The Social World

Tag: Special relationship

  • Why Trump is freezing out Five Eyes allies

    Why Trump is freezing out Five Eyes allies

    The most powerful intelligence alliance in the world is breaking up. In January, Donald Trump restricted intelligence-sharing on Russia and Ukraine, cutting allies out of negotiations and freezing certain channels entirely. Then in March came the so-called “Ukraine intel blackout,” an unprecedented freeze that shut Britain and Australia out of updates on Russian troop movements. And last month, the Dutch said they were scaling back intelligence-sharing with America over fears of “politicization.”

    Trump tends to treat intelligence as leverage, a tool to reward countries that fall in line with Washington and punish those that don’t. In his hands, intelligence and secrets have become bargaining chips. But by holding information back, he’s weaponizing the very trust that built the western alliance and sustained the power of the Anglosphere. The “Five Eyes” – the spying network that comprises the US, the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and Australia – is not a commercial arrangement. It can’t survive if its members start haggling over access.

    There are good reasons for Trump to be wary of the Five Eyes. British and Australian agents, after all, were at the heart of the Russiagate saga which did so much to derail his first administration. More broadly, the alliance allows governments to spy on their own citizens through one another’s networks, sharing the results without technically breaking their own laws.

    We like to believe our governments need warrants, oversight and law to reach into our private lives. In truth, the invasion of privacy in the West takes place on an industrial scale. Almost every phone call, search and message passes through a web of monitoring that’s rarely acknowledged and almost never constrained by law. Its defenders insist this cooperation keeps the West safe. Its critics call it institutionalized hypocrisy. Both are right to a degree.

    American law forbids the National Security Agency from targeting US citizens without a warrant. British law requires GCHQ to obtain one under the Investigatory Powers Act. So the NSA collects on Britons. GCHQ collects on Americans. Data is exchanged. It’s a system built on plausible deniability. Each agency claims it is merely receiving “foreign intelligence.” The scale of the intelligence-gathering and analysis is staggering.

    The US’s NSA alone intercepts hundreds of millions of text messages, emails and call records every day. Under its “Upstream” and “Prism” programs, the agency taps the world’s main fiber-optic cables and demands user data directly from US tech giants. Britain’s matching operation, GCHQ’s “Tempora,” stores three days of transatlantic internet traffic at any one time, with metadata retained for a month. Australia’s Signals Directorate monitors entire oceanic cable systems linking Asia to the Pacific. Canada’s Communications Security Establishment sits astride the Atlantic routes into North America, feeding bulk intercepts into shared databases that analysts in all five countries and beyond can query.

    The alliance’s reach extends into almost every form of modern communication – mobile networks, satellite relays and social media platforms. Few of its targets are terrorists or spies. The agreement that started this system, known as UKUSA, was signed in 1946. It has never been ratified by any legislative body and remains classified in full. What we know comes from leaks, court rulings and declassified scraps. Over the years, the network has quietly expanded beyond its original five members to include associate and “third-party” partners in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. These extensions, often referred to as “Nine Eyes” or “Fourteen Eyes,” have turned the alliance into a sprawling global surveillance web, linking western intelligence agencies through shared databases, cables and monitoring systems that cover the planet.

    The Five Eyes were born of Churchill’s idea of “the English-speaking people,” bound by language, law and a shared sense of moral purpose. Yet the values that once made Five Eyes a moral community have fractured. Today, the alliance binds countries that no longer see liberty, privacy or speech in the same way. In Britain, police arrest citizens for online “hate incidents.” In Canada, the government froze protesters’ bank accounts. Australia’s diplomats helped ignite an FBI investigation into a US presidential candidate.

    The secrecy and the overreach are real, but Trump’s crusade against Five Eyes is not about curbing surveillance. It’s about dominance over the system. At the start of the year, the President began starving Washington’s allies of intelligence they’d once taken for granted. Then screenshots from a White House Signal chat appeared online, revealing private exchanges between senior aides discussing US military options in Yemen, shared by allies. The breach exposed not only sensitive operations but also the chaotic way Trump’s team handled classified material. British and Australian intelligence officers were said to be furious, prompting allies to scale back contributions. Former GCHQ staff described a collapse of confidence among the Five Eyes intelligence services.

    London and Canberra have since formed smaller, closed sub-groups to coordinate without US participation. Canada, meanwhile, has scaled back its contributions after Trump publicly threatened to expel it from the alliance altogether, following months of tariff disputes. Inside Washington, intelligence veterans describe an atmosphere of suspicion not seen since the Cold War.

    For Trump and his allies, the intelligence alliance is not a bond of friendship, but a nest of unelected bureaucrats, the “deep state abroad.” To him, distrust is not paranoia but prudence. He views the exchange of intelligence as a transaction and intelligence itself as a commodity. That’s not altogether wrong. The Five Eyes alliance has always been transactional, a system of barter between intelligence services, trading data for access, reach or favor. Trump’s battle is not against the surveillance itself. He is targeting the independence of allies who refuse to submit. Intelligence does not obey the laws of supply and demand. It depends on the unspoken belief that what is shared will not be politicized. Once that trust collapses, the value of the intelligence collapses with it. Trump is destroying Five Eyes by destroying the trust that underpins it. Whether that’s deliberate or not is hard to say.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 24, 2025 World edition.

  • Lord Young goes to Washington

    Lord Young goes to Washington

    I’m writing this from Washington, DC, where I’ve spent the best part of a week talking to politicos and think-tankers about the state of free speech in the mother country. Don’t believe our Prime Minister when he says it’s in rude health, I’ve been telling them. It’s on life support and any pressure that can be brought to bear on His Majesty’s Government to protect it would be hugely appreciated. Once again, it’s time for the new world to come to the rescue of the old.

    Not that they need much convincing. The view of Britain among Washington’s political class isn’t informed by diplomatic cables or articles in the Economist, but by viral videos on X. The impression these give is of a country rapidly descending into lawlessness in which the police are too busy arresting people for hurty words to protect them from violent criminals. “What the hell’s going on over there?” is the constant refrain.

    When I tell them the footage they’ve seen is just the tip of the iceberg and the police are detaining more than 30 people a day for speech offenses – outdoing Russia – they’re anxious to help.

    But what can they do? I had hoped that the US-UK trade deal might provide Donald Trump’s administration with some leverage. Could a preamble be included in which both sides affirm their shared commitment to the long-standing guarantees of freedom of expression and association as set out in the First Amendment? That wouldn’t be legally enforceable, but would be politically significant and might make Keir Starmer think twice before further eroding free speech, lest he be accused of jeopardizing the deal.

    However, the people I met in the State Department said the President is anxious to get the trade agreement over the line and unlikely to countenance anything that would delay it. The sense I got from meetings with members of the administration, which probably won’t come as a surprise, is that Trump is very much in charge and no one wants to do anything to irritate him. Indeed, they were careful to refer to the “Department of War” and the “Secretary of War,” even to me, although occasionally they stumbled and said: “The Department of Defense… I mean War.” A Washington Post editor I had lunch with confirmed this was an important loyalty test, with WaPo journalists getting into bad odor with the President because the newspaper insists on continuing to use “Defense Department.”

    Trump’s iron grip was often contrasted with the chaos of the previous administration, with Joe Biden portrayed as a drooling idiot. I met with staffers at the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee, which has just published a report accusing a group of senior Democrats in the last administration – the “Politburo” – of covering up the President’s cognitive decline and effectively ruling in his place, signing off executive orders – and pardons – using an autopen. The Committee’s view is that all the clemency actions taken by the Biden administration were illegitimate.

    Does this mean Anthony Fauci, pardoned by Biden in one of his final acts before leaving the White House, can now be prosecuted? I asked an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services over dinner and he laughed but declined to answer. Incidentally, I was reliably informed that Health Secretary RFK Jr is the second most popular member of the administration after Trump. The reception he gets from the MAGA faithful is rapturous, apparently.

    Another possibility I discussed with officials was withholding visas from UK citizens who work for censorship bodies such as Ofcom, which is currently trying to take enforcement action against US tech companies that refuse to comply with Britain’s new “Online Safety Act.” But after kicking around that idea we concluded it would probably be politically unhelpful. If Dame Melanie Dawes, the CEO of Ofcom, was refused a travel visa, she’d spin it as Trump doing the bidding of his buddy Elon Musk when all she’s trying to do is keep children “safe.” A better alternative, we thought, would be for the White House to offer political asylum on human rights grounds to British thought criminals. That would be a piece of epic trolling, given that our PM is Mr Human Rights. If any Christian street preachers are facing prosecution for misgendering some pro-abortion activists, do get in touch.

    Even that might not fly. The overall impression I got is that, for reasons no one was quite able to explain, the President still thinks of Sir Keir as a useful ally. So our best hope of harnessing the might of the US to protect free speech in the UK is if Starmer is replaced by someone more antagonistic to Trump. It surely won’t be long.

  • King Charles will make a splash at US-250

    King Charles will make a splash at US-250

    If only work had started sooner on the new extension to the East Wing of the White House. Then President Donald Trump might be able to inaugurate it with a party for the man who owns arguably the grandest ballroom in the world (one Mr. Trump knows well).

    Discussions are ongoing for a state visit to the US by King Charles III and Queen Camilla next year. President Trump has now logged an unprecedented two state visits in an easterly direction and common courtesy dictates a return invitation for the Windsors to pay a visit to the White House.

    Next year is the obvious date. It will be 250 years since the US came into being by extracting the colonies from the rule of the King’s fifth great-grandfather, George III. As divorces go, it has proved to be the most enduring and amicable bust-up in history – and that surely warrants a party. Some readers will be old enough to remember the euphoric events in honor of the 200th in 1976. The late Queen Elizabeth II was the guest of honor back then. Next year will also be her centenary so there will be a poignant subtext to the visit, not least because Trump was the last state visitor of her record-breaking reign.

    So how will things pan out this time? Overall, they will certainly be more upbeat than might have been expected had Kamala Harris won the presidential election. The last administration was treading very warily around the 250th for fear of looking triumphalist. Back in 1976, the anniversary celebrations were a straightforward “three cheers for the heroes of the Revolution,” “down with the evil Redcoats” and “no hard feelings.” Philadelphia turned out in force to welcome the Queen sailing in aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia carrying a brand new Liberty Bell from the same Whitechapel foundry that had made the original. And the partying went on and on. Ahead of 2026, the Democrats were agonizing about the elephant in the corner of Independence Hall. How to handle the Founding Fathers’ extensive links with slavery while those villainous Brits, rather awkwardly, had been offering emancipation? Maybe it was time to tone down all that revolutionary hoopla.

    Trump is certainly not going down that route. He will see things in much the same way Gerald Ford saw them in 1976: this was the birth of the greatest nation on Earth, warts and all, with all the freedoms that followed. In other words, it’s going to be big. Very big. And there is really only one other nation which needs to be at the party (though the French might claim an invitation to the top table).

    In 1976, the only debate was choosing which day the Queen should arrive. She had been invited for July 4 but thought it best to let the US have its moment. “Forgiveness can only go so far,” a waspish British embassy spokesman told the New York Times. It was decided that she should arrive on July 6 instead. No sooner had she stepped off the Britannia than she was delivering the first of several George III jokes. As she declared in Philadelphia: “Without that great act in the cause of liberty 200 years ago, we could never have transformed an Empire into a Commonwealth!”

    The bicentennial royal tour included Boston and New York, where the Queen insisted on a trip to Bloomingdale’s and Prince Philip jauntily wore a “Big Apple” sticker on his dinner jacket. The centerpiece was the White House ball in Washington, with Bob Hope acting as master of ceremonies. It also featured a fabulous faux pas which enraged Ford and greatly amused the Queen. As he led her on to the dance floor, the bandmaster chose that moment to strike up “The Lady is a Tramp.”

    I would envisage a little more history in the mix this time around. The King has always been fascinated by George III – whom he feels is greatly misunderstood – and the Royal Archives have recently digitized hundreds of thousands of Georgian documents with generous American support from organizations such as the Omohundro Institute of Early American History. I made a program about it all for the BBC. What sticks in the mind – along with firing guns at Yorktown and seeing Ivan Schwartz create the first American statue of the tyrant King since 1776 – is the way in which George moved on so swiftly from his “America is lost!” trough of despair to building the foundations of today’s “special relationship.”

    That, incidentally, was a banned phrase in British diplomatic circles at the time of the bicentennial. Timid Foreign Office mandarins were worried that it sounded presumptuous and that it might irk the UK’s European allies (Prince Charles was specifically ordered to remove it from his 1970 speech to the Pilgrims Society of Great Britain). That will certainly not be the case next year. Expect to hear it trumpeted at every turn following the President’s heartfelt words on the bilateral relationship at the Windsor state banquet in September: “‘Special’ does not begin to do it justice.”

    It should be a great party. Make that two parties if the Prince and Princess of Wales (as I expect) also undertake a US 250 tour of their own. Mr. Trump just needs to keep a close eye on his bandmaster.

    Robert Hardman writes for the Daily Mail and is the author of The Making of a King: Charles III and the Modern Monarchy (Pegasus Books). This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 10, 2025 World edition.

  • Trump’s state visit to the UK could not be going better

    Trump’s state visit to the UK could not be going better

    So, the Donald was on his best behavior after all. There had been rumors flying around that President Trump would use his speech at the formal banquet that has been thrown in his honor by King Charles to make some pointed reference to free speech and its perceived absence thereof in Britain today. In the event, there was nothing but a series of emollient statements of praise for his hosts, their family and the country he was visiting, as well as, of course, himself.

    This threw up some incongruities – who would ever have imagined hearing Trump allude to Locke and Orwell? But his sentiments were warm (only partially reduced by his less-than-fluent delivery, reading at times haltingly off what looked like a giant prompt book). As such, they would have gone down well with those in St George’s Hall in Windsor Castle and far beyond.

    In truth, Trump’s state banquet was never expected to be a controversial or difficult event. Whether the King had wanted to host this second, unprecedented state visit for the American president or not, he was never going to make any public protestation, and so the speech of welcome that he gave his guest was typically warm and eloquent. He talked of the “enduring bond” between the two countries, in language soon echoed by Trump, and made a good joke, saying, in an allusion to George III and the War of Independence: “It is remarkable to think just how far we have come. My five times great-grandfather did not spare his words when he spoke of the revolutionary leaders.”

    Still, both men had their own agendas in mind, too, and they were expressed in polite yet pointed ways. The King talked with vigor of the enduring special relationship, but also – in lines presumably suggested by the government – he observed that “Today, as tyranny once again threatens Europe, we and our allies stand together in support of Ukraine, to deter aggression and secure peace.” Was there the slightest hint of irony when he praised Trump – a man obviously angling for the Nobel Peace Prize – and his “personal commitment to finding solutions to some of the world’s most intractable conflicts”? There almost certainly was.

    And even in his peroration, when Charles spoke of how “in renewing our bond tonight, we do so with unshakeable trust in our friendship and in our shared commitment to independence and liberty”, there was the hint of a suggestion that this commitment might present itself in rather different ways. Talk of Trump’s attempts to protect the environment may have been more wishful thinking on Charles’s part than demonstrable fact.

    The President, meanwhile, has had a splendidly indulgent day of watching military displays in his honor, all of which have taken place out of public view in the grounds of Windsor Castle, so as to avoid the embarrassment of any protests marring his fun. Therefore, when he delivered his remarks, they came from a place of apparent contentment – hence the sincerity of his warm words about the royals. Nevertheless, he was still unable to resist a spot of self-praise as he announced that America has gone from being “a very sick country” to the “hottest anywhere in the world”. The King, to his immense credit, kept his best poker face throughout.

    Still, everyone involved in organizing this state visit will, rightly, congratulate themselves on how well the day went. Even the gray, overcast weather did not turn into the downpour that occasionally threatened to materialize, and the pageantry and glitz on display (at a rumored cost of £15 million for the entire event) show that, when Britain attempts to put on a performance like this, it usually succeeds.

    The political aspects of Trump’s visit come today, and they will be harder-won than this largely decorative display of soft power. But this coming together of two very different men, with very different values, over watercress panna cotta and ballotine of Norfolk chicken could hardly have gone better, either for them or their respective countries. And Charles will also know that the occasion will not – cannot – occur again, either, which may have made the whole thing easier to bear with suitably well-bred equanimity.

  • As an American Anglophile, I can’t defend Britain

    For much of my career, beginning as a foreign adviser to the U.S. Congress, I have proudly stood as one of America’s strongest advocates for Britain. 

    I have defended her history, her institutions and her role as the original home of liberty. 

    I have championed the UK in forums throughout the US and in publications across the globe, reminding audiences that our shared values of liberty and democracy, bequeathed by our mother, England, form the bedrock of transatlantic strength. 

    Today, for the first time, I find Britain indefensible. The affection and historical respect remains. The confidence is gone.  

    Britain now prosecutes her own citizens not for violence or treason but for words. Lucy Connolly was sentenced to 31 months in prison for a tweet in the wake of the Southport tragedy; she served ten. 

    Her crime was expression, harsh perhaps but still speech. Graham Linehan, the award‑winning creator of Father Ted, was arrested at Heathrow by armed officers with guns for online comments defending women’s spaces. Arrested, by police carrying weapons, for his opinions. 

    This is the country that once gave the world John Stuart Mill.  

    Such cases expose what Britain has become: a two‑tier system of justice. Those branded far‑right, nationalist or “Islamophobic” are prosecuted with zeal. Those spreading incendiary rhetoric from Islamist or minority factions are met with indulgence. The 2024 riots exposed the imbalance in plain sight. Swift punishment for those the state distrusts. Hesitation and leniency for those it fears. Law as weapon, not protection.  

    This has not happened by accident. Britain’s institutions have been captured. Its police, judiciary and permanent bureaucracy answer less to the people than to a class of activists embedded at the top. 

    Leading them is a man who knows the law not as a shield for the people but as a sword for ideology: Keir Starmer. Starmer did not merely elevate activist lawyers to high office. He is one. He has built his career knowing how to bend legal frameworks into blunt instruments. Now in Downing Street he deploys those instruments against the liberties Britain once bequeathed the world.  

    A particularly chilling example lies in the push to enshrine a definition of “Islamophobia.” What is presented as tolerance is in practice a new blasphemy law, criminalizing criticism of religion and culture whenever it offends official sensitivities. The land that abolished the Star Chamber is now flirting with prosecuting thought crimes.  

    The suspicion of national pride runs just as deep. During the 2024 riots, Starmer cautioned against using the St George’s Cross or the Union Jack “divisively.” To ordinary Britons these flags are symbols of unity and heritage. To their government they are red flags of extremism. 

    Meanwhile, foreign flags fly freely across London without question. The message is unmistakable: pride in your own country is suspect. Allegiance to any other is acceptable.  

    Immigration policy tells the same story. Labour boasts of progress, yet more than 32,000 asylum seekers remain in taxpayer‑funded hotels at a cost of £2.1 billion a year. Whole communities are expected to accept disruption without complaint, and if they speak out they are branded intolerant. Concerns about security or cohesion are brushed aside as if no decent Briton could possibly hold them.  

    From abroad the shift is impossible to ignore. Elon Musk has called Britain’s censorship Soviet‑style. JD Vance has condemned its crackdown on speech. The US State Department now lists Britain as a country presenting significant risks to free expression. I never imagined America would place Britain alongside nations that treat liberty as a nuisance. That day has come.  

    For those of us who have long defended Britain, it is heartbreaking. This is the country whose strong institutions enabled America’s own rise and whose commitment to liberty inspired ours. Yet under its current leadership Britain has stumbled into repression, constraint and fear, where ordinary citizens look over their shoulders before speaking.  

    And still there is a chance for recovery. A counter‑movement exists. Figures such as Nigel Farage, Robert Jenrick, Ben Habib and the Reform UK party speak plainly about borders, free speech and sovereignty. They refuse to accept that patriotism is extremism or that questioning official orthodoxy is hate. For this they are demonized by the governing elite, but for this they are listened to by ordinary citizens who have had enough and are reasserting their national pride as manifested in the tidal wave of Union and St. George flags that have flooded cities throughout the UK through efforts such as Operation Raise the Colors. 

    Britain must decide. It can continue down its present course, where speech is policed, justice is politicised and Starmer’s legal class governs not on behalf of the nation but against it. Or it can remember its own inheritance, trusting its people and restoring freedom as the organizing principle of national life.  

    The world does not need a Britain that jails her patriots. It needs the Britain that once taught us all to be free.

  • Essex-boy Elegy: J.D. Vance meets the Bosh man

    Vice President Vance is currently receiving visitors at an 18th-century Georgian manor in the Cotswolds, an implausibly quaint patch of the English countryside. Petitioners so far have included James Orr, the Cambridge academic and right-wing activist, Robert Jenrick, likely the next leader of Britain’s Tories, and Nigel Farage, likely the next UK Prime Minister.

    Also on the list was one Thomas Skinner, a gregarious wide boy from East London turned e-celebrity turned patriotic influencer. After a stint as a pillow and mattress merchant Skinner, 34, found fame as a contestant on the 15th series of the British version of The Apprentice. In 2022 he began posting videos on social media of himself gobbling down steaming platters of traditional English fare – pie, mash, bacon, beans, sausage, chips (fries), fried eggs, fried bread, black pudding – while extolling the virtues of family and hard work. Each homily would end with Skinner’s trademark catchphrase: “BOSH.”

    Skinner’s politics began to emerge. “I love Trump, I think he is brilliant, that’s my opinion. I think it’s good he is back in charge, it will be good for the UK economy,” he said in late 2024. Mayor Sadiq Khan had “ruined” London and militant eco-protesters were “ruining people’s lives.” Orr, who has emerged as a leading theorist of a newly-galvanized British right, took notice. Had they finally found their own Trump – or at the very least their own Archie Bunker? In June Skinner delivered a speech at Now and England, a conference organized by Orr, where he spoke of “kids being taught to be ashamed of their own flag.” The Vice President watched.

    Now the two netizens meet at last. Vance, a longtime online admirer, invited Skinner over for beers and a barbecue. Skinner relayed his experience with his usual brio:

    When the Vice President of the USA invites ya for a BBQ a beers, you say yes. Unreal night with JD and his friends n family. He was a proper gent. Lots of laughs and some fantastic food. A brilliant night, one to tell the grand kids about mate. Bosh❤️

    Here is a pic of Me and Vice President @JDVance towards the end of the night after a few beers 🍻 I’m overdressed in my suit, but when the VP invites you to a BBQ, you don’t risk turning up in shorts an flip-flops 😂 Cracking night in the beautiful English countryside with JD, his friends and family. Once in a lifetime. Bosh ❤️🇬🇧🇺🇸

    The encounter is another sign of the chaotic merger that’s being carried out between politics and the online world. Is Skinner a meme, or a politician? It’s increasingly difficult to disentangle the two.

  • The UK censorship files: Jim Jordan’s crusade against Britain

    The British Empire may be gone, but there is one area where the UK has not lost its global ambitions: online censorship. The latest vehicle is the Online Safety Act (OSA), a behemoth internet regulation law whose vast provisions are steadily coming into force – and increasingly drawing the ire of the Trump administration as it starts to impact US tech firms. 

    Under the OSA, “Britain has the power to shut down any platform” that breaks its content regulation rules, boasts secretary of state for technology Peter Kyle. The latest stage of its implementation began last week with new mandatory age-verification measures for social media platforms. 

    The Act is already curtailing what can be read online in the UK. Though the OSA was passed back in 2023 by the Conservatives, the Labour government has taken it up the internet “regulation” crusade with gusto. The rhetorical strategy is to claim that the law is unobjectionable since it is merely about restricting minors’ access to pornography and other “harmful” content – “think of the children”. But it all comes across as rather hysterical. In an extraordinary intervention this week, when the populist Reform Party’s Nigel Farage pledged to repeal the law, Kyle labelled him – and anyone else that’s opposed to it – as being on the side of child predators like Jimmy Savile.

    In reality, there are many valid criticisms to be made of this wildly overbearing law. Small online forums dedicated niche interests, for instance, including fixed-gear cycling and hamsters, have been forced to close due to heavy compliance costs. Many tech companies likewise view it as suffocating. Another major sticking pointis its stringent regulations on AI – a vital emerging field in which the UK risks being left in the dust.

    Most egregious, though, is the OSA’s impact on free speech. Since the new rules came into force, platforms have been forced to censor political speech that paints the British government in a bad light. This includes footage of recent anti-asylum protests, and even speeches in Parliament and court transcripts about the rape gangs scandal. This latter is particularly galling: this was horrific abuse that the British state abjectly failed to protect these children from – and now speech about it is being censored in the name of child safeguarding.

    The bigger problem, for Kyle and the British government, is how the OSA and their censorship cheerleading will play out in the eyes of America. The Trump administration is already unhappy with the state of free expression in Britain.

    A good example of the culture clash came this week, with Jim Jordan, a Trump ally, free-speech advocate and chair of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee. Jordan will meet Peter Kyle himself, where he is expected raise concerns about free speech. As part of his UK visit, Jordan has viewed documents produced by the Committee that seem to show that the UK government attempted to censor online content during the riots that swept the country last summer. Posting them on X as ‘THE UK CENSORSHIP FILES’, he has accused the British government, including Kyle and Keir Starmer, of “trying to censor criticism of itself,” and clamping down on “narratives” wounding to the British state – like claims of “two-tier justice”. Here’s hoping that Peter Kyle will refrain from alleging that Jordan is “on the side of predators” for his free-speech advocacy.

    While freedom-loving Brits are grateful that their American cousins are helping to safeguard free speech, there is also the question of how the OSA will impact Americans’ own jealously-guarded First Amendment rights. If Washington, DC, looks askance at censorship laws the UK, it’s even less pleased about the British state’s attempts to expand the scope of that regulation across the Atlantic to US websites and tech firms. Back in May, the State Department fired a warning shot, mooting visa bans for foreign officials found to have censored “protected expression in the United States”. US free-speech concerns are also expected to feature in any forthcoming trade deal. Both Trump, in his recent visit, and JD Vance, in the Oval Office back in February, have publicly needled Keir Starmer over the issue.

    The key question is whether America is happy to allow a few hundred Whitehall bureaucrats to bring its tech titans to heel. With the US celebrating 250 years of independence next year, there are many free-speech warriors stateside who would sooner tell Ofcom, Britain’s broadcast regulator, where to get off.

    Prominent among the minutemen is Preston Byrne, an Anglo-American lawyer and free speech activist who also works with the Adam Smith Institute, a British free-market think tank. Byrne has already tangled with Ofcom over the OSA, following enforcement letters it sent to US websites including Gab and Kiwi Farms earlier this year. These sites, however, were comparatively small fry. Ofcom has now sent similar letters to Reddit and Rumble, and in response, Byrne is set to bring a case against Ofcom in the US federal courts.

    For a notice to be served by a foreign power against a US company, typically it would have to go through the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) to be valid. But that doesn’t seem to be the case for these notices: indeed, if Ofcom had gone through the MLAT, Byrne believes that the State Department and the Department of Justice would not be minded to abide by them. So the letters, for all they threaten these companies with fines or worse, are in fact legally dubious. “Ofcom,” Byrne tells me, “is the international equivalent of a stalker-y ex – they’ve been told to stop, it’s unlawful for them to continue, and now we need the courts to intervene.”

    Just how much more will this battle heat up? What’s clear is that British officialdom’s zeal for online regulation is setting it on a collision course with a resurgent and energetic US free-speech lobby. Yet with trade talks looming, such escalation would surely be a grave mistake. Britain does not rule the world anymore. If London wakes up the “screaming Eagle”, Byrne says, “they’re not gonna like the results”.