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I don't know, it feels like something changed with respect to speech between 2010 and 2020. Like, people would look down on you for saying non-PC things loudly in public, but you didn't get arrested for it. And as for the VP's wife being Indian, for a while we had in the UK:
All either Indian or Arab, at the same time.
The laws themselves aren't new, the enforcement has changed.
Before everyone was on the Internet, enforcement was hardly necessary. The media oligopoly was on board with it and self-censored. Any would-be politicians would need the de facto consent of the media to run a campaign. They didn't bother listening in on pub conversations to find people to arrest. Commoners had no reach anyway, so there's no real point going full Stasi. That left a handful of enforcement actions against a small-time publisher here, a politician who goes off script there, but that was it.
Nowadays people can find each other via the Internet, and there's a lot of discontented people who know there are more and can organize. It has removed the media's role as approval committee, and upended politics. So now in some places they suddenly find it worthwhile to arrest people at their house over tweets.
The early 2010s were a transition period, where the media lost their grip but the enforcement had not yet been stepped up.
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It is not only about free speech. During 1990s and early 2000s there was a huge discussion of how will the EU look like post Maastricht, labeled as Europe of Nations vs federal Europe - with the former being labeled as "eurosceptic" and latter as proeuropean of course. The eurosceptic side basically lost with 2007 Treaty of Lisbon. The new empowered EU beurocracy started churning regulation at breakneck speed - doubling the already burdensome regulation by 2024 so now majority of national laws are passes just to implement EU regulations. It now borders with comical, such as the latest EU Space Act which despite declining EU space programs boasts how it will bring about safe, sustainable and green space exploration or something silly like that. EU institutions and bureaucrats are unironically proud of EU being regulatory superpower, some of them really believe in how they are essential for regulating the whole world.
EU is basically a paradise for bureaucratic structures - the so called Deep State - with byzantine rules hiding responsibility behind layers and layers of structures and almost no real oversight. Just look at this simplified graph of EU institutions from wikipedia and keep in mind that each of this rectangles hides layers of equally byzantine rules of how they are constituted. I'd say that with EU institutions gaining more and more control, the whole thing is turning into something akin to ancient Chinese system of true bureaucracy or maybe something like late Soviet or post Deng and pre Xi system of collective leadership, where it was not dear leader, but party structures controlling the state.
It's practically dark humor that EU efforts to be a regulatory superpower abroad are fuel to the EU-US divorce, which in turn justifies further strengthening the EU institutions. It may be all according to keikaku to some EU advocates, but I've heard many express incredulity about how various US political leaders might take issues with attempts to fine American companies with great political influence into compliance with European Union political interests.
The sort of default Atlanticism that might view continental political propaganda as unobjectionable but Russian political propaganda as toxic is passing away with the Boomers. The emerging generations filling the bureaucracies are increasingly likely to see it either from a neutral principle lens, in which case either European propaganda is just as bad or Russian propaganda is just as harmless as the other, or through a partisan friend-foe lens. The later case is just as bad in its own way, as it means the European-Russian axis only matters in so much that it provides a stick to beat the opponent with, regardless of from which direction.
Geopolitical alliances crack when one party is seen as the partisan partner of one's own domestic political opponents. Sometimes that crack can be overcome by sufficient time, see the South Korean left's political evolution regarding views on the US following the dictatorship period. But actively pursuing it unprompted is somewhere between feckless, malpractice, or a deliberate tradeoff for shorter-term priorities considered more important.
TBF, this kinda goes both ways.
From the US point of view, the EU supports the Democrats against the Republicans (in a lot of ways), and thus the Republicans see the EU as backing their domestic enemies.
From the EU point of view, the US is supporting the European far-right (by providing communications that circumvent the various EU censorship laws), and thus the EU establishment see the US as backing their domestic enemies.
I happen to be extremely unsympathetic to the EU establishment's position, but that's because I see their suppression of the far-right as an oligarchical attempt to revoke democracy and thus not a legitimate state interest.
It indeed was written to go both ways. The number of alliances that have died after a suppressive elite supported from afar was overthrown is uncountable, as are the number of alliances that are stillborn because one party excepts assistance / pardon for suppressing domestic opposition.
It does not help the European Union that it is not actually a treaty ally of the United States, but rather that its elites tried to transfer the benefits of alliances with various national members to the EU itself.
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No need to list examples of these Indian or Arab mayors in UK. It's just hypocritical to hear it from US and even current administration. If it came from Japan, sure.
As for feeling, possible, but not enough if you are critical. Mind you, haven't looked into data proper, but it wouldn't be damning to the change in free speech standards if the feeling coincides with clearly people communicating more in online spaces and issues that seemingly would have been censored anyway having become more prevalent.
I am personally skeptical myself about there being that many ardent defenders of free speech in principle. I identify myself as a principled one (at least now), but time and time just shows that people are just interested in their version of free speech. These days it's even exemplified by US President himself.
This is not just mayors. These are the leaders/president-equivalents of the UK, Scotland and Ireland: the most powerful people in the land.
What I am trying to say is that, if we were talking about alcoholism, then maybe Japan is teetotal and the US sometimes comes home drunk from parties, but the UK is an alcoholic drinking fortified beer at 9am. Is it hypocritical for the US to tell the UK they drink too much? Sort of. But it's still true.
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