by James Corbett
corbettreport.com
October 18, 2026

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: the UK is an Orwellian police state.

What’s that? You have heard that one before?

OK, how about this one: the UK is actually worse than Orwellian.

Take the case of Joanne May of Suffolk, England. Just last week, two constables on patrol showed up at May’s door to deliver an official police caution about an online post that she didn’t even make. The video of the incident is online, and you can read about the interaction at Reclaim The Net.

Or take the case of Graham Linehan. He’s the famed Irish comedy writer behind such hit British television shows as Father Ted and The IT Crowd. In September 2025, Linehan was arrested at Heathrow Airport for having made “transphobic” tweets six months earlier. So egregious was this tyrannical crackdown on free speech that Linehan later received an official apology from the Metropolitan Police and £25,000 in compensation. Now, even the Met’s own watchdog is criticizing the police’s actions in this case.

Sadly, stories like these will come as no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention to the assault on free speech in Britain of late.

The latest Big Brother Watch Report, “Britain’s Free Speech Problem,” quantifies this assault. It notes that British police have arrested an astounding 62,199 people for “communications offenses” over the last five years. For the record, that’s more speech-related arrests than in China, Russia or any of the other countries we’re constantly told are the “enemies of human rights and Western democratic values.”

But what you may not know about this sorry state of affairs is that the UK police state did not spring up overnight and it is not the result of the capricious whims of this or that police officer. It is actually a part of a vast bureaucratic infrastructure for speech policing that has been carefully erected over the past two decades. This infrastructure includes a deliberately bewildering array of investigative units, task forces, directorates and government ministries whose existence has been largely concealed from the public and whose operations are shrouded in secrecy.

Ignorance of this bureaucracy cannot be allowed to continue. If you’re British, you should know about these threats to your speech. And if you’re not in Britain, this editorial should prompt you to investigate how many similar agencies, police units and task forces exist in your own local area.

The National Centre for Information Defence

Last month, Andy Burnham used the occasion of his first address to the United Nations General Assembly as Prime Minister of the UK to announce the creation of the newest member of the UK’s vast thought policing bureaucracy, the UK National Centre for Information Defence (NCID).

According to the UK’s Ministry of Justice, the new body will “sit in the Prime Minister’s Office and Cabinet Office” and will “focus on hostile-state disinformation and AI-enabled deepfakes that the government says damage British interests and social cohesion.”

Translation: the NCID will act as the Prime Minister’s personal speech police and dutifully label any information he doesn’t like as Russian disinformation.

Why Russian disinformation? Because, according to Burnham, those dastardly Russkies are responsible for: creating bots and fake websites, falsifying newspaper articles, forging credentials of venerated British institutions (including the beloved BBC!), interfering with the UK’s 2019 general election and “stok[ing] tensions and unrest in the wake of horrific events.” And they’re probably stealing candies from babies, spitting on the cross and farting in your general direction even as you read this.

Yes, the new office is being justified by recourse to the same old “Russian misinformation” hysteria that has proven so useful to would-be censors of online information in the US in recent years. Will wonders never cease?

Research, Information and Communications Unit

The Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU) is, as powerbase.info reports, a “strategic communications unit within the UK’s Homeland Security Group.”

In 2007, The Sunday Times reported on the origin of this shadowy government entity. SPOILER ALERT! So Ministry of Truth-y is this “Communications Unit” that even The Sunday Times‘ government sources have to concede it’s a bit of a throwback to Red Scare times.

The alleged airline plot in August 2006 caused another of the government’s periodic rethinks. For all the work on pursuing terrorists, the government realised that its strategy on preventing more taking their place was not working. After a bureaucratic tussle, the Home Office has become the centre for a new strategic hub for all counterterrorism policy: the Office of Security and Counter Terrorism. The rethink also led to the creation of the nebulously titled Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU). Officials deny this is in any way a propaganda department, although one conceded: “It does sound horribly cold war.”

So, what does RICU do? As always, it depends who you ask.

According to the UK government, “RICU aims to understand and counter terrorist and extremist ideologies” by providing “internal analysis on terrorist use of propaganda and exploitation of the internet.”

According to a 2023 investigation, however, RICU produces reports identifying “key texts” for “white nationalists/supremacists.” Among the works listed in one such report: Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Huxley’s Brave New World, the poems of G.K. Chesterton and, yes, Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The report also noted that interest in the works of Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, Tennyson, Kipling and Edmund Burke constituted “warning signs of potential extremism” and, bizarrely, even declared that the BBC’s own “Great British Railway Journeys” program was “of interest to the far right.”

When directly confronted about this affront to civilization by one House of Lords peer, the government responded with the usual political sidestep:

The books and television shows referenced in these products were not identified as ‘far-right’ and ‘white-supremacist.’ The inclusion of these items of media was an illustration of the types of mainstream content shared in online spaces that are known to be frequented by terrorist and extremist influencers and susceptible audiences.

Translation: Don’t worry! We’re not going after these books. We’re only going after the people who seem to like these books!

Doesn’t that make you feel safe?

National Security and Online Information Team

As the UK government’s own handy-dandy fact sheet informs us, the National Security and Online Information Team (NSOIT)—formerly known as the “Counter disinformation unit” (CDU)—was “first set up within the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport in 2019[,] and it has since responded to periods of acute disinformation risk, including Covid-19.”

NSOIT’s official purpose is to “understand disinformation narratives” and it “attempts to artificially manipulate the information environment to ensure that the government understands the scope and reach of harmful mis and disinformation and can take appropriate action.”

But what does that mean in reality? Why, it means flagging inconvenient opinions as “disinformation” in order to get them scrubbed from the internet, naturally!

Specifically, a 2023 investigation by The Telegraph documented how the secretive unit not only flagged “misinformation” during the scamdemic against the Cabinet Office’s own guidance but also “responded“ to that misinformation.

What the unit meant by “responding” was varied. In some cases it involved an online rebuttal. But in others, the DCMS used its position with the social media companies as what it called a “trusted flagger” to fast-track a request for content to be removed.

So obviously does this type of “response” cross over into outright government censorship of unpopular opinion that Michelle Donelan, the Member of Parliament who took formal control of the unit in 2022, tried to have it shut down.

The Telegraph understands that Michelle Donelan, Mr [Oliver] Dowden’s eventual successor [as head of the unit], tried to have the CDU shut down after she took over at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in September last year.

She was uncomfortable that the unit was flagging social media posts by British citizens that were neither disinformation—false information that is spread deliberately—nor misinformation—false information that is inadvertently spread.

Donelan was evidently unsuccessful in her mission. The unit was merely rebranded as NSOIT and continues to operate to this day.

Defending Democracy Taskforce

Set up in 2022, the Defending Democracy Taskforce is a whole-of-government body whose primary focus, according to a UK government press release, is “to protect the democratic integrity of the UK from threats of foreign interference,” including “foreign interference in our elections and electoral processes; disinformation; physical and cyber threats to our democratic institutions and those who represent them; foreign interference in public office, political parties and universities; and transnational repression in the UK.”

But what it’s really about is stopping people from saying mean things to politicians.

Just ask Dan Jarvis, who, as UK Minister of State for Security, chairs the taskforce. Earlier this year, he addressed Parliament about the Defending Democracy Taskforce’s mission and its vital role in protecting the state from people who tweet mean things at him and his MP buddies.

Let me be equally clear about our message to those who threaten, intimidate or harass those participating in our democracy—and this applies to individuals and groups alike: anonymity is not safety, no one is beyond reach, and whether the offence occurs online or offline, those responsible should expect to be investigated and prosecuted.

The taskforce’s critics, like Kate Dewsnip of the University of Liverpool School of Law and Social Justice, outline the various problems that such a unit raises.

For example, notes Dewsnip, the taskforce “points towards a modern trend of securitising democracy,” turning questions about elections and political participation from a constitutional and legislative matter into a national security matter.

And, she adds, as an “executive coordination mechanism situated within the National Security Council machinery,” it is “neither a statutory body nor an institution established by Parliament,” which raises “important questions relating to accountability and oversight.”

As a result, the taskforce’s very existence poses troubling questions about the limits of its power and the nature of its authority.

Who determines what constitutes a threat to democracy and, consequently, what falls within the Taskforce’s remit? As highlighted above, the scope of the Taskforce’s operations has recently expanded beyond threats posed by foreign interference, cyber threats and hostile state activity—relatively well-defined categories—to encompass issues such as online abuse, intimidation of politicians and democratic participation. Although clearly matters of concern, what constitutes ‘defending democracy’ in the context of online abuse and democratic participation is not necessarily clear-cut. Given that the Taskforce has the capacity to shape policy agendas, intelligence priorities and institutional responses, questions inevitably arise regarding the legal and constitutional basis upon which its remit is determined and its activities are overseen. The Taskforce’s budget is not publicly available.

In other words, a shadowy government body of unknown provenance and questionable legality is now coordinating actions across the entire government in order to stop people from criticizing government officials. And all of this is being sold to the public in the name of “defending democracy.”

One would be hard-pressed to find a better example of the old adage, “Any given government program will do the opposite of its name.”

Hybrid Threats Directorate

The Hybrid Threats Directorate (HTD) started life in 2022 as the Information Threats and Influence Directorate (ITID). It changed its name to the Cyber, Information and Tech Threats Directorate (CITT) in 2025 before evolving into the HTD earlier this year.

Any government “directorate” that has to change its name so frequently is undoubtedly involved in some shady shenanigans, but when that directorate is in charge of “using advanced analytical approaches including open-source intelligence, AI, linguistic skills and data science” to “counter malign information operations,” you know it’s especially shady.

Thankfully, David Miller was able to uncover many of those shenanigans in an expose for MintPressNews earlier this year. His article, titled “Leaked Documents Reveal UK Intelligence Operation Targeting Russia, Iran, Gaza and Beyond,” uses leaked documents to report on how the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) set up a “clandestine new propaganda unit.”

Directed by MI6 and hidden behind civilian cover, the unit exists to professionalize and expand the British state’s long-running practice of promoting disinformation under the guise of ‘countering disinformation.’

The article walks through several twists and turns as the FCDO folded a bewildering array of “counter-disinformation” units and organizations—from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Russian Language Program to the Institute for Statecraft’s Integrity Initiative to the National Security Council’s Counter Disinformation and Media Development Program—into the Information Threats and Influence Directorate, which, among other things, engaged in espionage and subversive activities in target countries like Russia. But the ITID’s cover was blown when the FSB, Russia’s intelligence service, leaked sensitive data on several British “diplomats”—whom they labelled as spies—to the Russian press. That’s when the ITID was reorganized as the HTD.

The entire twisted tale is worth reading in its entirety, but suffice it to say Miller demonstrates how this amorphous body has been targeting the UK’s perceived “enemies” in the information space, including Russia, China, Iran and Gaza. He also speculates that the HTD had a role in spreading the disinformation behind the Golders Green false flag event earlier this year that attempted to spin up an international incident by pinning the blame for a meaningless act of arson on Iranian terrorists.

And when and if the HTD gets exposed for waging active psychological operations against their own citizens (and the people of the world) in the name of “countering disinformation,” they will doubtless change their name again and retreat further into the bowels of the UK’s deep state bureaucracy.

The pattern is unmistakable: every time this MI6-directed propaganda operation is exposed, it is simply rebadged and relaunched, always with expanded targets. The Islamic Republic is now firmly in its sights. And more and more repressive attacks on Shia Muslims, Palestinians and all who support them are in the works.

Using a “counter-misinformation” body to spread misinformation. What will those crafty Brits think of next?

Need I go on…?

…because I could! I haven’t even mentioned the Cabinet Office’s (officially disbanded) “Rapid Response Unit,” let alone the “National Cyber Force“ or the “Media Monitoring Unit“ or the countless other organizations that are dedicated to censoring and surveilling British citizens’ speech and that are buried so far in the UK’s governmental bureaucracy they haven’t been noticed yet.

But I assume you get the point. There are so many units, taskforces, councils, directorates and teams dedicated to monitoring and censoring free speech that it’s difficult to keep track of them all. And that’s just the ones in the UK. Do we really think the situation is fundamentally better in the US, or in Canada, or in Japan, or anywhere else in the “free and democratic” developed world?

Add in all the non-governmental organizations that are similarly devoted to identifying and censoring politically unpopular speech online and in the real world and you start to realize the true extent of the problem.

And as bad as this is, it’s about to get even worse! That is, if Lisa Nandy has her way.

As Kit Knightly reports over at Off-Guardian, Nandy, the UK’s Culture and Technology Secretary, is lamentIng that the UK’s existing infrastructure for policing and curtailing free speech online—including the soon-to-be-implemented social media ban—does not go far enough. Now, she’s calling for an even more powerful police state to “protect” women and children from that nefarious internet bugaboo, “online harms.”

“This is a staging post to what must be a very active interventionist state, policing and regulating the online space so that people are safe,” she told The Guardian last month.

Nandy has now vowed to go further. “We shouldn’t accept that this is the end,” the culture secretary said before her speech at the Labour party conference, which will be introduced by Georgia Harrison, a campaigner against image-based sexual abuse. “This is a staging post to what must be a very active interventionist state, policing and regulating the online space so that people are safe.”

By now, everyone with their head screwed on straight knows that the various draconian restrictions that are being implemented in the name of “protecting children” from “online harms” are actually intended to be used as a bludgeon to prevent people from speaking politically uncomfortable truths online. The 62,199 speech arrests the UK’s police have made in the last five years is testament to that.

It follows, then, that the powers-that-shouldn’t-be genuinely do fear people speaking their minds freely. Free speech is such a threat to their power that they are prepared to set up any number of units and taskforces, commit any amount of money and enact any number of laws to prevent people from voicing their anti-government opinions in public.

It also follows that the only way the jackbooted thugs of this encroaching Orwellian thoughtpolice state can truly win is if we stop speaking truth to power.

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