"We're not that keen on free speech in this country." These words were said to me by a tabloid journalist in London the day after two men gunned their way into the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris. At a time when most people were digging down into comforting half-truths and flagrant untruths, here at least were some honestly spoken words. And although recent events in Britain are not comparable to Paris and Copenhagen, think back to the days before Paris and you will see that Britain is a country which now has trouble with free speech. The problem runs through our laws, policymakers and public.

(Illustration by Michael Daley)

Early in January a major news story was whether the Sun columnist Katie Hopkins would be arrested for tweeting about "sweaty jocks". Hundreds of complaints were made to the police and "Police Scotland" announced that it would "thoroughly investigate any reports of offensive or criminal behaviour online and anyone found to be responsible will be robustly dealt with". Hopkins had been reported for "hate crimes" before, including once live on television after criticising a fat woman's size. Such recourse to the law is now the norm in Britain.

Recent freedom of information requests revealed that in the UK in the past three years nearly 20,000 adults and 2,000 children (the youngest aged nine) have been investigated by the police for comments made online. Like everything else, there usually needs to be a "celebrity" link to make these stories public knowledge. But Twitter is now full of people and groups who not only report anything that offends them as a crime but encourage others to do the same. Some are recipients of public funds from a system which encourages reporting of what it terms "hate crime".

The truth is that Britain's free speech sinews were flabby long before their most serious challenge came along. Few people wanted to defend the right to be rude on Twitter. Nobody wanted to defend a Sun columnist who makes a career out of meanness. It is hardly surprising that there is barely anyone left to defend people who might have offended, as we are always threateningly reminded, around one and a half billion Muslims. The idea that we might need to retain the right to offend the religious must have got lost around the time we were wondering what to do with people who tell fat people they are fat.

Britain's free-speech problems have been mounting for years. The first mistakes were the legal ones over what does and does not constitute free speech. Even free-speech absolutists support incitement laws. But the bar of what constitutes incitement has been greatly lowered in recent years. You used to need a mob with pitchforks in front of you; now the perception has arisen that the public are perpetually in pitchfork mode, so that almost anything addressed to them could be incitement. The last Labour government consistently worked to lower this bar, even criminalising speech simply deemed "offensive". It is also worth recalling that in 2006 that same government came within one vote of passing a Racial and Religious Hatred Act which would have criminalised all criticism or ridiculing of religion. The government's defeat did not close the debate. When the current government overturned the worst portion of the Public Order Act (relating to "insulting words") the Labour opposition expressed deep concern over how this might negatively affect minority groups. This was a great theme of the Blair years and it has remained with us-the idea that minority groups are especially beleaguered and must therefore have special protections from offensive words.