UK government accused of cracking down on free speech: 'Think before you post'

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LONDON - Britain is facing a free speech crisis as the new left-wing government, overzealous police and courts crackdown on freedom of expression.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the leader of the ruling Labour Party, and his government of barely two months have been accused of rolling back free speech protections on safety grounds and failing to root out selective enforcement of laws.

"Every Brit fundamentally has the right to free speech, but for several years now, we’ve seen a growing trend," Lois McLatchie Miller, Senior Legal Communications Officer for Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) U.K., told Fox News Digital. "It’s only now becoming widely recognized that certain groups, depending on their beliefs, seem to have their free speech curtailed much more easily than others with different viewpoints."

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Widespread riots in the streets of England last month and a heavy-handed approach in response to the social unrest reignited the debate about free speech.

The U.K. has been grappling with harsh policing of online speech for years. In 2019, ex-police officer Harry Miller was investigated over social media posts deemed transphobic for questioning whether transgender women were real women. Miller’s posts were recorded by the police as a "non-crime hate incident," prompting him