Great Britain is experiencing a free speech crisis, with over 12,000 people arrested for online speech crimes in 2023 alone. Despite this, fewer British politicians defend free speech as a principle.

On July 28, 2026, Reform U.K., led by Nigel Farage—an ally of U.S. President Donald Trump—reported Green Party leader Zack Polanski to the Metropolitan Police for an Instagram post. The post featured a man wearing a T-shirt depicting a guillotine alongside the text "We're only making plans for Nigel." Polanski had accepted this collaboration post, which included several pictures from a Green Party event and was shared with his 713,000 Instagram followers, though he did not create the post himself.

Farage reposted a screenshot of the post on X, stating, "If I was to post anything as inciteful then I would expect to be arrested, and so should Polanski." The Metropolitan Police confirmed they were "conducting enquiries into the matter."

Once the image was brought to Polanski's attention, he immediately unshared the post and stated he unequivocally does not support such dangerous messages.

Farage has previously criticized the British government's frequent police actions in free speech cases, highlighting the 2024 imprisonment of Lucy Connolly, a 41-year-old mother jailed for over a year over a single tweet. He described Connolly's case as a "symbol of [then–Prime Minister] Keir Starmer's authoritarian, broken, two-tier Britain," and introduced her at a Reform U.K. conference as "Britain's favorite political prisoner."

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