Kemi Badenoch has warned that freedom of speech in Britain is “under threat” from Labour, accusing the governing party of harbouring authoritarian tendencies and backing proposals akin to blasphemy laws.
In an interview with The Telegraph’s Planet Normal podcast, the Leader of the Opposition said: “I don’t think Labour understands the importance of free speech, how it is a core British value.
“When you look at some of the rhetoric that we hear from Labour MPs, a lot of authoritarian stuff. We have Labour MPs talking about blasphemy laws.
“That’s not free speech,” she added. “They haven’t brought it in yet, but we need to be very vigilant that we do not allow the erosion of core principles like freedom of speech in the UK.”
While Badenoch said she did not agree with US Vice President JD Vance’s claim that free speech was “disappearing” in the UK, she acknowledged it was “under threat”.
Her remarks come amid growing concerns about Labour’s stance on religious criticism and expression. In a move critics say risks creating a de facto blasphemy law, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner is overseeing plans to introduce a formal definition of ‘Islamophobia’.
The new definition is being developed by a five-person working group chaired by Dominic Grieve, the former Tory attorney general, who has been tasked with recommending “appropriate and sensitive language”.
While in opposition, Labour pledged to adopt a 2018 definition of Islamophobia drafted by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims, co-chaired at the time by the current Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, and Anna Soubry. At the time, the APPG issued a report that defined Islamophobia as “a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness” and went on to give examples of how this prejudice manifests itself.
The report was criticised for defining Islamophobia too broadly. For instance, it cited “claims of Muslims spreading Islam by the sword” as an example of “classic Islamophobia” – a characterisation that would, by implication, brand historian Tom Holland’s In the Shadow of the Sword as Islamophobic. Another example given was the suggestion that Muslim-majority countries might exaggerate or fabricate claims of genocide against Muslims – a definition that would label as Islamophobic anyone who disputes, for instance, Iran’s description of Israel’s military operation in Gaza as “genocide”.
More recently, the APPG’s definition has come under renewed scrutiny because it describes references to “grooming gangs” as a “subtle form of anti-Muslim racism”. In practice, this framing has led to individuals who highlight the overrepresentation of Muslim men in grooming gang offences being accused of Islamophobia, despite the weight of evidence. Data from 43 police forces in England and Wales for the first nine months of last year show that men of Pakistani heritage were up to four times more likely to be reported for child sex grooming offences than the general population.
The definition has also been widely adopted by local authorities. A Freedom of Information request conducted by Hardeep Singh for Civitas in 2023 revealed that 52 councils in England – approximately one in six – have adopted it. Many of these councils are in areas where grooming gangs have been operating. In these areas, councillors or council workers risked disciplinary action if they spoke out against grooming gangs in ways that might be deemed Islamophobic under the APPG definition.
Controversy around Labour’s approach to ‘Islamophobia’ intensified in November, when Labour MP Tahir Ali urged Sir Keir Starmer to introduce legislation to “prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions”. Starmer did not directly reject the proposal, instead replying that “desecration is awful and should be condemned”. The exchange prompted concerns that Labour was considering reintroducing blasphemy laws.
Elsewhere in the interview, Badenoch reflected on her party’s handling of the clash between women’s sex-based rights and trans rights, admitting that the Conservatives “ended up just allowing extreme activists to take root” by looking the other way on gender ideology.
Asked about last week’s Supreme Court ruling on the meaning of the word “woman” in the Equality Act 2010, she said the party had initially been too quick to dismiss women’s concerns as a “niche issue”.
“One of the lessons that my party has now learnt is that sometimes just because everybody agrees on something doesn’t mean it’s right,” she said. “This stuff was allowed to seed for a very long time because many people thought, ‘well, you know, we don’t talk about this. We talk about the economy. Just ignore it – this is a niche issue’. And also believing that this was how you showed support for people who were LGBT.”
Badenoch warned that the Conservatives had drifted from their core values by failing to uphold principles such as free expression.
“By not looking at the principles and just going along with what many people have been saying, initially we ended up just allowing extreme activists to take root,” she said.
