I would not hold up any country because there are flaws everywhere; and I don't like writing about free speech because it has different meanings for everyone. But even in our puny Slovakia raiding newspaper offices and taking peoples private data at the border is not something that would happen and didn't happen for at least the last 25 years or so, even though we had and currently have horribly bad governments.
The situation in the UK is particularly bad I think because the legal situation is a hodgepodge of a missing written constitution, interweaving of the government branches (as I understand, the government can sometimes ignore the courts or is above them), the libel laws, and while still (for now) a member of the ECHR which gives some guarantees, it's rulings are always (many years) after the fact. Crucially, the UK is a very class-based society. The ruling class gets what it wants and it does not want free speech.
There's some truth in what you say, but it's filtered through a distorted lens.
Like many countries, the UK government makes the laws and the courts interpret them. The government can't ignore the courts, but can introduce new legislation.
The UK population leans more conservative than many other European countries, but free speech, for the most part, has broad public support. There's a lot of discussion around where the line should be drawn, however, and the government tends toward a more restrictive interpretation, while the opposition tends to oppose censorship.
There is a strong element of class in the UK, but this is often misinterpreted. Class in the UK is not particularly fluid. You can have power and wealth, and still not be considered upper class. In the current government, only a minority of MPs are upper class, and of the current cabinet, only one attended a private school (a typical indicator of being upper-class).
The raiding of the Guardian over the Snowden leaks was justified as recovering stolen national security information, and was widely (and rightly) criticised by the press at the time. It's not a common occurrence.
Now, I don't mean to justify the UK government's behaviour. The government bows to the whims of GHCQ far more than it should do, particularly on any technological issue, where it seems GHCQ is the only one ever consulted. Obviously putting backdoors in messaging software, or raiding newpapers, is both incredible stupid and has ultimately lead to the UK government backing down.
But that, I think, is the important part - that it backed down. The UK has a lot of flaws, and certainly isn't at the top of the press freedom list, but it's also consistently in the upper quartile (and notably above Slovakia, if you want a reference point). Looking from the outside, you see the exceptions and controversies - the parts where the system fails - which makes it easy to get a distorted picture of the situation.
> In the current government, only a minority of MPs are upper class
And yet their policies are broadly right-wing conservative. Point is the government itself does not have to consist of upper-class people for the class to steer and benefit from the policies. Why is that? Well...
> The UK population leans more conservative than many other European countries
We really don't know that because the population has been massaged by right-wing propaganda for (at least) decades. I remember even in the 90's reading Financial Times or something like that and the opinion articles about the EU were quite simply lying. Can imagine it was even worse in the Daily Mail etc. The result regarding the EU is well known, but I think this applies to everything; the population seems to lean conservative because the ruling class prefers it like that and the media owners oblige.
To return to the free speech/press freedom issue, it's the same again: it only works as far as the ruling class allows that. One obvious example are the past climate and current anti-genocide protests, where the government heavily abuses anti-terrorism laws to limit free speech.
You're using the word "class" in two different contexts here. The "class" in "upper class" is not the same as the "class" in "ruling class". This may seem pedantic, but when people say that the UK is a class-based society they're explicitly talking about the former. That's not to say there isn't overlap, but they're still two distinct sets.
I'm not going to defend the actions of the UK government, but I will ask that you give time for the courts to do their work before passing final judgement. In the case of the article you linked, for example, the man was arrested but not charged, and in the case of Palestine Action as a whole, there's an ongoing court case against the government's ban, which seems likely to succeed.
Obviously these incidents shouldn't have occurred in the first place, and I fully agree that the government is abusing the law to get its way. But the actions of the home office don't necessarily reflect the country as a whole. They don't even necessarily reflect the Labour Party as a whole.
> I'm not going to defend the actions of the UK government, but I will ask that you give time for the courts to do their work before passing final judgement. In the case of the article you linked, for example, the man was arrested but not charged, and in the case of Palestine Action as a whole, there's an ongoing court case against the government's ban, which seems likely to succeed.
Yes but the issue is already the government acting like this. They most probably know they are in the wrong and are acting anyway, because they want to quell the dissent. The damage is already done.
> They don't even necessarily reflect the Labour Party as a whole.
Of course. I still think about the Labour as 'the good ones', compared with the Tories (or Reform) anyway. OTOH I think this does reflect the country as a whole and not only the current government. That is my feeling from living in the UK some time ago.
I will end this saying that IMO the main difference in speech/press freedom between the UK and say Slovakia is that the UK imagines itself a powerful country fully in control of its destiny, and this illusion enables executive overreach. While Slovakia is a small country thrown around by external forces so much that only the dumbest politicians waste their energy trying to limit press freedom.
That's fair. The government certainly shouldn't be acting like this, and if Slovakia is better in this area, then that's certainly something the UK should seek to emulate.
It may be that I'm conditioned to expect the Home Office to be authoritarian screw-ups that need to be babysat by the courts and principled backbenchers. But you're right that, ideally, the government shouldn't be doing this in the first place.
However, it seems to be the case that, even amongst conservatives, the view in the UK is that the government is infringing on free speech.
The situation in the UK is particularly bad I think because the legal situation is a hodgepodge of a missing written constitution, interweaving of the government branches (as I understand, the government can sometimes ignore the courts or is above them), the libel laws, and while still (for now) a member of the ECHR which gives some guarantees, it's rulings are always (many years) after the fact. Crucially, the UK is a very class-based society. The ruling class gets what it wants and it does not want free speech.