LAURIE WASTELL
Grass grows, birds fly, sun shines – and Labour and its Leftie allies try to censor X. A cross-party group of more than 30 Labour, Lib Dem, Green and other MPs has this week written to Ofcom, the broadcast regulator, to ask it to investigate whether Elon Musk’s social media platform is complying with the Online Safety Act. The letter follows research from the pro-censorship think tank the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). It paints the platform formerly known as Twitter as a “a home for hate” under its new owner, alleging that antisemitism is “reaching millions” there. “For too long, X has been a source of abuse and hate,” says Joani Reid, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on antisemitism, who led the letter. “We are calling on Ofcom to use every power available to it to take action and hold the platform to account for breaches of our online safety laws.”
It is true that the CCDH has been able to uncover some nasty and antisemitic posts on X (“Every time a Jew dies, the world becomes a better place” and “Don’t stop till… all Jews are gone off this blessed earth”). This would be somewhat more concerning, however, if such posts were attracting much engagement, either in likes and reposts or just plain impressions. But since Musk’s takeover, X’s enforcement philosophy has been “freedom of speech, not reach”, which errs on the side of stifling flagged content via the algorithm rather than removing it outright. Accordingly, the antisemitic posts collected by the CCDH typically have zero likes and scarcely any views – most commonly in the single figures. To try and suggest such posts have wide currency on X today is a major exaggeration. Indeed, if one is minded to trawl, say, Bluesky for similar sentiments one can find them.
It’s easy to see then that this research, and the attempt to use it to influence Ofcom, forms part of a wider censorship agenda against Musk’s free-speech platform. This is the same CCDH, after all, whose Chief Executive, Imran Ahmed, is set to have his US visa revoked by the State Department over concerns about his organisation’s attacks on X.
Ofcom isn’t the only front in the attack. The Government Communication Service, which supports ministerial communications, is presently reviewing the Government’s use of X, part of its government-wide procedure for digital engagement. The review ought to be a workaday bureaucratic procedure which few politicians would have typically much interest in, with the current process said to be “relatively informal” and “ad hoc” and carried out without ministerial oversight. But hysterical Labour MPs would rather the British Government flounce off X entirely to Bluesky, like some self-satisfied activist crusty. Speaking to Politics Home, the Labour Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, Sarah Owen, talked about “the threat X poses to our country’s democracy and social cohesion” and called for a “thorough, minister-led” review of the Government’s X presence, given the “changing and ever-increasing risk it poses to our political system”.
Labour MPs calling for the Government to quit X paint a decidedly lurid picture of the platform. “It is also no longer a space for domestic political engagement, with many followers being bots or international actors paid to destabilise our democracy and sow division,” wails Owen, who herself departed X last year. For Samantha Niblett, “it’s a breeding ground for the far Right who have no interest in the good work of this Labour Government” (translation – Labour routinely gets a kicking on it). Ben Goldsborough adds that “By maintaining a presence there, the Government risks granting legitimacy to a platform that undermines the very principles we stand for” (perhaps he’s right after a fashion – we know how much Labour despises free speech).
It speaks to how deranged and juvenile these Labour backbenchers are that they seriously think it’s a good use of a minister’s time to even consider such a move. And to just how vain and impractical, that they would have the Government sacrifice its presence on a major social media site to virtue-signal about Elon Musk. A Government spokesperson explained wearily that X is among online “channels that are accessed daily by millions of people in the UK”, hence why it is used to communicate “verified and accurate” Government messaging.
The Labour Government’s complaints about new media tend to align rather closely with places it is being most heavily criticised. At a September Media Select Committee, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy responded to a question about BBC failings by launching into an attack on ‘populist’ new entrant GB News. “People are reading different accounts,” she lamented. This means that “shared spaces and [the] shared understanding that is the basis of democracy is fracturing. I think that is very, very dangerous.”
Not at all dangerous, apparently, is the Leftie Bluesky, despite hardly being a repository of good faith, common sense and moderate political sensibilities. After the shocking murder of Charlie Kirk, for instance, the gleeful response on the site was so ghoulish that Bluesky’s ‘Safety’ handle had to an issue a warning to users not to glorify or celebrate “violence or harm”. We, the #BeKind brigade, are “committed to fostering healthy, open conversations”, it gently reminded its denizens, who, largely insulated from conservative eyes, had been openly crowing they were “glad” the father-of-two was dead, saying that he should “rest in piss”, and calling for the next target to be Donald Trump or J.K. Rowling.
It’s clearly not because X is uniquely ‘hateful’ that the Left wants to go after it. The real reason Left-wingers are in such a tizz is that without their tribe having a thumb on the scales of online discourse (really more like a whole fist, as we learnt from the Twitter Files), it has tilted back towards reality – and thus on many topics to the Right. Nowhere is this clearer than the issue which is causing the Blueskyers’ heads to explode this week, which is Labour’s attempts to deal with the ‘Boriswave’. The term itself, which Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood used in the Commons this week, was coined by an anonymous British X user around the summer of 2024. Soon after, the issue of the Boriswave being granted Indefinite Leave to Remain – and the mass fiscal and demographic timebomb this would mean – jumped the barrier from an online talking point to a mainstream policy concern. This week, a Labour Home Secretary announced a sweeping reform to immigration system to address a problem which was missed by most of the political class and is taboo for most of the Left, but which was identified and campaigned on relentlessly by the ‘online Right’.
If these posters and those reading them have moved mountains, it’s clear why those who would rather be on Bluesky want to clip the wings of X. Bluesky’s predominant output – bewildered, demoralised sweary screeds about the other place – shows how the self-imagined Masters of the Universe know they have entirely lost their erstwhile control of the political conversation. To the self-image of snooty Lefties, the Brexit vote was a body blow – next came the brutal combination attack of our departure in 2020 under Boris Johnson, the second victory of Donald Trump and the inexorable rise of Reform. Now, the sight of a Muslim Home Secretary pledging to take on the ‘Boriswave’ has them mentally out for the count. As Remainer ultra Marie Le Conte (remember her?) put it this week in a Substack she promoted on the Blue place: “Aren’t you tired of feeling insane all the time?”
On immigration, as with Net Zero and woke, the Left is losing the argument. If Labour thinks it can censor its way back into the public’s good graces, it’s got another thing coming.
This article (30 Left-Wing MPs Call on Ofcom to Censor X Under the Online Safety Act. Of Course They Do) was created and published by The Daily Sceptic and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Laurie Wastell
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