We need a parliament, not a crèche

Nobody benefits from the infantilisation of political discourse.

Toddlers are demons in human form. With their continual tantrums, the very young are the most unreasonable of interlocutors, and they know how to get their way. The stamping of tiny feet and the wailing and gnashing of teeth produces the most irritating of symphonic experiences. I empathise with those parents who would rather capitulate to their offspring rather than suffer their sound and fury.

But it is a sad state of affairs when politicians are looking to toddlers for tips. During an interview with Sky News last week, Peter Kyle – the government’s Science Secretary – made the astonishingly infantile claim that Nigel Farage was ‘on the side’ of abusers who predate on children due to his opposition to the Online Safety Act. ‘Make no mistake about it,’ he said, ‘if people like Jimmy Savile were alive today, he would be perpetrating his crimes online, and Nigel Farage is saying that he is on their side, not the side of children’. He later doubled down, tweeting: ‘If you want to overturn the Online Safety Act you are on the side of predators. It is as simple as that’.

Was Kyle drunk? Could he genuinely believe that legitimate concerns raised about the Online Safety Act are tantamount to paedophile apologism? The government claims that the act is solely about protecting children from accessing harmful material, but since the measures were passed we have seen sinister forms of censorship imposed on the adult population. Many online posts have been restricted, including those about two-tier policing, women’s rights to single-sex spaces, Richard the Lionheart and even images of a painting by Francisco Goya. Testimony from Sammy Woodhouse, a victim of the grooming gangs scandal, has likewise been censored on the grounds that it contains ‘graphic content’.

No one is denying that children should be shielded from the worst aspects of the internet, but there are all sorts of ways in which this problem might be tackled without resorting to this sledgehammer approach. By threatening social media platforms with draconian fines, the government has incentivised tech companies to censor excessively and impulsively. Moreover, the act has been written in such a way that it is wide open to exploitation by any future government that wishes to curb dissent. (You can read my piece about the risks here.)

As a government minister, it is surely not too much to expect Peter Kyle to engage with the arguments like an adult. Yet his core claim – that everyone who disagrees with him wants to help paedophiles – is so juvenile that it raises further concerns. Most obviously, there is the question of how it is that we have developed a political system in which such a petulant character can advance to a cabinet position?

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