Freedom of expression during each prime minister's tenure

Every prime minister since 1991, ranked by how the freedom of expression changed from their first day in office. Politare shows what happened during a tenure; it does not claim the office-holder caused it.

#	Prime minister	In office	Total	Per year	Chart
1	Tony Blair	2 May 1997 – 27 Jun 2007	+4.9 points 1996 → 2006	+0.5 points/yr
2	Con Theresa May	13 Jul 2016 – 24 Jul 2019	+1.1 points 2016 → 2019	+0.4 points/yr
3	Con John Major	28 Nov 1990 – 2 May 1997 from 1991	0.0 points 1991 → 1996	0.0 points/yr
4	Gordon Brown	27 Jun 2007 – 11 May 2010	0.0 points 2006 → 2009	0.0 points/yr
5	Con David Cameron	11 May 2010 – 13 Jul 2016	−1.7 points 2009 → 2016	−0.2 points/yr
6	Con Boris Johnson	24 Jul 2019 – 6 Sep 2022	−2.8 points 2019 → 2022	−0.9 points/yr

Sorted by total, highest first. Every row is indexed to the last count complete before the first day in office ("from" marks a start that had to move because that count had no data, or because the period cut it); Levels are per cent changes, rates are differences in points; "per year" compounds levels and divides rates. Tenures with under 12 months, or under three observations, are left out. points, 0 to 100, V-Dem's 0 to 1 index times 100 · V-Dem Institute, V-Dem dataset v16 (v2x_freexp_altinf): the freedom of expression and alternative sources of information index, the press, academic and private speech and the media's independence, as V-Dem's country experts rate them, with V-Dem's confidence interval; the 0 to 1 index times 100 · United Kingdom data · as of Sep 2026.