The leftist British government is reportedly willing to walk back some of draconian online censorship rules to avoid falling into a trade war with U.S. President Donald Trump.
According to a report from The Telegraph, Downing Street is looking at reworking the Online Safety Act passed under the previous Tory government in 2023 for fear that punishing American tech companies may draw the ire of President Trump.
The law empowers Britain’s broadcasting authority Ofcom to impose fines on large tech firms of up to 10 per cent of global revenue if they fail to self-censor so-called “harmful” content on their platforms.
The powers, which will come into place next month will also allow for the British state to launch criminal charges against senior management and even potential bans of platforms from the country.
This may set up for a showdown with key Trump ally and X owner Elon Musk, who has been a vocal critic of Britain’s speech restrictions, who has called the UK a “tyrannical police state” and has lambasted the “two-tier” justice system in which there is “no justice for severe, violent crimes, but prison for social media posts.”
Andrew Hale, a trade policy analyst at the Trump-aligned Heritage Foundation, told the broadsheet that the new censorship rules are seen in Washington circles as a major impediment to any future trade deal between the United States and the UK.
“Every meeting I have to discuss trade policy with people either in the administration or people in congress, they always raise that. They say, ‘This is a huge roadblock’.”
The founder of Britain’s Free Speech Union (FSU), Lord Young of Acton, relayed similar concerns, saying: “If Ofcom tries to fine X or Facebook 10 per cent of their global turnover for not removing content that isn’t unlawful, I predict a showdown between Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and the UK Government.
“If that happens, Trump will side with his tech bros and tell Sir Keir that if he wants a trade deal, he’ll call off his dogs.”
However, while Starmer and Downing Street may be willing to ease restrictions to reach a deal with Trump, it is unclear if the prime minister’s leftist base in the parliament will be equally as willing, given their desire for more speech restrictions.
Indeed, in the Labour’s election manifesto last year, the party pledged to “build on the Online Safety Act, bringing forward provisions as quickly as possible, and explore further measures to keep everyone safe online, particularly when using social media.”
The party also said that it would implement legislation to “give coroners more powers to access information held by technology companies after a child’s death.”
This may put the government at odds with American companies like Apple or the Meta-owned WhatsApp over their encryption technology. While the party couched the demand in its manifesto with the language of dead children, the Labour government is reportedly seeking far more access.
According to a report from the Washington Post, London has already secretly demanded that Apple create a backdoor for British intelligence into the company’s cloud data storage service. If the American company were to comply, it would give the UK essentially unfettered access to users’ encrypted data worldwide.
