EZRA LEVANT | Andy Burnham was once flagged by a government disinformation unit. Now he's building one

Britain's new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, used his first speech at the United Nations to order a National Centre for Information Defence, to "detect, attribute and disrupt" hostile state information attacks. In the same speech he warned about "far right narratives" and a "negative, corrosive narrative about life in Britain," and promised: "Well, no more." (Transcript)

Britain has done this before. In 2023, Big Brother Watch revealed that Whitehall's Covid-era anti-disinformation units logged columnist Peter Hitchens, MP David Davis, Oxford's Carl Heneghan, and the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, for opposing local lockdowns. After the Southport murders, a government unit flagged a post about asylum hotels to TikTok. And 62,199 people were arrested in Britain for speech offences over five years.

Canada already has the parts: a Privy Council push for social media monitoring, Meltwater "social listening" contracts, a Heritage-funded "situation room" that tracked "right wing responses" to the war in Gaza, a military that saw Covid as a chance to test propaganda techniques, an Industry Canada memo contemplating "legal action" over posts, and Bill C-34's new Digital Safety Commission. As Heritage Minister Marc Miller put it: "What constitutes legitimate and illegitimate discussion is a very fine line."

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