The United Kingdom has surrendered its centuries-old tradition of English liberty, particularly free speech, to silence critics of immigration and enforce progressive orthodoxies, according to a new analysis. The nation now ranks third among five Anglosphere countries in adopting a political and cultural project that rejects Western history, prioritizes group identity, and embeds these ideas into law.
Free speech under assault
The birthplace of John Milton's Areopagitica now arrests 12,000 people each year for social media posts, according to the report. As a result, Britain is no longer classified as an open country in a leading global freedom of expression index, ranking alongside Colombia, Nigeria, Romania, and South Africa.
Author Michael Murphy writes that British institutions are "stocked with technicoloured men (and women), with technicoloured hearts, who are all too willing to use their lanyards as a garrote around the neck of a centuries-old tradition of English liberty, free speech in particular."
Subtler but more sinister wokeness
Unlike in other Anglosphere nations, wokeness in the UK manifests in subtler ways, Murphy argues. Public figures took the knee for George Floyd, but there was no performative sobbing or declaration of anarchist autonomous zones as seen in the United States. Because the majority of the population are indigenous to the British Isles, there is no fretting over indigenous English land, and talk of such remains taboo.
However, this restraint does not mean the UK has avoided progressive overreach. Murphy notes that the nation that defeated Napoleon's armies now rewards its soldiers with a lifetime of litigation and rewards those who hound them with honorifics and high offices.
Grooming gangs and institutional failure
The report highlights a specific case: for decades, the state ignored the rape and sexual abuse of thousands of English girls by largely Pakistani grooming gangs, declining to pursue perpetrators for fear of appearing racist. This crime was enabled because the state privileged sensitivities around the ethnicity of the perpetrators over the abuse suffered by mostly underaged, white working-class victims.
Ranking in the Anglosphere
The United Kingdom sits at No. 3 in The Western Surrender series, which ranks the five Anglosphere countries by their adoption of progressive ideologies that undermine Western civilization. The series argues that these ideas reject and rewrite history, prioritize group identity above the individual, and embed this agenda into laws and institutions.
Murphy concludes that the British state has little tolerance for those who dissent from liberal orthodoxies, and the process of silencing critics is "arguably all the more sinister for the lack of attendant frippery."
