I don’t know what I’d do if QPR banned me from Loftus Road for the next two-and-a-half years. It was bad enough not being able to go to games during lockdown, but the thought of all my mates attending while I was stuck at home would be devastating. When the Rs are playing at home I look forward to the match all week – it’s become my only social activity that isn’t related to work, a vital safety valve. It would be devastating to my mental wellbeing.

Yet that’s exactly what’s happened to Linzi Smith, a 34-year-old Newcastle fan. On 31 October last year she was banned from St James’ Park for the remainder of this season and the next two. Why? Not for getting into a fight in the stadium or abusing a steward. No, Linzi’s ‘crime’ in the eyes of Newcastle United Football Club was to criticise the view that men who identify as women should be treated as if they were indistinguishable from biological women, including being able to access women’s changing rooms, and compete against women in sports like football and rugby.

Policing what football fans tweet about matters of ongoing public debate is an example of extraordinary overreach

Admittedly, being a Geordie, Linzi sometimes expresses herself in a raw, unvarnished way. For instance, she compared advocates of ‘affirmative’ medical procedures for trans-identifying children to Dr Mengele and described trans lobby groups with links to schools as ‘groomers’. Had she said these things to a trans employee of the football club in the stadium, or even to a trans fan at a game, she could – conceivably – be accused of harassment. But she didn’t. She simply said them on Twitter, the social media platform which originally described itself as ‘the free speech wing of the free speech party’.

When someone complained to NUFC about Linzi’s tweets, claiming they would make trans people at matches feel ‘unsafe’, the commonsense response would have been to politely tell the complainant that what fans say about the trans issue outside the stadium isn’t the club’s responsibility. If she’d said something racist and the club thought there was a risk Linzi might engage in racial abuse at matches, that might be grounds for taking the complaint seriously. But in this case, she’d expressed a point of view about an issue on which there’s no settled moral consensus.

Instead, not only did NUFC open an investigation into Linzi, it also contacted the Premier League and asked its surveillance unit to trawl through her social media accounts to see what else she’d said. The ‘Stadium Stasi’ then compiled a report, including details such as where Linzi walked her dog and the name of the church near her house, which it handed to Newcastle. The club passed this information to the police, apparently under the impression that saying trans women aren’t women is a ‘hate crime’.

Linzi was then interviewed by Northumbria Police under caution, but after two hours of questioning officers concluded that challenging trans dogma isn’t actually against the law. You’d think at that point NUFC would close its file on Linzi, particularly as she has spent tens of thousands of pounds on Newcastle tickets and merchandise over the years. But no. It decided she’d breached the club’s ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ policy and imposed a three-season ban.

As the head of a free speech advocacy group, I’ve taken up Linzi’s case. M’learned friends think the fact that the Premier League handed over a file of Linzi’s personal data to NUFC is a breach of privacy law, so with our help she’s submitted a complaint to the information regulator. We’re also exploring other legal remedies that will stop Premiership clubs – and the League itself – behaving like this in future. Policing what football fans tweet about matters of ongoing public debate is an example of extraordinary overreach. What business is it of theirs what Linzi says about the trans issue, particularly outside the stadium? This is a level of monitoring you’d expect to find in communist China or Putin’s Russia, not in a liberal democracy – particularly not one that’s been led by Conservative prime ministers for the past 14 years.

The only explanation I can think of is that policies and enforcement mechanisms put in place by the Premier League that were designed to combat racism have gradually grown in scope until they’re used to monitor and punish any form of ‘wrongthink’. It’s a cautionary tale about how a benign policy intended to protect the vulnerable can morph into an instrument of oppression. And it’s not just in football, obviously. As a society we are drifting, little by little, into a form of hyper-liberal totalitarianism, and all in the name of being ‘kind’. At some point, we have to draw a line and say: ‘Enough!’ Linzi is my line.