Democratic Institutions: Threats

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Moraes, whom I have considered a friend for some 30 years. He was a great champion for those in the European Parliament who had no voice but his—often overlooked and marginalised groups—and was always in the best Labour tradition of trying to build people up rather than trying to drag others down.

“But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it”.


So wrote JS Mill in On Liberty, which I think is still presented to the president of the Liberal Democrat Party as a kind of badge of office when elected. If noble Lords heard a clanking noise as we opened our debate, I suggest that was the shade of JS Mill hearing the opinions from the Front Bench of the party he served and loved, as expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, because he used the argument that every censorial and authoritarian Government begin with: he started talking about Russia and then he elided into talking about Elon Musk. This is how it always happens. We are presented with some terrorist threat, some terrible foreign actor, and then very quickly it turns into “someone whose opinions I happen not to like”. We, the nation that came through the great wars and travails of the 20th century upholding the principle of free expression, are now expected to throw it all in the air because we do not like someone who is expressing legitimate opinions that are rude about politicians.

Let us consider the JS Mill argument about the importance of the solitary opinion. JS Mill does not argue that free speech matters only for the heretic. He argues that it matters for the rest of us, because how will we know when a consensus is mistaken if we repress challenging or different views? During the pandemic, it was very difficult to express in public the opinion that the virus had originated from a lab leak. If we now look at the evidence, particularly well expressed by our former colleague Viscount Ridley and Alina Chan in their book on the subject, we see that it is very clear that that is the likeliest origin story—yet you would be silenced and forbidden to express that opinion.

Who is to say what is the currently correct but repressed opinion? If you think about it, almost everything, when it is a new idea, begins with one or two heretics: everything from the female franchise to religious toleration. Who are we to say that we should stamp out views that we happen to find difficult? As John Milton put it,

“opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making”.

In other words, as long as you have a free market of ideas, the true ones over time will drive out the false ones.

This is always a difficult argument to make, because we are a tribal species and we are driven by our DNA towards vendetta and feud. We are all in favour of free speech on our side, but we struggle when it is on the other side. I agree very much with what the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, said about why there should not be a state definition of Islamophobia. I think we should all be protected by the same laws. How many people will argue, as I would, that exactly the same must hold true about a state definition of antisemitism, and for the same reason? We should all be defended by the same laws. The people who got very angry and upset about, let us say, the arrest of Graham Linehan over a slightly off-colour joke about trans women or the incarceration of Lucy Connolly after the Southport riots are very rarely equally vocal in their defence of the free speech rights of, let us say, Kneecap when they say that the only good Tory is a dead Tory, or of Bobby Vylan saying, “Death, death to the IDF”.

I would set a very high standard for incitement since I would not consider any of those to be actually likely to incite people—I do not think a stoned theatregoer at Glastonbury is going to jump on the next flight to Ben Gurion Airport and launch himself at the first Israeli soldier he sees because of that call from the stage—but, wherever you set that boundary, you have to apply it consistently. I see that people have great difficulty doing so, not least when it comes to Twitter, which was, I think, the essence of the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace.

When Twitter was banning Donald Trump, we heard from the Washington Post, Vox Media and most Democrats that it was a private company, so it was allowed to do whatever it wanted. The left-wing economist Robert Reich said that the first amendment did not apply to private corporations, and he was absolutely right. However, now that it is owned by Elon Musk, the same Robert Reich says, “Oh, no, it’s an oligarchy. It’s nothing to do with free speech”, and the people who were all in favour of it—when, by the way, it was practising censorship—are now suddenly very upset about it because it is not practising censorship. As I say, we are a tribal species and we find it difficult to apply these standards consistently.

When I say “we”, I think I especially mean “we politicians” because we are sensitive to the attacks that we get. This is not new. A hundred years ago we could have been having a very analogous debate about the power of the press barons—the Rothermeres, the Northcliffes and the Beaverbrooks. Indeed, we were, and people in this Chamber and at the other end suggested various ways of silencing their opinions on exactly the grounds that we just heard. Yet, people were sensible. The British public were not a bunch of dupes. They were able to make up their minds and we came through the 20th century as a country that upheld freedom.

That is the real solution to disinformation and misinformation: not repression, but truth. The best way to defeat a bad idea is to present people with better ideas.

“Let her and Falsehood grapple. Who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?”


So wrote John Milton in 1644. Ours is the country that gave the world Wycliffe, Wilkes, Milton, Mill, Lilburne and Locke—and that is only the Johns. What country has done more for free expression? How extraordinary that we should be hearing the sentiments that we have just heard in this of all places. Milton, addressing Parliament, said:

“Lords and Commons of England, consider what Nation it is whereof ye are and whereof ye are the governors”.


We defeated the Nazi and Soviet tyrannies but never lost our belief that freedom and free expression made our society better. How extraordinary, after that achievement, now to be seriously talking about ripping it all up because we do not like what is being said about us on Twitter. Lords and Commons of England, consider what nation it is whereof ye are.