STARMER WOULD USE ANY EXCUSE TO BAN X:

Indeed, ever since the Labour government came to power in July 2024, X and Musk have been a constant thorn in its side. Freed from the tight censorship of the old Twitter, British and international X users have been free to vent their frustrations about a whole host of thorny issues that Labour would prefer not to talk about, from multiculturalism to trans ideology.

Take the grooming-gangs scandal, interest in which was revived in January 2025, seemingly after Musk learned about it for the first time and began tweeting about it relentlessly. News that Labour’s safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, had refused to hold a national inquiry into the rape gangs may have passed under the radar were it not for the fury expressed on X. Starmer’s immediate response was to accuse anyone demanding justice for these evil crimes of jumping on Musk’s ‘far-right bandwagon’. Six months later, the PM would be forced, shamelessly, to order a national inquiry. The scale of the abuse, rape and torture endured by thousands of working-class girls by predominantly Pakistani men became impossible to deny.

Or take the trans debate. Before Musk’s takeover of Twitter, it was a bannable offence to refer to a ‘transwoman’ as a man. In 2025, the UK Supreme Court clarified that, under the Equality Act at least, a man who claims to be a woman really is a man. The gender-critical movement that struck this blow for women’s rights would have had to struggle even harder to reassert this basic truth without a platform like X, where users are free to ‘misgender’ as they please.

Totalitarians hate free speech:

Isn’t it ironic that the UK threatened to shut down X on the same day Iran shut down the internet to prevent its people from criticising the regime?

The irony of our times. pic.twitter.com/TIMoyGswJi

— Michael A. Arouet (@MichaelAArouet) January 9, 2026