What we told the White House about free speech in Britain

20 August 2026

On 17th August Lord Young, our General Secretary, was contacted by Rachel Rees, a political reporter at the Financial Times, alleging that the FSU has shifted “notably rightward since 2024” and was becoming the “political arm of the populist right” and asking for his response. He replied the following day:

It is inaccurate to say the FSU has shifted rightward since 2024. We are currently defending a pro-Palestinian protestor who’s being prosecuted for holding up a sign saying “I support Palestine Action” – not something the “political arm of the populist right” would do. We are also defending a member of the Social Democratic Party under investigation by Police Scotland and a prominent pro-Scottish independence blogger, among others on the left, and in the past year we’ve paid for the legal defence of numerous people who identify as left-wing, including a trade unionist who publicly supported Jeremy Corbyn. The FSU recently employed David Rose, a former Guardian journalist, as our Research and Policy Director and since he joined he has interviewed some prominent left-wingers for the FSU podcast, including John McDonnell, Paul Holden and Fiyaz Mughal. In the past year, we’ve also organised a Save Our Juries event at which Lord Boateng spoke, tweeted in support of the Labour MP Karl Turner, promoted the crowdfunder of a former deputy leader of the Green Party, offered to help the transwoman arrested for celebrating Ann Widdecombe’s death and reached out to the Canary after it was debanked.

Needless to say, none of this was quoted in her story which ran on 18th August.

On 20th August, she contacted him again to say she’s working on a follow-up piece about a briefing the FSU prepared for the Office of the Vice-President in February 2025 ahead of Sir Keir Starmer’s visit to the White House. We put our hands up to that. The FSU stands up for the speech rights of its members and campaigns for free speech more widely, so, yes, we do prepare briefings for people in a position to lobby the UK Government to stand up for free speech. Everything in our briefing was in the public domain. We’re publishing it below, not just so our members and supporters can see exactly what we told the Vice-President, but also because all of the attacks on free speech we alerted him to are still very much alive. If he raised any of this with Sir Keir, the Prime Minister clearly didn’t listen. Should Andy Burnham visit the White House, we intend to send a follow-up briefing.

You can read the full briefing here.