Scotland’s free-speech opponents remain as hypocritical as they are illiberal. Shame on them.

Like an old friend you do not actually like very much, the Scottish government’s Offensive Behaviour at Football Act will not go away. It is five years since this offensive piece of legislation was passed and time has done nothing to lessen either its absurdity or its offensiveness.

To recap for readers who, for doubtless honourable reasons, have not kept up with one of the more extraordinary speech-curbing measures passed by any UK legislature in recent years, the bill’s premise is that creating new kinds of thought and speech crime can eliminate thoughts and speech deemed offensive. (Some past reflections on this execrable bill can be found here, here and here.)

And so it came to pass that the Scottish police, with the full backing of the Crown Office and the Scottish government, began their programme of harassing football supporters whose only crime was to behave as football supporters. The singing of songs – speech, that is – would henceforth be deemed a criminal offence if the police could be satisfied that said songs were in some dubious sense ‘offensive’.