“This is gaslighting and deception to create faux moral outrage while the mad Commies literally shut down free society and censor information.”
Every so often, amid the fog of moral panic and ministerial press releases, someone cuts clean through the noise.
I find this person is often the brilliant former MEP and TalkTV host, Alex Phillips.
While the government lines up solemnly to declare its latest crackdown “necessary,” “urgent,” and “for the children,” Phillips said what millions are already thinking. Not in a briefing note. Not in a committee room. In a blunt, accurate observation that exposes the whole charade.
“Suddenly the UK Government are cracking down on sexually abusive images…and have chosen to target X,” she wrote. “Not the myriad porn websites that disseminate billions of misogynistic, violent and paedophilic content. Not Snapchat which is often used by creeps trying to groom kids. No. The platform that has become the UK’s number one news source.”
That, right there, is the story.
For years, women have warned about pornification, abuse and exploitation online. Campaigners have begged governments to confront the industrial scale of misogyny pumped out by mainstream porn sites. Parents have raised alarms about grooming on private messaging apps. These concerns were not hidden. They were not niche. They were ignored.
Until now.
And what changed? Not the content. Not the harm. What changed is that one platform stopped playing ball.
X is not perfect. No channel is. But it is where information flows fastest, where narratives collide, and where official stories are questioned in real time. It has become, inconveniently for those in power, one of the country’s most important news sources.
Phillips goes further, and she is right to do so. “I am a vehement campaigner against pornification and for women’s safety, but I’m frankly not buying this,” she wrote. “This is gaslighting and deception to create faux moral outrage while the mad Commies literally shut down free society and censor information.”
Strong language makes polite society uncomfortable. Accuracy often does.
If this were genuinely about protecting women and children, Labour’s target list would look very different. The internet’s worst offenders are neither obscure nor hard to find. They generate billions in revenue, operate openly, and have done so for years. Yet Keir Starmer has thundered about banning them. No emergency rhetoric. No talk of “all options on the table.”
Instead, we are told that the great threat requiring unprecedented state action is X.
The background matters. This is the same political environment in which thousands of people are arrested every year for speech offences. The same culture in which insults can land you in a courtroom. The same state now floating the idea of blocking an entire platform used by tens of millions because it refuses to submit to centralised narrative control.
Against that backdrop, Phillips’s intervention lands like a hammer blow. It forces an uncomfortable question: why now, and why this platform?
The answer is not safety. It is authority.
Alex Phillips has always been clear-eyed about this stuff. She does not minimise harm, she does not excuse abuse, and she does not pretend the internet is a gentle place. What she refuses to accept is the cynical repackaging of censorship as virtue.
Her message resonates because people can see the pattern for themselves. When governments ignore real dangers for years, then suddenly discover their conscience precisely where their control is weakest, trust evaporates.
The facts are already out there. What Phillips provides is clarity. She names the contradiction. She exposes the misdirection. She says, plainly, what others dance around.
And that is why her words matter more than any ministerial soundbite.
This is not about sexually abusive images suddenly shocking a morally alert government. It is about power, narrative and obedience. Alex Phillips is completely right to call it out.
The noise will continue. The outrage will be manufactured. But the truth, once said clearly, has a habit of sticking.
And thanks to Alex, it has been said.
By Claire Bullivant
