In an extraordinary address at the Munich Security Conference, US Vice President JD Vance warned that the greatest threat to Western democracies was not external aggression but the erosion of free speech within their own societies. Britain, he argued, was leading the charge in policing thought, with European nations following close behind.
Vance’s speech, widely expected to focus on geopolitics and the war in Ukraine, instead delivered a devastating critique of the systematic suppression of dissent by Britain and its European allies. Invoking the Cold War, he argued that the West once defined itself in opposition to regimes that criminalised dissent and censored opposing views. Yet now, he said, it was Western governments adopting such tactics themselves.
“Unfortunately,” he said, “when I look at Europe today, it’s sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the Cold War’s winners.”
He went on to suggest that European elites, rather than upholding the democratic principles they claim to champion, had become fixated on controlling speech and political outcomes.
“Now, to many of us on the other side of the Atlantic,” he said, “it looks more and more like old, entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation, who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid, vote a different way, or even worse, win an election.”
Vance argued that curbing free expression in the name of political stability was a self-defeating strategy.
“I believe that dismissing people, dismissing their concerns or worse yet, shutting down media, shutting down elections or shutting people out of the political process protects nothing. In fact, it is the most surefire way to destroy democracy,” he said.
In a speech liberally sprinkled with examples of free speech suppression, Vance reserved his sharpest criticism for the UK, as a society in which the government was increasingly encroaching on matters of individual conscience, treating religious expression as a form of subversion.
He referenced Adam Smith-Connor, a British Army veteran who was found guilty of breaking the government’s new Buffer Zones Law [the catchily titled Public Order Act 1986 (Amendment) (Abortion Clinics) Regulations 2023] which criminalises silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person’s decision within 200 metres of an abortion facility. Successive UK governments have argued that such zones are necessary to prevent harassment outside clinics, though critics contend that the measures criminalise peaceful expression. Smith-Connor was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.
In Scotland, too, he noted, new legislation has led to concerns over the policing of private prayer. “This last October… the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called ‘safe access zones’, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law. Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime in Britain and across Europe,” he said.
The letter referenced by Vance was sent following the passage of the Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Scotland) Act in June 2024, which makes it an offence to attempt to influence someone’s decision to access, provide, or facilitate abortion within 200 metres of an abortion clinic.
Is his claim accurate? Technically, yes. While the law does not explicitly criminalise private prayer inside homes, the letter warned that activities in private residences could be unlawful if they were “intentionally” or “recklessly” visible or audible within the buffer zone.
Official notes to the legislation cite the example of a resident inside the safe access zone displaying anti-abortion signs with the intent of deterring access to abortion services. In theory, a resident who prayed loudly enough to be heard outside — perhaps leaving windows and doors open, and especially with the aid of amplification — could also be in violation.
Vance did not spare the rest of Europe. He criticised EU officials — or “EU Commission commissars” as he termed them — for their threats to shut down social media platforms during periods of civil unrest. Such measures, he argued, were little more than an attack on public debate.
“[T]he moment they spot what they’ve judged to be ‘hateful content’, or to this very country where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of ‘combating misogyny’ on the internet.”
He also lambasted Romania for annulling the result of the first round of its presidential election when a hard-right candidate came first, and condemned Sweden for imprisoning a far-right activist involved in Quran burnings. These actions, he suggested, demonstrated how European governments were increasingly willing to restrict speech to avoid controversy or discomfort.
“We must do more than talk about democratic values. We must live them,” he said, urging European leaders to uphold free speech rather than curtailing it in the name of public order or social cohesion.
Vance was not blind to the issue in his own country, however, acknowledging that the US had also struggled with free speech in recent years.
“I will admit that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe, but from within my own country, where the prior administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation… Our own government encouraged private companies to silence people who dared to utter what turned out to be an obvious truth.”
While Vance’s critique was directed at the Biden administration’s approach to online discourse, he insisted that the Trump administration would take a sharply different stance, making opposition to censorship a pillar of its foreign policy.
“There is a new sheriff in town,” he declared. “And under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer them in the public square.”
Perhaps predictably, his address ruffled feathers in a room filled with European policymakers, many of whom have championed expanding ‘hate speech’ laws and increasingly restrictive digital regulation in recent years.
Carl Bildt, the co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations and former prime minister of Sweden, condemned Vance’s remarks, dismissing them as politically motivated.
“At best it was totally irrelevant to European or global security concerns. At worst it was blatant interference in the [German] election campaign in favour of far-right AfD,” he wrote on X.
Mr Bildt added that the speech had been “significantly worse than expected.”
In the UK, the Liberal Democrats were also quick to push back, with foreign affairs spokesperson Calum Miller criticising Vance’s remarks.
“Britain will not take lectures about political freedoms from the acolyte of a president who tried to undermine American democracy and now praises Putin. The British people will see straight through this hypocrisy,” he claimed.
Not all responses were negative, however. Reform UK’s Rupert Lowe welcomed Vance’s intervention, posting on social media: “The Americans have got a real hero in JD Vance.”
With the UK and EU continuing to expand their respective legal frameworks around speech regulation, and the Trump administration now positioning itself as a staunch defender of free expression, the transatlantic divide on free speech looks set to widen further.
