I’ve always thought I’d eventually make it to the United Kingdom. It’s one of those “bucket list” destinations—castles, history, the pubs, the whole cultural experience, even the Harry Potter experience. But truth be told, over the past several years my appetite for visiting has cooled considerably. Sometimes the decline of a nation unfolds so quickly, you feel as though you’re watching it in real time.
PJ Media previously reported on the recent arrest of Graham Linehan, the man behind the sitcoms Father Ted and The IT Crowd, and the whole incident has pushed the UK squarely into the category of places I may never set foot in. Short of a total course correction in British culture and politics, I can’t imagine ever going.
Earlier this month, Linehan touched down at Heathrow from the U.S. and was immediately surrounded by five armed police officers—and then arrested for three tweets he posted back in April. His “crime”? Pointing out that letting a biological male into female-only spaces is, by definition, a violent, abusive act. He even joked that if authorities won’t step in to protect women, maybe ordinary people will have to. Predictably, critics ran with the line about “punch him in the b***s,” portraying it as some dire threat of violence. But anyone with half a brain could see it for what it was: hyperbole, a comedian mocking the absurdity of the world we’ve let ourselves live in. In Britain today, though, nuance is dead—and so is free speech.
Even Linehan’s bail conditions were an Orwellian overreach, banning him from accessing social media altogether. Those restrictions were only lifted on Saturday, highlighting again how intrusive and destructive the system is becoming. Public figures remain deeply split—some insist the police response was grossly disproportionate while others call his tweets “totally unacceptable.” Yet no one even questions the biggest outrage: that a citizen was placed in handcuffs over words.
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What does that say about the UK? Believe me, as someone who has spoken out repeatedly against the trans cult myself, I have no good reason to believe I’d be any safer there than Linehan has been. In today’s Britain, the state’s police will treat social-media posts as criminal threats while actual crime in the streets goes unchecked. It is the weaponization of law enforcement against dissent, and we know exactly where it leads.
And if this is Britain today, I honestly want no part of it.
There are plenty of places on my list to see—just as there are plenty I’ve already ruled out. I’ve never been to Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco, or Portland, and there’s really no reason to expect I’ll ever go to any of them now. I’ve been to New York City a fair number of times, but you can bet that if Zohran Mamdani is elected mayor, I won’t go back. The UK may not have been high on my travel list, but unless things change, it might never be on the list again.
I still hold out hope that things can turn around. Maybe the outrage over Linehan’s arrest will finally wake people up to just how far Britain has gone down this road of censorship and absurdity. Maybe it will spark a real conversation about free speech, about the difference between satire and so-called “hate,” and about the sheer lunacy of punishing someone for stating the obvious. It’s a long shot, sure—but sometimes it only takes one high-profile case to shake people out of complacency. Maybe Linehan’s arrest will be that case.
I hope it will.
