Imagine a future historian investigating why Keir Starmer’s Trump strategy failed. They might first consider the president’s designs on Canada. Then maybe watch videos of Trump looking admiringly at Vladimir Putin or read about his long-standing relationship with Nigel Farage. Surely history would show that this human rights lawyer took issue with some of Maga’s resident white nationalists?
No dice. The historian discovers that the plan fell apart because a few anonymous officials at a public body called Ofcom took issue with an eccentric tech billionaire’s new artificial intelligence agent and so banned his entire social media network – creating what became known in America as the Great Atlantic Firewall – which then led Maga officials to sanction Britain, resulting in the digital equivalent of the War of 1812. Fanciful? Not as much as it should be.
This hypothetical situation takes its cue from the indignation that has swept the British government after users on X asked its AI agent, Grok, to manipulate pictures of women and children into nude and degrading deepfakes. Ministers have called for Ofcom to investigate swiftly, stressing that all options – including a ban on the platform – remain open.
It’s a treacherous path to take. A ban would be met with fury from the White House – an outcome Starmer has so far suffered every indignity to avoid. Given the assiduousness with which he has tried to keep the US administration sweet, one can’t help but wonder whether he forgot that nowadays internet regulation constitutes foreign policy, and, more importantly, that in Trump’s America the line between corporations, the oligarchs who own them and the state is blurry and, occasionally, nonexistent. In Caracas, for instance, where does an oil company’s security team stop and a Delta Force unit begin?
Labour should be warned that Elon Musk, the proprietor of a platform that is now awash with porn, has squirrelled his way back into Trump’s close circle. Musk and the president had dinner at Mar-a-Lago over Christmas. This week he hosted the War Secretary, Pete Hegseth, at one of his factories. Expect Musk’s pals to take offence that their favourite billionaire is subject to British censorship, especially when many are still livid that Trump was once banned from social media.
What is more, X is the Maga movement’s public square, where its officials and influencers flesh out its politics and send tweets against regimes that ban entire websites, calling them communist Marxist wokedoms. X is part of its political identity. Maga would relish the irony that the British government has banned the very platform that first made it aware of what it sees as Britain’s newfangled authoritarianism. It would be a very modern, bathetic end to the special relationship.
All of which raises the question: why would Labour risk its main foreign policy plank in the pursuit of internet regulation? The British public don’t mind when the government bans stuff, as the pandemic proved. And no doubt many in Labour hold X responsible for giving oxygen to the hard right and Tommy Robinson.
Let’s discard the politics for a moment and look at what the government states as its reason to act. In parliament recently, Britain’s Technology Minister, Liz Kendall, said the action the government was taking against X was an example of Britain exercising its “sovereignty”. It was an interesting choice of word. What sovereignty? Economic sovereignty?
Labour has long championed a cosy relationship with Silicon Valley. Rachel Reeves even appointed Doug Gurr, a former Amazon executive, as interim chair of the Competitions and Markets Authority in order to reassure Big Tech. Labour’s complaint has never been that these companies have too much economic power. That the British state is trying to regulate tech companies abroad draws attention to the absence of tech companies to regulate at home. If they were regulating British tech companies, then the government wouldn’t have to worry about retaliation from a foreign country.
Nor have they ever asked what these companies’ power means for national sovereignty. No, the government only got angry when these companies failed to comply with its laws and regulations. Labour understands sovereignty then in terms of rules, not power.
At least parliament is sovereign and makes those rules, right? Well, sort of. It is the grand strategists at Ofcom who appear to be making this decision, which could shape British foreign policy for years to come, not Britain’s elected politicians.
As well as economic dependence on the US, political vengeance and the legalisation of politics, a fourth reason for Labour’s move might be that its faith in its Trump strategy is waning. There are signs of a belated recognition that Britain gets bruised when Trump falls into one of his rageful fits. I hear that calls around the cabinet table for Starmer to saddle up with the Europeans are growing louder. Hence why he is inching away from America’s grip into European arms. Enduring the piratical adventures of Trump is less enticing when you realise speaking softly and carrying a small stick doesn’t get you much influence in private.
I’m sure Labour will be happy for this all to die down. But if the situation escalates and Trump retaliates, then Starmer’s entire America strategy begins to look precarious. That would be yet another example of a Labour policy cracking on contact with reality. And yet another case study for the historian to parse.
[Further reading: Why Keir Starmer has gone to war with Elon Musk]
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This article appears in the 14 Jan 2026 issue of the New Statesman, Battle for power
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