Michael Gove among senior Tories urging ministers to hold PayPal to account after the US online payment giant abruptly cancelled the accounts of free speech campaigners
By Isolde Walters For Mailonline:
Leading figures in the Conservative party including Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Gove and Sir Graham Brady have demanded ministers hold PayPal to account after it abruptly cancelled a group which campaigns for freedom of speech.
Toby Young, who set up the Free Speech Union and the Daily Sceptic news blog said three of his PayPal accounts were closed by the American online payments giant without explanation last week for an alleged violation of its policies.
The FSU defends victims of so-called ‘cancel culture’ and academics accused of holding ‘un-woke’ opinions, while the Daily Sceptic was set up to scrutinise lockdown policies and their impact.
PayPal has so far refused to say which of its rules the accounts had broken.
Now dozens of Tory party grandees and peers from across the political divide have now written to Business Secretary Jacob Rees Mogg accusing PayPal of censorship, claiming it was ‘hard to avoid construing its actions as an orchestrated, politically-motivated move to silence critical or dissenting views’.
The letter, signed by 42 MPs and peers, warns that PayPal appears to be using ‘its dominant position in the market’ to ‘impose private economic sanctions on organisations of whose views it disapproves and thus to restrict their ability to engage in political debate in the public square’.
The politicians – who include Labour MP Graham Stringer – are urging ministers to demonstrate the Government’s commitment to free speech by demanding an explanation from PayPal for its actions.
They also call for the company to release any remaining donations or payments that it has confiscated unfairly from Mr Young’s accounts.
Watch: ‘We see this kind of thing happening in China… We’re now beginning to see the same thing in the West.’ Toby Young, Founder and Director of the Free Speech Union, describes PayPal’s decision to shut his accounts as ‘a real assault on free speech’ from ‘woke corporations’. GB News
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