Opinion: Labour plan to nationalise broadband will be the end of free-speech

The Labour Party’s manifesto will take Britain back to state spending not seen comparatively since the 1970s. As part of this, free broadband will be given to every home. This has been widely criticised for the economic impact. However, one way that the MSM have not discussed this policy is the impact on choice for the public. Some may surely see this as a direct threat to civil society and liberal democracy if a government has the means of directly controlling digital communications. 

Under Labour’s proposals, its new provider of services presumably called something along the lines of ‘British Broadband Services’ would be accountable to a regulator that is run by the owner and controller of that same service. This really would be the end of free speech in Britain. Both Mr Corbyn and Mr McDonnell are the most left-wing Labour leadership figures for a generation, and both have a long history of support for regimes that stifle or throttle free media and clamp down on free speech and free association. Marxist governments typically do not support a free media once in power. 

UNN’s Oliver Down has asked a crucial question to the Labour press team ‘Would a free media be safe with a single broadband provider?’ Would the new Labour internet provider could use excuses to intervene in content allowed such as extremism, online grooming, fake news, breaches of data protection? These are the fears of many. 

Even if the intention is not to use the state provider to control and shape what we see and hear as a society, it puts into the hands of government a means of control that is best left in the hands of the market, subject to regulation by an effective independent regulator such as IMPRESS. Most news is consumed via the internet that via any other means and it must never be under state control.