The Antifa Case for Scrapping Online Censorship
Free Speech is now in Labour's Interest
I don’t yet have any thoughts on Restore Britain so stop asking me. There’s a lot of positive stuff about Reform and we are monitoring the situation. For now, J’accuse is going to hold a line of aristocratic serenity vis-a-vis the squabbles of the online right. We cannot, however, remain indifferent to our own livelihood. The social media ban for under 16s and its invidious Irish architect directly threaten us and, before all else, we are motivated by stopping it from being implemented. It is in this spirit of total self-interest that the following article is written. This article is written as if I were a Labour strategist and doesn’t reflect my views on Reform UK.
With the foundation of Restore Britain, the under 16 social media ban would destroy quite possibly the only timeline in which Labour hang on to power. It would remove the main vehicle for Rupert Lowe’s party, which has already lowered Reform’s odds at the bookies and, possibly, taken away 3% of their voters. Restore Britain has no existence outside of X and will rely on Elon Musk’s patronage, both algorithmic and financial, for success. As such, censoring X, or otherwise impeding the British public’s access to X, entails handing the keys of Downing Street to Nigel Farage.
Irrespective of the talent of those involved, Restore has, more or less, replaced Reform as a social media presence; on the day Nigel Farage announced his cabinet, the only thing anyone was talking about on X.com was Restore Britain. From now onwards, every single Reform account is going to be ratioed by LoweSoldiers, every time there’s news of stabbings or migrant rapes, it will be a Restore account getting the engagement rather than Reformers. Perhaps Reformers are right that this won’t translate into votes but at least on social media, Restore have already won in less than 24 hours. Reform as a force on social media is a thing of the past.
What this means is that the nasty statistics and videos which have Sir Keir worried are now points of division among his enemies. You are no longer losing votes to Reform by allowing this, you are entailing that Reform loses votes to Restore. You’re basically shutting down the free publishing site of the one party which could destroy your competition. X is a radicalisation chamber in which the right eats itself. You could not be more stupid if you shut it down at this point in time.
Sir Keir Starmer KC is never, ever going to win back voters lost to Reform. His best bet is to divide the Right and survive in coalition with the Greens and Regionalists. If Restore succeed in getting just 25% of the Reform vote in 100 seats it becomes electorally impossible for Nigel Farage to be P.M. The Conservative vote has now stabilised and Reform can only really lose votes from their plateau of 300 seats. Furthermore, unlike Reform, there’s no danger at all that Restore will actually form a majority government.
Given that Restore are going to receive at least 100 million£, already dominate X without really having to try and have some kind of membership, it seems likely they are going to make at least some kind of impact on Reform. The only thing which could prevent this is if X were censored in the United Kingdom, or if Labour press ahead with trying to restrict foreign funding to elections. This would not save Labour as much as it would save Reform. Farage will simply persist as ‘the anti-Starmer candidate’ and continue getting engagement from what is in fact, not social media, his main stomping ground: G.B News.
The Online Safety Act is not the ECHR. It is not some deeply held tenet of Starmerism. It is a recent, cynical move to censor news which is destabilising the UK government. This cynical justification no longer exists. X.com is now a force which weakens Reform UK. Anyone telling Sir Keir Starmer KC to go along with the last, morally bankrupt vestiges of Mandelsonism is most likely working for Nigel Farage.