What do Rishi Sunak and Nigel Farage have in common? Not much – except they have each been smeared by the Labour Party as being an ally of paedophiles.
Last week, Technology Secretary Peter Kyle was the first to level this charge against the Reform UK leader. Farage was, he claimed, “on the side” of “people like Jimmy Savile” who want to abuse children online.
The response was furious; understandably so. Kyle’s victim branded his remarks “disgusting” and demanded an apology. None has been forthcoming.
The lack of apology is, presumably, because it wasn’t an accident.
If one minister says something in the heat of the moment, it will usually be retracted. But now a second minister, the Home Office’s Jess Phillips, has doubled down, writing in The Times that Farage “doesn’t worry about… modern-day Saviles” because he is more interested in “political advantage…[and] clicks for his monetised social media accounts”.
The Savile line wasn’t an off-the-cuff error, then, but an intentional strategy. Branding Nigel Farage a friend of paedophiles is now apparently the official message of His Majesty’s Government.
Having struggled to land a glove on the right-wing insurgent on matters of politics and policy, ministers of the Crown now seek to smear him by association with the most notorious paedophile of the modern age. “Political advantage” appears to be an acceptable priority for oneself, if not for others.
In 2022, Boris Johnson raised the failure of the Crown Prosecution Service – on Keir Starmer’s watch – to prosecute Savile (something the now Prime Minister apologised for on behalf of the organisation he led).
Labour reacted with outrage, and various Conservatives resigned and rebelled in protest at the weaponisation of the case. Starmer himself declared Johnson’s attack “a deliberate slur”, lamenting: “It’s not about me, it’s about the way we conduct our politics. I don’t want to see us go down the route that this potentially takes us down.”
It seems he has changed his mind.
This grubby attack on Farage will be familiar to Rishi Sunak. In 2023, Labour issued a campaign poster featuring the then prime minister’s smiling face with the extraordinary – and defamatory – caption: “Do you think adults convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison? Rishi Sunak doesn’t.”
The truth, of course, is that Sunak very much does think such criminals should go to prison – making the poster what is traditionally known as “a lie”.
But the opposition refused to withdraw it, and plastered it all over social media. On we trundled down the “route” that Starmer previously deplored.
The furore over the Government’s shameful attack on Farage serves another purpose: distracting from the reasonable point the Reform leader made about the Online Safety Act.
His critique was that the Act – which bans all British internet users from seeing or reading content deemed “legal but harmful” unless they have provided age verification in the form of face scans, photo ID documents and credit card details – amounts to a restriction on freedom of expression. He’s right, it does.
The Act is already malfunctioning, only a few days in. Social media posts about violent protests, the realities of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and even a video of Katie Lam MP’s speech in parliament about the grooming scandal, have been blocked from view.
Other examples of gated content (cited on the grassroots blog LabourList) include paintings by Goya, quotes by the Roman poet Livy, and Reddit groups providing advice to survivors of sexual abuse.
If you’re over 18, and have the time and energy, then you might choose to jump through the Act’s verification hoops.
But what of the 16- and 17-year-olds whom the Government has just announced will be given the vote? The very same Government believes that these citizens should be forbidden – for their own safety! – from hearing MPs talk about issues of major concern on which they will now be voting. It doesn’t make sense.
square CHRIS STOKEL-WALKER I never thought I'd agree with Farage on anything – until now
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That’s only the start of the problem. There are legitimate reasons why someone might not wish to provide their personal photo ID to a big tech firm, or why someone escaping an abuser might be wary of linking their anonymous Reddit account to their personal identity.
There are also obvious dangers to creating honeypots of valuable personal data – in the US, a data breach has just exposed the sensitive information of thousands of women who relied on the app Tea to do background checks on potential partners, endangering them for seeking to become safer.
Even on the less contentious topic of pornography, I’d be amazed if hostile state actors like Russia and China were not right now either setting up their own sites or hacking existing ones, in the hope of securing the blackmail prize of the verified browsing history and sexual proclivities of public officials, politicians, scientists in sensitive research fields and others.
These are reasonable concerns, and it is legitimate in a democracy to raise them; indeed, it is the duty of opposition MPs to do so.
But no. If you are concerned about freedom of expression, if you think it’s wrong to force abuse survivors to choose between risking their anonymity and accessing support communities, or if you think it nonsensical to give 16-year-olds the vote then ban them from watching parliamentary speeches, then you shouldn’t expect a fair hearing or even the respect you are due as a concerned citizen.
You’re no better than a friend to Jimmy Savile, and the Government wants to shame you into shutting up. It’s for your own safety.
Mark Wallace is chief executive of Total Politics Group
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