London, March 1931, and Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin has a serious political problem.
The press barons Lord Beaverbook and Lord Rothermere are not only against Baldwin on economic and imperial policy, they are keenly promoting candidates aiming to defeat the government. The previous autumn the new Empire Free Trade Crusade party, founded by Beaverbrook in 1929, had won a by-election in Paddington. Now it appeared that an “independent” candidate supported by Rothermere’s Daily Mail and Beaverbrook’s Daily Express would defeat the government in a by-election in Westminster St George’s.
What was the prime minister to do? Baldwin, a quiet compromiser and one of the few businesspeople ever to get to the front rank of British politics, could have sought a backroom deal with his fellow businessmen. Or he could have deftly modified the government’s policy so as to buy off the opposition of the press and end their direct involvement in elections.
But Baldwin did neither of these things. Instead of compromising with his opponents, he took them on in a remarkable and widely reported speech:
“The papers conducted by Lord Rothermere and Lord Beaverbrook are not newspapers in the ordinary acceptance of the term. They are engines of propaganda for the constantly changing policies, desires, personal likes and dislikes of two men. What are their methods? Their methods are direct falsehood, misrepresentation, half-truths…”
He continued the attack with a now-famous phrase:
“What the proprietorship of these papers is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility—the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.”
The media-political-commercial world was stunned. The mild-mannered worm had turned. A prime minister and his government said no to being pushed about by businessmen using their powers and allies. It was a crucial moment in British political history. And the government won the by-election.
It seems like another age. More recent prime ministers have sought to minimise press opposition to their agenda through a combination of personal relationships and tailoring policies. This has been done with little actual corruption. Humbert Wolfe once wrote, “You cannot hope to bribe or twist, thank God! the British journalist. But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there's no occasion to.”
And similarly, given what many politicians are willing to do without resorting to bribing the media, there is little need for cash transactions in brown paper bags. It is a mutually convenient relationship, as long as neither side push it too far. There has not been a “Baldwin moment” since.
When this week a European Union commissioner had the audacity to say that the X social media platform, formerly known as Twitter, could face sanctions for promoting disinformation there was a similar intake of breath to that which met Baldwin’s sterling speech.
Thierry Breton, the commissioner of the internal market, did not quote Baldwin’s line about “engines of propaganda for the constantly changing policies, desires, personal likes and dislikes of two men” and methods of “direct falsehood, misrepresentation, half-truths”, still less compare anyone to a harlot. But it was still a sensation, as Breton reminded X of its duty to prevent the spread of disinformation and illegal content on its platform, following the recent riots in the UK and owner Elon Musk’s decision to “broadcast a live conversation between a [US] presidential candidate and yourself”.
The letter—which should be read in full—is not without its own problems. It appears not to have been sanctioned by the European Commission as a whole, though it is also not clear that it needed such approval, given the general autonomy commissioners have in respect of their portfolios.
And it is as important to keep those with public power from overreaching into the province of media and business, as it is to keep those with media and business power from overreaching into the province of politics and policy.
Also, to an extent, the letter and its reception is a sideshow in a longer-running contest between the EU and X, where the platform is the subject of an investigation under the 2022 Digital Services Act. What happened this week was a mere skirmish in a rather hard-fought war between the regulator and the regulated.
But as with Baldwin’s speech in 1931, it is also remarkable that the letter was written at all. Perhaps X has laid off the public policy staff who would have ensured that such a public rupture would not have happened. Or perhaps Breton and his staff wanted to signal that they were unafraid of the social media giant, regardless of the sensibilities of the wider Commission.
While the content of the Breton letter is important, its true significance is that it was published, given the usual pressures for such concerns to remain private—or to not be mentioned at all. The tech bros of Silicon Valley do not seem—yet—to have captured policymakers in the same way that, say, the barons of Fleet Street did to ensure there were no further Baldwinesque outbursts in Great Britain. Maybe they will not get to do so, though they will try.
And if the Commission does stand firm, and it insists on X and other social media platforms being regulated effectively in respect of their actions in the countries of the European Union, then there will be little that those platforms can do if they want to be active on this side of the North Atlantic.
For, as the United Kingdom found out when it was bested in negotiations over the departure from the EU, the Commission is not moved by aggressive bluster and howls of anguish. To adapt a phrase well used on social media: the EU does not care about your feelings.
