UK in free fall on free speech, expert warns as British MP brands Trump admin grant 'MAGA money meddling'

The U.S. Embassy in London is offering up to $500,000 in grants to bolster shared values between the United States and the United Kingdom, including freedom of speech, due process and limited government, but at least one British critic is rejecting the offered funding as "MAGA money meddling."

Liberal Democrat MP Lisa Smart framed the grant as "Trumps MAGA money meddling in democracy," in a quote to The Guardian.

"We have a proud tradition of liberty and freedom of speech in this country," Smart added.

That tradition, according to free speech defenders, is under threat across the pond.

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"It is a true free speech disaster in the U.K., and they don't even seem to know what's happening," Greg Lukianoff, president of the nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), told Fox News Digital.

Lukianoff posited that the U.K.'s current attitude to free speech means it needs all the help that it can get.

"Whether the help is coming from JD Vance or Trump or maybe some future Democrat who sees the light on this stuff, the U.K. should be accepting help on freedom of speech because they are in crisis, and it's unsustainable," Lukianoff told Fox News Digital.

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The U.S. Embassy in London, in response to Smart's criticisms, noted that Liberal Democrats did not push back on Biden-era grants that could be viewed as political.

In response to the accusation that the U.S. is "meddling in British democracy," the U.S. embassy said in a statement to Fox News Digital, it "is mindful of such concerns, and has discontinued Biden-era public diplomacy spending on divisive ideological projects such as 'climate justice,' LGBTQ activism, and race-based hiring initiatives — none of which, to our recollection, raised such complaints from officials."

President Donald Trump's State Department as a whole is that directed personnel to push a woke diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) agenda on foreign officials and governments, Fox News Digital has learned.

Meanwhile, the FIRE boss rejected the notion that foundational values like free speech are MAGA constructions.

"When it comes to the idea of these being fundamentally tainted ideas, that is very much a higher education, elite-educated concept," he told Fox News Digital.

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The U.K. has imposed a number of new laws restricting speech in the country in recent years, perhaps most notably the 2023 Online Safety Act, which gives the country's regulators the power to sla