1 day Ago By The Telegraph
Kemi Badenoch has backed Donald Trump by warning that free speech is “at risk” in Britain amid a row with the White House over abortion . The Conservative leader said the UK should not be “persecuting people for expressing themselves”. She spoke out after the US State Department expressed concern over the case of a woman who allegedly breached a buffer zone outside an abortion clinic .
While she warned against “talking Britain down”, Mrs Badenoch told LBC that the UK had to be careful not to restrict free speech. It came after the US State Department issued a statement saying it was “concerned about freedom of expression in the United Kingdom” in relation to the case of an anti-abortion campaigner. It said it was “monitoring” the case of Livia Tossici-Bolt, an activist prosecuted for holding a sign near a Bournemouth clinic reading: “Here to talk if you want .
” The US intervention is a fresh challenge to Sir Keir Starmer as he seeks to avoid billions of pounds of tariffs due to be imposed by the Trump administration this week . Mrs Badenoch said she was not familiar with the case of Ms Tossici-Bolt, but warned against “draconian interpretations of the law”. She said: “We have freedom of expression in this country, we have free speech in this country.
“However it is at risk because a lot of people are expanding the law way beyond the original intention.” A source familiar with US trade negotiations with Britain suggested on Monday that the Prime Minister would have to back down on the matter, adding that there should be “no free trade without free speech”. Jonathan Reynolds, the Business Secretary, sought to downplay the row on Tuesday morning.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “As someone who is very closely part of the issues that are currently being discussed, obviously there are things from different people in the administration that they’ve said in the past about this, but it’s not been part of the trade negotiations that I’ve been part of.” US ‘must recognise UK is a free country’ Mrs Badenoch told LBC she did not want to see the US “wars” about abortion come to the UK, adding that abortion law in the UK is “good”. She said: “We’ve managed for a very long time to avoid the very intense wars that they have around abortion.
“I think that the laws that we have around abortion in this country are good: safe, legal and rare is what we used to say 20 or 30 years ago. I think that we’ve found a right balance. I do, however, think that we should not be persecuting people for expressing themselves.
” Speaking at Conservative headquarters on Tuesday morning, Mrs Badenoch repeated her assertion that free speech was “under threat”. But in response to a question from The Telegraph, the Tory leader said the US State Department needed to recognise that the UK was a “free country”. “We do have free speech in this country, but it is under threat,” she said.
“It is under threat because people are overinterpreting a lot of the rules.” Vance raised UK free speech concerns The Conservative leader added: “I think that some of the things the US State Department is commenting on is actually more commentary rather than reality. “The State Department should recognise that this is a free country, it has liberal values.
People in our country have freedom. “I thought the laws were too onerous in how we treated abortion buffer zones, but at the end of the day that’s what Parliament voted for. “We have to be vigilant.
I’m not pretending that everything’s fine. We have free speech in this country and we must protect it.” The Trump administration has raised concerns about British laws on abortion protest before.
Last month, JD Vance, the Vice- President, told the Munich Security Conference he feared “free speech in Britain and across Europe was in retreat” . Speaking on Monday, Ms Tossici-Bolt said she was grateful to the US for “prioritising the preservation and promotion of freedom of expression and for engaging in robust diplomacy to that end”. She told The Telegraph: “It deeply saddens me that the UK is seen as an international embarrassment when it comes to free speech .
My case, involving only a mere invitation to speak, is but one example of the extreme and undeniable state of censorship in Great Britain today.”.
