At long last, Keir Starmer has given up the ghost. Don’t get your hopes up — he hasn’t resigned; rather, he’s capitulated on his bizarre resistance to banning social media for the under-16s. On Friday, the Telegraph reported that the PM was “open to legislation” forcing Big Tech to boot children off social media platforms after 100,000 people wrote to their local MPs. He would no longer block a Conservative amendment to a bill next week introducing an “Australia-style ban” — similar to that which was introduced last year by Anthony Albanese. The move is vastly popular — 70% of MPs are thought to support it — and addresses growing public concern about the internet’s impact on British children. So why did it take this long?

Until now, Starmer reasoned that kicking kids off social media was not the “practical way forward”; these crafty Gen Alphas would find other, less regulated sites to infiltrate under the noses of their oblivious parents. It was the classic progressive apologia: legalise and regulate, with a generous dollop of harm-reduction. If your nine-year-old wants to do heroin, she will, so wouldn’t you rather her have clean needles?

Now, though, clearly the lunacy of such an approach has finally slapped Sir Keir around the chops. For the liberal mantra of legalisation — so often applied to matters of drugs and prostitution — signals giving up, an acceptance that change is beyond us and that deleterious urges should always be satisfied. Just as legalising drugs relies on nobody becoming addicted, and legalising prostitution relies on the kindness of pimps, the argument “they’ll access it anyway, so let’s clean X and TikTok up” hinges on the goodwill of foreign tech bosses who probably haven’t even seen Adolescence yet.

The internet has, by design, been a regulatory Wild West since its inception, based on the fantasies of West Coast weirdos who were more concerned with digital utopias than the quandary of 12-year-olds stumbling upon gangbanging videos. Starmer’s change of tack marks a rare step in the right direction: while some particularly motivated teens will slip through the net, a blanket ban will vastly reduce access.

This move may save many kids. The risks of radicalisation, the sexually and socially disabling influence of pornography, the stultifying effect on growing brains with goldfish-level attention spans — we know the risks, and Starmer is right to mitigate them. But will a ban save Starmer himself? The Conservatives’ amendment was backed by Brutus himself — Andy Burnham — leaving the PM looking painfully slow on the uptake.

A public that is vaguely aware of potential legislation will now only hear that our glorious leader has acquiesced, rather than acted. Even if they do give Starmer credit, it will be with a gritting of teeth: when Sky News posted Keir’s pre-announcement warblings on the subject on TikTok on Thursday, the comments grumbled about “socialists” who “always want to ban things”. Rather than a radical intervention in a cresting crisis, the PM’s crackdown is being interpreted as more evidence of his drab puritanism. Joyless, grey, no fun — Keir Cromwell.

But as with the puberty blockers fiasco, we are witnessing a kindly but inept elite realising that the great experiments of progressive Britain have failed. Today’s children have been used as beta testers in the creation of deliciously addictive algorithms; Big Tech has been freely harvesting their data and their dopamine.

Ultimately, states being unable to stop children from watching hardcore porn is a moral failure. The most honest approach is for Starmer and his Cabinet to frame this legislation for what it is: a salvaging of values, a stern correction to years of ineptitude and a lifeline to boys and girls thrown overboard long ago by parents and politicians afraid of playing bad cop.

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Poppy Sowerby is an UnHerd columnist.

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