Reading the press and the usual on-line outrage factories, you’d think Britain is being ruled by an authoritarian regime deterimed to lock people up posting things on the internet.
The story goes like this: Labour got into office, a wave of censorious lefties took over, and suddenly the police are marching into bedrooms at midnight to arrest anyone who says a naughty word on X.
It’s a compelling narrative — if you’re a columnist who spends all day Googling your own name.
But it doesn’t survive contact with reality.
The Graham Linehan Effect
Graham Linehan was recently arrested (and then promptly un-arrested) over online statements, which led the Met to review its arrest policies. Cue another week of “THE LEFT IS COMING FOR YOU” headlines.
Meanwhile, when someone called me a paedophile online, local police showed absolutely no interest whatsoever.
Not even a polite automated email.
It made me wonder whether the story wasn’t simply exaggerated — whether the idea of a free-speech crackdown existed more in the newspapers and influencer feeds than in actual enforcement.
So I tested it.
The FOI Project
I sent Freedom of Information requests to:
- The Crown Prosecution Service
- The Ministry of Justice
- Every police force in England and Wales
I asked for the number of arrests/prosecutions under:
- Section 1, Malicious Communications Act 1988
- Section 127, Communications Act 2003
- The Online Safety Act 2023 (cyberflashing, threatening communications, false communications, epilepsy trolling, etc.)
I received replies from the CPS, the MOJ and 18 police forces.
What emerged was remarkably consistent.
The Data Says the Opposite
- Prosecutions for online offences have been falling for four years.
- They continued falling under Labour — in fact they fell faster.
- There is zero evidence that the Online Safety Act has increased arrests or prosecutions.
- There was a spike just after Covid, likely because people were reporting each other for online spats at much higher rates during lockdown.
- The peak year for prosecutions was 2021. It’s been downhill ever since.
The clearest picture comes from CPS data:
2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 Jan – March 2025 Communications Act 2003 { 127(1)(a) and (3) } 1,444 1,366 1,753 1,663 1,717 1,764 479 Communications Act 2003 { 127(1)(b) and (3) } 136 150 161 211 187 317 129 Communications Act 2003 { 127(2)(a) and (3) } 148 98 121 121 159 98 8 Communications Act 2003 { 127(2)(b) and (3) } 54 49 61 46 53 34 2 Communications Act 2003 { 127(2)(c) and (3) } 484 397 451 398 431 538 193 Malicious Communications Act 1988 { 1(1)(a) and (4) } 2,868 2,970 3,763 3,688 3,557 2,465 355 Malicious Communications Act 1988 { 1(1)(b) and (4) } 458 469 676 684 576 574 151 Malicious Communications Act 1988 { S1(1)A } 25 66 128 188 216 179 48 Malicious Communications Act 1988 { S1(1)B } 4 11 29 23 17 21 3 Online Safety Act 2023 { 179 } 0 0 0 0 0 38 22 Online Safety Act 2023 { 181 } 0 0 0 0 0 495 348 Online Safety Act 2023 { 183(1), (2) and (10) } 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 Online Safety Act 2023 { 184 } 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 Data Source: CPS Case Management Information System 5,621 5,576 7,143 7,022 6,913 6,526 1,739
The MOJ data supports this, although it was provided in such a user-hostile spreadsheet that including it here would cause permanent retinal damage.
A Shift in What’s Being Prosecuted
While overall prosecutions are falling, there is a shift in focus:
- Fewer cases about “offensive messages”
- More cases involving online grooming and exploitation
The first conviction under the Online Safety Act — Karl Davies, with 17 offences involving a 13–14-year-old girl — is exactly the kind of case Parliament intended the law to tackle.
So again: the data simply doesn’t match the narrative of mass censorship.
So Why Do So Many People Think Free Speech Is Under Attack?
1. High-profile cases create bad impressions
Lucy Connelly pleaded guilty to incitement to racial hatred, which is an existing crime and nothing to do with online speech laws.
Joey Barton lost a libel case, not a free speech case.
But the far right — and a handful of very online contrarians — folded these into their favourite conspiracy about censorship.
2. The louder complaint: privilege is being diluted
This is the uncomfortable truth.
A lot of today’s “free speech crisis” isn’t about the police or the state.
It’s about status anxiety.
I grew up in a world where the voices that dominated public debate were:
- white,
- male,
- educated,
- and above all reactionary.
Their opinions weren’t just heard — they were treated as default common sense.
Today, those same voices have to compete with:
- women
- minorities
- younger people
- LGBT
- experts
- immigrants
- anyone with a smartphone and an opinion
And many of them are simply more interesting.
The feeling that “free speech is being crushed” is often just the feeling of no longer being the loudest person in the room.
It’s not censorship.
It’s competition.
And some people really don’t like it.
You’ll often see people in online discussions complain about immigrants, government, left/right wing, Starmer or another politician. Sometimes quite vicious comments like shooting people coming off boats from the cliffs of Dover. The same people will also complain about freedom of speech being repressed.
Then you have likes and emojis – people enjoy the dopamine hit that lots of likes provides, it has an addictive quality and can make people feel validated and they are more likely to receive them in their echo chambers. Can you remember old style message boards – bulletin boards? They are still about but die a little more each year. These were so much better than the likes of X and facebook, proper discussions where everyone who posted had their opinion read as there were no (default) sort by most relevant options. People online these days are the tl;dr generation – it has to be short, snappy and impactful – substance seems to count for little.
Uncurated online discussions (whether Usenet newsgroups, bulletin boards, web forums or blog comment sections) do avoid empowering “tech bro” oligarchs: unfortunately they don’t scale well, and thus are best suited to discussions on a very specific interest that will limit the number of users involved.
(Of course this limitation was less of an issue in the earlier history of the internet, when fewer people were online anyway.)
Some of the old school message boards are still around, but even they are being destroyed by the endless cycle of click like and share