News that Rachel Reeves was pleading with Britain’s big watchdogs to “tear down regulatory barriers” clearly hadn’t trickled down to key Labour outriders last week. Guido was following the select committee appearance of the Musk-hating ‘Centre for Countering Digital Hate’…
Led by Imran Ahmed (himself a perfectly amiable chap)– ex-Labour staffer and good mate of No10 Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney– the session saw an outburst of appeals to the DSIT select committee to ramp up red tape on advertising. The CCDH called for an industry-wide “database” for all online advertisements: “if there was an open database of what content was monetised by whom we would have more clarity and we would have more accountability moments”. How many millions in revenue and time and effort would be wasted filling that spreadsheet out…
The online advertising industry is now worth £35bn to the UK each year. And already has as its regulator one of the more effective watchdogs in the UK at present, the Advertising Standards Authority…
Last year the CCDH were revealed to have a “5-year plan” to “kill Musk’s Twitter”. That UK DOGE cannot come quickly enough…
Sarah Pochin at Reform Scotland’s manifesto launch event: “I really wanted to come on in a Reform tartan burka, but apparently I wasn’t allowed… One day let’s do one of these events not live-streamed. We’ll do all the naughty stuff…”