As Scotland, the UK and, indeed the rest of the world wakes up to the imminent launch of the Scottish Hate Speech and Public Order Bill on the 1st of April, which will be one of the most controversial and draconian restrictions on freedom of expression in any western nation, until the even more draconian Irish Hate Law and Canadas Bill C63 become law, the cries of outrage are growing. To stem the critics the Scottish Government, various quangos and Police Scotland have stepped up their damage control to reassure us.

The Bill has major problems both in how it has been drafted and also the principles behind it. Lucy Hunter Blackburn’s superb analysis in today’s Spectator highlights the complications of enforcing the Bill, mentioned that Police Scotland still seem to have no coherent idea how to enforce it, following their absurd ‘Hate Monster’ advertising campaign or their disgraceful racial profiling of white, working class young men as being the most likely offenders which appears to run foul of the very law it’s discussing. 

Mr Starmer and Mr Davie have some serious questions to answer here as well. Both Labour and the Lib Dems in Scotland and England are keeping remarkably quiet at the moment, allowing the hapless Yousaf to defend his Bill… a Bill their parties in Scotland enthusiastically supported. Now I am no expert on the internal governance between the UK Labour and Lib Dem parties and their Scottish counterparts, but it’s safe to guess that the Scottish parties will at least keep Starmer and Davie in the loop over the various proceedings of the Scottish Parliament. So we can safely assume that both Keir and Ed were briefed on the content of the bill by Anas Sarwar, the leader of Scottish Labour and Alex Cole-Hamilton, leader of the Scottish Lib Dems, and no doubt consulted if the UK leaders approved of their backing of the it. Now if my assumption is incorrect, and they were not consulted before the vote was cast, then Starmer and Davie need to come forward and say that. If they do not, then the only assumption the UK voters can have is that both the UK Labour Party and UK Lib Dems both approve of and back the Bill. Which then begs the question: under a Labour Government, will this bill be expanded across the rest of the UK? Either Starmer and Davie have no control over their Scottish counterparts or they are enthusiastically in agreement with the law. Which is it?

The SNP have wheeled out the collection of  MSPS, zealots, councillors and activists that pass for its front line to defend the act on social media and news channels. They bend over backwards to reassure us that the law won’t harm freedom of speech and the. The ‘bar for prosecution will be rightly high’ claimed Humza Yousaf, promising post legislation consultation with the critics of the law, however, as Lucy Hunter Blackburn says in her article, a promise he reneged on, preferring to retreat behind the party and his supporters.

The line seems to be that once again the plebs are too the thick to understand the nuances in the law and have once again, been hoodwinked by ‘misinformation’ and ‘the far right’. Activists on X are bending over backwards to reassure everyone that the law will only be used in exceptional circumstances - however, the current Police Scotland training and the opening of ‘Reporting Centres’ (including one in a Mushroom Farm and a Glasgow Sex Shop [Paw, Ah’m away doon the sex shoap, tae report Ma Broon tae the Polis, she only goan misgendered ma wee dug!]) tends to suggest that quite the opposite is the case. Individual officers, again, in Lucy’s article in the Speccy, are expressing deep concerns over the lack of clarity, the lack of training and how the hell they are meant to enforce this mess.

However, I believe that critics are focusing too much on the incoherence of the Bill without asking WHY it is incoherent. Why is it that nebulous terms like ‘Hate’ and ‘Stirring Up’ are used without specific definitions? Indeed, Ireland’s proposed Laws define ‘Hate’ as.. well ‘Hatred’? 

The people who draft these laws are not stupid, and calling them such for drafting such woolly laws misses the entire point of the laws, be they in the UK, Canada or Ireland. As Douglas Murray indicated in a recent interview, the laws are deliberately written to be vague. The point of them is to cow the population into behaving itself. The whole purpose is to intimidate dissenters into silence. “If your opinion may be deemed as hurtful then you’d better not say it.” This is why in my article published here yesterday I argued that the Bill  has killed the Scottish Enlightenment, or at least the spirit of open debate and freedom that the Enlightenment heralded.

Never mind if what you said is eventually found to be legal in court, the arrest, investigation, trial and unemployment, doxxing and persecution that will follow is punishment enough. The old Stasi trick of zersertsung - punishment through process. You don’t need to prosecute, you just need to accuse and society will happily build the pyre.

And as for Humza’s height of the bar for prosecution? Well, given how the first minister reacted to the questions about why he rerouted a Scottish Government donation of £250k from the UK Water Agency to the high controversial UNRWA, against the advice of his own experts and ministers, was to accuse the questioners of ‘Islamophobia’ I would fully expect the Scottish Government to use the law to shut down any questions it doesn’t like. Which is, of course, the purpose of all these laws at heart.