#53 (Don’t) Speak Up
Plus: Cooperation and conflict in the international sphere
Welcome to the 53rd instalment of the Liberal Digest. Reading the below you may notice that free speech appears as a theme. The news that the Home Secretary pledged to drop the concept of ‘non-crime hate incidents’ was extremely welcome. A nonsensical product of a virtue signalling government blowing in the cultural wind that sucked up valuable police time; the idea belongs in the dustbin of history. But the government should obviously go further, and the Adam Smith Institute has provided a great place to start. Elsewhere, while we might be tempted to think that the tides could be changing on some of the worst products of our politics thanks to the breakdown in the two party system, Reform UK gave us pause to think again. Their twin announcements to support the pensions triple lock, and drop a spokesperson for slipping up when trying to make a sensible point, are straight out of the ‘uniparty’ playbook. Political incentives will always kick in in the end.
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Stop the Press!
Best op eds, interviews, news and analysis of the week in the old-school media
Shabana Mahmood announced the end of non-crime hate incidents:
“Over recent years, unclear guidance has led to officers being called out to people’s homes over insults and routine arguments. A lack of clarity around when and how NCHIs should be recorded, the rise of the digital age and social media, and inconsistent approaches between police forces have led to them no longer being fit for purpose. In new measures announced today, NCHIs will be replaced with a system that lets police get on with their jobs – preventing and fighting real criminals to make communities safer. After commissioning the College of Policing and National Police Chiefs’ Council for an urgent review of NCHI guidance, the government is now accepting all their recommendations. The final recommendations, published today, set out a series of common-sense reforms to give police a clear, consistent process for handling these types of incidents. The new system will prevent police from recording lawful free speech, whilst ensuring that reports from the public, which may lead to genuine harm, get the right response. Police will still be able to keep tabs on serious community tensions and protect those who need it.”
Megan Kenyon assesses how likely it is, or not, that Labour will embrace electoral reform:
“The view that the UK’s electoral system needs to change is not uncommon in Westminster. The APPG for Fair Elections is the largest APPG in Parliament, and draws support from across parties. Neil Kinnock – once cautious on the issue – became more sympathetic to reform over time, particularly as the distortions of elections like the 1983 general election became clear. Among Labour members, support is even stronger: around two thirds back a move to proportional representation. Sobel’s APPG has called for a national commission to examine the voting system and present options for reform. As he put it, such a body “might find that first past the post is the best system – and we would have to accept that”. Others argue that now is a politically opportune moment to act, with enough time before the next general election to consider implementing changes or committing to them. Simon Opher, the Labour MP for Stroud who is a member of the APPG, said now is the perfect time for the government to set one up. “I think it’s clear from a political point of view, the timeline is perfect,” he said, “before the next election, we can either adopt it or we can say we will adopt it… I think politically that’s a sound move. And on a moral basis, it’s just the right thing to do.””
John Alty argues that globalisation isn’t dead, but we can’t afford to rest on our laurels either:
“This does not however mean we should be complacent about whether we have a set of international trade rules. While it may be impossible to achieve the tranquil world order envisaged when the WTO was set up, a world without any framework in which to engage with arguments about trade unfairness, weaponisation or national security has the potential to stoke wider political tensions as well as depress business confidence and increase costs for consumers. Ironically, US unilateralism and threats have encouraged others to double down on such frameworks, with India – a notoriously reluctant participant in trade agreements – concluding deals with the UK and EU and renewing stalled efforts with Canada, the EU and CPTPP exploring closer relations eg on digital trade, and other bilateral agreements being landed. Crucially, the US approach has not resulted in widespread copycat behaviour by others.”
Christopher Riley describes the Artemis moon mission as a truly unifying international project:
“As the first humans for over half a century prepare to set eyes on the whole Earth in this way, they are about to experience something almost sacred. Sharing this experience will change them more than they can imagine. But perhaps the knowledge that there are other people up there again looking back from so far away will also change us. It will be a reminder to see ourselves as poet Archibald MacLeish did after seeing the first photos from Apollo 8, “as riders on the Earth together, on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold”. Lying on the lunar surface, a few thousand miles below them, as the Artemis astronauts pass over the moon, will be a tiny silicon disc of goodwill messages from world leaders, placed there by the crew of Apollo 11 in July 1969. One message is from a man called Eric Williams, then prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago. It reads: “It is our earnest hope of mankind that while we gain the moon, we shall not lose the world.””
Ryan Bourne explains why our new political settlement will have dire consequences for prosperity and freedom:
“This need not be the final settlement, obviously. When tried, nationalist economics will likely discredit itself. Once it slips liberal restraints, it often curdles into cronyism, patronage, corruption and waste. Favouritism replaces competition; political allocation replaces market discipline. That can make nationalist governments both economically destructive and morally grubby, eventually sowing the seeds of their own defeat. On the cosmopolitan left, Davies expects the centre to win out against the hard left via a reinvigorated liberal coalition. But that will take time. For now, the bleak arithmetic is straightforward. The side with the strongest emotional connection to voters is becoming more anti-market, and even its market-friendly voices are willing to junk old principles when identity and sovereignty are at stake. The side that is occasionally pro-market is competing with socialists and often treats liberalisation as an instrument, not a creed.”
Maxwell Marlow brands the Tobacco and Vapes Bill as unworkable, authoritarian and counterproductive:
“But perhaps the cruellest irony of the Bill is what it does to the products that actually work. The Government knows (because its own actively NHS prescribes them) that vapes are an effective quitting aid. Vaping is at least 95 per cent safer than smoking. Lords amendment 72, which protects the advertisement of vapes as part of a public health campaign, is an implicit admission of this fact. And yet the same legislation introduces punitive restrictions on vape flavours, advertising, and availability that will suppress their uptake among the very adult smokers who need them most. The Adam Smith Institute’s paper 19 Million Years of Life, which I co-authored with Mark Oates, calculated that if every current smoker in Britain switched to tobacco harm reduction products, the cumulative gain would be 19 million years of additional life. Using Action on Smoking and Health’s own methodology, smoking currently costs the UK taxpayer £21.8 billion a year. Achieving smoke-free status through harm reduction, rather than prohibition, would reduce that burden by between £9.2 billion and £12.6 billion annually. Bafflingly, the Government is actively working against themselves — and taxpayers.”
The Times: British companies invest in economy at second-lowest rate in G7
POLITICO: City of London braces for energy shock to turn into a full-blown meltdown
The Telegraph: EU offers ‘emergency brake’ on youth mobility scheme
Guido Fawkes: Every tax hike coming in this week - and next
The Times: UK launches review of electric car sales quotas
BBC: UK and allies discuss sanctions to stop Iran blocking Strait of Hormuz
Financial Times: UK bank capital rules are becoming a drag on growth
Stacks of Freedom
Highlights from our fellow Substackers
Sam Dumitriu asks why nuclear energy shouldn’t be allowed to benefit from regulatory carve outs like wind power can:
Hannah Ritchie charts how foreign aid spending has changed:
Tim Worstall debunks Jason Hickel’s latest claims about poverty in China:
Kelsey Piper discusses the pitfalls of quotas:
Valentin Boboc looked at where our energy should be focused when it comes to trade:
Wonk World
Ideas and analysis from the think tanks, academia and other clever sorts
The Adam Smith Institute have drafted a Freedom of Speech Bill:
“We do not believe that freedom of speech is gone - it still exists and remains at the front of mind for lawyers, politicians, and judges. It is upheld by Article 10 of the ECHR, even if vaguely, and recent governments have made overt steps to protect it in higher education. However, despite these good intentions, freedom of speech continues to be eroded. The Online Safety Act, the Public Order Acts, the Malicious Communications Act, the Obscene Publications Act - the list goes on - all continue to erode that ancient liberty of freedom of speech and expression. Now is the time, for those who value such liberties, to be proactive in our refusal to accept one more incursion on our freedoms.”
Johan Norberg documents how freedom in Hungary has cratered under Viktor Orbán:
“Unconstrained by law, media, and an independent civil society, Fidesz has used its powers to take control of the economy. Orbán has christened it an “unorthodox economic policy” and said that “for rebuilding the economy it is not theories that are needed but rather thirty robust lads who start working to implement what we all know needs to be done.” Orbán had ridden a wave of anger at austerity policies, and now he claimed that privatization had gone further in Hungary than in any other EU country and had to be reversed. Liberated from economic theories, these “thirsty robust lads” started carrying away the private property of others on a gigantic scale. Some nationalization was outright, such as the confiscation of private pensions. In 1998, Hungary had become the first postcommunist country in Europe to allow workers to invest a share of their salaries in private accounts. Fidesz wanted to lay its hands on that wealth to pay for its own spending promises. In late 2010, the party declared that those who did not return to the state pension system would effectively be excluded from it; they would lose their future right to a state pension despite being legally required to continue paying taxes into the system. Almost three million Hungarians left their private savings to the state system, and they were not compensated. Savings totaling almost 10 percent of GDP were expropriated.”
The Entrepreneurs Network is looking to hire a new researcher:
Hear Hear
Podcasts for weekend listening
Cass Sunstein delivered the inaugural Emerging Scholars Lecture at the Mercatus Center:
Posting to Policy
Best of social media this week
Via SPEAK UK
Further Afield
Interesting stuff from around the world
David French reminds us that freedom of speech must reign supreme in the battle against social media:
“A social media site isn’t a bottle of alcohol or a cigarette. It’s not delivering a drug. It’s delivering speech. Sometimes that speech is silly and harmless. Sometimes it is toxic and harmful. Sometimes it’s educational or inspiring. But it’s all speech, and in America speech traditionally can only be blocked, censored or regulated in the narrowest of circumstances. Defamation, true threats, obscenity, child sex abuse material, direct incitements to violence — each of those forms of expression can be banned and punished because they are not encompassed within the “freedom of speech” protected by the Constitution. Commercial speech — advertisements for prescription drugs or labels for food, for example — can be heavily regulated. But when you move beyond these categories — especially when someone is engaged in speech that has any kind of artistic, political, cultural or religious value — then the most comprehensive protections of the First Amendment start to lock in. Even the algorithm is a form of constitutionally protected speech. As I’ve explained before, in a 2024 Supreme Court case called Moody v. NetChoice, Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the majority that “expressive activity includes presenting a curated compilation of speech originally created by others.” The algorithm, Justice Kagan explained, was comparable to the layout of a newspaper, where editors decide which stories to feature prominently, which stories belong on the back pages, and how to make the page attractive and readable so that more people will see the news.”
Israeli lawmakers approved legislation that would make the death penalty the default sentence for Palestinians convicted of deadly terror attacks:
“The bill stipulates that Palestinians convicted in Israeli military courts of carrying out deadly attacks deemed to be “acts of terrorism” would be executed by hanging within 90 days, with a possible postponement of up to 180 days. In theory, Jewish Israelis could also be executed under the law - but in practice this almost certainly would not happen, as the death penalty could only be carried out where the intention of the attack was to “negate the existence of the state of Israel”. The legislation was pushed hard by the far-right, with the National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir its driving force. After the vote, he posted on X: “We made history!!! We promised. We delivered.””
Pam Bondi was removed as the United States’ Attorney General by Donald Trump:
“Trump lauded Bondi’s performance as attorney general in his post, saying she had done “a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown in crime across our country”. But the president had reportedly grown increasingly frustrated with Bondi, in particular over her handling of the Epstein files. When she was sworn into the post in February 2025, she vowed transparency over the Epstein case and promised to release an alleged client list associated with the disgraced financier, who died in 2019. The department later said no such list existed. In the end, millions of files related to Epstein were released under pressure - including from Trump supporters - and only after Congress passed a law requiring the Department of Justice to make unclassified records public. The agency, and subsequently Bondi, faced bipartisan backlash, with lawmakers accusing the justice department of failing to obscure some identifying information about survivors, while protecting the identities of those who were not victims.”
Katherina Reiche, Germany’s economy minister, urged a rethink on nuclear power as energy prices continued to soar:
“Germany’s dependence on gas backfired after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 forced Berlin to abandon pipeline imports from Moscow. Germany had to turn to liquefied natural gas, mostly from the US, which now makes up about 10 per cent of its gas supply. Persistently high energy costs have since weighed heavily on German industry, which also faces intensifying competition from Chinese companies at home and abroad. In the second half of 2025, gas prices for private households were 79 per cent higher than in the same period in 2021, just before the start of the war in Ukraine, while electricity prices rose 23 per cent, according to Germany’s statistical office. The energy price shock will wipe out more than half of the growth that was previously expected in 2026, a consortium of German economic think-tanks warned on Wednesday.”
Ed Tarnowski argues that age-verification for social media puts kids at risk:
“The unintended consequences stemming from age verification laws are no longer theoretical – these policies have been tested for years across the Atlantic. The United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act (OSA), a 2023 law, requires online platforms to implement “highly effective” age verification rules – measures that went into effect last July. Under the law’s most stringent compliance requirements, Wikipedia would be compelled to allow users to filter out content from “unverified” users. In other words, many site editors would have no choice but to reveal their identities or quit editing the site altogether. This comes with broad consequences. Wikipedia’s model depends on the ability to draw from a widespread, diverse and often anonymous pool of editors – the only way to sustain an encyclopedia of its scale and credibility. The nonprofit operating Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation, rightfully argues ending anonymous contributions could “expose contributors to data breaches, stalking, lawsuits or even imprisonment by authoritarian regimes.””
POLITICO: Trump signs order limiting mail-in voting
Bloomberg: Poverty in Argentina Fell to Lowest Since 2018 Under Milei
Jeremy Warner: Trump’s America is fast becoming a banana republic
BBC: Refugee’s death after release by US immigration authorities ruled homicide
Financial Times: Venezuela’s ‘chief torturer’ takes over the military
Graph of the Week
