I would suggest taking that stat with a big grain of salt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB3WVygAM8I

I mean yes and no.

Looking through that article, one of the examples is "The wife of a conservative politician was sentenced to 31 months in prison for what police said was an unacceptable post."

But if you dig into what happened - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3wkzgpjxvo

"The wife of a Conservative councillor has been jailed for 31 months after calling for hotels housing asylum seekers to be set on fire."

This is pretty clear incitement to violence.

The UK has problems, but it's not very useful to throw all of these cases together to make a big number, it really rather undermines the point.

(edit - looking at the video posted in a sibling comment is enlightening. The number actually convicted of anything is around ~400 and this includes a lot of direct incitement to violence, stalking and all sorts. Which are similarly illegal in the US. The US right-wing talking points are as usual a load of crap.

None of which is to say I think the UK has things right, and that number of arrests is clearly a problem in itself, but as usual the "OH MY GOD look at what's happening over there! Muh free speech!" from the US commenters is hypocritical and myopic)

There are a lot of things you can worry about in life. I'm not sure not visiting countries due to things zero people have had a problem with is productive. I'd be more worried visiting the US with the ICE stuff, although I accept that's rare but there's real cases like https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/21/karen-newton...