The Jason Arday saga exposes the Met Police's troubling pattern on free speech

Max Thompson

14 August 2026

FSU Campaigns Officer Max Thompson writes for GB News.

Enough is enough. Just when you think the Metropolitan Police could not get any more ridiculous, it strikes again.

Despite repeated failures to recognise that its actions have infringed our right to free expression, and no shortage of platitudes about lessons learnt, the force appears to remain determined to investigate supposed speech crimes, wasting resources that should be directed to its primary duty: investigating crimes and keeping the public safe.

The buck stops with the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Mark Rowley. He must now finally get a grip or go.

Last September, five armed police officers hauled Irish comedian Graham Linehan off his flight at Heathrow. He spent hours in a cell, endured repeated questioning, and needed treatment in A&E after his blood pressure rose dangerously high. His crime? Three gender-critical posts on X.

This saga shocked the country and reached the attention of President Trump, whose administration has rightly admonished our political leaders for their disregard of one of the most foundational qualifications of a liberal democracy: free speech.

Once released on bail, Graham was handed Orwellian bail conditions, including a ban on posting on X — lifted after Free Speech Union pressure — and a vague requirement not to contact any of his "victims". Well, anyone can apparently be a victim if they are woke or sad enough not to take an offensive joke to heart.

A month later, the Met dropped the case entirely. The Commissioner blamed vague government guidance for his officers' failures and announced the force would no longer investigate non-crime hate incidents. But this fiasco cost the British taxpayer £25,000 in a compensation payout for Graham Linehan, plus a hefty legal bill.

One would have thought this embarrassment might teach the Met a lesson. Apparently not.

Many will have marvelled at the saga of Professor Jason Arday, Cambridge's DEI superstar academic, who turns out to have been a fantasist and prolific embellisher. He has claimed he did not speak before his twelfth birthday, could not read or write until he was eighteen, completed thirty marathons in thirty days, and appeared on a TV programme that aired twenty years before he was born. I would not judge anyone for chuckling — but there is a far more sinister side to this story.

In a desperate bid to silence those scrutinising his record, Arday reported a journalist and a fellow academic to the police, and hired the notoriously aggressive law firm Carter-Ruck.

As questions grew over plagiarism in his PhD thesis, Jack Grove of Times Higher Education emailed him a list of legitimate queries. Arday reported Grove to the Metropolitan Police for harassment. Carter-Ruck then wrote to Grove's employer suggesting his inquiries may have been "racially motivated". Why go to such lengths — enlisting the police and making insinuations of racism — unless you have something to hide?

Grove himself said he was stunned to learn he had been the subject of a four-month Scotland Yard investigation that ultimately went nowhere.

Nor was he alone. When Dr David Harris, Professor Emeritus at Plymouth Marjon University, challenged inconsistencies in Arday's record, Arday reported him too. The Met passed the complaint to Devon and Cornwall Police, who rightly declined to investigate. So why did the Met spend four months investigating a journalist for doing his job?

On LBC, Sir Mark Rowley admitted the force had dropped the ball again.

"We dropped the ball on that one — let's not beat around the bush," he said. "A report came in, I think it was of harassment or some crime like that. It should have been screened out earlier on as not requiring investigation. In hindsight, we should not have done that. Big organisation, we'll make the odd mistake. We shouldn't have made that call to him and said that."

How can the Met continue to complain about a lack of resources when it dedicates them to investigating three gender-critical posts, a journalist doing his job, or an academic upholding academic freedom?

Lord Young of Acton, the Free Speech Union's General Secretary, has written to Sir Mark demanding an explanation. As reported in The Telegraph, he wrote:

"Telling a journalist to stop making lawful inquiries of a public figure under investigation for potential professional misconduct is not safeguarding – it is press censorship, delivered over the telephone by an officer who appears not to have realised he was speaking to a journalist doing his job until Mr Grove told him so."

The country's largest police force has consistently failed to recognise the importance of free speech, and just when we feel common sense is being restored, we find ourselves back at square one.

Here, in one case, are the failures of two institutions: a police force silencing a journalist asking awkward questions, and a university prioritising DEI over basic background checks. The consequences for academics and journalists should worry us all.

Jason Arday reached for the police the moment people were on to him. Powerful figures should never be able to wield the police as a personal weapon against those speaking the truth. Free speech and academic freedom are fundamental to our society.

Read Max's article for GB News here.