A timely warning here about the way in which the EU is shutting down freedom of expression in the name of ‘human rights’. The story ran in the Financial Times two days ago. Ostensibly about criminalising denial or trivialisation of the Holocaust, the measure will also make it make it mandatory for all EU member states to punish public incitement ‘to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin’. As was said repeatedly in the debates over Britain’s proposed law against incitement to religious hatred, hatred is a slippery concept and this would criminalise essential debate. Once ideas are criminalised — including Holocaust denial — we are all sunk. What’s more, this is being imposed upon us by the EU, to whom we in the UK have sold our democratic birthright. The British Parliament eventually neutered its own proposed law against incitement to religious hatred — only to have it introduced now, apparently, through the European back door.