The state’s stealthy strangling of The Conservative Woman (TCW)
IN HER role as editor of TCW, Kathy Gyngell did what British journalism has fought to do since John Wilkes and the North Briton; with leonine grit and courage she upheld freedom.
The closure of TCW as a daily site should shame every politician who claims to care about free speech. It should shame Conservative MPs who cheered or tolerated the Online Safety Act. It should shame ministers who mouthed support for liberty while online dissent was being throttled. It should shame the broadcasters who now expect to be treated as ‘trusted news’ while they helped create the climate in which dissenting outlets were cast as dangerous.
A heroine of free speech has been forced to retreat from a platform she built by steely resolve and courage because Britain’s censorship state has made the cost of dissent too high. TCW was not defeated. It was starved of oxygen by people who could not answer it.
