The left-wing Labour Party in Britain is reportedly planning on making ‘misgendering’ someone a crime with up to two years in prison.
In a move that would introduce compelled speech laws, Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is preparing to create new hate speech legislation that would punish people for referring to someone with the “wrong” gender pronoun.
According to a report from the Mail on Sunday, a Labour government would seek to elevate misgendering an “aggravated offence” putting it on the same level as assault or harassment motivated by race or religion, which comes with up to two years in prison.
Responding to the report, Caroline Ffiske of Conservatives for Women said: “Thousands of women dispute the notion of ‘gender identity’ and particularly the idea that it should be prioritised over biological sex.
“We have serious and legitimate concerns over being expected, in the workplace, when using public services or in private life, to refer to a man as ‘she/her’.
“Is there a risk with this policy that a woman could be accused of harassment for correctly sexing a man and then for that to be treated as an aggravated offence?”
Reclaim Party leader Laurence Fox added: “You can take your pronouns and your compelled speech and shove them where the sun don’t shine.
“Looks like anyone who isn’t clinically insane is going to be spending some time in chokey with our new Labour overlords in power from next year.”
With the governing Conservative Party continuing to struggle in the polls, amid failures to tackle illegal and legal immigration and ushering in the highest tax burden since the Second World War during a cost of living crisis, the Labour Party is widely expected to take control of the government in the next general election.
According to the latest survey of Westminster voting intention from YouGov, the Conservatives currently stand at 24 per cent of the vote, compared to the Labour Party at 47 per cent. Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats are currently polling at 9 per cent and the populist Reform UK (formerly the Brexit Part) is sitting at 8 per cent.
Although the left-wing Labour Party would likely seek to expand hate speech laws, the Conservative Party under multiple prime ministers has refused to repeal Tony Blair-era hate speech laws and has vastly expanded the government’s power to police content on the internet.
Indeed, just last month the Conservative government passed into law the Online Safety Bill, which empowers the Office of Communications (Ofcom), the UK’s country’s equivalent of the FCC, to levy fines of up to £18 million (roughly $22 million) or up to 10 per cent of an online company’s global turnover for failing to abide by the government’s limits on speech.