That’s a bold claim isn’t it? We’re potentially four years away from the next general election; seems a bit too early for that rhetoric. And, ahead of the 25 July 2025, I probably would’ve erred on the side of skepticism in making such claims as well.
Labour’s tenure has not started well, with examples such as the controversial flip-flopping on winter fuel payments and the ‘will they, won’t they’ approach to slashing people’s benefits dominating recent headlines. One gets the impression they’re willing to talk tough about decisions that are unpopular and impact the most vulnerable but will U-turn if opinion and backbench support wanes.
To keep Reform at bay, Labour need improve living standards for average people and that’s not happened yet. Though it’s not promising stuff, four years is a long time in politics. If the magical UK growth happens in the next few years, then maybe that’s not an impossibility.
Even among the substantial doom and gloom, July still brought some good news. Labour’s decision to give 16-17-year-olds the vote at the next election was significant development in UK suffrage – and one long-advocated for by progressives wanting to encourage younger people to get involved in politics.
How unfortunate it was that within a fortnight Labour – again after a lot of speculation – introduced age verification requirements for online services under the Online Safety Act 2023. These measures that are likely to push swathes of new voters to vote Reform – along with a lot of the rest of the country.
Rare left-right consensus: the issue is overreach
There are two issues at play here: technical overreach and public perception.
Regarding the technical, the legislation represents a grotesque and, ultimately, clumsy overreach. This Act has been in the makings for multiple years – it was Conservative Party legislation originally – so two successive Governments have had a think about how to enact age verification systems online. The result is potentially the largest transfer of UK personal data to third party overseas private companies in history.
You’ll not find many objections across the political spectrum to restricting access to pornographic and extreme material by underaged internet users. Indeed, pre- and post-implementation, support for the aim of the Act is pretty clear, with 69% of people supporting the requirement for age verification on pornographic material.
But this is only one piece of the puzzle. Where public support is less clear right now is the requirement for blanket age verification for other major services that do not host obscene material.
This includes widely used service companies such as Spotify, which may delete accounts that fail their mandatory age checks, and Xbox, which has indicated age verification will be required to access online features from 2026 onwards. Social media sites like X and Discord have already implemented this.
Much wider implications
Worryingly, Wikipedia is concerned about access to its site and whether its visitors or volunteers will be impacted by age verification systems. This would be a shocking blow to the democratisation of knowledge and potentially lead to Wikipedia withdrawing access in the UK entirely.
Support forums also have been affected. Reddit has required age verification for access to anything on the site labelled “NSFW” (Not Safe For Work), which includes mental health, sexual health, alcoholism, and drug support forums. If services like Spotify, which hosts 18+ music videos that aren’t pornographic, must implement age verification, then it’s fairly reasonable to assume major streaming platforms such as Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime will eventually require age verification to sign in, as well as wider social media platforms such as TikTok or Instagram.
It’s an enormous burden on the UK population. Even if you don’t actively seek out smutty material, the chances are by the end of this year you’ll have been asked to provide ID verification to multiple different third party verification providers just to use innocuous services.
These services aren’t provided in-house by either the Government or by the platforms themselves. On occasion, the verification services are not even UK-based – for example, Persona and k-ID are both American companies which provide verification services to Reddit and Discord, respectively.
Whether one is providing a passport, driving license, or simply a selfie, all of this dramatically increases the chances of major personal data leakage in the future, as we have seen recently in tech media. Moreover, this personal information will be held in perpetuity or, worse, may be sold on to other private companies.
The harm and overreach of the Act greatly outweighs the potential good it can do. Reform UK has already been quick to point this out and try to use it as a wedge.
Public perception and the slow creep of frustration
You could argue polling for adult age verification is strong, so what does Labour have to fear? It is a popular policy as written because most people will want to ensure everyone sees age-appropriate material in principle.
The issue is that polling data around the Act as a whole is erratic because the Act is so large in scope. Polling by More in Common at the start of August – post implementation – showed that 59% of people still supported the Act. Yet this is down from the overwhelming support for age verification generally.
However, in the same polling data, 87% of people were concerned about personal information “being hacked” after age verification. Almost two thirds (66%) were concerned about not seeing harmless information that’s been incorrectly labelled and 74% were concerned with the Act being bypassed by virtual private networks (VPNs). Though it was a loaded question, it’s significant that 72% were concerned with restrictions on free speech, because the free speech cited was “information that is critical of immigration”. Reform UK will continue to raise issues on free speech and VPNs as points against Labour.
It’s still early days for the Act and while it will almost certainly prove unpopular with young people, Reform UK is in the driving seat currently to (perhaps correctly) label the Act as not just ineffective but also a Labour attempt to quell right-wing momentum.
Frustratingly, the Act doesn’t intentionally do this, but it can limit the ‘adult’ content that some may see online emanating from any protest. Over the last year or so, we have seen the right wing complain about “two-tier policing” and any perception of censorship will play into these hands. It’s a brutal one-two jab: not only does the Act not prevent extreme right-wing misinformation, but its blanket approach gives rise to the perception of bias.
Also unhelpful in this regard are the messaging and attacks emanating from Number 10 in response to criticism of the Act. On a rare occasion where Nigel Farage criticised legislation from a reasonable position, the Technology Secretary took the startling action of claiming Farage was “on the side of Jimmy Savile“, echoing similar attacks the Tories made on Keir Starmer some years back.
I don’t think many on the left wing are opposed to ‘fighting fire with fire’ when it comes to aggressive rhetoric with the far right, but this attack completely missed the mark. It painted Farage as a sympathetic figure and the Government as completely unwilling to discuss their flagship new legislation. Any further attacks on this note will similarly backfire on Labour
More to come
We haven’t yet seen the full extent of the Act. By the end of 2025, it seems major platforms will be required to submit illegal conduct risk assessments and report on how they are protecting children from harmful conduct to Ofcom. How will already strong hives of Reform UK supporters such as those on X or Signal respond to such monitoring of their conduct?
We can also assume platforms will aggressively reject the requirement for transparency reports to Ofcom. One might anticipate culture wars over Labour censorship into 2026 and beyond.
I support the deplatforming of the ever-growing far right, but this should have been on the agenda consistently since before 2016. With the measures in this Act, Labour are playing into the far right’s hands because ordinary people will be impacted in their day-to-day life. This is just foolish. The overreach massively increases the risk of populist radicalisation.
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