Nigel Farage in the US likens UK’s online free speech censorship to North Korea

Key topics:Farage visits White House, meets Trump, criticises UK speech laws.He compares UK online safety enforcement to authoritarian regimes.Democrats question Farage’s credibility as a free speech advocate..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Lucy White.Reform UK leader Nigel Farage visited the White House on a Washington trip in which he sparred with congressional Democrats and railed against British limits on online speech, comparing his own country to authoritarian North Korea. Farage posted a photo of himself standing next to Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Wednesday, without providing detail of any discussions he had with the US president. The visit highlighted the depth of common ground between Trump’s Republican Party and the the populist Brexit campaigner’s insurgent opposition group, which has been leading Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour for months in opinion polls. It’s good to be back in the Oval Office. @realDonaldTrump 🇬🇧 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/12GAQxm32L— Nigel Farage MP (@Nigel_Farage) September 4, 2025Earlier, Farage resumed a long-running attack on the UK’s Online Safety Act, which places duties on tech platforms to remove legal but “harmful” content, during appearance before the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee. In the hearing entitled “European threats to American free speech and innovation,” he cited the arrest at London’s Heathrow Airport earlier this week of Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan over online comments made against transgender people.“At what point did we become North Korea?” Farage said. “Well, I think the Irish comedy writer found that out two days ago at Heathrow Airport. This is a genuinely worrying, concerning and shocking situation.”.Read more:.Nigel Farage shifts on immigration, touts Trump ties and bold tax cuts in bid for UK power.Farage — a long-time supporter of Trump’s who has appeared at the US president’s rallies — is tapping a current of concern that’s grown in the UK over the way the online safety laws brought in by the former Conservative administration are being applied by police. On Wednesday, he was joined by politicians known for their more moderate stance in expressing concerns about Linehan’s arrest. “One of the definitions of freedom is that people can say deeply offensive things, other people can take offence but they can do that openly,” former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, a Liberal Democrat, told Times Radio. “I do worry that we’re possibly getting the balance a bit wrong.”Former Home Secretary James Cleverly, a moderate Tory, meanwhile, told GB News the arrest looked like an “overreaction to a rather crass joke.” Labour Health Secretary Wes Streeting earlier told Times Radio that as a sitting minister, he couldn’t comment on a live police investigation, but that “if we’re not getting the balance right then that’s something that we all have to look at and consider.”Nevertheless, Farage is likely to face criticism for the North Korea comparison. Earlier Wednesday, Starmer said: “We have a long history of free speech in this country. I’m very proud of that and I will always defend it.”.Asked about the Linehan case by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch during Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Starmer said he wanted to “ensure police focus on the most serious issues.” He did not go so far as to say that the response to Linehan’s comments was disproportionate. Linehan was met by five police officers on his return to the UK after a member of the public reported him for the offensive posts. Farage also brought up the case of Lucy Connolly, a 41-year-old mother who became a figurehead for right-wing free speech activists after she was imprisoned in 2024 for publishing a tweet on X which urged her followers to “set fire” to hotels housing asylum seekers.Her posts and others were seen as encouraging racially aggravated riots prompted by incorrect online rumours that the murderer of three young girls was a migrant. She was released last month after serving 40% of her 31-month sentence.Farage described her tweets as “intemperate,” but lamented that the UK had sunk into a “really awful authoritarian situation.” “I’ve come today as well to be a klaxon to say to you, don’t allow piece by piece this to happen here in America,” Farage said. “You will be doing us and yourselves and all freedom-loving people a favour if your politicians and your businesses said to the British government, you’ve simply got this wrong.”.Farage’s comments on free speech come after his own party was criticised for restricting local journalists’ access in Nottinghamshire, central England. Reform’s council leader, Mick Barton, has barred the Nottingham Post and the NottinghamshireLive website from interviewing him..Read more:.Farage's Reform Party, not the Tories, is Starmer’s real opposition: Adrian Wooldridge.During the hearing on Capitol Hill, Representative Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, criticised the committee Chairman Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, for selecting Farage as a guest speaker. He listed a number of people who could have spoken about freedom of speech, including Russian dissidents or Chinese pro-democracy advocates.“But no, the dictators of this world have got nothing to fear from this hearing,” Raskin said. “The Republicans called it to attack our democratic allies in Europe.”Referring to Farage, Raskin said the “star witness is not a human rights leader,” but instead was a “far-right pro-Putin politician who leads the UK’s Reform party.”Farage has repeatedly pushed back against claims that his anti-migrant party is far-right, and while he said more than a decade ago that Russia’s Vladimir Putin was the world leader he admired most, he has since distanced himself from the dictator..© 2025 Bloomberg L.P.

Nigel Farage in the US likens UK’s online free speech censorship to North Korea

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