Shyam Bhatia is an award-winning author and war reporter based in London. His books include “India’s Nuclear Bomb,” “Brighter than the Baghdad Sun” and Benazir Bhutto’s biography, “Goodbye Shahzadi.”

The U.K.’s ability to laugh at itself — and listen to those who disagree — was once a point of national pride. From the satire of television’s “That Was The Week That Was” and “Spitting Image” to Hyde Park hecklers and heated radio call-ins, the country’s democracy was loud, cheeky and gloriously irreverent.

That Britain is vanishing.

Once admired for its rough-and-tumble pluralism, the U.K. long saw freedom of expression as a badge of honor. It tolerated irreverence — even prized it as proof of liberal strength — and saw dissent as not merely allowed but necessary.

Now, that legacy is being quietly dismantled by legislation and fear, replaced by a more brittle state that polices protests and placards, as well as satire, sarcasm and even private WhatsApp messages; a state that, in the name of public order, criminalizes the freedoms once used to mock the powerful.

Take the case of Marianne Sorrell: An 80-year-old retired teacher who was arrested in Cardiff for silently holding a placard at a peaceful pro-Palestine rally. She was detained and held in custody for nearly 27 hours. Police searched her home, seizing items such as books, percussion instruments, and a walking stick. Her bail conditions even barred her from returning to Wales.

Her crime? Quietly dissenting.

Then came Jon Farley: A 67-year-old former teacher in Leeds who, at a Gaza vigil, held up a cartoon from “Private Eye” — Britain’s longest-running satirical magazine, famed for lampooning politicians and exposing hypocrisy.

The cartoon in question was mocking the government’s anti-terror rhetoric. And in response, Farley was arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000, handcuffed and interrogated for hours. “I was searched and treated like a criminal — for holding a satirical cartoon,” he said. And when he explained where the cartoon came from, by his account, the officers just looked blank.

The magazine’s editor Ian Hislop was alarmed too: “If we’ve reached a point where holding up a ‘Private Eye’ cartoon gets you arrested under the Terrorism Act, then we’ve truly lost the plot.”

But the intrusions aren’t limited to public space; they’re inside British homes as well.

Earlier this year, Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine — the parents of a 9-year-old girl in Hertfordshire — were arrested in front of their daughter after exchanging messages critical of her school’s new headteacher in a WhatsApp group. Six officers arrived at their home, seized their devices, and the couple was interrogated for hours over allegations of malicious communications.

“We’ve gone from being concerned parents to criminal suspects — over a private conversation,” said Allen.

The climate of fear has even extended into Britain’s comedy circuit. A couple of years ago, comedian Joe Lycett revealed he’d been reported to the police by an audience member offended by one of his jokes. Officers launched an investigation and asked Lycett to submit a written explanation of the routine.

“To be fair to them the fuzz were very nice about it,” he later said. “But felt they had a duty to investigate.”

In the end, no charges were filed, but the case highlights how lighthearted satire can trigger official scrutiny — and why many in the profession may choose silence over summons.

The reach of censorship now extends to include the murky terrain of “hate” as well. Introduced with the intention of protecting marginalized groups, hate crimes legislation can be applied with disturbing vagueness, with one widely cited example of police in 2020 investigating more than 120,000 so-called “non-crime hate incidents” — remarks that aren’t deemed criminal but are still logged in official records, sometimes affecting future employment checks.

There’s other legislation treading similarly hazy ground: In 2022, the government passed the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, giving law enforcement expanded powers to shut down protests deemed “noisy” or “disruptive.” It was a watershed moment, where volume not violence became grounds for arrest. And the law now acts as a muffler on public expression, particularly for those on the margins.

Meanwhile, new legislation like the Online Safety Act empowers regulators to censor digital content deemed “harmful,” which is a dangerously elastic term. The act is meant as a shield for children and vulnerable users but, in practice, it extends state reach into satire, parody and legitimate political critique. And with pressure from the U.S. mounting after last week’s visit from Washington’s Congressional delegation, it’s becoming a transatlantic problem.

When speech becomes risk, silence becomes strategy — and democratic discourse collapses inward. This isn’t about law and order. It’s about fear and control. And while the government insists it’s a matter of “balance” and protecting people from harm, especially in a volatile political climate, balance implies proportionality — and there’s nothing proportionate about arresting an elderly woman for a slogan or raiding a family home over a WhatsApp message.

These examples aren’t outliers. They’re signals of a state clutching its narrative so tightly, it risks suffocating dissent altogether.

None of these people were violent. None incited hatred. None posed any credible threat to public safety. Yet they were all treated as suspects — watched, arrested, interrogated and, in some cases, banned from expressing themselves again.

And what of the baton-wielding police arresting elderly citizens as if they were threats to national security? They’re increasingly detached from the cultural heritage they claim to protect.

There is, in all this, a sense of something quietly slipping away — not just rights but a deeper understanding of what it meant to be British. The tragedy isn’t just the loss of liberty but the fading memory of having once possessed it.

Of course, the injustice is nothing new — what’s new is who it’s reaching. For decades, many people of color in Britain endured surveillance, suspicion and suppression, often without the headlines or outrage. Now, much of the majority-white population is getting its first taste of what others have long known: Free expression in the U.K. has always been conditional — on who you are, what you say and how palatable your truth is.

There’s a reason comedians are self-censoring, journalists are consulting lawyers before making jokes, and people are hesitating before forwarding memes — in case it’s misunderstood, flagged as offensive or taken out of context.

We’re witnessing the quiet dismantling of a democratic norm: The right to be irreverent, critical or even foolish without being criminalized. British icon George Orwell warned us of this: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

But this isn’t just a domestic crisis. It touches everyone — even those just passing through. The U.K. once drew visitors not only for its cathedrals and castles but for its noisy, opinionated democracy. Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park — the open-air emblem of unfiltered public expression — was a highlight for many. Today, the space stands eerily silent. The crowds are thinner. The speakers fewer. The spirit diminished.

And yet, Britain continues to lecture others. London-based human rights organizations are quick to highlight repression abroad, but perhaps the time has come to turn their gaze homeward. The erosion of civil liberties isn’t just something that happens in faraway autocracies. It is happening here — quietly, legally and with increasing speed.

So, a word of caution: The Britain many once imagined — witty, tolerant, open — is no longer here. In today’s reality, a careless remark in a pub, an ironic slogan on a shirt or a misheard joke can attract a knock on the door.

The spirit that made this island loud, plural and proud is flickering. And while Britain isn’t lost yet, it certainly needs watching.