U.S. President Donald Trump warned UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer that it would be a “mistake” for the British government to censor his Truth Social platform under the recently enacted Online Safety Act.
In an otherwise cordial press conference with the British Prime Minister at his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland, the issue of the Conservative Party-passed and Labour Party-enforced Online Safety Act threw a spanner in the works.
When pressed on the possibility of the censorship law impacting users on his Truth Social platform, President Trump turned to Starmer and remarked, “I only say good things about him and his country, so if you censor me, you’re making a mistake”.
For his part, Prime Minister Starmer, who desperately tries to claim that modern Britain still has free speech whenever in the company of anyone from the Trump White House, asserted that the legislation was merely focused on preventing children from accessing harmful content, such as websites which promote suicide.
“We are not censoring anyone,” Starmer proclaimed. “We’ve got some measures that are there to protect children.”
U.S. President Donald Trump meets with UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer at Turnberry in Scotland. July 28th, 2025. Jon Khan, Breitbart News
However, the Online Safety Act, which enables UK broadcasting regulator Ofcom to impose fines of up to 10 per cent of a social media platform’s global turnover or £18 million, whichever is higher, has already had a stifling effect on freedom of speech in Britain since coming into full force on Friday.
Immediately, British users began to report that footage of violent anti-mass migration protests on X was being blocked for them due to age restrictions required by the OSA.
Meanwhile, Conservative MP Katie Lam reported that a video of a speech she delivered in the House of Commons discussing the scourge of predominantly Muslim Pakistani child rape grooming gangs and the failures of government and local officials to protect young girls was also placed under “restricted access” by X following the implementation of the Online Safety Act.
“The British state won’t protect children from mass gang rape. But it will ‘protect’ adults from hearing about it,” Lam remarked.
The OSA comes on top of other laws which already criminalise speech in Britain, including the 2003 Communications Act, which makes it a criminal offence to send “grossly offensive” messages on communications networks.
UK police also record hundreds of thousands of so-called non-crime hate incidents in criminal databases, which, despite not rising to the actual level of crimes, can be visible on criminal background checks for employers. There is currently no appeal system in place, and those who get swept up in the speech code dragnet are often not informed that someone has made a complaint against them.
While President Trump hailed the “unparalleled” relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States, the issue of tech censorship may become a dividing line if the British broadcasting authorities begin imposing fines on American social media companies for failing to comply with UK speech restrictions.
The Trump administration has already come into conflict with the UK over laws criminalising the silent prayer near abortion clinics, which Vice President JD Vance, among others, has warned, represents a fundamental erosion of the liberties upon which Britain was built.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on X: Follow @KurtZindulka or e-mail to: [email protected]
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