Liverpool Mayor Says "Time Is Approaching" For Everyone To Consider Leaving X
Liverpool Mayor Steve Rotheram visited Southport with Merseyside Police Chief Constable Serena Kennedy and Police and Crime Commissioner Emily Spurrell in the aftermath of the attack (Alamy)
5 min read
Mayor of the Liverpool City Region Steve Rotheram has said “the time is approaching” for politicians and the public to consider whether they should “withdraw” from using Elon Musk’s X platform.
The scenes of far-right, racist violence across the UK have been linked with online disinformation being spread on social media platforms, including a false name connected with the suspect in the Southport stabbings of young girls.
X, formerly named Twitter, has been one of the sites where dis and misinformation have been particularly rife in the last few weeks, and the platform’s owner, Musk, has been openly using the site to spread conspiracy theories and criticise Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s handling of the riots and social media regulation.
Rotheram, who has more than 75,000 followers on X, is the mayor for the region which covers Southport. He told PoliticsHome that while X had not “created” the riots across his region and the rest of the UK, it did have a “causational effect” on the violence.
“It's just vile. It [X] really is in the gutter and something needs to happen,” Rotheram said.
“The time is approaching where we've got to all examine whether we should, en masse, withdraw from it and for there to be a different platform.”
However, he said he recognised it was a “difficult one” to navigate as a politician, as he also did not want to risk “leaving the landscape open” to the far-right.
“There won't be people like us countering the stuff that they're saying,” he said.
“It could be sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy, that we end up with this a communication tool for the far right and Nazis and haters, and is that what we want? But something needs to happen, and if they [the social media companies] don't police it themselves, then the Government needs to step in and police it for them.”
Rotheram agreed with comments made by London Mayor Sadiq Khan last week that the Online Safety Act should be revisited urgently. When asked whether the act goes far enough, Rotheram replied: “Possibly not.”
“We've seen that escalating in the last few days with Musk and the way in which he's trying to intervene and purposely mislead people in this country in a certain direction. That's really dangerous,” Rotheram said.
“Musk is adding fuel to the fire. There don't seem to be those controls, or if there are controls, they're not interested in implementing those controls. It's become the Wild West, where anything goes on social media at the moment.”
Starmer has suggested he would consider taking further steps to regulate social media in the UK following the riots. "I do think that we’re going to have to look more broadly at social media after this disorder," he told reporters on Friday.
Despite concerns over the role the website played in spreading disinformation in recent weeks, the Prime Minister's official spokesperson said on Monday there had been “no change” to how the Government uses social media when asked whether it might consider leaving X.
They said the communication strategy aims to “reach the broadest possible audience, and a number of channels are used to ensure that we are doing that.”
The spokesperson also refused to engage with Musk's remarks about Starmer's handling of the riots, saying they would not get involved in a "back and forth" with the X owner. They did say, however, that the PM would “disagree with that completely” when asked about Reform UK Nigel Farage claiming he’s the “biggest threat to free speech” the UK has seen.
PM Keir Starmer pictured with Labour mayors Steve Rotheram, Andy Burnham and Nik Johnson (Alamy)
Merseyside was one of the areas affected by the rioting, along with other towns and cities in the north of England such as Middlesbrough and Hartlepool.
Last week, the Labour MP for Middlesbrough told PoliticsHome that a legacy of “rampant inequality” had opened the way for “terrible behaviours and abuse” to take hold in Teesside.
Rotheram seemed to agree that this had also been the case in his region, arguing that social media had “really exploited” some of the arguments that people were being left behind by the Government.
“Inequality has always, possibly will always exist… but there needs to be a sense of fairness, doesn't there?” he said.
“And that's where people have been able to exploit the impressionable, the vulnerable, because it's an easy argument, isn't it? The reason that your life is difficult, that your circumstances are as they are, is because of somebody else. Somebody else is getting what you should be getting.”
Rotheram added that he had submitted a proposal to No10 outlining what would need to be done to help Southport recover from both the tragic deaths and injuries of the young girls in the knife attack, and also the riots that followed.
“It's a number of asks to Government to say, following what's happened, this is for Southport specifically.
“So following what's happened there, there's going to have to be some interventions quite quickly, but also there needs to be some ongoing support for that area, because they are having to deal with the absolute, unfathomable tragedy of what happened, but then equally, the insanity of what happened in their neighbourhoods.”
This is likely to include forms of community support and mental health support, particularly for the young people and children in the area.
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