By Elizabeth Piper, Alistair Smout and Patricia Zengerle

LONDON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Nigel Farage, leader of the populist Reform UK party, took aim at what he called Britain’s “awful authoritarian situation” on Wednesday, urging Washington to persuade the government to put an end to what he described as a clampdown on free speech.

Giving evidence to the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, Farage stepped up pressure on Prime Minister Keir Starmer over free speech, referring to cases when Britons had been arrested for making comments on social media deemed to incite violence.

He also criticised Britain’s Online Safety Act, which regulates social media companies, saying it was “a road to hell paved with good intentions”.

“It doesn’t give me any great joy to

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