Sir Keir Starmer has a porn problem, and it could be as serious as the “Pincher moment” which did for Boris Johnson, Labour MPs are warning.
In a series of late-night sittings recently, the House of Lords has been debating the regulation of adult content. Peers had already voted to ban semen-defaced images, screen-shotting intimate videos, and to bar the creation or possession of porn depicting incest.
On Monday they went further and defeated the Government by just one vote on an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill which makes portrayals of sex between stepfamilies illegal too.
In 2024, 4.1 billion videos viewed on Pornhub featured incest-related scenarios. Campaigners are concerned that it normalises the concept and makes it more likely in real life. The Lords were told that in the UK, step parents perpetrate around half of all sexual abuse cases against children.
This week the Government found itself in the invidious position of whipping its Labour peers against the ban, on the basis it risked criminalising sexual relationships that are lawful between adults in real life. They also claimed the change would make it too complicated for prosecutors. Some Labour peers abstained.
Among a series of amendments, peers also voted to make it a duty on platforms that host porn to check the age of their actors.
If the bill goes back to the House of Commons for parliamentary ping-pong by the end of the month, Labour’s women MPs have told The i Paper they will back the Lords’ amendments and defy any attempts by Starmer to force them to vote the same way as their colleagues on the benches.
“I don’t want to defeat the Government but if they hold out, that is what they will make us do,” one female Labour MP said.
Another party MP warned Starmer he was facing “a Pincher moment”, which served as the last straw in the downfall of Johnson’s premiership. After allegedly groping two men while he was drunk, then Tory deputy chief whip Chris Pincher resigned, triggering a scandal because Johnson knew about the allegations but didn’t dismiss him. It’s now a byword for a calamity that a government doesn’t see coming.
“Here they are worrying about World War Three and not seeing a real crisis coming down the track. It’s another example of them turning away,” the MP said.
Labour MPs and peers warned Starmer is at risk of leaning too heavily on the advice of Varun Chandra, special envoy to the United States on trade and investment, who will be making a business case not to impose more burdens on Big Tech for fear of alienating the Trump administration.
“It’s not a comfortable position and lots of members of Parliament will be going into the whips and sending a flag up. To say No 10 is not wildly across this is an understatement. The general sense is that they are so overly obsessed with caution on tech, and that comes from Varun Chandra,” a minister said.
No 10 could try to stop the bill going back to the Commons at all by coming up with a set of its own amendments that would satisfy peers. What it can’t do is ignore the issue.
A government spokesperson said: “We are committed to our goal to halve violence against women and girls within a decade and are actively and constructively working across government to develop an effective response to these amendments to deliver on that commitment.”
The world has changed since Labour MPs first attempted to secure changes in the House of Commons last year, only for the Lords to take up the fight.
The Epstein files have dragged adult content regulation into the mainstream. A brief glance at the files shows the convicted paedophile’s porn search terms informed his real-life actions. Jeffrey Epstein relished videos involving young-looking girls being injured and the “breaking” of “teenage sluts”. He groomed young girls and set them homework to watch online porn so they could better satisfy his needs.
“Nobody wants to be a Mary Whitehouse about this, but we are now at a crisis point and it is having a massive effect: because of porn, young women think sex is about pain,” a Labour source said.
Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok, which created sexualised deepfakes of women and children, also inspired revulsion.
Women in Parliament are angry. It’s not just the Epstein-related furore over Peter Mandelson’s appointment and subsequent sacking as UK ambassador to Washington.
It’s the years of boys’ club briefings and Starmer’s decision to award a peerage to former close adviser, Matthew Doyle. Downing Street did not withdraw the nomination even after it was revealed Doyle campaigned for a friend charged with child sex offences. Doyle has had the Labour whip removed but remains a peer for life.
Last month Labour MP Emma Lewell told Starmer at a meeting with female parliamentary colleagues: “I can’t even begin to explain how much it hurts when people are screaming at me in the street that I am a member of the ‘paedo protectors party.’”
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch repeated the phrase back to Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions.
At that bruising encounter with women MPs and peers Starmer promised change to tackle misogyny. And he’s now surrounded by senior women in No 10 who are keen not to repeat past mistakes. Some insiders believe a compromise can be found and say this administration has done more to tackle violence against women and girls than any of its predecessors.
On Wednesday Starmer paid tribute to Sarah Everard, murdered five years ago. When police officer Wayne Couzens was arrested, prosecutors found free-to-view violent pornography across all his devices.
Now is Starmer’s chance to show change in action. Will he listen to advice to change the Government’s stance on incest porn, as women in his party are now advising him?
“It’s too early to say if there are changes in No 10,” the minister said. “Whose voices get heard is the fundamental test and it’s not been tested yet. Now is the time.”
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