Labour’s authoritarian urges are worryingly obvious… and not just in outdoor smoking ban it intends to impose

Cry freedom

WILL this Government continue to allow us that most cherished of rights — to speak freely? The omens so far are poor.

Labour’s authoritarian urges are ­worryingly obvious.

And not just in the outdoor smoking ban it intends to impose despite promising to tread “more lightly on our lives”.

They’re there too in the Home Secretary’s extraordinary plan to embroil our police once again in recording “non-crime hate incidents”.

Yvette Cooper seems to believe this will show zero tolerance for anti- Semitism and Islamophobia.

Experience proves it will be a mandate for cops to probe anyone who simply hurts another’s feelings via even the most anodyne remark in person or online.

That’s not police business.

Besides, they’ll be busy enough chasing illegal smokers down the street on behalf of the Government’s public health fanatics.

Or should we say “irregular” smokers, since “irregular” is how Labour intends now to rebrand the illegal migrants landing on our beaches in small boats?

Meanwhile, in our universities, Tory measures painstakingly negotiated to preserve free speech are set to be axed.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson risibly claims they were a charter for “hate speech” against minorities.

In fact they were merely a safeguard against aggressive left-wing radicals shutting down speakers voicing even mildly conservative views on campus.

Some political balance is vital.

Our students and lecturers are already overwhelmingly left-wing and our universities the wokest places in the land.

At University College London a new edict says vulnerable people must not be called “vulnerable”.

Even if your sole motive is their protection and needs, such supposedly unthinking and blunt ­language could “disempower them”.

Will Labour ever rein in this insanity?

As we say, the omens are not good.

An easy cell

THE warning was chilling.

Freeing thousands of criminals early from our overflowing jails is “rolling the dice”, admitted Martin Jones, UK chief inspector of probation.

He’s right.

It’s a giant gamble, with innocent lives potentially at stake.

So why aren’t we snapping up the offer from Estonia, whose prisons are half-empty, and flying lags there to serve out the sentences they were given?

Our Nato ally makes some money, while we solve our problem without increasing the risk to the public.

Simples.

Scroll with it

HAVE a fabulous weekend . . . and good luck to all those trying for Oasis tickets.

We hope your Saturday won’t be entirely spent hunched over a screen refreshing a website.

For everyone else, enjoy the sunshiiii-ine.