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Starmer’s Looking for an Excuse to Ban X

January 11, 2026 UKR Editor CENSORSHIP, GOVERNMENT 0

“All options” on the table now includes silencing a global network; an idea once unthinkable

CAM WAKEFIELD

Keir Starmer has signaled he is prepared to back regulatory action that could ultimately result in X being blocked in the UK.

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has suggested, more or less, that because Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok has been generating images of women and minors in bikinis, he’ll support going as far as hitting the kill switch and blocking access to the entire platform.

“The situation is disgraceful and disgusting,” Starmer said on Greatest Hits Radio; the station best known for playing ABBA and now, apparently, for frontline authoritarian tech policy announcements.

“X has got to get a grip of this, and Ofcom has our full support to take action…I’ve asked for all options to be on the table.”

“All options,” for those who don’t speak fluent Whitehall euphemism, now apparently includes turning Britain’s digital infrastructure into a sort of beige North Korea, where a bunch of government bureaucrats, armed with nothing but Online Safety Act censorship law and the panic of a 90s tabloid, get to decide which speech the public is allowed to see.

Now, you might be wondering: Surely he’s bluffing? Oh no. According to Downing Street sources, they’re quite serious.

And they’ve even named the mechanism: the Online Safety Act; that cheery little piece of legislation that sounds like it’s going to help grandmothers avoid email scams, but actually gives Ofcom the power to block platforms, fine them into oblivion, or ban them entirely if they don’t comply with government censorship orders.

Killing X isn’t a new idea. You may remember Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s Chief of Staff, founded the Centre for Countering Digital Hate. In 2024, leaks revealed that the group was trying to “Kill Musk’s Twitter.”

More: Keir Starmer’s Censorship Playbook

Ofcom, the country’s media regulator, is now in “urgent contact” with both X and xAI, Grok’s parent company, after reports that users were using the chatbot to generate images of real people in bikinis.

UK Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Liz Kendall told Ofcom it should consider blocking X in the UK, that she expects action in “days not weeks,” and that Ofcom would have the “full backing of the government” if it used blocking powers.

But here’s the problem. In the government’s fury over Grok and its users, they’re now open to ban an entire global communications platform. The equivalent of bulldozing the post office because someone sent a rude postcard.

People have been using Photoshop to create fake, explicit, deeply creepy images for decades. If you had a PC, half a clue, and a little too much time in the early 2000s, you could slap a celebrity’s face onto anything you wanted; with results that ranged from ridiculous to criminal.

And nobody suggested shutting down Adobe, or banning Microsoft Paint, or arresting the paperclip from Word for aiding and abetting. Because, and this used to be common sense: the tool is not the crime.

But now, with AI, all that reason goes out the window. Grok, Midjourney, DALL·E; you name it. These systems don’t wake up in the morning and decide to be pervy. They generate what they’re told to generate. That’s it.

They don’t have taste, they don’t have shame, and they certainly don’t have a moral compass. They have some restraints, but they can easily be overcome if people know how to prompt. This will always be true.

They’re glorified suggestion boxes that vomit out whatever the user types in. If someone prompts an AI to produce a woman in a bikini and you think that’s a problem, that someone is the problem; not the platform, not the algorithm, and not the wires it’s running on.

You can do the exact same thing with a pencil and paper. In fact, some of the most disturbing imagery ever created didn’t come out of a neural net. It came from human hands, in basements, bedrooms, and badly lit studios. But we’re not banning Bic pens. We’re not raiding Staples because someone bought a sketchpad and had dark thoughts.

Predictably, Elon Musk is not thrilled. He has accused the UK government of attempting to “suppress the people.”

“Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content,” Musk added, putting the blame on the users, not the tool.

Screenshot of an X post about AI making bikini images, showing Starmer on a beach and an AI-made image of him in a red bikini

It’s not just Elon either. Sarah B Rogers, the US Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, warned: “Erecting a ‘Great Wall’ to ban X, or lobotomizing AI, is neither tailored nor thoughtful.”

President Trump has previously referred to the UK’s online censorship law as as “not a good thing,” and while Keir Starmer is playing Internet Emperor, Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican congresswoman who sits on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, is calling out the UK’s absurd overreach and threatening to bring legislation to sanction both Starmer and the country if he goes ahead with his tantrum.

Some of the images in question are inappropriate. Some are satire. But they’re not being created by X itself. They’re being created by users. People. And even with guardrails on Grok, there are always ways to prompt your way around them.

So even though there are likely millions of tools that can put a woman in a bikini, why is Starmer threatening to support the blocking of the entirety of X?

When BBC News host Huw Edwards was convicted of having actual images of child abuse and only received a suspended sentence, Starmer famously said: “As far as the sentence is concerned, I mean, that is for the court to decide.”

Without even getting into the hypocrisy of Starmer, his duplicity means what we’re looking at here is less about child protection and more about a government flailing in the age of AI, social media, and digital speech it no longer understands or controls.

The government is looking for any excuse to suppress one of the biggest thorns in its side.

It’s political theater; the kind that looks strong on morning television but crumbles under scrutiny.

What makes that clear is that plenty of other AI systems can do the exact same thing Grok’s being dragged over the coals for.

OpenAI’s image models have slipped up. Some AI image generators have whole fanbases built around photorealistic deepfakes of celebrities.

There are dodgy Discord bots out there generating worse in seconds, with less scrutiny and zero accountability. But none of those platforms are being threatened with a national ban.

And let’s not kid ourselves here: X is one of the last places online where you can still talk about things Keir Starmer would really, really rather you didn’t.

Ever since Elon Musk got his hands on Twitter, the platform has become a giant headache for the political establishment, and not just because people keep replying to their speeches with clown emojis. The real reason they hate it is that it’s torched their grip on the flow of information.

X moves faster than the official narrative. Way faster. Before a newsroom has even had time to spin up a headline, the footage is already out there; raw, unedited, and usually filmed by someone on the ground with a phone and zero interest in protecting anyone’s PR strategy.

Leaks, whistleblowers, inconvenient facts: they don’t wait for permission to speak anymore, they just hit “post.”

It’s also true that the major platform Keir Starmer’s government is gearing up to punish, with the full force of Ofcom and the legal system revving like a bulldozer, is also the only major platform where he gets roasted in real time.

X is where Starmer gets community-noted, quote-tweeted, and ratio’d into orbit every time he opens his mouth. So now the platform isn’t only a tech problem. It’s a PR problem. And in modern politics, that’s the only kind anyone actually takes seriously.

This article (Starmer’s Looking for an Excuse to Ban X) was created and published by Reclaim the Net and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Cam Wakefield

See Related Article Below

UK Government Threatens TOTAL BAN On X Over Grok Bikini Flap

Rampant attack on free speech continues

STEVE WATSON

UPDATE:

The UK’s Labour government under Prime Minister Keir Starmer has escalated its war on online expression, now openly threatening to ban Elon Musk’s X platform entirely. Using the pretext of Grok AI’s image generation capabilities, Starmer’s regime is pushing for total control over what Brits can see and say online, exposing the thin veil over their authoritarian impulses.

This move comes amid a surge in Grok-generated sexualized images, but the crackdown reeks of selective outrage aimed at silencing dissent rather than protecting anyone.

Starmer issued the threat, declaring “This is disgraceful. It’s disgusting, and it’s not to be tolerated,” adding that “all options are on the table” to address what he called unlawful content on X. He emphasized, “X has got to get a grip of this, and Ofcom (The UK’s regulatory authority for the internet) has our full support to take action in relation to this. This is wrong. It’s unlawful. We’re not going to tolerate it.”

Labour MP Lola McEvoy doubled down, stating platforms like X “have no right to be accessed in this country” if they fail to comply with the UK’s draconian Online Safety Act.

Multiple sources confirm insiders are advancing plans to block the site, with the AI excuse front and centre.

Leaked WhatsApp messages have also revealed Labour MPs urging the government to abandon X altogether, labeling Elon Musk a “fascist” and arguing it should “show direction to others in the UK.”

One MP questioned why they couldn’t follow Trump’s lead with Truth Social, while others claimed their constituents are on Facebook instead.

Journalist Alison Pearson nailed the double standard: Starmer rants about “safety” on X while flooding the country with undocumented fighting-age males daily. What about the real threats to British women and girls from unchecked migration? He doesn’t give a damn about anyone’s safety.

Starmer, now the most unpopular UK Prime Minister in history with just a 15% approval rating, is also the most community-noted public figure on X, constantly called out for lies. He’s the fifth most ratio’d person on the platform—everyone exposes his deceptions. He can’t control X, and there’s no doubt that this is playing into the move.

Broadcaster Alex Phillips tore into him: “You don’t like X because you don’t like free speech. That’s why you want to close it down. You’re a thin-skinned megalomaniacal monster. We see you, Keir Starmer!”

Unsurprisingly, the UK’s Online Safety Act is marching in step with the EU’s Digital Services Act, both targeting X under the guise of protecting kids while fining it millions for allowing unfiltered speech.

Starmer’s threats have drawn international backlash. US Republicans, including Trump ally Anna Paulina Luna, warn of sanctions against the UK if the ban proceeds, labeling it a direct assault on free speech.

The post continues,

“…restricting the platform, including the dispute with Brazil in 2024–2025, which resulted in tariffs, visa revocations, and sanctions and consequences tied to free speech concerns against Brazilian officials over concerns related to censorship and free-speech violations.

Starmer should reconsider this course of action, or there will be consequences.

There are always technical bugs during the early phases of new technology, especially AI, and those issues are typically addressed quickly. X treats these matters seriously and acts promptly. Let’s be clear: this is not about technical compliance. This is a political war against @elonmusk and free speech—nothing more.”

Trump himself has signaled readiness to hit back, tying into his administration’s visa bans on Europeans pushing tech censorship.

Trump also recently suspended a $40 billion tech deal with the UK over its free speech crackdown, a move that underscores America’s commitment to First Amendment principles, and a clear sign that the President will not stay silent on Britain’s freedom crushing policies.

Trump has long been attuned to Britain’s erosion of rights, dispatching a “free speech squad” from the State Department in May to investigate cases of activists arrested for silent protests and online dissent.

He’s even offered political asylum to UK “thought criminals,” including those prosecuted for gender-critical views or immigration criticism, positioning America as a haven for those fleeing authoritarian overreach.

The UK’s erosion of free speech has been accelerating, from jailing citizens over tweets, to branding criticising illegal immigration as hate speech, to criminalising ‘wrong’ opinions on sports commentators.

Even the likes of Google, which has previously demonetized, shadow-banned, and outright censored content that doesn’t align with leftist narratives, has expressed concern over the tyrannical potential of the Online Safety act.

Starmer’s focus on Grok also completely ignores that other AIs, like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, enable the exact same image manipulations—putting people in bikinis or worse. All AI can do this, it’s clearly selective outrage.

 

 

The government has also not expressed any concern about the fact that Google’s AI gets basic historical facts wrong and skews everything toward woke/DEI, as well as giving bad health tips, encouraging suicide, and falsely accusing people of being rapists and racists.

Why single out X? Because it’s the one platform where truth slips through the cracks of mainstream control and free speech is fully embraced.

Starmer’s regime can’t hide behind “safety” forever. Banning X won’t erase the truth— it’ll only fuel the resistance. Brits deserve platforms where facts flow freely, not dictated by thin-skinned tyrants.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

This article (UK Government Threatens TOTAL BAN On X Over Grok Bikini Flap) was created and published by Modernity News and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Steve Watson

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