THE Labour government is considering a plan to impose state regulation of journalists and newspapers!
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has published preliminary proposals that would require Facebook, YouTube and X, among others, to prominently display news from public service broadcasters including the BBC, ITV and Channel 4.
Nandy has said that the plans ‘will make sure that people have better access to trusted and accurate news and that our regulated public service media is seen and heard in the fierce battle against mis and disinformation.’
Ian Murray, the Media Minister, has also claimed that the plans were ‘existential for our democracy’ and refused to rule out requiring publishers to submit to regulation by a state-sanctioned regulator such as ‘Impress’ – which was originally bankrolled by the Hacked Off campaigner Max Mosley, who died in 2021.
Impress was set up in the wake of the phone-hacking Leveson Inquiry.
Nigel Huddleston, the shadow Culture Secretary, said: ‘We don’t believe that strict state-backed regulation is appropriate. It could compromise freedom of the press, media plurality and investigatory journalism.’
However, the proposed measures will now be subjected to a ten-week public consultation. Such measures have even been attacked by the Trump regime in the USA which has protested against regulation of US technology companies as an attack on free speech!
However in the UK, Labour is now considering a plan to impose state regulation of journalists via new controls over social media.
No major newspaper publisher has consented to its supervision, with most of Fleet Street signed up to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), a self regulatory body that they fund.
Any attempt by Labour to induce publishers to submit to state-backed regulation will threaten to reopen a bitter row just as Burnham is manoeuvring promising a ‘fresh start’.
In fact, the right wing Labour leadership is desperately manoeuvring to push through measures that will give the UK’s bosses more power not less to impose dictatorial measures onto the working class and the growing millions of unemployed youth.
Institute for Fiscal Studies director Helen Miller has warned: ‘Whoever is the Prime Minister they will find that within the fiscal rules there is very limited scope to increase spending on a particular area without cutting back spending elsewhere or raising taxes.’
At the same time, the Metropolitan Police is to extend its use of live facial recognition technology, first into London’s West End by Christmas, followed by a further six areas next year.
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley boasted: ‘Facial recognition is one of the most revolutionary technology advances in policing in recent years.’
Big Brother Watch warned: ‘This is an alarming escalation of an intrusive technology.’
The Met has been trialling live facial recognition in Croydon, south-east London, saying 173 arrests were made during the six-month pilot.
Now is the time to campaign as never before for a general strike to bring down the current Labour-led coalition and replace it with a Workers Government and socialism.
The TUC must be made to recall its Congress to discuss and to call a general strike to bring down the bosses and replace bankrupt capitalism, that is determined to take the working class down with it into the abyss that the capitalist crisis is creating.
Now is the time for the working class to have its say!
It must force the TUC to act now and bring in a Workers Government and Socialism.
This will nationalise the banks and the major industries and bring in a socialist planned economy that will be able to further develop the productive forces.
Capitalism has more than had its day, and now is the time to overthrow it and replace it with a planned socialist economy whose maxim will be ‘from each according to their ability to each according to their need!’ Forward to Socialism! Victory to the World Socialist Revolution!