“Labour deputy says Farage is a threat to democracy and calls for misinformation clampdown”, the Guardian reports.
Reform UK is destabilising British democracy by spreading divisive material that is being amplified by bots and troll farms, Labour’s deputy leader has said.
Lucy Powell called for tighter laws on social media giants to tackle misinformation, arguing the online space was “open to wealthy individuals, and bad state actors”.
It’s open to everybody, even bad state actors like the UK.
She also highlighted the multimillion-pound donations that have bolstered Reform’s election war chest and “fund their powerful online campaigns”.
Reform UK should put that acknowledgement that they are running a powerful online campaign in their next ad.
Arguing Nigel Farage and his party posed a threat to democracy, she said the law should be strengthened to “tackle the scourge of dis- and misinformation which is ripping communities apart and undermining us all”.
She said Reform’s “exploitation of online algorithms on social media sites is well documented”, as was the way the party had benefited from “bots and troll farms to amplify support”.
A Reform spokesperson said Powell’s claims that its messages were spread by bots and troll farms was “completely untrue” and called her a “conspiracy theorist desperately trying to distract from a failing Labour government”.
“Rather than smearing voters and demanding more state censorship, Labour should be focused on fixing the messes they’ve created,” the spokesperson said.
Clamping down on misinformation? So, they’ll be shutting down The Guardian, The BBC, the Government Information Office….
Whenever you see the phrase “threat to democracy” substitute the phrase “threat to my political preferences” or in some cases “threat to my re-election” and you pretty much have the truth.
FWIW the actual biggest threat to democracy is an unelected, unaccountable, unmanageable, unfire-able civil service, though California taking three weeks to “count the ballots” must be up there with the most transparent threat to democracy where the machinery is so plainly visible.
It’s ‘democracy’ (“Hooray! Good!”) when the masses of ordinary people agree with the elites & the authorities and ‘populism’ (“Boo-hiss! Bad!”) when those ordinary masses disagree.
And of course Reform is ‘populist’ and so a ‘threat to democracy’ – not to mention being sinful and right-wing and Nazi and badwrong in so many other ways.
One might note in passing that Reform’s “Short Money” allocation for 2025/26 is £406,296.87, less than a sixth of the Lib Dems £2.5 million allocation (on substantially fewer votes.) You kinda need private donations if your opponents are getting government donations of several million quid. (For info, Reform’s BBC favorable propaganda allocation is negative, like the Tories, and unlike Labour, Lib Dems, Greens and Nats.)
If Lucy is scratching about for ideas, may I suggest Belgium as a model ? They used the neat trick of barring Vlaams Blok from public funding, as being too beastly and right wing. The even neater trick was that they had previously limited private contributions to fourpence ha’penny per person. It had the desired effect – the party folded. I love the smell of democracy in the morning.