The Online Safety Act and the Left's ‘ancient' institutions

Spectator

6 days ago

After Reform promised to repeal the Online Safety Act, it didn't take long for Labour to defend internet censorship. 'And get rid of child protections online? Madness,' Labour MP Chris Bryant tweeted. 'Why would anyone want to grant strangers and paedophiles unfettered online access to children?' asked Mike Tapp.
Science Minister Peter Kyle went one step further, declaring that anyone opposing the Online Safety Act – including Reform leader Nigel Farage – is 'on the side of Jimmy Savile'. Labour's latest attack ad reads: 'Farage's Reform party would scrap laws keeping children safe online'.
The actions of government ministers over the past few days provide a masterclass in left-wing institution shrine-making. Yes, it might seem absurd that the government is treating a week-old policy like a sacred cow, the abolition of which is completely unimaginable. But this is a strategy ripped out of the progressive playbook. The same approach has been taken to the Human Rights Act, Ofcom, the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Supreme Court. We live in a world of Blairite institutions treated as ancient pillars of society.
On Sky News, Kyle added that Farage was 'on the side of turning the clock back to the time when strange adults can get in touch via messaging apps with children'. How dare Farage try to turn back the tide of progress like this, returning the UK to the dystopian hellscape of… last week? If Labour are to be believed, the internet before 25 July 2025 – when the act's child safety duties came into force – was a dangerous and terrifying place in which children were constantly at risk of predation. It's completely safe now, though. The fact that the greatest safeguarding scandal of the 21st century – the mass grooming and rape of our children – happened mostly offline seems to have passed the government by.
Here's how it works. Step one: diagnose a real problem and propose an institution or law that may do something in a roundabout way to address it. The Online Safety Act latched on to very real fears that children were accessing hardcore pornography and self-harm sites online. Martyn's Law, legislation seeking to improve protective security and organisational preparedness in event venues, responded to the horrors of the Manchester Arena terror attack in 2017. The Human Rights Act of 1998 emerged from a good-natured desire to 'bring rights home'. Nobody could ever object to the prohibition of slavery or torture. It all seemed very reasonable at the time.
Step two: give your newly created solution wide-reaching powers that go far beyond the scope of the problem you sought to solve. Consult every 'stakeholder' on the books and add in amendments seeking to cover a whole host of new issues.
Quickly, the Online Safety Act became an attempt to age-restrict most of the internet, including 'content relating to': sexual exploitation, illegal immigration and people smuggling, and fraud. Yes, 16-year-olds will soon have the right to vote – but not to watch some speeches in Parliament.
Attempts to insulate venues from the threat posed by terrorism left small event organisers with hours of paperwork and online training in order to hold even tiny events unlikely ever to have been the target of an attack. The Human Rights Act became a vehicle for criminals to stay in the country. Finally, once your institution has spiralled completely out of control, object to any and all criticism on the grounds that the world we lived in before was a cruel and dangerous place. Never engage with the realities of the past.
Robert Jenrick's campaign for Britain to leave the European Court of Human Rights and abolish the Human Rights Act was met with shock from campaigners. Those who support him are accused of trying to take away human rights – of trying to remove 'the fundamental universal rights we have as all human beings'. Ushering in a world where no one can have a free trial or a family life. Those on the left refuse to engage with the fact that, before 1998 when the act was introduced, Britain was clearly not an authoritarian state. Indeed, freedom of speech was undoubtedly better back then.
The same case is made for the Supreme Court, which only came into existence in 2009, and the Equality Act of 2010. Before this, we are meant to believe that the ordinary person was suffering day to day at the hands of evil, woman-hating employers and parliamentary dictators. The same goes for the Office for Budget Responsibility – a creation of Cameron's 2010 government, and one which the Chancellor Rachel Reeves is determined to hand even more power to. Was the Treasury completely out of control before they weighed in with their forecasts? Is a 15-year-old institution that's overseen consistently rising government debt truly beyond reproach? Was the press really much worse before Ipso, the press regulator, was established in 2014? If anything, its existence has made it harder for the press to report on contentious topics, such as the gender debate.
There was a world before the turn of the millennium. Britain is held together by the fundamentals of its democratic norms; by its truly ancient institutions: common law, democracy and parliamentary sovereignty have all done great things to protect the individual. The institutions and policies of the last decade have hindered, not helped, this project. Learn from the derangement of the conversation about the Online Safety Act. Don't fall for the progressive guidebook next time they get it out.