𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Can anyone really doubt that politicians face more threats now than they have for years? Given the recent tragic killing of Ann Widdecombe, debates on political safety have once again been thrust into the public view.

So when Zack Polanski posted an image to his more than 700,000 followers of a man wearing a picture of a guillotine and a slogan aimed at Nigel Farage, it sparked fury.

Defenders of the Green Party leader point out that he removed the offending image as quickly as possible, saying it was a mistake.

But the wider debate it has sparked has predictably split along tribal lines. Reform says Zack Polanski being cleared by the police is a clear example of “two-tier” Britain.

Others have noted that Reform spends a lot of its time defending free speech, yet now finds itself demanding a political rival being sent to the slammer for an online post.

Everybody, it would seem, backs free speech right up to the moment their own side is on the receiving end.

The trouble is that beneath the tit-for-tat sits a genuinely difficult question, and it deserves more than the answer either side has offered.

When exactly does a post become a crime? It can be easily argued that an image of a guillotine is not itself an instruction to commit violence.

Much like wearing a T-shirt showing a gun, a car, a sword, is not demanding they be used to nefarious ends.

Nor is calling a politician a name, or expressing a wish that a particular government minister were no longer in office.

So is wearing a T-shirt like this an incitement to commit a crime? Does the intent of the wearer matter at all? If so, how can that be discerned?

The threshold at which the powers that be may intervene in what an ordinary Briton writes or shares online is not a small question. It goes to the heart of what a free country is.

Yet one must be honest about the other side of the argument. Sir David Amess was murdered in 2021. Jo Cox in 2016. A former MP has been killed in the past few weeks.

Threats to Members of Parliament have risen sharply, and MPs have had to take drastic and often isolatory measures to distance themselves from the public as a result.

It is, of course, important to see the context in which a picture of a guillotine, sitting on a phone screen in front of nearly three-quarters of a million people, was seen.

The wider point is the one both sides are avoiding. If the law is to be applied at all, then should it not be applied evenly, without regard to whose name the guillotine appears beside?

That is harder than the shouting on either side would suggest. But a country in which the answer depends on the party rosette of the accused has not solved the free speech problem, it has abandoned it.