What the Jeremy Clarkson furore tells us about Left-wing bias, hypocrisy and free speech

Another day, another Jeremy Clarkson controversy. A record 20,000 people have now complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) about his column in last Friday’s Sun, when he wrote offensively about Meghan Markle. Critics have accused him of racism and misogyny, with more than 60 MPs signing a letter saying that “this sort of language has no place in our country” and demanding that “definitive action is taken to ensure no article like this is ever published again”.

The column has become a flashpoint for multiple issues, as is often the way with media controversies these days. The easiest question to answer is whether Clarkson will survive the storm. Of course he will: he always does. He’s one of the country’s biggest media stars, both in print and on TV. Calling for the monarch’s daughter-in-law to be publicly humiliated is consistent with his 2008 joke about lorry drivers murdering prostitutes, his saying in 2011 that striking workers should be shot, and his using the word “slope” over footage of a Burmese man in a 2014 Top Gear special. He exaggerates for comic effect, backpedals when the public reaction is particularly extreme (he issued a rather half-hearted apology for the Markle comments on Monday) and lets others discuss the underlying prejudices they feel his remarks betray.

The deeper and more complicated question is what this episode reflects about our attitudes towards free speech. The number of complaints about Clarkson’s remarks dwarf those prompted by Jo Brand in 2019 when, referring to a milkshake being thrown over Nigel Farage, she said: “Why bother with a milkshake when you could get some battery acid?” So too with Miriam Margolyes, who in 2020 said “I wanted [Boris Johnson] to die” before later downgrading her desire to mere castration. In both cases Ofcom cleared the women of any wrongdoing, citing the fact that the remarks had been made on comedy shows (Radio 4’s Heresy and Channel 4’s The Last Leg respectively) and were therefore clearly intended not to be taken seriously.

That one can make jokes about anything and everything, so long as their tone and content remain within the law, is a central and paramount part of freedom of speech, which is in turn one of the bedrocks of a functioning democratic society. “Free speech is not just frank speech but fitting speech,” said Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in a House of Lords debate last year. “It is a necessary condition to the building of good communities.”

Satire has for centuries been used as a tool against overarching power, and with that comes not so much the possibility but the inevitability of giving offence – something greatly exacerbated by the recent rise of social media, whose users are often disinhibited by sitting behind a screen with few real-world consequences for whatever they say, and where as the discourse becomes ever more tribal and vicious, so too must a commentator be even more of both in order to guarantee being heard above the babble. “The online world has completely changed the way in which we share and receive ideas,” Welby said in that same Lords debate. “We find ourselves in somewhat uncharted territory, in grey areas where the law is just beginning to catch up, and in a different culture in which the rules of engagement are still being developed and understood.”

The dichotomy between the Clarkson case and those of Brand and Margolyes comes down largely to two factors. The first is that social media is still predominantly an arena populated by younger, more left-leaning people: a 2019 Hansard Society report showed that 45 per cent of social media engagers, but only 35 per cent of the public, supported Labour, whereas for the Tories the figures were 22 per cent and 26 per cent respectively. The second is that Brand and Margolyes were widely perceived as punching up, whereas Clarkson is seen as punching down. Markle herself may be famous and rich, but his remarks play uncomfortably and even irresponsibly in a country where more than 70,000 women were raped in the year ending March 2022 and where only 0.03 per cent of those cases saw charges brought, let alone convictions. Stella Creasy, the MP and women’s rights campaigner, says: “There’s no free speech when 51 per cent of the population live in fear of being targeted for crimes simply for who they are. Challenging that culture is crucial to stopping these crimes.”

Any examination of free speech sooner or later comes up against a simple truth: just because one can say something doesn’t mean that one should. The old adage that one should say something only if it’s right, necessary and kind is for most people overly prescriptive, but when none of these three things apply then it is surely time to ask whether it’s still worth saying.

Welby quoted American philosopher and legal professor Zechariah Chafee – “It is hopeless for the law to draw the line between liberty and license” – before saying: “We can look into our own hearts and make that decision before we speak out. The struggle in a connected world is to distinguish what is morally reprehensible from that which is criminally punishable… If freedom of speech is to flourish in this country despite its enemies, how might we foster those habits of the heart and mind that encourage a society that listens, reflects and responds with generosity and grace?”

Calling for a woman to be humiliated publicly, for a politician to be doused in battery acid, or for a Prime Minister to lose his life: none of these are generous or graceful, no matter how amusing you may or may not find them. Freedom of speech must apply to all alike or it applies to none, but so too less absolutist considerations of decency and kindness. As Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon – cited in Clarkson’s article alongside Rose West as someone he hates a little less than Meghan Markle – says: “Everybody has to exercise the rights we all cherish in our society today with a degree of respect, civility and responsibility.”