Hence, days before the vote, the government hopes to announce its response to a public consultation on “growing up in the online world”. Allies say that Sir Keir will set out a “game-changer” policy. It will almost certainly be some sort of ban on under-16s using big social-media apps and sites. Exemptions are expected for a range of messaging services, such as WhatsApp, or those seen as educational, such as YouTube’s “Kids” offering (no need to throw Bluey out with the bathwater). As a prelude, the government this week promised to block children from viewing naked pictures online, giving tech firms a three-month ultimatum for installing software. Australia has already enacted a social-media ban. Canada and the EU are moving in that direction. A poll by YouGov in March found that 76% of Brits back a ban, more than in most large European countries (see chart). Even a majority of older teenagers and 20-somethings support it, suggesting it is not just an obsession of greying curmudgeons. Some kids’ charities which once opposed a ban now favour it. Yet pressing ahead would be a mistake. As well as harms, social media bring benefits. And Australia’s ban has proved leaky, with many children still having access to at least some social-media sites; the measure has not led to an uptick in more wholesome hobbies.
Britons may be some of the keenest cheerleaders for a ban, but they are also among the least likely to think it would work. Some families of children whose deaths have been linked to social-media use oppose the idea, partly because they fear the most dangerous content is not on major apps but lurking in darker corners of the web not covered by any regulation. And for the government, there is a danger of mixed messaging. Britain is trying to position itself as a tech and AI champion, but some of its rhetoric sounds hostile. Elon Musk, the owner of X, is a favoured target, but Silicon Valley as a whole also gets it in the neck from Labour bigwigs. Mr Burnham recently thundered that it was time to “regulate social media, artificial intelligence and big tech”, while Wes Streeting, another would-be Labour leader, said in the Observer that X and its chatbot Grok “should be treated like any other publisher”—a move that would make it near impossible for AI language models to be used in Britain. Neither has set out details of the tech policies he would actually pursue if he made it to Downing Street. Theo Bertram, a former executive at TikTok who now runs the Social Market Foundation, a think-tank, says that while social-media firms can accept new rules about children they will feel more jittery about the increasingly aggressive tone in Westminster. “If the Labour Party or any party expresses a position that the UK is hostile to AI, that could be extremely harmful,” he predicts. The issue is a diplomatic minefield: a press release from the American embassy in London warned that a ban would place “disproportionate” burdens on American firms. Others deny that there is any contradiction between a short-term safety crackdown and broader tech boosterism. At a cabinet meeting on June 9th Liz Kendall, the secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, said that AI had “huge potential” which Britain could “only seize” if public concern over tech’s impact on child safety and economic inequality is adequately tackled. The push looks like yet another example of Sir Keir’s vanilla brand of populism. He rightly rejects the economic utopianism of the populist left and the anti-immigration vitriol of the populist right, but still embraces easy
policy answers when it suits—regardless of the complications. Predictably, this supposed quick win is facing flak: even before the policy’s announcement it is being assailed by the opposition for not doing enough.■ For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in Britain, sign up to Blighty, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//britain/2026/06/11/a-kids-social-media-ban-would-be-a- bad-parting-gift-from-keir-starmer
A frenzied knife attack by a refugee has put Northern Ireland on edge It set off destructive riots in Belfast and beyond June 11th 2026 Rush hour in Belfast on June 9th didn’t happen at the usual 5pm. By mid- afternoon offices, shops and government buildings started to empty. By teatime Northern Ireland’s capital was more deserted than on a public holiday. The previous night a Sudanese refugee had been caught on video viciously stabbing a local man. Police captured the suspect almost immediately; his victim survived, remarkably. Within hours, anonymous posts began spreading across the internet, advertising protest locations that evening. These were not so much invitations as threats to shut down much of Northern Ireland. They made clear that businesses were expected to close.
It is a tactic that hardline protesters have repeatedly used in the region, to devastating effect. It brings things to a standstill. Before it was even dark, protesters had closed several arterial routes around Belfast. A Glider—the large bus-like vehicles in the city’s rapid transit system—was burnt out. Petrol bombs were thrown at police in Newtownabbey, north of the city. Several cars were burned. A police car was set alight in Portadown, 40km south-west of Belfast. Riot police could do little. The real targets were foreigners. Doors were kicked in, cars torched and homes set alight. A child was among those evacuated in an armoured police vehicle as their home went up in flames. Two women were still in their care- worker uniforms when police rescued them from arsonists. This was the region’s third consecutive year of anti-migrant violence. Unlike protests in mainland Britain, the unrest involves the organisational muscle of pro-British loyalist paramilitaries who have survived for over a quarter of a century after the Good Friday Agreement. Claire Hanna, the leader of the nationalist SDLP, called it a “racist pogrom”. The Police Federation said it had been “reminiscent of fascism and racism”. Although pro-British unionist leaders condemned the violence, they emphasised understanding of anti-migrant sentiment. Jim Allister, whose
TUV party has an electoral alliance with Reform UK, decried “the importation of an alien culture”. Hadi Alodid, the man charged with attempted murder in the attack, had travelled to Northern Ireland from the Republic of Ireland, crossing the open land border. He was not an illegal immigrant. The Conservative Party’s shadow Northern Ireland secretary suggested that there should be intelligence-led immigration checks on the British side of that border, as already happens on the Irish side. On June 10th a riot closed Northern Ireland’s busiest roundabout, in Glengormley just north of Belfast. For three hours police were sporadically attacked with masonry and petrol bombs. Children as young as four were taken by their parents to watch among a crowd of about 1,000. A grandmother on a walking stick disapproved—not of the violence, but of the indiscriminate destruction of the street: “It’s themmuns [gesturing to where she believed migrants lived] they want to be doing it to, not our own,” she said angrily. Recent history suggests this disruption will fade after a few days, but it will keep recurring.■ For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in Britain, sign up to Blighty, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//britain/2026/06/11/a-frenzied-knife-attack-by-a-refugee- has-put-northern-ireland-on-edge
A posh and peculiar British magazine is thriving The unusual pleasures of “Country Life” June 11th 2026 It was late March 2026. The war in Iran was raging. Donald Trump had threatened to destroy Iran’s power plants. Newspapers across the world raced to cover this. Not Country Life. The British magazine instead offered a cover with two lambs on it and, inside, a feature on “The chickens that lay our favourite eggs”. It was similarly off-news for the outbreak of the covid- 19 pandemic (its cover had a lovely picture of a thatched cottage) and of the Ukraine war (a lovely picture of the coast). The second world war was marginally more newsy. On September 16th 1939 the magazine offered: “Golf—The Game in War-Time”. Britain offers two kinds of country life. There is “country life”, the simple act of living in the country. Then there is Country Life, an upper-case, upper-
class magazine that is related to country living (it features a lot of cows) but that is also very different (it features a lot of country houses and croquet lawns). Country Life is less a mere publication than an institution. British novelists satirise it. British landmarks are sold in it (in 1915 Stonehenge was flogged for £6,600, or £602,340 in today’s money). British royalty reads it: Charles is a fan. The other British royal family, the Beckhams, rather like it, too: David reads it from cover to cover. It is, like the royals, surprisingly popular; 40,000 buy it each week. It is also, like the royals, odd. Each issue opens with “posh porn”: images of grand houses newly on the market (they tend to have things like lovely moats) and, in its “Frontispiece” feature, images of grand girls (they tend to have lovely smiles). The title implies a physical location. In truth, it speaks to a spiritual one: an England of country piles and tennis and tea on the lawn; an England that is declining but not yet fallen; an England that is, in short, keen to read articles with titles like: “How do you make an 18th- century stately home fit for a 21st-century family?” Its first issue was published in January 1897 when Edward Hudson, a publisher, having failed to make a magazine about glossy horses sell, switched to glossy houses. Soon Country Life had fancy offices (designed by Edwin Lutyens), fancy correspondents (Gertrude Jekyll did gardening) and fancier readers, like Evelyn Waugh. Go to the right sort of country house and you will, still, find piles of it in the loo. The magazine is so anodyne it often appears in doctors’ waiting rooms. “It is”, says Michael (now Lord) Heseltine, a former Conservative politician and a fan, “our life…It’s us. It’s what we do.” It even has its own vernacular: one does not “buy” Country Life or “read” it, one “takes” it, like literary laudanum. The magazine’s success is enviable and to many unfathomable. It breaks almost every publishing maxim. Whereas the news elsewhere focuses on the grim, Country Life not only “ignored the second world war”, says Mark Hedges, its editor, and the covid-19 pandemic (he preferred “concentrating