There is a long tradition of politicians and their propagandists implying or outright asserting that to oppose their policies is to support evildoers. To oppose the War on Terror, for example, was suggested to mean doing the work of Al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein.
When somebody has to say that something is “as simple as that”, it is rarely simple
To oppose the Online Safety Act, meanwhile, according to one Labour minister, appears to mean siding with paedophiles. Peter Kyle MP, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, claims that when Nigel Farage criticises the act he demonstrates that he “would have been on Jimmy Saville’s side”. “If you want to overturn the Online Safety Act you are on the side of predators,” says Kyle, doubling down, “It is as simple as that.”
When somebody has to say that something is “as simple as that”, it is rarely simple. The Online Safety Act has not just introduced age verification checks for pornographic materials. As Fred de Fossard writes, even political news has been blocked:
Footage of British people being arrested in Leeds while protesting against asylum seekers’ hotels was censored on X for users who had not verified their age.
Even worse, videos of a speech made in Parliament by Katie Lam MP detailing the horrors of the rape gangs have also been blocked by these new rules. Speech which has been constitutionally protected from censure since the 1689 Bill of Rights is now being censored online via age verification technology.
There are rich ironies here. Why Jimmy Saville, who enjoyed preying on children in person, would have had to do it online is mysterious. But who enabled him? State institutions like the BBC. It is, meanwhile, scandalously hypocritical for ministers to attack people for endangering the young when Britain’s porous borders have allowed in dangerous men who have assaulted children.
More deeply, though, it is disturbing that the response of the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology is not to engage with criticisms but to demonise critics. Such is the lack of political seriousness, and the scale of political self-entitlement, in the Labour Party that its politicians feel that sceptics of its policies can be bullied into silence.
This is bad in itself but it is also symptomatic of its purblind understanding of the heights of public mistrust towards its agenda. When Mike Tapp MP proclaims that “the Government protects children” he ironically embodies the sort of populism that Prime Minister Keir Starmer decries for offering “easy answers”, but it is certainly true that “online safety” is a popular goal. Then again, Keir Starmer was elected with a massive majority and then dived in the polls. Public opinion can turn, especially when people see the impact of policies on their lives, and arrogance like this won’t help.
Elsewhere, Chris Bryant, Labour MP for Rhondda and Ogmore, has wrung his hands about Reform UK’s opposition to the Online Safety Act by saying, “Get rid of child protections online? Madness.” It should go without saying that to oppose a measure which has been presented as a means of protecting children does not mean opposing all measures to protect children. But as others have observed, Bryant’s hyperventilating is also illustrative of how Labour behaves as if once laws have been established they become unquestionable. Adam Wren — a contributor to The Critic — comments:
Blairites have this annoying tendency to treat institutions that were set up yesterday like the Supreme Court as these untouchable sacred cows, but doing it with legislation that literally came into effect yesterday is really taking the piss.
Indeed. Is it really unimaginable to think that Britain might return to the dark, dystopian days of last week?
But this is typical of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. Yes, its positions might change with the political winds. But one thing that is constant is the idea that all of its critics operate in bad faith. Its left-wing critics should be sidelined as wreckers. Its right-wing critics are sinister populists. Rational debate is not considered necessary. Recall what appears to have been an attempt to bypass substantive analysis of online harms and solutions by whipping up a moral panic about the issue of kids on social media through the ubiquitous promotion of the TV drama Adolescence. (No doubt Mr Kyle believes that critics of the Online Safety Act would side with youthful murderers such as the one portrayed in the series.)
This is the kind of thing that a government might be able to get away with if it is popular. For a government that is so broadly and deeply disliked, it is futile at best. That would be cause for good cheer if it did not make it so plausible that more absurd and sinister censorious policies might be introduced to quell dissent. After all, if politicians say that their opponents are siding with paedophiles, why should we not expect them to act like it as well?
