That’s Debatable!

This week, Connie and Jan discuss a new report released by the Government’s Commission for Countering Extremism (CCE). The CCE Freedom of Expression Survey asked 2000 people in England and Wales about their views on free speech with regard to politics, religion, race, immigration, climate change and transgender issues. It claims to reveal a ‘nuanced landscape of public opinion on free speech’ and highli...

Connie and Jan begin by discussing the furore arising from last week’s Glastonbury Festival, when rap duo Bob Vylan led a crowd of thousands in chanting ‘Death, death to the IDF’. Some commentators have demanded that police investigate the rapper for incitement to violence while others greeted his words as a morally impassioned politically justifiable performance. Many drew parallels with Lucy Connolly,...

That’s Debatable! is the weekly podcast of the Free Speech Union. Hosts Lynsey Metcalfe and Jan MacVarish – both staffers at the FSU – talk about the free speech controversies that have erupted in the past week. Please like, subscribe and share.

Jan is joined this week by FSU Case Officer Lynsey Metcalfe. They discuss stories of more ‘rainbow refuseniks’ – in this case, two footballers who have been punished by the French footballi...

That’s Debatable!’ is the weekly podcast of the Free Speech Union. Hosts Connie Shaw and Jan MacVarish – both staffers at the FSU – talk about the free speech controversies that have erupted in the past week. Please like, subscribe and share.

This week Jan and Connie discuss the robust guidance issued by the Office for Students in relation to free speech, and the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 which comes into force ...

That’s Debatable!’ is the weekly podcast of the Free Speech Union. Hosts Tom Harris and Jan MacVarish – both staffers at the FSU – talk about the free speech controversies that have erupted in the past week. Please like, subscribe and share.

In this week’s episode, Jan Macvarish and Connie Shaw discuss the FSU’s campaign against the ‘banter ban’. Connie describes legislative...

That’s Debatable!’ is the weekly podcast of the Free Speech Union. Hosts Tom Harris and Jan MacVarish – both staffers at the FSU – talk about the free speech controversies that have erupted in the past week. Please like, subscribe and share.

In this week’s episode, Jan Macvarish and Connie Shaw discuss the FSU’s campaign against the ‘banter ban’. Connie describes legislative...

That’s Debatable!’ is the weekly podcast of the Free Speech Union. Hosts Tom Harris and Jan MacVarish – both staffers at the FSU – talk about the free speech controversies that have erupted in the past week. Please like, subscribe and share.

This week, the Free Speech Union’s Education and Events Director Jan Macvarish takes the steering wheel as Tom Harris is away. She is joined by the Free Speech Union’s Case Management Officer L...

With the FSU’s backing, Lucy Connolly, jailed for a tweet about migrants that she posted following the Southport murders, has been fighting her 31-month sentence in the Court of Appeal. Although a verdict was expected on Thursday when the hearing concluded, the Court will now be providing a written judgement, somewhat vaguely scheduled for “as soon as possible”. Allison Pearson has written a powerful pi...

Julian Foulkes, a retired Special Constable, was arrested and held in a cell for eight hours over a tweet warning about the threat to British Jews posed by the pro-Palestinian marches. In October of 2023, he responded to another tweet criticising Suella Braverman for describing the pro-Palestinian protests that were sweeping the country in the aftermath of the massacre in Southern Israel as ‘hate marches’. As reported in the Telegr...

According to College of Policing guidance, Non-Crime Hate Incidents (NCHIs) help forces build an intelligence picture of community tensions and understand where they need to allocate resources for prevention. Indeed, during a House of Lords debate in November 2024, Lord Hanson, the Home Office minister, told peers: “It is vital that the police monitor non-crime hate incidents when proportionate and necessary to do so to help preven...

We have just completed our quarterly analysis of FSU casework and dive into the results of that during today’s episode. The first quarter of 2025 was our busiest ever with 411 new incidents received in the FSU inbox. This growth in caseload is directly related to the continuing increase in FSU active membership, which is now running at over 4,000 new members per quarter. ‘State Intervention’, which rang...

Both The Times and Sky News have reported on a landmark ruling from the Office for Students (OfS), which has fined the University of Sussex a record £585,000 for “serious and significant” free speech failings in the case of Professor Kathleen Stock, accused of ‘transphobia’ for her gender-critical views. Professor Stock was forced out of the university in 2021 after a three-year campaign of bullying and...

With the FSU’s support, the Chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation – Rick Prior – is suing his own union after he was ‘cancelled’ for suggesting frontline officers are increasingly nervous about challenging people from ethnic minorities whom they suspect of breaking the law, given the spate of internal investigations into officers accused of being ‘racist’. Following an interview on GB News in O...

In a major win for workplace free speech, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) have abandoned plans to impose new diversity and inclusion rules on financial firms after strong pushback, including from the FSU. Had the proposals gone ahead, they would have placed sweeping new obligations on a significant portion of the UK’s financial sector. In January 2024,...

A man arrested for burning a copy of the Koran in Bradford will not face charges, following intervention by the Free Speech Union. The man arrived in Britain as an asylum-seeker and, ironically, he was fleeing religious persecution in a Muslim majority country. After he uploaded a video of himself burning a Koran in a symbolic stand for freedom of speech and against Islamic extremism, West Yorkshire Pol...

In a remarkably frank speech at the Munich Security Conference, US Vice President JD Vance warned that the greatest threat to Western democracies is not external aggression, but the erosion of free speech within them. Britain, he argued, was leading the charge in policing thought, with other European nations close behind. Invoking the Cold War, Mr Vance said that the West once defined itself in oppositi...

With the help of the FSU, a former Royal Marine who served in Iraq has been cleared of publishing threatening material with intent to stir up racial hatred – in reality, a 12-minute Facebook video urging people to stage peaceful protests about illegal immigration. Jamie Michael, an FSU member, was unanimously acquitted by a jury at Merthyr Tydfil Crown Court in just 17 minutes. The story was reported th...

We briefly discuss last Saturday’s Manchester event on free expression in football, before moving on to a recent victory for workplace free speech that was reported in The Telegraph. The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) has scrapped controversial plans to force its 32,000 members — including 15,000 student members and 46 partner universities — to "encourage diversity, equity and inclusion" in all aspects of their professio...