Comparing Nigel Farage to Jimmy Savile marks a new low in politics
Invoking Jimmy Savile to attack Nigel Farage over online safety is not just offensive – it exposes a deeper intolerance in political debate. Peter Kyle’s remarks cross a dangerous line, says Eliot Wilson
You would think that any mainstream politician would think twice before comparing an opponent to Jimmy Savile. The man police believe was not only a predatory sex offender on a horrifying scale but perhaps Britain’s worst sexual abuser is now the face of evil: guilty not just of appalling crimes (allegedly including necrophilia) but of abusing trust, exploiting his celebrity and eminence and of flaunting clues to his grotesque nature.
This is not like calling someone a “Nazi” or a “war criminal”. This is more personal: summoning up a universal hate figure and saying that your opponent is like him or on his side. Even in today’s febrile political atmosphere, that would, surely, be going too far.
Yet Peter Kyle, science, innovation and technology secretary, did just that. Last week, he was defending the Online Safety Act 2023, a statute many think misses its intended target and has unintentional but adverse consequences for free speech. Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, has been one of the most vocal of the act’s opponents. Speaking to Sky News, Kyle asserted that it was a “huge step forward” for online safety. But he did not – could not? – stop there.
“Make no mistake, if people like Jimmy Savile were alive today he would be perpetrating his crimes online – and Nigel Farage is saying he is on their side.”
You don’t have to be a Faragiste, and I am certainly not, to bridle at this. There are two problems, one essentially intellectual, the other much deeper and more emotional.
The first is that Kyle clearly thinks that the Online Safety Act (which was, ironically, introduced by the previous Conservative government though with Labour support) is the only possible way to regulate online content and safeguard the vulnerable. In his cramped, incurious mind, it is not possible to disagree with its provisions but agree in principle with its aims. That is not supposition on my part, but what Kyle said on social media:
“If you want to overturn the Online Safety Act you are on the side of predators. It is as simple as that.”
Labour’s way or the high way
This is the dogma of Roman Catholicism since St Cyprian: “extra Ecclesiam nulla salus”. There is no salvation outside the Church. More prosaically, it is the government’s way, or the high way.
There is a broader issue, which out of fairness I often try to explain away but which is demonstrated again and again. The progressive left genuinely thinks it is better than its opponents, more moral and more virtuous, and therefore anything in defence of its proposals and ideals is justified.
Kyle’s outbursts make it apparent that he cannot intellectually entertain the notion of someone disagreeing with him in good faith. Whether that ‘someone’ is Nigel Farage is immaterial; what matters is the nature of his response to any opposition. There are several arguments against the OSA: that it has driven users to virtual private networks (VPNs), beyond the reach of regulation and age verification; that it is such a blunt instrument it is blocking MPs’ speeches about child abuse; that it is effectively censoring coverage of anti-immigration protests.
These are serious problems which suggest poorly drafted, inadequate legislation. It is not merely Farage who opposes the Online Safety Act: Kemi Badenoch has been critical, lawyers have warned of an excessive regulatory burden and a petition to Parliament for the act’s repeal is nearing half a million signatures.
But Kyle wants to protect children! Who could disagree with that? Certainly only the malign. His logic is inexorable: if only the malign could oppose him, they should be called out. No criticism is too harsh: they are “on the side of predators”.
hen Angela Rayner called Conservatives “Tory scum”, when Zarah Sultana can shrug off the notion of celebrating the death of George W Bush, when Kneecap, the poor man’s Chumbawamba, can declare that “the only good Tory is a dead Tory”, these people show us who they are
Peter Kyle is not stupid – he is a former Cabinet Office special adviser with a PhD – so I cannot offer him that mitigation. When Angela Rayner called Conservatives “Tory scum”, when Zarah Sultana can shrug off the notion of celebrating the death of George W Bush, when Kneecap, the poor man’s Chumbawamba, can declare that “the only good Tory is a dead Tory”, these people show us who they are.
They show us their arrogance and self-righteousness, and they show us the streak of hatred in them. Nigel Farage’s armour-plated ego does not need an apology from Peter Kyle, nor are his hands always clean. The rest of us should treat Kyle as the former prisoners of war treated Emperor Hirohito on his state visit to London in 1971: quietly, firmly, turn our backs on him. He has proved he has nothing to say that we need to hear.
Eliot Wilson is a writer