TRIGGERnometry - Journalist Investigated for Tweet Speaks Out - Allison Pearson

Episode Date: December 4, 2024

Allison Pearson is a British journalist, author, and columnist. She joins us to discuss her recent visit by Essex Police on Remembrance Sunday over an "offensive tweet". *Follow Allison on X: https://x.com/AllisonPearson SPONSOR. Munk Debates - become a member for free at https://munkdebates.com Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Substack! https://triggernometry.substack.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Shop Merch here - https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I was much happier being a free speech supporter in theory. The practice turns out to be slightly unpleasant, but there we go. Two very senior police inspectors, two former Home Secretary, a former Prime Minister, and they all said, my tweet did not come near the threshold for a criminal investigation. I don't think people realize just how outrageous this actually is. I haven't particularly wanted to fight. I'm not brave.

some things you have to take a stand. And many of us will fight to the death for this. Alison Pearson, Britain's latest thought criminal. Welcome to Trigonometry. Well, non-thought, non-criminal. Non-thought, non-criminal. We're going to get into all of that. But for viewers who don't know who you are,

including many American people, they would have heard about a journalist who had a visit from the police for a tweet that wasn't even a crime. that journalist is you. Yes. Tell us what happened. Yeah, so it was the morning of a Remembrance Sunday.

American listeners' viewers may not know. Remembrance Sunday is our big commemorative day for the dead of the two world wars. I was in my house, in a market town in Essex, and I was still in my dressing gown. I had all my Remembrance Day, black clothes and the poppies laid out. And my husband says there's two coppers at the door. And I thought that's a bit weird. but they closed off our street for a parade.

So I thought maybe they're telling us our cars in the wrong place. I went down to policemen outside and they said they were here in connection with, I think, a hate incident. And then I said, and then they said it was to do with a social media post a year ago. So I was quite taken aback. And I said it was obviously was going to be a tweet because that's the social media I do. And I said, can you tell me which tweet it was? Because apparently I had been stirring up racial hatred and not something I'm do as a full-time thing.

And so the guy said, we can't tell you what it was. And then I said, oh, could you tell me who my accuser is? So that might give me a clearer picture. And he said, yeah, we're not allowed to tell you that either. But it's not the accuser. It's the victim. So we have something called due process in Britain or we used to. And usually the person who is the accuser or someone who's the accused, which was me, is innocent until proven guilty.

But clearly this person who had complained about me was now being called by the police a victim. So I was shocked. I think only half my brain, half of your brain is thinking, this is crazy. And the other part is, you know, is panicking. So I'm a student of English literature, as you guys may know. So I drew myself up to my five foot three and a half inches. And I said to them, poor guys actually, because I think they probably thought a bit of overtime, you know, go around, tell the lady she's been a bad girl. And I said, well, today we are commemorating the dead of world wars.

And hundreds of thousands of British men and allied forces gave us. their lives so that we could live in a free country, not like the country they were fighting. And I said, what would they think of you, those young men, a similar age to the age you are now, if they knew that in their country, coppers could turn up at the door and act in a tyrannical way to a person and refused to disclose what she'd done wrong or who was accusing her. So they looked quite a little bit shamefaced. They were looking down at their notes. And yeah, So that was what happened. And what did they say to that?

Very reasonable challenge, actually. I think, I don't think they were expecting the St. Crispin's Eve, Shakespeare and soliloquy when they went around to warn people. To be honest, I think my recollection of what happened is pretty good, but I was very, very startled and shocked. I heard, I thought I heard incident, which I thought was this thing called. a non-crime hate incident, which is called abbreviation NCHI, the police later claimed that they told me it was a criminal investigation under the Public Order Act. Now, I didn't hear that. They could have said it, but I don't know. They also said they invited me for a voluntary interview about this tweet. And I think it's something that's worth saying, because obviously

I've learned a lot about the non-crime hate incidents. And that literally anyone can complain to the police that you have made them feel offended or made them feel unsafe. So basically anyone who doesn't like my politics, doesn't like me, doesn't like the newspaper I work for, which is the Daily Telegraph, literally anyone can make that complaint. and which is obviously what happened in November last year. And that was a guy in Sussex, made the complaint to Sussex Police. And we think at that stage, it was my offence, quote unquote, was deemed to be a non-crime hate incident. But by the time, 12 months later, it had gone via the Metropolitan Police in London,

come up to Essex, and somehow it had been escalated to a criminal investigation. And Alison, we have to get this out on the table. What was the tweet that you think this was triggered by? Well, I've never been told officially. And the telegraph news desk, which immediately swung in behind me, asked Essex police to confirm which tweet it was, but they refused. But then they leaked it to the Guardian newspaper, which is.

is an interesting way to proceed. So it seems to be a tweet not long after the Hamas massacres of the 7th of October. And I'll be honest with you guys, when the police were on the door, because I, a couple of weeks after the massacres of 7th of October in Israel, with some friends and colleagues, I co-founded the British Friends of Israel, which was to support British Jews at a time of huge increase in anti-examination. Semitism in our country and also to support Israel's right to defend herself. And since that

time, I have seen a huge increase in attacks on me, attempts to undermine me. So when the police were there, at the back of my mind, I'm thinking this is to do with being a supporter of the Jews, isn't it? I thought it's inevitably going to be that. So the tweet the Guardian thinks it was came about because the Remembrance Sunday of 2003 with British Friends of Israel, you may remember that there were a lot of pro-Gaza people out on the streets, some statues were desecrated. We announced that we were going to be standing on Armistice Day,

very solemn day by the Winston Churchill statue, and anyone who supported British Jews could come along and meet us there. So various people turned up and it was great and it was free speech union people like Toby Young and Laura Dodsworth and so on. So we were there and there were some police there and we invited them to do a selfie with our group which had our British Friends of Israel flag. And they turned us down quite quite gruffly. So that was okay. They didn't want to be in our picture. And then about a week or 10 days later, I was on Twitter just scrolling and someone had retweeted a picture of police with a group which looked like it was a pro-Palestine group

to me. That's what the picture looked like. And the guy who had tweeted it said, seems clear which side they've chosen. So in a kind of casual manner, I retweeted and I said, how dare they, unwilling, police unwilling to pose with British friends of Israel, but perfectly happy to pose with the Jew haters. Now, you know, people may say that was quite a sort of direct or, you know, rough form of words. I stand by those words. And then what happened quite quickly, I don't know, it would have been an hour or so after I'd retweeted that picture. It came up that that was a picture that didn't date from a few months before.

It was from a year ago and it wasn't in London. So I immediately deleted my tweet. and in fact our Prime Minister, Kirstama, when he was the Director of Public Prosecutions, our most senior prosecutor, somebody said to him, what do you do if you've made a mistake on Twitter? And he said, delete the tweet immediately, which is what I did. I don't know how many people saw that tweet, but it was a very narrow window in which people could see it.

But this person in Sussex claimed that they had been very offended. by that tweet then. So I made an error about the photograph. I don't feel the sentiment I was expressing was wrong. And indeed, the group that was in the actual photograph has very anti-Israel views, as it turns out. And are big fans of Osama bin Laden, which tends to be a bit of a clue, doesn't it really. So anyway, yeah. So they're Gen Z then.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm just to say, actually, that it's a bigger story with Essex Police, who were the ones trying to pursue me, a Jewish lady wrote and said she had submitted a complaint to Essex police about a very anti-Semitic tweet, which was indeed pretty Israel genocide, white supremacists, and a hate crime officer at Essex. had replied and said, you know, you are offended, but this doesn't, we're not going to be looking into this because feelings were running very high at the time when the guy posted that. Now, I could say equally that when I posted mine, which was in a few weeks of a massacre, which I travelled to Israel recently to investigate and write big reports on, my feelings were running very high. And I suppose that the broader picture guys is,

people get frustrated and upset and these issues that crop up are, you know, they do excite strong feeling. But I think strong feeling, we live allegedly in a free society and we are allowed to express strong feelings as long as we are not inciting violence. And it should be said that the Telegraph and me, we approached very senior legal people, a law lord, a former solicitor general, two very senior police inspectors, two former home secretaries, a former prime minister, and they all said, my tweet, did not come near the threshold for a criminal investigation. That's ridiculous.

So it didn't come near the threshold, yet they still pushed it forward. And then you look at what is happening within our legal system. system and the court system where people have had the most heinous crimes committed against them, and for a multitude of different reasons, they drop out of the system. Yeah, but there's a lot about this situation. It's, on the one hand, you think this is clearly, it's ludicrous, right? So it's almost so bad, it's funny. But it's sinister, Francis.

It's sinister. I'm a law-abiding person. I'm in my home. I've got the police round to my door. There are neighbours around me who've had cars stolen from their drive. They've had their shops broken into. My neighbour Anne had £20,000 of jewellery

stolen from her small antique shop round the corner. They were given a crime number, texted a crime number. The police wouldn't come. But they were prepared to come for speech, which they deemed to be hateful, but actual crimes that I would still say the vast majority of British people

would be their priority for police to investigate, go uninvestigated, unlooked at. So we've got a massive disconnect in our country between police are more comfortable now policing speech than they are doing policing. And why do you think that is? Well, unfortunately, as a reluctant free speech martyr, I have to say,

I've had discussions with Constantine in the past about his excellent book, and I was much happier being a free speech supporter in theory. The practice turns out to be slightly unpleasant, but there we go. Let's not skip over that, Alison, because I think different people will respond differently to situations like this, but you've talked about this being quite, I don't know what the right word would be, harassing or unpleasant for you. And there are people who will say, well, some police turned up here, or what's the big deal?

Why was it so unpleasant for you the way that this went down? Because they accused me of, I was on a criminal, potentially a criminal charge for stirring up racial hatred, a serious charge, which the Commissioner for Police in Essex,

Roger Hurst, went on the radio station, and he talked about crimes like mine, crimes, which could command a seven-year prison sentence. So I think that the police... So you thought when these guys are at your door, I could be getting nicked for years here? No, I think that wasn't that then. I think it was more the threat of this hangs over you.

So when you go to bed, you don't sleep very well, and then you wake up and there's a kind of immediate sum, your first thought on waking up is, but I'm under police investigation for something I consider to be almost nothing. But they say about things like this that the process is the punishment. And I think that's really right.

And it's almost like, I guess, you know, you've got experience of this in a Labour MP, actually Graham Stringer in the House of Commons talked about the Starzy-like treatment of Alison Pearson. And you think, I mean, coming out of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, of course, the great satirists and the great writers talked about

the sort of absurd. It's absurd, okay, but they make up things and then the more you protest, the more than noose titans, right? So you can say, I don't want to engage with this process because it's clearly outrageous, but you don't have that option. So obviously I got in touch with the Free Speech Union and my friend Toby Young, who is the founder of the Free Speech Union, and I gave him a description of what had happened.

And he said many, many people, I mean, all walks of life, thousands and thousands of people have been given these non-crime hate incidents, including a former Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, for a speech she gave at the Conservative. Party conference when she was the Home Secretary. So the person who was in charge, overall ministerial charge of the legal system in our country, was herself given one of these apparently fatuous, idiotic things which can have a real effect on your life. For example, if I have a non-crime hate incident on my record, then I may not be allowed to

to work with children. I wouldn't be able to be a trustee of a charity. I gave a big speech for the sick children's trust last night and I joked to the audience that I was lucky to be there because, you know, obviously if I had not fought back against this charge, then I wouldn't be able to do a lot of the work that I do. But it's frightening and I think of myself as living in a free country and you suddenly realize there are people who think, think there are limits on speech, even things that were clearly not crimes. Now, something I have found out, lots of serving and former police officers have broken cover to tell me that at the College of Policing, so let's just go back to the beginning. The non-crime hate incidents

really started with the Stephen Lawrence murder case, a horrible, horrible case of a young black guy standing at a bus stop set about by racist thugs. Now, there were various findings from the McPherson inquiry into the Stephen Lawrence case, which suggested that had some of these people been stopped when they were at the stage of hateful speech, maybe it wouldn't have ended up in the murder of Stephen. So that thought, the College of Policing, which doesn't make laws, it's not Parliament, came up with these non-crime hate incidents. They're not within the criminal law and they're not really within the civil law. They sit in this very, very awkward grey area.

And this meant that any expressions of anything could be that the police could turn up and slap these on. They've slapped them on children, for example, just to give you a kid in the playground who's called someone a bad word, that child. age nine got one of these non-crime hate incidents so he wouldn't be able to travel outside the country potentially so for me the more interesting thing is that the cop the ex-police and serving police say that the college of policing has been entirely captured by woke ideology they are committed to turning the UK into a progressive utopia and the police officers who are doing their training are not really being taught a lot about nuts and bolts policing, like catching actual bad people, but they are told that there are these protected characteristics,

and that's on the basis of skin colour, religion, sexuality. So essentially, if the person who decides to make the complaint to the police that you or I have said something hateful, it's a much stronger claim if they're a black person or a Muslim woman. Oram was a Muslim. or a trans person. So essentially now we have a lot of the higher echelons of policing are completely captured by a progressive ideology which I would suggest is not shared by the bulk of my fellow citizens who think that the police should solve their burglaries. But that's not what's happening.

And if you look, there's been a huge increase in these hate crimes. And just to say that under the last. conservative government. Suella Braverman, she was our home secretary, and she could see that these were sinister and could lead to have very, very bad chilling outcomes. And she suggested to the Prime Minister of issue sooner that these should be scrapped. But of course, the so-called conservatives have been frightened of the liberal intelligentsia. So they said, obviously, the Prime Minister said, no, no, we can't scrap the non-hate crimes. And but she was allowed to introduce a statutory guidance, the code of conduct.

And that code of conduct says if you're approaching someone accused, before you do it, use your common sense. Think, is this in the public interest? Will this person, Alison, pose a serious threat of violent disorder? I mean, I do nothing else, as you know. You're lucky the room hasn't been set on fire. And that code of conduct, the police was supposed to be abiding by that. It's just got worse and worse. So we now have a situation where, as we've had various, very senior people speaking out this week,

former Lord Hogan Howe, former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, our most senior, he said this is obviously very bad and open to abuse. And Lord Sumption, former Supreme Court judge, said it's basically a charter for grudges. It's, that's, you know. And the thing that I find worrying about all of this is, on the one hand, you go, well, all of these notable figures within the establishment have come out and said and condemned it. And I think that's good. Then I look over at Kea Stama and all his lot and I think, well, it's going to get worse, isn't it?

Well, yes. I think that if my case can do anything, it's possibly act as a slightly shaming, short-term shaming tactic. Yvette Cooper, now the Home Secretary in the Labour government, was apparently going to increase the number of opportunities for hate crime claims. But this week she swiftly executed a bit of a U-turn and said, we need common sense in the application of these.

And the Prime Minister, when he was questioned last week, he too said the same, you know, reassuring words. We really don't want them policing tweets. We want them policing crimes. Because the Prime Minister knows that those are the views of the vast majority of people. Would Labor like to have everyone on the hook for hate crime? Absolutely they would. Yeah, absolutely.

But we have to say, unfortunately, that the Conservative government allow these things to take hold and flourish. I suppose that one of the basis of my ongoing claims against them will be how on earth was the stupid non-crime hate incident. Do you know what? I hate saying that. Let me tell you why I hate saying that. So I am a student of English literature and I loved as a kid from a home with not very many books in it. I did at school George Orwell's selected essays and that became a very treasured book for me. It's still my most thumbed book on my bookshelf. And he wrote politics and the English language and why I write. And those are touchstones to me. And whenever I sit down to write a column, I always think of Orwell. Choose an Anglo-Saxon word. Don't choose a Latinate word. Sometimes you

can break that rule, but mainly that's a good rule. Choose a short, pithy word. So that was a great touchstone for me. And Orwell said, if politicians are using ugly language, that's because the thing behind it is ugly. And he talked about, he said that these sentiments are like prefabricated sections of a chicken coop. Now, a non-crime hate incident is peak prefabricated sections of a chicken coop. It's an ugly phrase for an ugly thing. It's meaningly. what is a non-crime hate incident? Well, I can tell you exactly what it is because Orwell wrote about this

in the preface to Animal Farm, which I discovered very late in life and I wish more people had read it because in that he talks about how difficult it was for him to publish Animal Farm and it wasn't because of official censorship, it was because of what he talked about as soft censorship.

And that's where people voluntarily censor themselves because they know the repercussions of not doing so. And that's what this is. That is what is designed to do. It's designed to intimidate people into not saying the things that they know to be true. Yes. That's exactly right.

And even, I mean, I'm obviously I'm a weekly columnist and there's a battle on the whole time. I work for a right-leaning, a very, very, very successful, wonderful, I think, refuge for all the views that millions of people hold dear. But even there, they are an uphill struggle. against this ideology. So just to give you an example, a while ago, I wrote a column about someone who described themselves as a pregnant man.

And I said, yeah, it's not a pregnant man, is it? Because, you know, something women do that men don't do, which is get pregnant. That goes, I'm on a tautizeation. Thank you very much for that. You know, uterus, vagina, you know, all that old stuff, you know,

been going on for a few thousand years, hasn't it really? And And so I wrote that column and, you know, in my usual quite fiery way, defending women and feeling very, very annoyed about the pregnant man. And so then the reader's comment started coming in and they were saying, why are you calling the pregnant man he? Now, I had submitted a piece which said she throughout her, she. that had been changed in the editing process.

Now, I'm not accusing people because that's what most people do. What Constantine has described is soft censorship. Most people think it's easier, right, because you know you're going to get complaints. So I said to my immediate line editor, that's being changed back now. All those pronouns are going to be changed back because you've made me look ridiculous. I'm saying there isn't a pregnant man and you've called it he. right, and the readers are furious, and they expect us to defend the values, which I'm defending, not to succumb to that soft censorship. And then they said, well, the lawyer said, let's go with

the other thing. And I said, it's not a legal matter. I'm the opinion columnist. My opinion goes into my column. And then they said, yeah, but these people will report the paper to the complaints Commission and then they will generate vast amounts of work and paperwork. So we'd rather avoid, for obvious reasons, the vast amounts of complaints and paperwork. So it's easier. They make these complaints and in the end, even the sane will go along with their nonsense. So I'm just saying that, and this is not a criticism. I mean, I'm so lucky to work for the Telegraph and they have been absolutely in my corner this last

fortnight. I mean, we wouldn't have got the result we've got probably if they hadn't, you know, come out and just really gone for Essex Police in the most kind of, the best traditions. Well, tell us about that. So these guys turn up at your door. They tell you you're guilty of all of these things, or been accused at least. The guy whose job it is to oversee the policing for that part of the country goes on radio and says, you know, Alison is committed a crime effectively, which you're not supposed to do in this country because until you've been charged and convicted, you're not, you haven't committed a crime, you've been accused of one, right? It's a big difference, I would argue. And then a backlash started, which I'm very glad

it did. And how did you go from there and what was the result? So actually, Roger Hurst, the police and crime commissioner, that was following my fight back. So I rang on the Monday after the police had been around on the Sunday, I rang my editor, Chris Evans, and I was describing what had happened, and he said, that's outrageous, absolutely outrageous. So then, obviously, then got the news team together,

and I then published in my Wednesday column what had happened, just described what had happened in my sense of shock and, obviously, distress. I was, you know, I was very between defiant and tearful, which I guess, you know, most people can understand that, was a kind of real switchback of emotions. And the news desk guys started to lift the lid

on some of Essex police's behavior. They published a wonderful chart showing how little actual crime the police solved. Very, very low figures for burglary, assault, violence of all kinds. But quite much better figures for racially or religiously. motivated crime or hate crime, if we were going to be cynical gentleman now, who would want to be that? The crimes you could solve sitting on your fat bottom, dunking a biscuit into a large cup of tea while you were working from home. All right? So not the crimes where you might actually have to go and be spat up by drug dealers or any of these people who most people would like

to be kept safe. So the paper was every day keeping up the pressure, really good stories, looking at Essex police and then starting to get prominent people, you know, people in the law, people in the media to start commenting on what had happened to me and this really built up ahead of steam. And I can't remember that Roger Hurst appeared on the LBC radio show. And not only did he say crimes like this carry a sentence of up to seven years, which I took to be intimidating.

I think he was part of the, let's get out there and far from apologising for the stupid overreaction, draconian overreaction of coming to my house, they double down. And one of the things he said, which really, really annoyed me.

So I was quite good I was annoyed because actually I might have just thought, let's just go to bed and not wake up. But you two sort of have quite dark thoughts. But I thought, he said about my tweet, he said, Let's think about how Ms. Pearson's tweet would have been heard by our black and Asian communities. I just thought, I've got black and Asian friends in Essex.

They don't think about themselves as living in a black or Asian community. They think about themselves as being British people and they think, if my shop is burgled, I'd like the police to come around. Thanks very much. They don't want the stupid expense of sending two officers on a Sunday morning to police me. for something I said a year ago that was deleted. So I felt that he was reflecting the mindset of these police, which I believe is racist.

I think it is the, what do they call it, the bigotry of softer expectations, don't they? These people are going to be annoyed about the tweet. The friends I spoke to of that type just laughed. I mean, my two friends of Indian background originally, and I said to them, do you think I go around stirring up racial hate? Because they absolutely fell about

and Jay said, I can't do the West Midlands accent, sadly. But he said, that's bollocks, that is. And I thought, it really gladdened my heart because hearing them laughing, because I thought they're going to think, they see headlines, you know, Alison Pearson racist tweet, what are they going to think of me?

They're going to think of me. And they just said, that's bollocks, isn't it? And I thought, such a gift. Sometimes people give you a gift. gift, don't they? That was a gift from Jay and Rucci to me was that's bollocks, isn't it? Because they know I'm not that person. And then Boris Johnson, wonderful writer as well as former Prime Minister, wrote amazing essay in the Daily Mail, where he just said, when we were kids, we read about the Soviet Union and behind the iron curtain, and we used to think, oh my God, imagine, you know, we're so lucky. We don't live in a place where

people can come to your door and accuse you, falsely accuse you of things, or make stuff up that you've said or thought. And he said, now, this is what they're doing to Alison, is exactly the kind of thing we used to think. Alison, forgive me, but this is where, with all respect, you lose me completely, and I tell you why. I don't give a shit about Boris Johnson writing an article. The Tories were in power for 14 years. Why is this still on the books? Why is this law still on the books? And by the way, why is the current conservative leadership not they're talking about we need to review no we don't need to review anything we need to scrap all this crap why wasn't this removed already why why do former prime ministers write articles in newspapers well that's true and but i'm sorry that my

anger at this situation seems to be unleashed towards you it really isn't but i'm just saying how have we ended up in this position because by the way for people who don't know this roger the first guy who's the police, blah, blah, blah, he's a conservative. Yes. What the hell is going on here? Well, as we know, conservative is now a broad and meaningless category. Yeah, absolutely, I know what you mean. If you're in that spot yourself, you become very grateful when people articulate the

point of view very well. And we have obviously not just Boris, but Lionel Schreier and my friend who wrote beautifully in The Spectator about the crazy. of this hate crime culture. I think that we know that the conservatives have been taken over. I think they're huge numbers of the party, which while in government just effectively became what they call one nation conservatives,

which basically means not paying any attention to the country, I think, one nation. It's basically anyone outside of one. No nation conservatives. anyone outside our social circle. They don't want to seem to be outside the sort of stifling liberal consensus. You know, they've got the sort of metropolitan viewpoint.

We had the newsagents podcast, which is sort of Emily MacLess like Emily Maclis and John Sopal, and they had a debate about my case, and they said that it was ridiculous. I was suffering a persecution complex. And you think, yeah, it's not really a persecution complex when you've got police. That's actually persecution.

So I think that same reason why the pregnant man is kept as him. Because people want a quiet life, the people who support these views, I would still argue are a very, very vociferous, aggressive minority. And they just think, well, we won't offend them. And what happens is that, as we've seen, we've just seen this week, it's a bigger issue, but we've seen record immigration figures last year, absolutely insane, a million people allowed into our country, many of whom will make net zero contribution to national wealth and well-being. But that was allowed as well.

Same kind of thing. Just go, you know, go with the flow. This makes us look progressive, modern, not like died in the wall. horrible old racist Tories. It's that kind of thing. They, you know, they, they prefer to, you know, listen to Stonewall. The Conservative government allowed trans-influences, trans pressure groups, to come very close to the center of government, you know, flying the pride flag.

I would argue as a mainstream conservative, entirely inimical to what people like me. want and believe should be happening. But they did it anyway because they were complacent and they had a large majority and they paid bugger all attention. Alison, can I stop you there? No, no, no, you shouldn't apologize. You're just both British. Yeah.

However you apologize, she apologises, then we can move on. Yeah, both identifies trans and move on. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Yeah, exactly. Ryan Reynolds here from Mittmobile, the message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, Stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment.

Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Up front payment of $45 for three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. But you were saying, you know, it's complacency. It's this. And this is why I'm going to push back on you. I don't think it's complacency. I don't think it's the things that you've said. I think it's one thing. And it's an unpleasant word, but it's a word that it accurately sums up this entire situation. It's cowardice, isn't it? Let's be honest.

Yeah, no, that's a good word. Yeah, it is cowardice because when you stick your head above the parapet, then, you know, people, guess what? People come around to your house and tell you you're racist or you're transphobic or whatever. And there are a few of us. You know, the, it was a well-known case, Harry Miller, former policeman who was told he tweeted something transphobic. Police came around to his house. And Harry amazingly fought it all the way to the Court of Appeal. And the Court of Appeal said, yeah, free speech should trump almost everything.

That's what, and I believe that. And there are a few exceptions, you know, people saying going around to set fire to a place of worship, obviously, but free speech should. But we have become cowardly and we don't defend our values and we see them trickling away. And it's very sad. And I just should say

that I haven't particularly wanted to fight. People say, you're brave or, no, I'm not particularly brave. But I see this as me having a platform and being able to speak for clearly thousands of people. The Free Speech Union thinks that 65 people every day get one of these non-crime hate absurdities slapped on them. So what I can do, the least I can do is, you know, make a fuss, make a stink, write about me. But really it's for the people. I've asked people to send in their own examples, which loads of them are tumbling in now,

some stuff you could hardly believe. I mean, it's mental. And I want to try and use the pressure we're built. You know, we've managed to build up some pressure. And we are, I think, I, if I could have done one thing in the last fortnight, it would be to make a police officer who's about to send someone out to knock on someone's door, to make him think twice. Just think maybe this person doesn't deserve that.

So maybe some good will come of it. You're talking about rights trickling away. Recently, a Labour MP got up in Parliament and was talking about the implementation of blasphemy laws. Thank you, Mr Speaker. November marks Islamophobia awareness month. Last year, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution condemning the desecration of religious texts,

including the Quran, despite opposition from the previous government. government, acts of such mindless desecration only serve to fuel division and hatred within our society. Will the Prime Minister commit to introducing measures to prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions? And you, and Kyr Stama seemed receptive. Well, he didn't seem receptive. He was just there nodding vigorously.

And you're thinking to yourself, am I? What's going on here? Well, I think that would be one of their, one of the goals of this Labor government will be to bring in much harsher hate crime legislation, which will make it illegal to criticise any aspect of Islam. And that's not our country in our country. I mean, I'm a lapsed Christian. I was a Sunday school teacher many decades ago.

And, you know, Christianity's open, open season. and everyone can have cartoons of Christ and so on and, you know, whatever. But, yeah, I thought that was, it is sinister. But we are, I think, I'm not sure if we're still at the end of it, but we were in Islamophobia awareness months. It's a smooth transition. You have Pride Month, then Islamophobia awareness, then suck a guy off month.

It's just going to keep going. I mean, could you have Islamophobia month and LGBTIQM? Of course you can. Pride Month at the same time? Absolutely. You're very well together. They go very well together. In fact, in our recent, we had some marvellous local elections in Britain,

where the Green Party had, was being supported by some quite vocal Muslim people and the sort of LGBTQ community. And you did think, looking forward to that party conference, because, you know, one group hates them. But look, I mean, I've been campaigning against anti-Semitism for the last year. year because that's obviously been really horrific. And this week we saw three little Jewish girls walking along had bottles thrown at them. One child was admitted to hospital. We're hearing about daily now British Jews leaving. We've got about a quarter of a million Jews in the UK.

And many of them are now thinking this isn't going to be a safe place for us to live. And that grieves me. They are one of our, I don't want to say patronising the most astonishing community that integrated makes a brilliant contribution to British life, every science, business, arts, musicals. There wouldn't be a musical on West End without the Jews. But so, yeah, but we have an entirely Islamophobia awareness months. And yet the attacks, I would say that the biggest racist threat at the moment is against Jewish people. But that comes back to my tweet, doesn't it?

which was so. No, I was just going to say, you know, one of the things that I think really resonated, as you know, the story had transatlantic and, frankly, world resonance. And I think, I don't want to sound snobby in any way, but I think when we think of someone being investigated by the police for a hate crime, you sort of imagine a bloke with a millwall tattoo on his forehead or something. Just like me. Well, right.

And you sort of, and then in this case, case, not only is that not your profile, but more than that, you're a journalist. You're a journalist. You represent a profession, much disgraced in recent years, frankly, by the behavior of many journalists, but nonetheless, a profession whose job it is to speak as freely as possible, whose job it is to hold government and policing to account, that's the job of journalists, among other things. So this isn't just an individual citizen. This seems to me, and to many people, I think, like whether by accident or by design, an attempt to prevent people from actually talking about things that matter in the public square. Yes, absolutely. I mean,

we have a free speech and a free press are the cornerstones of a liberal democracy, aren't they? And it's been somewhat shocking to me this past 10 days to discover how many journalists are prepared to have me thrown under the bus so they can say, oh yeah, well, maybe what she said wasn't very nice. I can say what I like.

You may not like it. You don't have to, guess what? You don't have to read it. You don't have to follow me, you know? You don't have to buy the telegraph. If our views are disgusting to you, choose some other views. So we have had, as you said,

We've had the Wall Street Journal saying a headline, you know, British police, police thoughts and not much else. That's America. So we're seeing this huge contrast, aren't we, with the Trump administration incoming is going to set its face against all these, while our society here is, you know, is doubling down on these atrocious things. I think British people have no idea of the way that this issue is seen in British police, by the way. I was in America. We were there for the election while this story broke. And I got in an Uber, and the first thing the guy said to me when you heard my British accent was, what do you think about the police going to journalist houses over tweets?

The first didn't know who I was, just randomly asked. This story has worldwide resonance. And I think it's because they're seeing one of the world's oldest democracies, one of the bastions of- Magna Carta. Freedom being a society in which this sort of... a thing happens. I just, I don't think people realize just how outrageous this actually is. But coming back to what you said about clamping down, so we had, back in the summer, we had a massacre of little girls in Southport in a Taylor Swift holiday dance club for little girls. And a person who's accused of that crime, three little girls were slaughtered with a knife and at least five other children were very badly wounded and their teacher. So it was a horrific event and I remember reading that the media,

when these outlandish crimes or the police said it wasn't a terrorist incident, so we'll take that at face value. But when those events happen, the media and everyone else swings into a particular pattern of suppressing the natural reactions of people. It's not a terrorist event. Don't worry, the accused is a. lovely was a choir boy, sweet guy, no one said or anything badly of him, you know, helped old ladies across the road. And then I read, they said he was Cardiff born. Cardiff is the capital

of Wales where I was born. And I just thought, don't call him Welsh. I mean, really, you know, this is, you know, Welshmen don't have a great tradition of running a mock with knives in amongst little girls. So the reaction to that massacre was they all. want to, the government, the state, the police, they want it to go away as quickly as possible. So people were tweeting, and because the police refused to be honest about the identity of the person, alleged murderer, that then there was, you know, a lot of speculation and conspiracy theories came into that space. And they cracked down on those people absolutely brutally. And if you want to know what I honestly think, I think multiculturalism in our country

is in huge trouble. We have allowed in millions and millions of people, some of whom, many of them have becoming great productive citizens, but a significant minority of whom hate our way of life, they hate our values, they don't want to integrate. And this is causing massive problems. And the states answer, the politicians, I imagine, if they think about it at all, are really scared. And the only way they can deal with it now is to silence the mass of ordinary people who think it's disgraceful. So this is all to do is mass uncontrolled immigration, threatening our country and its values. I'm a woman. I see those undocumented young males from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, coming across the channel

and I think they will pose, they potentially pose a threat to British women and girls, right? Violence against women and girls is on the increase in our country and those guys are coming from places where women are regarded as livestock, right? So it's dangerous to let them in,

particularly undocumented young males. If you start writing about this, no doubt the next time I tweet about this, I'll be, I'll have another non-crime hate incident against me, but I won't shut up. And many of us will fight to the death for this, because they will not change the nature of our country, right, and allow these things to come in and have dissent silenced and freedom of speech silenced. Actually, I'm sounding braver than I am. I'm not brave, but some things you have to take a stand.

Alison, and it's very interesting you say that, because what I see the Labour government doing is kicking the can down the road. The way that they silenced, And they smeared everybody who went on these protests as far right. But eventually the truth comes out. And there is going to be a court case in January. Yeah. And there's obviously, there's a large part of me that goes, that is a good thing. There's a significant part of me that is utterly terrified as what's going to happen.

Because there's only so long you can silence the truth for. And then when it gets revealed and all its unpleasant goryness, that's when things have the potential to get ugly. And that's what I'm worried about. Well, they tried to slip out, didn't they recently? I think it was when you guys were in the States. So they snuck out around the presidential election. In fact, the choir boy from Wales, yes, he did have a allegedly had an Al-Qaeda training manual in his house

and was brewing a bioweapon. Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly brewing an alleged bio weapon. Now, say what you like about my house in Safra Maldon, but cooking up rice in on the stove is not something I do.

So, yeah, I agree with you, Frances. I don't know where it will all end, and one fears it's not going to end well. And I think that we could be moving eventually to a much further right government. I mean, people like me now, I would say I was an absolute middle of the road conservative. I voted twice for Tony Blair's New Labor.

But people like me now are branded far right for, I think, defending the centre-right ground pretty much. So I think we could possibly head to a far, far-right. If they don't address this, we could be heading for something much worse. And if their idea of defending the indefensible is arrested, and imprisoning for over two years, a Tory councillor's wife, who had no previous convictions, who tweeted something very unpleasant and racist.

On the spur of the moment, the woman had, Lucy Connolly, had lost a child in horrible circumstances. She was clearly upset. She tweeted, and then she deleted quickly. And that woman is now on a wing in a prison with people who have murdered people because she expressed herself on social media. I find that really chilling.

It is. And as well, the problem with lying, which I see a lot of this government, look, all governments do and all politicians do, of course they do, but the cover up and the lies is what you do when you cover things up is you distort reality.

And you don't only distort the reality of the people you're lying to, you distort your reality as well, which is why lies are so dangerous, particularly for the person who said to them. And I'm looking at this Labour government and I'm thinking to myself, do you actually live in the real world

with what you talk about? Because the vast majority of people who I talk to and I make a point of talking, trying to talk to everyone, because I think it's important, the cabbies, the Uber drivers, the people work in the supermarket. I like to have a chat with them and get to know and to actually see what's happening with this country.

What they talk about and what ordinary people talk about, it's two different reality. isn't it? And that's a huge problem. Absolutely it is. And I guess like you, I'm, you know, I'm, obviously I'm part of the media. I live outside London. I mix with, you know, regular people. And, you know, my little office I rent was above a corals bookmakers. And the guys and their guys in there came out and said, oh, thank God you've got rid of that nonsense.

You know, the reaction of normal people to my kids. case has been people coming up giving me plants, bottles of wine. Yeah, I think that, but the, a really quite narrow, I don't like that using the word elite, it's a bit hackneyed, isn't it? But it's a group of opinion formers who have a very strong, you know, they impose their narrative on people. And I think people go along, perhaps nod along. I think most people just think it's rubbish. And I think worse than that, if this protected characteristics, if it is indeed the case now that the police are essentially policing to protect the protected groups against the white majority, I mean, what situation are we in there? No one's voted for that, have they?

So this is, yeah, it's a potentially very inflammatory and combustible situation. And I think we see that in many walks of, you know, many instances now of housing and lots of things. We've got a health service that doesn't function in a first world way because of the pressure on it of, partly because of the pressure on it of inward migration. And people who are starting to think nothing works, we're paying huge taxes, you're creating, you're almost creating a situation where there could be, you know, civil unrest. And you mentioned the role of some media outlets and all of this. And look, the news agents is just where you go to find out

how really neutral, in inverted commas, the BBC has always been because it's former BBC people being like rabidly, far left, progressive, woke, et cetera, all of it. What I found really shocking, I know that it seems like a minor point, but we have this satirical magazine in this country called Private Eye. whose job it is to lampoon the people in power, to lampoon bureaucrats, to lampoon governments,

to lampoon politicians, to lampoon the people who abuse the rights and privileges they have by virtue of their position. That's what the private eye has always done, and I used to get a subscription to read regularly. And when I saw an article in private eye defending the police and attacking you, that's where I was like, I have no idea what this is going on in these people's heads anymore. How can a satirical magazine take the side of the police when it comes to enforcing anti-speech legislation? How is that possible? Well, they've fallen through the looking glass, haven't they? Well, look, I think they are pretty misogynist, actually, superannuated public school boys.

They obviously don't like me and they, you know, they do that. I don't care if they don't like you. That's not the point. The point is they are a magazine whose job it is to make fun of things and they are defending police officers who go to the journalist doors to intimidate them about a thing that's clearly not a crime and should never be a crime in a civilized society. Well, there were lots of comments and mainly of the,

I've cancelled my subscription and they said, You know, it is the Voltaire thing, isn't it? You know, we may not like it, but I'll defend the death. Right. They're right to say it. And I hope I would have the sense and the magnanimity were it someone who was politically opposed to me, like, you know, a guardian journalist. I hope I'd be straight out of the traps and saying we can't have police visiting journalists. You know, that seems to me fundamental.

But things have become very, very tribal, haven't they? And, yeah, I thought it was disgraceful that I didn't read it. it particularly because I could see that some things you want to spare yourself. But I think this idea as well that, you know, I was playing up or was, you know, being hysterical or making a lot of it. I am hearing in the last two weeks cases being brought against normal families or people, children, which are absolutely outrageous and have no place in our society, right? So, It's not just me. You know, obviously, I've used my experience.

This is what journalists have the privilege of doing. You can use your position to make the general case. This is, you know, if I've got former Home Secretary's weighing in behind me, lucky me. But the general principle is that people with no access to connections or any platform are, you know, being frightened. It's very, very frightening. You don't want the police to be, you know, at your door or on your case. And one other thing with the media was the Sunday Times last week published Essex Police had leaked to them part of the transcript of the conversation, which I didn't, I wasn't aware that the police were recording on my door. I believe the police are supposed to tell you the accused, whatever I am, I'm an accused of a victim incident.

But they were recording. But anyway, they were recording our conversation, and the Sunday Times published, redacted elements of it, which of course backed up the S6 police's view that I misrepresented the conversation. Again, I thought that was extraordinary, that during a live investigation,

that the police would leak a conversation, which I don't think they were legally entitled to leak. But the fact that they were really, again, intimidating me by getting people like private eye to say she lied about that conversation. I'm not saying I got it 100% right because I would argue that anyone with the police in front of them would be slightly panicking and not necessarily. But I would say that 97% of what I reported was completely correct. And it acted as a smokescreen for the police.

It deflected from the central question of should they ever have sent police to my door, which 100% they should not. There was nothing criminal about my tweet. So that the private I think is, oh, she lied about what happened. What about the fact that police were investigating a tweet for which didn't come near, didn't come near to being a crime? So that doesn't seem to be important. What's important is I'm making a big deal of it. It's only just police popping around for a quiet word. Can they hear themselves? I don't think they can. And I think you were right to raise this issue.

I know that many people around the world with big audiences and big platforms have been paying attention to this. Elon Musk got involved. And this is a big global issue. People should make no mistake about this whatsoever. This is going to be an issue in this country. It's going to be an issue in all of Europe. It's an issue in America only to the extent that they've now actually turned the tide on this stuff, we hope. But this is really important that you drew attention to this.

I fear we're going to have to keep drawing attention to this issue until it gets resolved. And as Francis says, you know, this is going to have to turn around one way or another. And I hope that way is peaceful and democratic. I really, really do. Well, I mean, the Telegraph's campaign is going to go on to try and get these Orwellian Kafkaesque non-crime hate incidents just killed off. They should have no part of our legal system at all. And I'm inviting anyone. I've said to people, don't be ashamed because they want you to be ashamed.

They want you to be frightened to say this bad things happen to me. I'm ashamed. Not you should be ashamed. So people doing it to you. So inviting people to come forward with their stories where there's been inappropriate activity with the police. And if we have to fight them one stupid case at a time, we will do it. We will expose them. I've already got a dossier.

The paper's publishing a story, Telegoth's publishing a story today. A lady and her family were out having a horse ride to, this is allegedly, to travellers, drove a car at them, frightened the horses, horse nearly fell into a ditch. Everyone was very, very scared. The guys, these guys, two guys got out of the car, came towards the family. They thought they were carrying a knife. They think it may have been a screwdriver. Lots of arguing between the dad.

The mum, my source, the mum, call her Anna, was very, very frightened. She dialed the police and she spoke to them and she said, oh my God, please come, please come. It's horrible. There are these effing Pikes here and Pai Key for American viewers as sort of slang for travelers or gypsies. And the police turned up at their house about half an hour later and they took down statement and then they said to Anna a 42 year old woman military family very respectable they said yeah we're going to need you to come down to the station because her call to the police 999 was recorded and she'd used the hate word pikey so this lady British lady

kind decent person is in shock because she emailed me and she said am I going mad I've reported something very dangerous and threatening and they're saying it's your word against theirs. We're not investigating the guys who nearly drove your horses off the road. We're going to get you. We're speaking on the day that Anna is having to go into the police station to make a statement about using a word when she was very, very frightened. And that is absolutely nuts.

And I was able to put her in touch with the free speech union. and fortunately, the lovely solicitor lawyer who helped me, Luke Gittos, is accompanying Anna today to that interview. And honest to God, if they prosecute her for doing that, I will unleash whatever powers I have to. I mean, that is, can we even, if you were to try that out on any person in the street, who would say that was okay? You're sounding pretty brave, that, Alison. So thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for doing what you've done to raise awareness of this issue.

I really think this is a big fight and it's going to run and run and run. And it's going to take a lot more than just you and a lot more people are going to have to stand up for themselves and for the principles that are really at stake here. So thank you so much for coming on. We're going to go and ask you questions from our supporters on Substack in a moment.

Before we do, we always wrap up with the same question. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be? Before Alison answered, as a final question. At the end of the interview, make sure to head over to our substack, the link is in the description and you'll see this. Why is it that British politicians do not work to the will of the majority of the people? Should off come be abolished? Do you think the police would have reacted in the same way for exactly the same alleged tweet

if you were black or Asian? I think coming on from what you've just said, um, We are going to have to have, in 2029, we're going to have, I believe there will be a conservative government returned. And I think it will probably be an alliance between Reform Party and the Conservative Party. And the Conservative Party is going to have to jettison any of these one-nation people who don't think any of the stuff we're talking about today is very polite. Let's not mention it. But I think that these institutions, the police, the universities, justice itself is absolutely infested with people who don't put the British people first, right? And they have come to see, we are a warped society where we have come to see every other point of view except our own. That makes us warped.

Our civilization is under threat by those people. So I think what I would say is that we are going to have the fight of our lives. And I think normal people who just think, hey, ho, this is what happens. Everyone is going to have to fight it at school level, at college level, at the police level. We're going to have to, I may run against Roger Hurst, the Commissioner for Police for Essex for the Reform Party. because if that man stands as a conservative, a fake conservative for that role, which he took on false pretenses, because he's not a conservative, as he's proven by his behavior, people like me who would think, I'm not that kind of person, I don't want to put myself forward for office or school governor or whatever. We're just going to have to do it because they are everywhere and we cannot allow them to. to colonize, kidnap our society and kick our values.

We're just going to have to stand up. Head on over to Substack to hear Alison answer your questions. How long do you think before the influence of the Trump administration bleeds into the British body politic and, by extension, policing, to end this corruption of our national life? This episode is brought to you by Netflix's remarkably bright creatures. What if a Pacific octopus held the key to a mystery that could heal your heart.

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