Democracy has left the building

Daily Telegraph 6 July 2026

Good afternoon.

Lucy Powell, Labour’s deputy leader and a close ally of Andy Burnham, has said social media sites should face censorship during elections to ensure the public makes “informed choices based on accurate information”. Combined with votes at 16, a foreign donor ban, the abolition of hereditary peers, the possibility that Sir Keir Starmer will stack the Lords on exiting Downing Street and a growing appetite for regulating freedom of speech, a pattern is emerging. Labour increasingly looks like a party that cannot win under the existing rules, so it is rewriting them instead.