Vice President JD Vance put Britain on blast in February over its suppression of speech and routine attacks on religious liberties. Citing a British Army veteran’s conviction and fining last year for silent prayer as an example, Vance stressed that free speech in the U.K. “is in retreat.”
Just in case leftist Prime Minister Keir Starmer missed his critique the first time around, Vance blasted Britain’s “infringements on free speech” weeks later while seated next to the British leader during a meeting at the White House.
When asked what was the ‘single most important issue facing the UK,’ a plurality answered ‘reducing immigration.’
Despite such constructive criticism from the Trump administration, the censorship regime in London has worsened in recent months thanks in part to the enactment of the so-called “Online Safety Act.”
The OSA, which came into force in July, not only requires Britons to prove with ID verification and credit-card checks that they are who they claim to be, but has already resulted in the suppression of speech and in the suppression of legal content, including footage of a protest and a video of a conservative member of Parliament’s speech about the sexual crimes committed by grooming gangs.
The Spectator’s John Power recently noted that the OSA serves to control “the channels through which dissent, especially the kind that makes the government deeply uncomfortable, is organized. It is as much a crisis-management tool for a flailing political class as it is a piece of digital regulation.”
While fast losing their freedoms, Britons are still able to express their frustrations at the ballot box and to pollsters.
A City AM/Freshwater Strategy poll released on Tuesday revealed that 71% of Britons think their country is headed in the wrong direction. With the exception of respondents ages 25-34 who majoritively think the U.K. is on the right track, a supermajority in every other age cohort took the opposite view.
When asked what was the “single most important issue facing the U.K.,” a plurality answered “reducing immigration.”
Just as most of the British aren’t keen on the direction their country is heading, they’re not pleased with the man at the helm.
Sixty percent of respondents said they held an unfavorable view of Keir Starmer; only 23% signaled approval.
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, had a favorability rating of 26%, beating Starmer by three percentage points and British Secretary of State David Lammy by 12 points. According to the latest Economist polling data, Trump’s approval rating in the U.S. is 41%.
In addition to revealing that Starmer is less popular in his own country than the American president, the poll revealed that Trump ally Nigel Farage’s Reform U.K. party is a relative favorite among would-be voters.
Whereas only 20% of respondents said they would vote for Starmer’s Labour Party, a plurality of 31% said they would vote Reform, the favorability rating for which was 39%. When asked to choose in a matchup between Farage and Starmer, the former enjoys a 2% lead.
It appears that Starmer’s unpopularity is not the result of his support for the OSA, which Vance criticized and Farage has promised to repeal. The poll found that 64% of respondents supported the new censorship law. Only 20% of respondents signaled disagreement.
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