Free speech row over ‘banned’ poster that includes King Charles

A freedom of speech row has been sparked by a Scottish independence poster that includes a picture of King Charles that was successfully ‘banned’ by an promoting agency.

The poster – designed by Alex Salmond’s Alba Party – was rejected by the media firm Global, which manages greater than 250,000 promoting websites across the UK. Global was reportedly involved the poster might trigger “offence”. 

The poster – which makes use of an official picture of the King, as he seems on postage stamps – sees the monarch ‘crossed out’ by a crimson prohibition signal. Above the picture is the slogan: ‘It’s time for an Independent Republic of Scotland’.

It comes simply weeks after Global claimed one other Alba poster – which depicted Rishi Sunak as a vampire consuming Scotland’s oil – was “slanderous”. The pro-independence occasion has now claimed {that a} media firm shouldn’t be capable of management the political messages seen by the general public.

Alba’s basic secretary Chris McEleny stated “censorship” in political promoting was a rising concern. McEleny stated: “We have a potential general election next year and the current situation is that media giants will get to decide which messages the public get to see and which messages they don’t.

“Therefore if you happen to needed to marketing campaign for an impartial Scotland with an elected head of state, you wouldn’t be allowed to show a picture of King Charles on the advert in concern that it could upset the royals.

“This is a ridiculous situation to be in – we must not allow interference in our democratic right to campaign in elections.”

In an e mail, Global – which additionally owns radio stations akin to LBC, Classic FM and Capital – instructed Alba it had strict guidelines round political promoting. The e mail stated Global wouldn’t carry paintings “deemed to be politically persuasive with the use of something that is likely to cause offence, likely to get complaints and likely to have to be removed/replaced”.

The Telegraph stated it had approached Global for a remark.