Badenoch says police visit to journalist's home was 'absolutely wrong'

Kemi Badenoch has said people need to stop 'wasting police time on trivial incidents' after officers visited a journalist's home over a year-old social media post.

Allison Pearson, a Telegraph columnist, is under investigation for allegedly stirring up racial hatred in a tweet posted, and then quickly deleted, last year.

She said Essex Sunday knocked on her door on Remembrance Sunday to inform her of the probe. 

Ms Pearson has since insisted in a ten-point post on X that she is not 'racist' and that she 'did not post a racist tweet'. 

Ms Badenoch, the Conservative Party leader, has backed the Telegraph columnist, saying police visiting her home was 'absolutely wrong'. 

'There has been a long-running problem with people not taking free speech seriously,' Mrs Badenoch told The Telegraph.

She added: 'We shouldn't have journalists getting visited by the police for expressing opinions. That's absolutely wrong, we need to look at the laws around non-crime hate incidents.'

'Keir Starmer says he is someone who believes in these things. Now he needs to actually show that he does believe it. All we've seen from him is the opposite.'

 Meanwhile, The Guardian has claimed to have uncovered the post at the centre of the row, despite Ms Pearson saying she has been unable to recall the exact tweet.

The newspaper alleged that it was a message sent last November, seemingly branding supporters of Imran Khan's political party in Pakistan as 'Jew haters' without evidence - and accusing the Met Police of complicity for posing for a photo with them.

The post was a comment on a group of people posing with a green and maroon flag used by supporters of the party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) flanked by police officers.

At the time, Ms Pearson allegedly said: 'How dare they. Invited to pose for a photo with lovely peaceful British Friends of Israel on Saturday police refused. Look at this lot smiling with the Jew haters.'

But the picture is from Manchester, meaning the officers do not belong to the Met Police. It is thought there was potentially some confusion between the PTI supporters and those who advocate for Hamas terrorists in the war with Israel.

The complainant, who is not Muslim nor one of the people in the photo, told the Guardian: 'Pearson tweeted something that had nothing to do with Palestine or the London protest. Her description of the two people of colour as Jew haters is racist and inflammatory.

'I was concerned about the tweet that Pearson put out last year so much so that I reported it to the police. She could have tweeted an apology stating she was wrong. She didn't.'

Ms Pearson said she initially thought she heard the policemen at her door say they were investigating a 'non-crime hate incident'.

Essex Police dispute this and said the officers, who had made attempts to contact Ms Pearson before the visit, were clear the alleged offence was inciting racial hatred.

Mrs Badenoch said: 'We need to stop this behaviour of people wasting police time on trivial incidents because they don't like something, as if they're in a nursery.

'It's like children reporting each other. And I think that in certain cases, the police do it because they're afraid that if they don't do it, they will also be accused of not taking these issues seriously.

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'So I don't like criticising the everyday police who are carrying these things out. I know some of them have got the wrong ideas. It is about what message the leadership is sending.'

Essex Police said the officers went to an address on Sunday to invite Ms Pearson to attend a voluntary interview as part of their investigation.

A spokesman said: 'We're investigating a report which was passed to us by another force.

'The report relates to a social media post which was subsequently removed.

'An investigation is now being carried out under Section 17 of the Public Order Act.'

Ms Pearson said she was told the investigation was about a post on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

She said the officers were unable to give her details of the post in question or identify her accuser, which they said was due to laws governing procedure.

'This was the most extraordinary overreach and state intrusion into my private life and I don't think I did anything wrong and I think their response was outrageous,' Ms Pearson said.

She said she had no recollection of what she posted but that if it was a year ago, it could have been linked to the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel or pro-Palestine marches shortly afterwards.