Is Keir Starmer eyeing Elon Musk as a useful villain for his season one? If so, I can’t help feeling the prime minister’s chances of getting a season two will diminish. “Let me also say to large social-media companies and those who run them,” Starmer intoned this week, “violent disorder clearly whipped up online: that is also a crime. It’s happening on your premises, and the law must be upheld everywhere.”
Something big happened in the UK over the past fortnight, even if aspects of precisely what remain unclear. But we know the thing that happened doesn’t happen in countries that are functioning well, or that are – how to put this? – fit for purpose. It feels a mixture of inadequate and tangential, then, to be hearing various senior political figures indicate that the thing that isn’t fit for purpose is … the Online Safety Act. “I think very swiftly the government has realised there needs to be amendments to the Online Safety Act,” London mayor Sadiq Khan says. “I think it’s not fit for purpose.” Starmer has since suggested he agrees.
