Starmer’s cynical child-safety crusade Digital tyranny hurts us all

Won’t somebody think of the children? When they choose to, Left-wingers are more than capable of noticing the emotive force of this appeal, and its power as a stalking-horse for political ends. But this week, as Keir Starmer pried the door to full government digital censorship several inches further open, most seemed determined to stay focused only on the narrow question of keeping children safe.

To this end, we are told, Starmer has announced that digital platforms have a three-month period in which to implement measures preventing under-16s from taking or sending or receiving nude photos. As things stand, Apple and Google have some age-verification features but these don’t work across everything on the platform. The Government has threatened to legislate if these measures are not made more robust. 

In response, much of the reaction so far has focused on how this actually isn’t enough censorship, and won’t someone think of the children? The safetyists may yet get their wish: further restrictions are expected next week, purportedly also addressed at protecting kids. The new rules will clamp down on infinite scroll, “harmful” websites and perhaps also the design of digital content algorithms. Conservative MP Laura Trott immediately declared that this wouldn’t be enough censorship either.

As the mother of a tween girl, you’d think I would be cheering this all on. Yes, I do worry about keeping my daughter safe as the shark-filled digital waters lap at her ankles. But I also think these proposals stink, are being rolled out in bad faith by a Poundland tyranny whose leaders are deeply afraid of their own citizens, and should be fought tooth-and-nail precisely on the grounds of thinking of our children. 

As regards thinking of my own child, so far I’ve just embraced the fact that being a parent means saying “no” sometimes, and resigned myself to being the villain on this issue. But in the macro-debate now occurring over kids and social media, what’s striking is that parental authority of this elementary kind doesn’t seem to figure at all. The actors in question are the Government and tech companies. Inasmuch as kids feature, it’s as a groom-able, corruptible, harm-able but otherwise passive blob, to be proactively Kept Safe by Big Government.  

I guess a government that doesn’t think its citizens capable of remembering to give their own kids breakfast, before sending them to school, is not going to treat those same parents as capable of managing their kids’ YouTube habits. And I’ll grant that there’s a grim pragmatism at work here. Based on observation of my daughter’s peer group, only a minority of parents seem to enforce more than minimal restrictions on screen use, or to spend much time investigating the platforms and content their children are exposed to.  

But if, as seems obviously the case well beyond this particular policy area, the government operates from a basic assumption that parents can’t be trusted to play any substantive role in raising their own kids, it follows that the only body with the power to intervene in their social media consumption must be (you guessed it) the government. And so we get to the crux of the matter: how is this to be achieved?

In the case of the ban on sending nudes, it appears this would mean forcing every device to include software that pre-emptively scans all images, and stops any being sent that the AI image scanner has identified as a bit nude-ish. To deactivate this, the device user would have to verify his or her age. So, again: how is age verification to be achieved? At the very least it would require a mandatory ID check when setting up a device or computer, perhaps by scanning a passport or driving licence. Starmer has also announced he’s rolling out “optional” digital ID, so presumably he intends this to be used for verification too. 

In other words, preventing kids from sending nudes would in practice mean everyone must accept the ubiquitous presence of software that automatically scans every image on every device, and censors according to its own algorithms. Which you don’t control. Then, too, anyone sharing images deemed “sensitive” by this software must prove they are over 18. And this means showing an official ID — perhaps, in time, a digital one — which in turn means forfeiting anonymity. 

Some might perhaps argue: so what? Of course the software is only going to be employed in the narrow context of kids being groomed to share nudes. And this kind of sexual exploitation is indisputably very bad. Am I on the side of perverts and paedophiles? This was the line taken by Technology Secretary Peter Kyle, when Nigel Farage raised concerns over the Online Safety Act, on free speech grounds. 

More fundamentally, though: why do we need these government mandates at all when parents can already enable this feature for their kids via the Screen Time settings in existing devices? Why, indeed, would Britain be going full-steam ahead with further restrictions, when the reporting so far from Australia is that the ban there isn’t even protecting kids at all?

The answer, I’m afraid, is that Starmer instinctively wants more control over the internet because he’s afraid of the people he is supposed to govern, plus they use the internet to laugh at him. And I can see how that would make sense from his point of view. Britain in 2026 really is a sullen, fractious tinderbox, with a population growing more visibly tribalised by the week, in a process that really is being accelerated by social media. 

This angry national mood derailed his premiership almost immediately, after the Southport atrocity, and erupted again last week over the role played by police “anti-racism” in the death of Henry Nowak. The perception of institutional animus against white Britons has propagated well beyond professional race-baiters, to the point where my husband was quizzed on a business trip to Europe last week by normally apolitical business colleagues. What on earth is going on in Britain, they wanted to know? 

Given all this, I don’t exactly blame Starmer for seeking to tighten his grip on the only aspects of the country he understands: the dimension of words, and that of rules. Perhaps he genuinely believes that stopping people talking about their political discontents is the same thing as making the discontents themselves go away. And certainly if you wanted greater powers to control what people say, Protecting Kids would be a good way to get people to grant you those powers. 

In the case of the Online Safety Act, for example, never mind how Peter Kyle insulted Farage: Farage was right about the Act’s effect on free speech. Critics argue that it’s not even doing a good job of keeping kids safe; meanwhile, it’s proving effective at stifling speech inconvenient to the regime. From satirical posts about Keir Starmer to actual speeches delivered in Parliament, the resulting perverse (or, if you prefer, just oppressive) speech restrictions have generated a rolling scandal since the bill became law in 2025. Given how swiftly its promise of protecting kids from porn mutated into a catch-all device for protecting the Government from mockery and criticism, a tool that scans every image you send would surely be similarly repurposed.

As for anyone who still blithely insists that showing ID is a small price to pay for saying what you like: let’s not forget that British police forces made almost 10,000 arrests in 2025 for social media posts. How much would they relish a tool that gave them the real name and address of everyone who’s ever “stirred up division” with a photo or video?

So won’t somebody think of the children? I don’t think anyone here is really thinking of the children. I don’t even buy that Jess Phillips, who recently resigned in protest at digital censorship not being implemented, is thinking of the children. This is, after all, the same Jess Phillips who was accused of trying to water down a national inquiry into the sexual abuse of girls, including in her own constituency, by majority-Pakistani rape gangs, by expanding its scope to meaninglessness. In other words: someone more than capable of turning a blind eye to the safety of vulnerable children, when doing otherwise might endanger her wafer-thin majority.

Nor do I think that the Americans already weighing in to oppose Starmer’s digital censorship are exactly thinking of the children either. The US interest in this issue is surely partly cultural, but it’s also about maintaining control of the West’s digital infrastructure, relative to Russia and China’s competing digital spheres of influence, and latterly also against noises from the EU about forging its own brand of “tech sovereignty”. Given all this, should Starmer’s three-month deadline for voluntary compliance expire and Labour follow through on the threat of legislating on censorship, we can expect robust pushback from the USA — to ends perhaps only somewhat aligned with the interests of the British people. 

But even those who don’t care about the geopolitics should look at these proposals, and actually think of our children. Laws that empower parents; sure. Perhaps even rules restricting under-16s to “dumb phones”. But a mandatory image-scanning backdoor for the Government, on every phone, which you can only unlock by giving up anonymity? Perhaps you’ve been shamed by Peter Kyle, or terrified by Laura Trott, into thinking we should assent to this so our children can enjoy freedom from sexting. But the freedom we should actually be thinking about, for children, is the freedom to speak, to think — and perhaps in time to organise, and liberate the nation from our useless, odious technocratic tyrants. 

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