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When Islamists on horseback can intimidate and chase down anti-regime protesters on British streets without consequence, it raises a question no modern Briton ever expected to ask: is this still a country confident enough to protect dissent?<\/p>\n
That is the question behind the startling <\/span>suggestion<\/span><\/a> from U.S. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers to the Telegraph \u2014 Britons may soon be justified in seeking asylum in America. <\/span>She was not being casually provocative for effect. She was serious \u2014 and each passing day strengthens her case.<\/span><\/p>\n With war now raging between the United States, Israel, and Iran, Britain is confronting a humiliating question: what does it say about our country when anti-Ayatollah Iranians can be harassed on British streets while police stand idly by? In Manchester, rival demonstrations erupted after the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and reports circulated \u2014 alongside <\/span>widely shared footage<\/span><\/a> \u2014 that pro-regime Islamists on horseback were intimidating and chasing away Iranians near the Islamic Centre.<\/span><\/p>\n UK: Pro-regime Iranian enforcers chased anti-Ayatollah Iranians near the Islamic Centre in Manchester. The police declined to intervene. pic.twitter.com\/HNkOOLH75p<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 @amuse (@amuse) March 7, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Source: @amuse\/X.com<\/p>\n To the shock of bystanders, police made no arrests. The astounded man filming the giant steeds and their bearded Islamic riders pleaded with police to know why the men weren\u2019t being \u201cnicked\u201d (that\u2019s arrested, in Northern parlance). \u201cThey\u2019ve just chased people with their \u2018orses!\u201d he shouts; his broad Manchester accent starkly at odds with the Middle Eastern politics playing out on his streets.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhat are we supposed to do?\u201d shrugs the short, young police officer, \u201cPull him off his horse?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYes!\u201d exclaimed the terrified onlooker.<\/span><\/p>\n This is the state of affairs in Britain: if your safety, social norms, or free speech are being compromised by Islamic agitators, the police stand by. Our accidental documentary-maker behind the cell phone summed it up nicely, \u201cIf he had a Union Jack on, he\u2019d be off the horse.\u201d He\u2019s right.<\/span><\/p>\n Over the past thirty years, the United Kingdom has <\/span>quietly<\/span><\/a> redefined the social contract that underpinned British society. But even those of us who have watched a stream of Trojan horses sneak in cultural change didn\u2019t foresee it morphing into actual horses on our streets.<\/span><\/p>\n And as Rogers correctly identifies, it is all underpinned by the demise of free speech. This has fallen off a cliff: not through dramatic constitutional rupture, but via bureaucratic growth under both Left and Right-wing governments. Millions of Brits, many of whom are my viewers on GB News, are relieved that the Trump Administration has been ringing the alarm bell on our behalf.<\/span><\/p>\n A growing number of ordinary citizens are being swept into the criminal justice system for social media posts, venting frustration on WhatsApp groups, and even uttering <\/span>unkind<\/span><\/a> words at protests. There were more than 12,000 <\/span>arrests<\/span><\/a> in 2023 under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988 \u2014 laws that criminalize posting messages deemed \u201cgrossly offensive,\u201d \u201cindecent, obscene,\u201d or causing \u201cannoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s roughly 33 arrests <\/span>per day<\/span><\/a> in a country where shoplifting is practically decriminalized, and less than 5% of home burglaries are solved.<\/span><\/p>\n While the laws curtailing speech were originally intended to deal with serious threats and targeted harassment, in practice, they can be applied far more broadly. Civil liberties groups <\/span>argue<\/span><\/a> that the vagueness of what constitutes \u201coffensive\u201d content allows authorities to monitor or detain people for expressing controversial political opinions, satire, or clumsy humor.<\/span><\/p>\n Things became more extreme with the 2023 Online Safety Act, one of the most significant legal changes of the decade, granting the communications regulator (Ofcom) wide authority to compel platforms to remove content. It also creates new criminal offenses for incidents of \u201cfalse and threatening communications.\u201d But the act\u2019s overly broad, subjective definitions and heavy penalties will lead to the censorship of lawful and harmless speech by tech firms trying to avoid multi-million dollar fines. Hundreds of people have already been <\/span>charged<\/span><\/a> under the new regime for \u201cillegal fake news\u201d and \u201cthreatening communications,\u201d with dozens convicted just months after it came into force.<\/span><\/p>\n Rogers is right to observe that this environment has produced something historically novel: a liberal democracy in which citizens increasingly self-censor not out of politeness, but out of fear.<\/span><\/p>\n Comedy writer Graham Linehan was arrested<\/a> last September at London\u2019s Heathrow Airport after traveling from America, where he had <\/span>posted<\/span><\/a> on X about protecting women\u2019s spaces from trans-identified males.<\/span><\/p>\n 2023 also saw the arrival of enforcement <\/span>against<\/span><\/a> \u201cnon-crime hate incidents,\u201d a uniquely British invention that allowed police to record speech as hateful even when no law had been broken. The message is unmistakable: speech is tolerated only so long as it causes no discomfort to those empowered to define harm.<\/span><\/p>\n Contrast this with the American approach Rogers implicitly praises \u2014 the First Amendment as the cultural spine of American life. It protects speech precisely because it is offensive, destabilizing, or unpopular. American courts do not ask whether speech might cause emotional unease; they ask whether the state has any business interfering at all.<\/span><\/p>\n Critics will argue that Britain\u2019s model is merely more \u201ccivilized\u201d and that Americans fetishize absolutism. But balance presumes a neutral arbiter, and Britain no longer has one. When regulators, universities, employers, and police all share the same ideological assumptions, moderation becomes enforcement by another name.<\/span><\/p>\n What Rogers understands \u2014 and what many in Britain still resist \u2014 is that free speech is not primarily about manners: it is about power and control. Once the power to determine acceptable opinion shifts decisively to institutions, citizens become subjects in all but name. You may still speak, but only at your own risk.<\/span><\/p>\n This is why talk of asylum, literal or not, resonates deeply.<\/span><\/p>\n Asylum is sought not only when bombs fall, but when rights erode so completely that dissent becomes untenable. We are not quite there yet \u2014 but the trajectory is headed nowhere good. How could it? The British government is currently <\/span>proposing<\/span><\/a> the abolition of jury trials for all but the most heinous crimes.<\/span><\/p>\n America\u2019s free-speech culture survives not because Americans are uniquely virtuous or diplomatic but because their system assumes fallibility \u2014 of governments, of majorities, of individual morality. Britain, by contrast, increasingly assumes moral consensus and builds enforcement mechanisms around it.<\/span><\/p>\n Sarah Rogers has done the UK a service by saying the quiet part aloud. If Britain wishes to remain a nation of free speakers rather than shy whisperers, it must relearn a lesson America never forgot: the price of liberty is not silence, but tolerance of speech we would rather not hear.<\/span><\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n Bev Turner is a host of \u201cThe Late Show Live\u201d for Great Britain\u2019s GBNews, based out of Washington, D.C. Follow her on X <\/span>@BeverleyTurner<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n