LONDON — The war on free speech is about to violate the most sacred recesses of British life—not the home or the workplace, but the pub.

On the night of Wednesday, July 16, the Labour government’s Employment Rights Bill passed its second reading in the House of Lords. If the bill goes into law in its current form—and there is not much to stop it now—Britons can be prosecuted for a remark that a worker in a public space overhears and finds insulting. The law will apply to pubs, clubs, restaurants, soccer grounds, and all the other places where the country gathers and, all too frequently, ridicules one another.

The bill has been dubbed the “Banter Bill” in a last-stand flourish of native wit. But it’s no joke. It is further proof of the state-sponsored decline of free speech in Britain—a decline rightly criticized by Vice President J.D. Vance, who, despite the demands of his day job, still finds time for some forthright banter on X.