The self-appointed defenders of free speech are only interested in elevating right-wing voices

Not known for having much in common during their time in power, Nicola Sturgeon and Boris Johnson are now both at similar stages of their careers, touring the country to promote recently published memoirs. Increasingly it seems the public will pay to hear the reflections of those once ubiquitous in our public life, although promoters appear to have dramatically overestimated how many people were willing to pay £75 to listen to the former prime minister at the Usher Hall earlier this month. 

During the Edinburgh Fringe politicians from both Westminster and Holyrood made appearances, with First Minister John Swinney heckled by protesters over his government’s response to the situation in Gaza. However, it was an in-conversation event with his deputy, Kate Forbes, which attracted the most headlines after the venue, Summerhall, said it had been an “oversight” to allow her to speak, citing the “safety and wellbeing” of other artists and performers.

Political parties, even those with just five MPs, should be careful about who they legitimise by providing a platform.

That concern was reportedly due to Forbes’ views on gender. One of the few SNP politicians brave enough to call out her party’s wrongheaded attempt to introduce self-ID, she has been castigated as a bigot as a result. Her admission that she would not have voted for same-sex marriage in 2014, a personal view born out of religious conviction and at odds with most of secular Scotland, effectively ended her hopes of ever being first minister.

And yet while Summerhall is entirely within its rights to choose who it provides a platform to, its decision to cancel someone who sits very much within the mainstream of Scottish politics does a disservice to us all. Summerhall Arts, the charity which runs the venue, was given more than £600,000 in public funding earlier this year. When parliament returned from its summer recess, MSP Fergus Ewing was quick to highlight the situation, calling for the government to claw back public funds received by arts venues which censor free speech. 

That view, however, is deeply problematic. Would ministers be forced to demand the return of taxpayers’ money if a venue refused to provide a platform for Tommy Robinson, for example? Personally, I don’t want to live in a country where the government must become a moral arbiter before deciding how to allocate money to the arts. 

But neither do I want to see a situation where democratically elected politicians (the deputy first minister, for crying out loud) are prevented from speaking by those worried it will hurt someone’s feelings. As the philosopher and writer Kathleen Stock has pointed out, the equating of emotional harm with physical harm has led us to a place where it appears some now see violence as an acceptable response to words they don’t agree with. 

A decade ago, the American psychologists Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff warned about the dangers of seeing speech as a form of violence and the risks associated with telling young people the “world is a far more violent and threatening place than it really is”. “It tells them that words, ideas, and speakers can literally kill them.” Worse, they argued, at a time of growing polarisation in the US, it helped justify political violence. 

The fragility of those on the left, the unwillingness to listen to dissenting voices on issues from gender to immigration to the Middle East, has allowed those on the right to claim they are the true defenders of free speech. More often than not, this freedom extends only rightwards, providing a platform for increasingly extreme views, the likes of which many of us naively assumed had been cast into what Leon Trotsky – and later Ronald Reagan – called the dustbin of history. 

At its conference earlier this month, Reform UK welcomed Lucy Connolly, the former childminder who was jailed after posting a tweet calling for hotels housing asylum seekers to be set on fire. Connolly, whose case has become a cause célèbre for some on the right of British politics, was taking part in a Telegraph podcast, Planet Normal. Introduced as “Britain’s favourite political prisoner”, she was given a hero’s welcome as she took the stage to tell her story. Earlier in the week the conference stage was given over to Aseem Malhotra, a British doctor who is currently advising Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy, and who suggested the Covid vaccine is linked to cancer cases in the Royal family. 

Connolly has done her time – she served just over a year of her 31-month sentence – and is free to give all the podcast interviews she wants. But political parties, even those with just five MPs, should be careful about who they legitimise by providing a platform. Even stout defenders of free speech must draw the line at incitement and disinformation. Although alleged threats against journalists and the barring of reporters from covering county council proceedings suggests Reform aren’t as committed to free speech as they claim to be. 

But those on the left must overcome their squeamishness about opinions they consider unpalatable. Rejecting anyone whose views do not completely align with our own impoverishes debate. Worse still, it creates a gap at the centre of our politics that is increasingly being filled by those who shout loudest from the extremes.