Big Burnham will be watching you

Andy Burnham has promised that ‘the north’ will be his lodestar when he takes the reins of power. Yet it seems the incoming regime could be drawing inspiration not from the north of England, but from North Korea. A raft of new measures clamping down on our online activity, proposed by the outgoing Starmer administration – from restrictions on VPNs (virtual-private networks) to enforcing so-called purdah rules during elections – have reportedly gained Burnham’s backing, bringing Britain’s approach to the internet in line with some of the least liberal and democratic countries on the planet.

Team Burnham confirmed earlier this week that Keir Starmer’s proposed ban on under-16s using social media will go ahead. And crucially, to enforce these age restrictions, the use of VPNs is likely to be heavily curtailed if not banned outright – for children and adults alike.

Essentially, VPNs allow users to disguise their location and their device’s IP address, making it possible to circumvent national restrictions. Their use has surged since July 2025, when the Online Safety Act began blocking age-inappropriate social-media content – and they have been in the Labour government’s sights ever since. Tech secretary Liz Kendall has promised an announcement on VPNs will come this month. A ban would bring Burnham’s Britain in line with totalitarian states like China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and Belarus.

And the crackdown won’t end there. Shortly after flouncing off X, culture secretary Lisa Nandy unveiled a green paper with plans to compel social-media channels and video-sharing platforms to prioritise what it calls ‘trusted’ content creators. In the name of tackling so-called mis- or disinformation, videos from the BBC and other public-service broadcasters will be given additional prominence on our news feeds, while content from independent creators will be artificially suppressed.

It’s not hard to guess what the government is up to here. After all, the BBC and mainstream media have broadcast their own fair share of actual misinformation – pushing elite orthodoxy on everything from trans to Palestine, even when it conflicts with the truth. Still, in Labour’s eyes at least, the Beeb can at least be trusted not to ask too many difficult questions about the issues that most animate the public – from rape gangs to small boats. Labour wants to replace the rough-and-tumble of the free internet – with its range of noisy, rabble-rousing dissenting voices – with a safe space where only state-approved opinions can dominate the discourse. And as if that were not Orwellian enough, Labour’s consultation on the ‘prominence’ regime does not allow respondents to say they are opposed to the state dictating what appears on our social feeds.

Perhaps the maddest proposal yet has come from Labour’s Lucy Powell, a Burnham ally who is expected to be promoted to deputy PM. Powell has suggested amending the Representation of the People Bill that’s currently working its way through the Commons to force social-media firms to follow similar rules to broadcasters during election periods. In other words, they should seek to enforce ‘impartiality and balance’ on their news feeds, even giving due weight to political parties based on their past electoral support. This would entail nothing less than the end of social media as a space for the free expression of public opinion – and during election time, no less. It would require a staggering amount of censorship and state oversight over what we post online and what posts we’re allowed to read, just as we’re making up our minds about who governs us.

As alarming and authoritarian as these proposals may be, none of them should surprise us. The Labour government’s all-out assault on free speech has turned the UK into an international embarrassment. Thirty people are arrested every day in England and Wales for posts on social media deemed ‘grossly offensive’ by police – that’s 12,000 arrests per year, more than America was arresting at the height of the first Red Scare. The Online Safety Act – passed under the Tories, but implemented and beefed up by Labour – means that vast swathes of the internet are now blocked to Britons who haven’t verified their age. This includes social-media posts about gender ideology and asylum hotels, a speech in parliament about the rape gangs, and a piss-takey article about the plummeting popularity of the Christian name ‘Keir’. Our right to blaspheme against Islam – or even criticise the most extreme manifestations of Islamist ideology – has also been constrained by Labour’s new Islamophobia rules. Not since the Crown licensing of the press was abolished in 1695 have we had a government so determined to keep a lid on dissent.

Burnham has now all but confirmed that a change of Labour leader will not mean a change of direction when it comes to our right to speak freely. We will continue careening down the slippery slope towards ever more insidious forms of authoritarianism. In the name of child protection and fighting misinformation, we could soon be living under speech restrictions that would make a tinpot dictator blush.

Be in no doubt, Big Burnham will be watching you.

Fraser Myers is deputy editor at spiked and host of the spiked podcast. Follow him on X: @FraserMyers.