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# “A Very Active Interventionist State”.
- URL: https://macanorak.com/a-very-active-interventionist-state/
- Published: 2026-10-01T12:29:03.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T12:30:52.000Z
- Description: A UK Secretary of State says protecting children online is only a “staging post.” How far down this road do we want to go?
- Author: MacAnorak
- Tags: Field Notes, Storm Warning

There's a scene in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy is told that the yellow brick road will lead her to someone powerful enough to grant her wish and return her *home, sweet home*. Nobody tells her what's actually waiting at the other end, an ordinary man pulling levers behind a curtain whose authority turns out to be almost entirely theatre.

Lisa Nandy, the UK Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, [said this week](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/30/lisa-nandy-social-media-ban-online-safety-culture-secretary?ref=macanorak.com) that protecting children from online harm is just a “*staging post to what must be a very active interventionist state, policing and regulating the online space so that people are safe*”. [\[1\]](#fn1) By “*staging post*”, I assume she means, “*a stopping place en route to a destination*”. So what is that destination exactly?

The context, because it deserves to be detailed properly: Nandy made these remarks in the lead-up to her speech at the Labour Party conference this week. She was defending the government's ban on under-16s using “high-risk” social media apps (TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Instagram and the like), due to take effect in March 2027\. In practice, this means those platforms will be legally required to verify a user's age and block access entirely to anyone under 16 (not just restrict certain features, but deny the account outright). Alongside this are curfews and algorithm restrictions for 16 and 17-year-olds.[\[2\]](#fn2) A public consultation on the ban drew more than 116,000 responses, with the overwhelming majority of parents saying the risk of social media outweighed the benefits.[\[3\]](#fn3)

Nandy compared this situation, with the government feeling compelled to ban anyone under 16 from accessing these platforms, to a hypothetical scenario where town centres are so dangerous that children are confined to their bedrooms, rather than the town centres themselves being made safe. She asserted that no right-minded person would accept such a situation as a long-term solution. I agree with her on that much. No reasonable person believes that platforms optimised to maximise user engagement amongst children are not worth our concern. However, Nandy’s solution seems to be that children can only come out of their metaphorical bedrooms and into the town centres once we start policing the town centres themselves. Fair enough. But how far down that road do we want to go?

I don't ask that to dismiss what she's responding to. In the [speech](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKPAgivCSaE&pp=ygURbGlzYSBuYW5keSBzcGVlY2g%3D&ref=macanorak.com) she subsequently delivered at the Labour Party conference on the 30th of September, introduced by the campaigner Georgia Harrison[\[4\]](#fn4), Nandy spoke of "*an almost violent indifference to the women whose privacy and dignity is stripped from them, to the children who were preyed upon, their childhood stolen*". She pledged that the UK would be "*the first in the world to introduce legislation to make it impossible for children to take, share or view nude images*”, and “*the first to tackle abusive and non-consensual images*". To Harrison directly, she said, "*we will do whatever it takes*". I don't think any of that is theatre and I believe it comes from a sincere and well-meaning place, but it’s the trajectory of travel that concerns me.

One plan mentioned by Nandy is to give established broadcasters (BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and others) greater prominence on platforms like YouTube and TikTok.[\[5\]](#fn5) The [government's own consultation](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/plans-for-prominence-of-trusted-news-sources-on-social-media-alongside-measures-to-reform-public-service-media-in-the-uk?ref=macanorak.com) raises the possibility of extending this to national and local newspapers too, labelled as "*trustworthy providers*". This isn't primarily a child safety measure, it's the state deciding which grown-up content an algorithm should favour. Someone in government will need to decide what counts as “*trustworthy*”. Who?

Then there's an idea from the BBC's Director General, Matt Brittin — a [public service algorithm](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/aug/27/bbc-chief-proposes-public-service-algorithm-youtube-style-user-generated-content?ref=macanorak.com) — Nandy has welcomed this as fitting the Prime Minister's vision of Britain as "*a world leader in tech as a force for good*".[\[6\]](#fn6) The idea, floated as an “iPlayer 2.0”, is a YouTube-style platform opened up to outside creators, but policed by an algorithm built around public service goals rather than commercial ones. Brittin has described this as *"unadulterated by commercial interests, by algorithms that have other interests at heart”* and pointedly, *“not biased towards the incentives of a U.S. tech company or commercial interests"*.[\[7\]](#fn7) I wonder, what makes a state-endorsed algorithm more trustworthy than a commercial one? Email me if you know the answer.

In her remarks in advance of her speech, Nandy said the internet was the only major new technology to have been “*entirely outsourced to the private sector*”, with “*no role for the state*”. This is great rhetoric, but the internet already operates under GDPR, the Computer Misuse Act, the Investigatory Powers Act and the Online Safety Act in the UK. By the time she gave her speech at party conference, that claim had softened a bit: “*we've outsourced a revolution almost entirely to the private sphere, to shape and to police*”. I'm curious about the verb she chose at the end there: *police*. Is that what she feels the state's proper role is?

Nandy herself admitted in her pre-speech remarks that “*there really is a problem*” with Ofcom's ability to enforce the powers it already has. Ofcom (Office of Communications) is the UK's communications regulator. It's the body actually responsible for enforcing the Online Safety Act, the law all of this sits under. She said "*laws are only as good as the ability to enforce them*". This is true, and it happens to be an argument against writing more laws before you've worked out how to enforce the ones you've already got.

I do accept that a justified concern exists. In a statement to Parliament on 8th September, Nandy cited an Internet Watch Foundation figure: in 2024, 91% of reports of child sexual abuse imagery assessed by the IWF contained at least one self-generated image. [\[8\]](#fn8) Separately, a study published this week in *[JAMA Pediatrics](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abstract/2854067?ref=macanorak.com)*, synthesising data on more than 2.8 million children across 64 countries, found heavier screen amongst children use was associated with poorer academic performance, weaker language development and higher rates of anxiety, depression and behavioural difficulties.[\[9\]](#fn9) Nevertheless, seeking to protect children from harmful algorithms and endorsing “*a very active interventionist state, policing and regulating the online space*” are not the same thing, even though one is being used to justify the other.

We've watched a version of this play out before, in this same country, from the same government.[\[10\]](#fn10) It started with a defensible aim (keeping serious criminals identifiable), and it ended somewhere far, far broader — a secret order asking Apple to weaken end-to-end encryption. That story has played out mostly in secret, behind a legal gag order, and it took dogged investigative journalism by The Washington Post to bring it into public view. This new version is happening with a minister using the phrase “*a very active interventionist state*” about her own government, without apparently feeling the need to soften it.

Nandy described the UK government as having “*a difference of opinion with the US administration*” over these matters, which echoes the fight I've written about before: a UK government finding itself at odds with Washington over how much control it gets to exert over an American company's platform, for reasons that (superficially) sound protective. [\[11\]](#fn11)

I'm honestly not sure which version of this story concerns me more, and I worry that both end in the same place — an expansively empowered state with broad authority over our online life. Nandy said, "*We shouldn't accept that this is the end*," which is a curious thing to say about a policy that hasn't started yet. "*We will do whatever it takes*," she told Georgia Harrison, and she meant it as a promise.

I worry where "*not the end*" and "*whatever it takes*" lead. The destination might end up having very little to do with keeping children safe, and a great deal more to do with who's standing at the other end of it, pulling the levers.

*Don't you want to know where the rainbow ends?*

---

1. This specific line was reported by the Guardian from remarks Nandy made ahead of her conference speech, not the speech itself. [↩︎](#fnref1)
2. The changes also cover 16- and 17-year-olds specifically: curfews and restrictions on websites using infinite scrolling and algorithmic content, plus tighter age verification, from March 2027\. [↩︎](#fnref2)
3. The government’s consultation received 116,211 responses, including more than 54,000 parents and 14,000 children. The [government reported](https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/growing-up-in-the-online-world-a-national-consultation/outcome/growing-up-in-the-online-world-progress-statement?ref=macanorak.com)that only 11% of parents thought the benefits of social media outweighed the risks. [↩︎](#fnref3)
4. Georgia Harrison’s case against an ex-partner who shared intimate footage of her without consent was the driving force behind a [change in the law](https://absolutelymagazines.com/from-reality-tv-star-to-relentless-campaigner-georgia-harrisons-journey-to-a-mbe/?ref=macanorak.com), removing the need to prove "intent to cause distress" in image-based abuse prosecutions. [↩︎](#fnref4)
5. First reported back in June, the plan would give established broadcasters and media companies greater visibility on platforms like YouTube and TikTok, ostensibly to counter “misinformation” risk. [↩︎](#fnref5)
6. This was proposed by BBC director general Matt Brittin in August, as a YouTube-style, publicly-run alternative built around user-generated content. [↩︎](#fnref6)
7. Incidentally, Brittin spent the last decade of his 18 years at Google running the company's operations (YouTube included) across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. [↩︎](#fnref7)
8. From Lisa Nandy's [oral statement to Parliament](https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/lisa-nandys-statement-on-protecting-children-online?ref=macanorak.com), 8 September 2026\. [↩︎](#fnref8)
9. Al-Jbouri et al., University of Calgary, published on the 28th of September 2026\. It's a synthesis of 23 earlier meta-analyses, not new data collected directly from children. The researchers explicitly caution that correlation isn't causation: children already struggling may simply turn to screens more, and family circumstances could be driving both outcomes at once. Several headlines ("[screen time damages children more than poverty"](https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/screen-time-damages-children-more-174359387.html?ref=macanorak.com)) claimed far more than the study itself supports. [↩︎](#fnref9)
10. Andy Burnham became Prime Minister in July 2026, handing Nandy the online safety brief shortly after — so to be fair to her personally, she’s not the one who signed off on the Apple TCN. But it's the same government, and what looks to me like the same instinct. [↩︎](#fnref10)
11. See [Two-Tier Encryption in the UK](https://macanorak.com/two-tier-encryption-in-the-uk/) — the UK government's secret Technical Capability Notice ordering Apple to build a way into end-to-end encrypted iCloud data, which drew a rebuke from Washington. [↩︎](#fnref11)