with them is just to suppress

them. This is just the opening salvo in what will be effectively a war on free speech over the next five years.

Hello, welcome back to the Brendan O'Neill show with me Brendan O'Neill and my

special guest this week Toby Young Toby welcome to the show.

Thanks Brendan. It's good to have you on, especially given that free speech is back in the news.

Free speech is an issue close to my heart, close to your heart as the founder and director

of the Free Speech Union of course, and there's a lot to talk about and I want to kick off by asking

you about what's happening in the UK right now under our new government the new

labor government which has taken action to block the commencement of the

Higher Education Freedom of Speech Act 2023.

A very ominous start to this new regime.

To kick off, I wonder if you could tell us

what that act is about, how it came about,

what is in it, and why we should be worried

that it might not go through. Well, the act came about because in the 2019 Conservative manifesto,

it said that if universities failed to address the free speech crisis on campus, the government would take steps to do so.

And universities did fail to address the free speech crisis and the crisis is real as I'm sure I don't need to persuade you.

And so the government brought forward this piece of legislation.

...