The Metropolitan Police have been told to focus on ‘serious crime‘ in a veiled swipe by Downing Street after Father Ted creator Graham Linehan was arrested by armed police at Heathrow Airport over ‘anti-trans’ tweets.
The Irish comedy writer, whose successful career was derailed by his views, says he was treated like a ‘terrorist’ before being quizzed by police over ‘three tweets’ he posted in April.
The Met Police has confirmed the 57-year-old was arrested on suspicion of inciting violence at around 1pm on Monday ‘in relation to posts on X’.
JK Rowling and Elon Musk are among several high-profile names to speak out after Linehan was arrested as soon as he stepped off an American Airlines flight from Arizona to London.
Tesla and X CEO Musk described Britain as a ‘police state’, while Rowling fumed: ‘What the f*** has the UK become? This is totalitarianism. Utterly deplorable.’
The gender-critical campaigner leapt to Linehan’s defence just weeks after he accused her of failing to back him after he was cancelled over his similar views.
Downing Street declined to comment on the arrest of comedian Graham Linehan, but said the Prime Minister and Home Secretary had been ‘clear’ about their ‘priorities for crime and policing’.
Asked about the arrest, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: ‘That’s an operational matter for the police, but the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have been clear about where their priorities for crime and policing are, and that’s tackling anti-social behaviour, shoplifting, street crime, as well as reducing serious violent crimes like knife crime and violence against women.’
Father Ted creator Graham Linehan claims he has been arrested over his tweets. He claims he had to go to a hospital (pictured) because he was so stressed
Keir Starmer’s government has been accused of turning the UK into a ‘police state’ by Elon Musk
JK Rowling, Robert Jenrick and others have led the outrage over the arrest of Linehan today
Asked whether the Government agreed with author JK Rowling’s claim that the UK was now a ‘totalitarian’ state, the spokesman said: ‘No.’
Kemi Badenoch blasted the arrest as ‘thought policing’ under the Labour government, saying police should not be monitoring social media for ‘hurty words’.
The Conservative leader said: ‘Sending five officers to arrest a man for a tweet isn’t policing, it’s politics. Under Labour, we routinely see burglary, knife crime and assaults go unsolved, while resources are wasted on thought-policing.
‘It’s time this government told the police their job is to protect the public, not monitor social media for hurty words. The Conservatives would stop this nonsense on day 1 and make public safety the first duty of policing, instead of pandering to fringe ideologies.’
Piers Morgan accused Britain of ‘turning into North Korea’, Robert Jenrick blasted it as ‘a complete waste of police time’ and Nigel Farage said he will raise the arrest when he meets allies of Donald Trump to discuss free speech in Washington this week.
Linehan’s arrest is the latest in a string of heavy-handed police responses over ‘thought crimes’, with writers, councillors and parents talking in school WhatsApp groups targeted in recent months.
The most high-profile ‘tweet police’ case involved Lucy Connolly, the wife of a Tory councillor who was released from prison last month after being handed a 31-month sentence for a racist tweet after the Southport attack.
After his arrest, Linehan claimed he was escorted to A&E ‘because the stress nearly killed me’, adding that his blood pressure was recorded at over 200mm Hg by a nurse.
Kemi Badenoch hit out at the Labour government and criticised the Met Police for ‘thought policing’
Tesla CEO Elon Musk along with JK Rowling criticised the government after Linehan’s arrest
Rowling leapt to Linehan’s defence just weeks after he accused her of failing to defend him after he was cancelled over his similar views
The creator of Father Ted and The IT Crowd has shared the tweets which he says police arrested him over.
One from April 20 said: ‘If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.’
A second tweet, on April 19, was a picture of a trans rally with the caption: ‘A photo you can smell.’ The third was a follow-up to this tweet which said: ‘I hate them. Misogynists and homophobes. F*** em.’
Condemning the arrest on X this afternoon, Piers Morgan wrote: ‘What’s happened to [Linehan] today is absolutely ridiculous. Five armed cops arresting him at Heathrow for tweets mocking the scandal of biological men invading women’s spaces? When it comes to free speech, Britain’s turning into North Korea.’
Shadow justice secretary Mr Jenrick also weighed in, writing: ‘This is ridiculous and a complete waste of police time. The police only respond to 1 in 5 reported shoplifting offences, but deployed 5 armed officers to arrest a comedian over three tweets. We desperately need to end this nonsense and go after actual criminals.’
LBC presenter Iain Dale fumed: ‘This is an outrage. [Linehan] has been pretty vile to me in the past on Twitter, but I stand with him on this outrageous experience… What an utter waste of police time.’
And Tory MP Neil O’Brien wrote: ‘Britain is now a total laughing stock – a country where we arrest the authors of light comedies and interrogate them about their tweets. It would be laughable it it wasn’t so serious.’
The Free Speech Union has said it will fund Linehan’s legal defence ‘against these preposterous allegations and the disproportionate response from the police’.
Describing his dramatic arrest on his Substack blog, Linehan wrote: ‘The moment I stepped off the plane at Heathrow, five armed police officers were waiting. Not one, not two—five. They escorted me to a private area and told me I was under arrest for three tweets.
These are the three tweets which Graham Linehan claims he was arrested over
‘In a country where paedophiles escape sentencing, where knife crime is out of control, where women are assaulted and harassed every time they gather to speak, the state had mobilised five armed officers to arrest a comedy writer for this tweet.
‘I promise you, I am not making this up.’
He said he was ‘arrested at an airport like a terrorist, locked in a cell like a criminal, taken to hospital because the stress nearly killed me, and banned from speaking online’.
‘To me, this proves one thing beyond doubt: the UK has become a country that is hostile to freedom of speech, hostile to women, and far too accommodating to the demands of violent, entitled, abusive men who have turned the police into their personal goon squad,’ he added.
Linehan claims that even when he handed over his passport in Arizona, officials told him he did not have a seat and had to be re-ticketed.
‘At the time, I thought it was just the sort of innocent snafu that makes air travel such a joy,’ he said. ‘But in hindsight, it was clear I’d been flagged.’
Linehan says he burst into laughter when he first saw the police officers – alleging that some were even displaying a ‘polite bafflement’ over the arrest.
He claims a van was arranged to meet him on the tarmac ‘so I didn’t have to be perp-walked through the airport like a terrorist’.
Linehan added: ‘At Heathrow police station, my belt, bag, and devices were confiscated. Then I was shown into a small green-tiled cell with a bunk, a silver toilet in the corner and a message from Crimestoppers on the ceiling next to a concave mirror that was presumably there to make you reflect on your life choices.’
He says ‘by some miracle’ he managed to sleep but he was then subjected to the quizzing about his tweets.
Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan speaks to the media outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court on May 12, where he pleaded not guilty to harassing a transgender woman and damaging her phone
But he added: ‘The police themselves, for the most part, were consistently decent throughout this farce. Some were even Father Ted fans.
‘Thank God the Catholic Church never had with the police the special relationship granted to trans activists. The male officers were mostly polite but clearly nonplussed by the politics of it all—just doing their jobs, however insane those jobs had become.
‘The female officers seemed more tuned in to what was actually happening. One mentioned the Sandie Peggie case in a certain way, and I realised I was among friends, even if they couldn’t admit it.’
Ms Peggie was suspended by NHS Fife after she complained about having to share a changing room with Dr Beth Upton, a trans medic, at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, on Christmas Eve 2023.
Linehan says he has a single bail condition: ‘I am not to go on Twitter. That’s it. No threats, no speeches about the seriousness of my crimes—just a legal gag order designed to shut me up while I’m the UK, and a demand I face a further interview in October.’
A spokesman for the Met Police told the Mail: ‘On Monday, 1 September at 13:00hrs officers arrested a man at Heathrow Airport after he arrived on an inbound American Airlines flight.
‘The man in his 50s was arrested on suspicion of inciting violence. This is in relation to posts on X.
‘The arrest was made by officers from the MPS Aviation Unit. It is routine for officers policing airports to carry firearms. These were not drawn or used at any point during the arrest.
‘After being taken to police custody, officers became concerned for his health and he was taken to hospital. His condition is neither life-threatening nor life-changing.
‘He has now been bailed pending further investigation.’
Linehan is facing trial at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Thursday over two separate charges. One is in relation to harassing trans activist Sophia Brooks on social media and the other for damaging Brooks’s mobile phone in October.
He denied the charges at a hearing on May 12.
Last month, Linehan accused Rowling of failing to defend him. But he will no doubt welcome her support today.
He told how he had backed her strong views on SNP’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which she previously dubbed ‘the biggest assault on the rights of Scottish women and girls’ in her lifetime.
But he claimed she failed to defend his right to free speech when he received backlash over his comments regarding trans people, saying Rowling’s ‘silence’ made him feel ‘toxic’ and isolated.
Lucy Connolly
Lucy Connolly, 42, was arrested by police after she tweeted following the Southport attack
Lucy Connolly, 42, was arrested by police after she tweeted following the Southport attack amid a wave of misinformation that falsely claimed the killer was a migrant who had arrived in the UK on board a small boat.
The post, which she later deleted, said: ‘Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the b******* for all I care… if that makes me racist so be it.’
It came as riots erupted across the country which did see several hotels set on fire with people still inside.
Connolly was convicted of publishing written material that incited racial hatred and handed a prison sentence of two years and seven months. She has since been released from jail.
Robert Moss
Robert Moss (pictured) was allegedly told by Staffordshire Police that his right to ‘freedom of expression’ must be ‘limited to maintain public safety and order’ after he was arrested on suspicion of malicious communications on July 8
Robert Moss, 56, was arrested by police officers in July after criticising his fire chief bosses online.
The former firefighter served Staffordshire fire and rescue service for 28 years and even worked as the county’s Fire Brigade Union’s secretary.
An employment tribunal in 2023 later found that he had been wrongly dismissed from his position, with a judgement ruling it had been an ‘unfair’ decision.
Following this, in a private Facebook group, the father-of-one had provided advice to firefighters, alongside making several critical comments regarding the fire service’s management.
At a bail hearing held at Newcastle-under-Lyme magistrates’ court, the police’s ‘gagging clause’ was eventually overturned due to concerns about the draconian approach by officers.
Julian Foulkes
Julian Foulkes (pictured), from Gillingham, was detained at his home by six officers from Kent Police – the very same force he had given ten years of his life to – after he questioned a supporter of pro-Palestine demonstrations on X in November 2023
Julian Foulkes, from Gillingham, was detained at his home by six officers from Kent Police – the very same force he had given ten years of his life to – after he questioned a supporter of pro-Palestine demonstrations on X in November 2023.
In the context of a rise in protests at the start of the Israel-Hamas war – and reports of an anti-Semitic mob storming a Russian airport – Mr Foulkes tweeted an activist: ‘One step away from storming Heathrow looking for Jewish arrivals…’
Mr Foulkes was later handcuffed on his own doorstep by uniformed officers equipped with batons and pepper spray.
Officers searched his home and made comments on his ‘very Brexity’ book collection, before detaining the 71-year-old for eight hours.
This month, Kent Police confirmed the caution was a mistake and had been removed from Mr Foulkes’s record.
In a letter sent to Mr Foulkes’s solicitors, the force repeated an apology from the chief constable Tim Smith for the ‘distress caused by the actions of his officers’.
Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine
Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine with their daughters, Sascha, nine, and Francesca
The parents of two young children were locked in a police cell for eleven hours after complaining on WhatsApp about the teacher recruitment process at their daughter’s primary school.
Times Radio producer Maxie Allen and his partner Rosalind Levine were arrested on suspicion of harassment and malicious communications after a ‘trivial’ dispute.
CCTV shows six uniformed police officers descending on their suburban home before they were led away in front of their crying daughter.
After a five-week investigation, Hertfordshire Constabulary finally concluded there was no case to answer.
Mr Allen, 50, branded the police action ‘dystopian’ and a ‘massive overreach’, and accused Cowley Hill Primary School in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, of trying to ‘silence awkward parents’.
