Will Jones – The Daily Sceptic Nov 12, 2026

You might think you’d seen it all when it comes to Britain’s thought police when Graham Linehan was met by five armed officers at an airport. But in the Yookay even muttering to yourself in the privacy of your own car can get you in trouble. Toby has the details in the Spectator.

The Free Speech Union (FSU) has fought more than 7,000 cases since 2020 and, frankly, I thought I’d seen it all when it comes to the police overreacting to an ‘offensive’ remark. Surely, the Met dispatching five armed officers to arrest Graham Linehan when he got off a flight from America for a tweet is the absolute nadir? But no. We were in court last week defending a man who was being prosecuted for saying something verboten while driving his car. The only person who heard it was his four year-old son, yet he was charged with “threatening or abusive behaviour” with a racial aggravator.

The story begins in April last year, when our member – let’s call him Craig – was driving his son back to their home in Glasgow after a day out at an amusement park in Falkirk. At around 4pm, when he was exiting the M80, he was cut up by another vehicle, forcing him to swerve to avoid a collision. He got the impression the other driver was drunk and called the police from his car. In due course, both vehicles stopped and the police arrived. They declined to breathalyse anyone, but took our member’s dashcam footage to see if any laws had been broken.

A week later, the officers returned the footage and told him that an offence had indeed been committed – but by him, not the other driver. His ‘crime’ was muttering the words “smelly black bastard” under his breath seconds after almost being driven off the road. The windows were closed, so no one outside the vehicle could have heard him, and the other driver wasn’t looking in his direction so couldn’t have seen him say it. The only evidence against Craig was the dashcam footage he’d turned over to the police in the hope of seeing the dangerous driver brought to justice

This is a near-perfect illustration of ‘anarcho-tyranny’, a phrase often used to describe contemporary Britain in which law-abiding responsible citizens are persecuted and criminals go unpunished. “How could you charge me for saying it in my car?” Craig asked the officer reading him his rights: “I was saying it to myself.” “The language was still racist,” she said.

He contacted the FSU, telling us he was being prosecuted for a thought crime, and it’s hard to disagree.

Toby cites two other shocking examples, before concluding: “In the Yookay… trying to bring criminals to justice is far more likely to get you into trouble than breaking the law.”

Worth reading in full.