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Andy Burnham, a potential Labour leadership rival to Sir Keir Starmer, has formed an unlikely alliance with Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch in calling for “much bolder action” to control children’s access to social media.
Starmer has so far resisted an Australian-style ban on under-16s having social media accounts, but he is now facing pressure from both ends of the political spectrum to do more to protect children.
On Sunday, Badenoch said the Tories would stop under-16s accessing social media and ban phones in schools, arguing: “This will help get a critical mass of children off social media.”
Burnham, Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, on Sunday added his voice to calls for a crackdown, posting on X: “I find myself agreeing with a lot of what Kemi Badenoch is saying about children and social media.
“It seems to me parents would welcome a cross-party consensus around much bolder action.”
Burnham told the FT he would support a ban on phones in schools and that he was “certainly open” to an age limit for social media use, informed by evidence from the Australian experience.
Starmer finds himself being attacked from the left and right on the issue, while simultaneously being accused by X’s Elon Musk on Saturday of overseeing draconian crackdowns on free speech. “Why is the UK government so fascist?” Musk said.
His comments came after Starmer signalled he would support the media regulator Ofcom if it chose to block or limit access to X in a row over the role of its AI chatbot tool Grok in producing sexualised images of children.
Badenoch, normally a fierce critic of “nanny state” politics, told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday programme that she did not “like the word ban” but said her party would impose age limits on social media accounts.
“What we are seeing is a lot of children spending so many hours a day on platforms that are profiting from their anxiety, from their distraction,” she said. “They are actively designed to be addictive.”
Badenoch said while adults could look after themselves, children needed to be protected. “We treat children like adults too often and sometimes we treat adults like children,” she said.
Starmer’s government has argued that children can benefit from social media use and has focused on tackling harmful content, including through online safety laws.
Starmer promised last week to take action against X, urging the social media platform to “get their act together” and stop its Grok AI chatbot from producing sexualised images of children.
After xAI limited access to Grok on Friday, the UK technology secretary Liz Kendall said she expected the communications regulator Ofcom to use its powers to intervene, including potentially blocking the service in the country.
“It is an insult and totally unacceptable for Grok to still allow this if you’re willing to pay for it,” she said. She has asked Ofcom to come up with proposals in the coming days on how it intends to deal with the issue.
Australian premier Anthony Albanese has joined Starmer in criticising X for “not showing social responsibility” in the Grok row, but Canada on Sunday said it would not be banning X.
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said Grok’s feature allowed for “unthinkable behaviour”.
“I am appalled that a tech platform is enabling users to digitally undress women and children online,” she told reporters. “The harm caused by these deepfakes is very real.”
“We will not be outsourcing child protection and consent to Silicon Valley,” von der Leyen added. “If they don’t act, we will.”
Starmer’s allies said there were “no plans for a blanket ban” on children using social media but added: “We will closely monitor how other countries approach this issue, including Australia — that’s not unusual.
“Because when it comes to children’s safety, we will always listen to parents and do everything we can to keep children safe online and offline.”
The government said the Online Safety Act mandates social media companies to protect under-18s from harmful content such as self-harm and suicide.
“These measures strike the right balance: protecting children from harm while ensuring they can benefit safely from the digital world,” a spokesperson said.
Additional reporting by Henry Foy in Brussels
