We’re in the middle of an ‘orderly transition’ of power from Keir Starmer to whoever might just possibly take over from him – it’s anybody’s guess – as prime minister. Many were worried that this would leave the government in policy paralysis, unable to commit to anything. If only.
It turns out that the hard-won freedoms of the British people are to be ended not by legions of brutes rolling down Regent Street in tanks, but by a gaggle of gormless supply teachers
Because both Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy and Deputy Leader Lucy Powell – close allies of Andy Burnham – are confidently mooting new ideas. Nandy has flounced off X, taking her department with her, just before announcing her big idea that social media firms must give ‘prominence’ to state-sanctioned ‘trusted’ news outlets.
Powell, meanwhile, is gung ho for restrictions on social media during elections, in a similar way to the silly ‘purdah’ demanded of broadcasters. How that would actually work is a puzzler. Are members of the public really to be treated like TV channels? Will random posters be hauled before Ofcom to answer for their salty tweets?
As many have already observed, these plans feel like the activities of a failing, flailing kleptocracy of the last century. One might – almost – have more respect for Labour if these schemes were an openly ideological, East German communist-style, crackdown. But they are far sadder and more squalid than that.
It turns out that the hard-won freedoms of the British people – achieved by reformers and free thinkers long dead – are to be ended not by legions of brutes rolling down Regent Street in tanks, but by a gaggle of gormless supply teachers. Where Goebbels failed, Miss Hoolie from Balamory has triumphed.
The nerve of the Labour party trying to muzzle its political opponents – under an obviously spurious claim of public safety – is disorienting. Nobody can quite believe their audacity, the absence of a scintilla of self-awareness. Even a child knows that facts are often contested and open to interpretation. This is the very stuff of politics in a democracy.
A propagandist of communism or fascism at least states openly that they are manufacturing a narrative for ideological control. The truly terrifying thought about Labour is that Nandy and Powell genuinely think that their world view, such as it is, is the only correct one.
We are, then, to have our public square adjudicated by the very same people who thought that rapists should be housed in women’s prisons (Nandy), and that mere mention of the unshiftable moral stain of the Pakistani rape gangs was ‘getting a little dog whistle out’ (Powell). People who couldn’t bring themselves to say that there are two sexes are criticising others for ‘abuse’ and ‘misinformation’. Are we really going to place the power to control information into those hands? It is a sick joke.
I am regularly taken aback by the good form and square dealing of my fellow conservatives when it comes to such Labour figures, as if this was still the twentieth century. I wish they would stop being squeamish and nice, and giving people like this the benefit of the doubt. Yes, you may be accused of being uncouth, but it is far too serious to worry about that. Labour rely on the good manners of their enemies. But it is not hyperbole to say that this kind of progressivism is, if not actually evil, stupid and destructive. And that evil certainly does come because of it.
Nandy and Powell are dangerous extremists pushing dangerous and extreme ideas. The effect is the same, whether the people pushing them are megalomaniacs or morons.
It is also bad form to call one’s political opponents stupid. But Labour are too daft to even realise what they are doing with laws like these. It is like watching an angry toddler smashing an antique clock to bits.
We can take some solace from the fact that state control of information on this huge scale is impossible without Chinese Communist party levels of brute enforcement. You can’t have no frills, Tesco value authoritarianism. As it stands, these policies are like trying to stop water passing through a colander by shouting at it.
Nandy and Powell seem to think that Labour’s manifest failures and resulting unpopularity are ‘comms issues’, and to believe in the late-Starmer era waffle that ‘we haven’t been good enough at telling our story’. They are convinced of their brilliance, which means the only way people could object is because a nasty person has lied. This is just one infantile delusion among many.
Labour cannot hope to solve the country’s problems because they cannot face the reality of what they’ve done to it. Now they want to muzzle people from even pointing that out.
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