An Englishman in England might go to prison for calling an MP a coward

This story deserves as much coverage as possible.

Think about it. A man called Alex Cline is being prosecuted simply for calling an MP a coward.

I am not blaming the MP whose complaint led to this grotesque prosecution, though I hope even his party faithful refuse in disgust to vote for him at the next election. No, he did not decide that Mr. Cline should be prosecuted. In any case, I am grateful for this prosecution - because we now know how authoritarian English law has become. Except only readers of the Brighton and Hove local press do. The news may have travelled as far
as Eastbourne or Worthing and it also reached someone who put it on on Facebook, where I came across it. 

It is the law I criticise, but much more the culture and thinking from which the law springs. Rod Liddle a few months ago wrote with characteristic brilliance about this law here.

Liddle is witty but there is nothing light-hearted about the subject of freedom of speech, which is far more important than sex equality or the state of Britain's hospitals. I wrote about the threats to freedom of speech a few days ago here, but I am no longer sure that threats is the right word. In many ways freedom of speech no longer exists in the UK, though it flourishes in the former Communist countries, such as Romania, for the time being.

What an increasingly fascist society England now is. Not just a fascist state, but a fascist society, that goes along with this kind of thing. The suggestion that the police and the courts  are not justified in preventing people being offended is very alien to the spirit of modern day England. The idea that the state can run businesses has been debunked but not the idea that it can tell people how they should live. The idea that extensions of state power limit freedom does not make a lot of sense to most English people any more, provided that the state's intentions are supposedly benign. Mussolini's definition of fascism is largely true of English society:

“Everything in the state, nothing outside the state.”

William Pitt the Elder famously said that the poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. Why don't Prime Ministers say things like this any more instead of talking about schools and hospitals and economic growth?

Partly because there are all sorts of reasons why the forces of the Crown or other authorities can enter the poor man's cottage without a warrant or process of law or tap his telephone or read his correspondence. They can demolish his cottage and they certainly insist that it is fitted with fire alarms that go off continually if the poor man leaves the kitchen door open while cooking his meagre breakfast. 

Actually, the poor man left his cottage long ago and it was bought by a rich stockbroker who only spends the occasional weekend there, but this is beside the point. The poor man does not repine. He no longer goes to his local public house, where he discussed politics with his pals, because it was closed due to the ban on smoking, so he sits at home drinking lager from the supermarket, which will soon become more expensive when minimum alcohol pricing becomes law. He spends his evenings watching propaganda on television or pornography on the internet. He is content.