Perhaps we should not be surprised that while this loss of confidence emerges other people should crop up to claim as free speech that which is no such thing. In January there was another eruption of anger from university vice-chancellors complaining about what they claim are government attempts to infringe free speech on campus. What they are resisting are renewed attempts by government to get public bodies to comply with its "Prevent" anti-terrorism programme. It seems a bit rich for  university vice-Chancellors who have failed for years to prevent terrorist recruitment and real incitement on campuses to claim these are in fact free-speech issues. Recruitment and incitement on behalf of foreign terrorist groups is already illegal, and likely to remain so. The fact that it happens on a university campus does not make it otherwise. Simultaneously in the media there are supporters of the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden who portray his theft and dissemination of thousands of British and American national security secrets in such a light. At very few times in history would freedom of expression and the "freedom" to steal vast swathes of secret government information and then dump it in such a fashion that only enemies of the state could gain from it have been confused. But they are widely confused here, and it represents only a portion of the mix-up.

When free speech includes the right to betray national security but not the right to call someone a mean name then free speech has become a meaningless term to protect whatever our particular prejudices happen to be and to criminalise everyone else's. Nobody in 21st-century Britain seems to have the guts of the French or the Danes. And if there is a reason why nobody in Britain seems willing to die for freedom of speech it is probably because at some point in the not-too-distant past we lost our passion for living with it.