Labour’s Savile smear shows just how far they’ve fallen

Last week, the Labour Party did something even its most cynical critics might not have predicted: it likened Nigel Farage to Jimmy Savile. Not directly, of course, because that would have been too transparent. Instead, ministers lined up to claim Farage’s pledge to repeal the Online Safety Act puts him on the side of child abusers, predators and, by implication, Savile himself.

Peter Kyle, Secretary of State for Science, declared that Farage was siding with “extreme pornographers” and warned that repealing the Act would empower people like Jimmy Savile. Jess Phillips, Minister for Safeguarding, accused Farage of prioritising clicks for his monetised social media accounts over the safety of children. Heidi Alexander, the Transport Secretary, suggested Farage would happily allow an online “free-for-all” where grooming and cyber-flashing run riot. The rhetoric wasn’t merely coordinated but grotesque.

Let’s be absolutely clear: Farage’s opposition to the Online Safety Act is not opposition to child protection. It’s a criticism of vague, expansive legislation that deputises tech firms to censor speech on the government’s behalf. The Act creates a regime where platforms are punished for failing to pre-emptively suppress “harmful but legal” content. What counts as harmful? Whatever Ofcom decides. There are legitimate concerns here about free expression, proportionality and the chilling effect on public discourse. Farage is not alone in raising them.

Yet Labour’s response is not to defend the policy on its merits but to suggest that anyone who questions it sides with paedophiles. This isn’t any form of argument but moral blackmail. It’s the language of smear campaigns and political desperation, not mature governance.

The hypocrisy is suffocating. When Boris Johnson hinted at Starmer’s record as Director of Public Prosecutions during the Savile era, Labour leadership and the media were incandescent. Johnson was accused of defamation by implication and dragging victims into the mud for cheap political gain. He was pilloried and ultimately forced to backtrack. Yet Labour ministers are now doing precisely what they once condemned which is using the memory of Savile to discredit a political opponent.

The difference? This time, it’s Nigel Farage. And for Labour’s front bench, that apparently makes it fair game.

There’s something particularly distasteful about weaponising the suffering of real victims in this way. Savile was not an internet troll. He was a serial predator whose crimes were enabled by institutional cowardice, BBC deference and decades of cover-up. To pretend that an overreaching tech regulation bill would have prevented him is fantasy. To invoke him as a rhetorical device against someone who questions that bill is revolting.

Jess Phillips, of all people, should know better. She’s spent years positioning herself as a champion of abuse survivors. Yet even she now parrots lines conflating political disagreement with complicity in paedophilia. Either she believes it or she’s willing to say it for effect. Neither reflects well.

What’s really going on here is projection. Labour is struggling to articulate a compelling defence of the Online Safety Act, so it resorts to the most emotionally charged accusation available. It knows full well that accusing someone of enabling child abuse poisons the well and short-circuits debate. That’s the entire point.

But it’s also dangerous. If the government gets away with this, there will be no limit to what can be said about critics of state policy. Oppose a hate speech law? You must be a bigot. Question climate policy? You’re a danger to future generations. Dissent becomes deviance. Free speech becomes guilt by association. That’s the road we’re on.

Farage, to his credit, has hit back hard. He branded the Savile smear “disgusting” and challenged ministers to a public debate. He should double down. If he can articulate a credible, liberty-focused alternative to the Online Safety Act - one that protects children without turning the internet into a monitored safe space for bureaucrats - he’ll expose Labour’s position for what it is: reactive, illiberal and deeply unserious.

There is still space in British politics for honest disagreement. But not if one side insists on turning every argument into a moral panic. Labour may think this line of attack is clever, but it reeks of desperation. They know Farage is gaining ground. They know Reform is resonating. So they reach for the dirtiest weapon they can find.

In doing so, they haven’t just insulted Farage but the victims they claim to honour. And they’ve shown us yet again how little respect they have for the public’s intelligence.