U.K. hate speech laws are in many ways actually less extreme than the Polish ones. The problem is that there are some ridiculously broad terms hidden within U.K. law which are interpreted in different ways depending who the judge or police officer happens to be. The most obvious one of these is the crime of being “offensive”.

Thankfully the more senior judges tend to see sense much of the time, but you still can get convicted by idiots in lower courts and have to spend a lot of time money and effort appealing the case.