Lisa Nandy has set a terrible precedent by flouncing off Twitter
A government that first declares a platform beyond the pale, then withdraws official engagement from it, is constructing the moral case to compel its regulator to act. First you leave; then you police; then, when policing proves “insufficient”, you ban, says James Price
When the Roman Senate ordered the burning of Aulus Cremutius Cordus’s histories for the crime of praising Brutus and Cassius, Tacitus noted that the books were simply hidden, copied and read all the more eagerly.
Lisa Nandy has not burned any books yet. But on Wednesday the Culture Secretary flounced off X (Twitter to you and me) and took her entire department with her, declaring that the platform “favours abuse and misinformation over meaningful debate”. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport follows the Attorney General’s Office, marched off the platform by Lord Hermer last month over “racism and misogyny”. Two departments gone in a matter of weeks. I expect there to be more.
Kemi Badenoch’s response was pretty good: “DCMS is supposed to counter and deal with misinformation, not run away because it’s all too much.” The department responsible for media policy in this country has concluded that the world’s largest public square is beneath its engagement. The Secretary of State will remain, she assures us, on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, which is all filled with Ciceronian rhetoric.
Misinformation?
The misinformation charge would also carry more weight coming from a political class less prolific in producing the stuff. This is a government elected on a promise not to raise taxes on working people, which raised them; one that conjured a “£22bn black hole” its own fiscal watchdog refused to endorse. And let’s not get started with Lisa Nandy’s own assertion that men who commit sexual offences should be put in women’s prisons if they say they are a woman…
This flouncing off is more serious than most will yet assume. It sets a precedent, and precedents in this territory run in only one direction. Ofcom has been investigating Twitter since January under the Online Safety Act. A government that first declares a platform beyond the pale, then withdraws official engagement from it, is constructing the moral case to compel its regulator to act. First you leave; then you police; then, when policing proves “insufficient”, you ban.
For a preview, look across the Channel, where the criminal justice system has become an instrument for shadowboxing political opponents. The Paris prosecutor’s office has escalated its probe of Twitter into a full criminal investigation, summonsing Elon Musk and his former chief executive Linda Yaccarino on a charge sheet that includes “algorithmic interference” in French politics and things said by a chatbot, and tipping off the American authorities for good measure. Whatever one thinks of Grok’s output, indicting foreign executives because you dislike their platform’s politics is a terrifying politicisation of justice.
Britain is laying the same groundwork. Brazil banned X outright in 2024, and the sky, ministers will have noticed, did not fall in Brasilia. I will make a prediction: before this Parliament is out, this government will attempt to restrict access to X for the rest of us, dressed in the language of safety. They will do the same in France. That is where this ends, and everyone involved knows it.
It will not work. The Senate’s bonfire made Cremetius immortal: his daughter hid the manuscripts, and Rome read them for centuries. Every attempt to suppress an idea advertises it, a phenomenon better known today as the Streisand effect. As Tacitus said: “The persecution of genius fosters its influence; foreign tyrants, and all who have imitated their oppression, have merely procured infamy for themselves and glory for their victims.”
Similarly, attempts by a Government this mendacious to hide the truth from the people will only make people more curious to see what it is they have to hide. In the case of this government, that truth is very ugly indeed.