How far will this government take the ban on speech?
In what appears to be a rolling back on free speech and citizen journalism, Britain is fast-tracking a law that will ban non-consensual intimate deepfake images. This is likely aimed at the social media site X.com after its AI assistant Grok allegedly generated inappropriate images. In the scope of the global news cycle and a further ban potentially on the table, the move couldn’t be more poorly timed. It coincides with social media bans in socialist Tanzania and a sweeping Internet blackout by the Ayatollah of Iran. While Britain is not Iran, the direction of travel – using information control to manage dissent – bears uncomfortable similarities. Brits are justifiably worried: Is this the nail in the coffin of Britain’s free speech?
Keir Starmer, UK prime minister, has already come under an avalanche of scrutiny for his hand in other undemocratic activities. For example, many of the local elections in Britain will not go ahead this year, having also been canceled last year under the pretext of local government reorganization. Additionally, arrests over speech and social media posts have increased in recent years, with the arrests of over 10,000 people per year under various Orwellian laws.
To make matters worse, Starmer’s online censorship has gone even further under the new Online Safety Act. This new law is intended to protect young people from “harmful” speech but gives regulators sweeping powers to silence lawful but unpopular speech in the name of safety. An example of the British government’s new stance on what is acceptable to discuss is a new taxpayer-funded online game. This game vilifies concerns over mass migration by giving the player a red extremism score, branding them as likely to be referred to the Prevent program, the UK anti-terror watchdog.
The fact that victims of a foreign grooming gang investigation can be dismissed as “white trash” is a disgrace – made all the more striking as senior ministers simultaneously talk about banning the most pro-free-speech social media platform, where stories like this gain greater public consciousness.
Just as the UK government has brought in these speech laws, the people have become aware that they are less free. Self-censorship and caution when speaking one’s mind are common, as individuals do not know the potential consequences of expressing their opinions. An opinion expressed by the Conservative Party or Reform Party could potentially create trouble or unnecessary harm if voiced by a civilian. Examples of this are easy to find, from Graham Linehan, who was arrested by armed police upon arriving in the UK from Arizona, to Deborah Anderson, an American cancer patient harassed by police in her own home in Britain over a post on X.
Though we aren’t locked in the jaws of state tyranny yet, Britain’s parallels with the current situation in Iran are unmistakable. Just as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps crack down on protest and switch off the Internet, Starmer is doing something similar for comparable reasons. It is a bad look to be constantly plagued by protest, which, as a fundamental right in a liberal society, serves to hold the government to account. While protests for a ban on X swirl online only so far, if the government were to do it, we would see freedom of speech advocates take to the streets too.
Although Britain’s governing Labour Party swept to victory in 2024 with confident rhetoric, it is keenly aware that the result reflected voter fatigue with the previous Conservative government rather than a wholehearted endorsement of its own agenda. Platforms like X have since become essential democratic pressure valves – spaces where peaceful protest is organized, government failures are documented, and information ignored by legacy media circulates freely. That very openness makes X unsettling to any administration instinctively drawn to control. When a government seeks to tax what it can and regulate what it cannot direct, attempts to constrain such platforms should be read not as benign governance, but as an early warning sign. Efforts to suppress open digital discourse, whether in Britain or elsewhere, signal a deeper discomfort with accountability itself.
A former human rights lawyer, the prime minister constantly points to international law as a beacon of what must prevail around the world. Meanwhile, at home, he simply cannot resist infringing on individual rights, replacing autonomy with bureaucracy. His demeanor now highlights the growing liberal class in Britain, which believes that the views of most hardworking British people are contemptible and that they know better. Just like Hillary Clinton and her infamous “basket of deplorables” comment, Starmer and the intolerant left he represents no longer believe in the democratic principles that built Britain.
What Britain needs is total, not selective freedoms. America is far from perfect, but it has a public consciousness aware of its citizens’ right to liberty. Many in Britain remain unaware of the country’s sleepwalk toward authoritarianism, and voices across the West must resist the mainstreaming of government tyranny.