Lisa Nandy and Lucy Powell are leading Labour’s tinpot free speech crackdown. The two senior Labour figures — Lucy Powell and Lisa Nandy — are working in lockstep to bring social media companies to heel and muzzle people who wish to point out the Government’s failures. Last week, Lisa Nandy flounced off X, taking her department with her. The Secretary of State responsible for media called the spread of misinformation and disinformation a threat to democracy and free speech, then vacated the stage. If Nandy really did care about misinformation, surely she should have stayed on the platform and engaged in debate? This dramatic move came just a week after she announced plans in the House of Commons, as part of the Government’s Green Paper, to force social media companies to prioritise and promote what they deem to be “trustworthy” news sources. Now, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party Lucy Powell is pushing for greater restrictions on social media during election periods. Her proposals would see private citizens treated like broadcasters and could result in the censorship of those who wish to engage in political debate online. Will we see private citizens — both domestic and foreign — hauled before Ofcom to answer for their tweets? Gareth Roberts writes that “these plans feel like the activities of a failing, flailing kleptocracy of the last century”. He adds: “It turns out that the hard-won freedoms of the British people – achieved by reformers and free thinkers long dead – are to be ended not by legions of brutes rolling down Regent Street in tanks, but by a gaggle of gormless supply teachers. Where Goebbels failed, Miss Hoolie from Balamory has triumphed. “The nerve of the Labour Party trying to muzzle its political opponents – under an obviously spurious claim of public safety – is disorienting. Nobody can quite believe their audacity, the absence of a scintilla of self-awareness.” This is a full-fledged assault on our right to free speech and open political debate. Gareth writes: “A propagandist of communism or fascism at least states openly that they are manufacturing a narrative for ideological control. The truly terrifying thought about Labour is that Nandy and Powell genuinely think that their worldview, such as it is, is the only correct one. “We are, then, to have our public square adjudicated by the very same people who thought that rapists should be housed in women’s prisons (Nandy), and that mere mention of the unshiftable moral stain of the Pakistani rape gangs was ‘getting a little dog whistle out’ (Powell).” Read more below 👇