Lisa Nandy Quits X Because Elon Musk’s Platform Is Not A Public Square

At long last, a politician with a backbone. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has announced she and her department are leaving Elon Musk’s X platform, calling it out for what it has become: a cesspool of abuse, disinformation, and toxic rhetoric masquerading as a public square. And honestly? It is about bloody time.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has announced she and her department are leaving Elon Musk’s X platform. Explaining her decision in what seemingly will be her last post on X, Nandy said the platform “isn’t healthy for our democracy or our communities and I don’t want to support it.” Responding on X, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said “DCMS is supposed to counter and deal with misinformation, not run away because it’s all too much.”

BBC

For years, we have watched X descend further into the gutter while politicians, journalists, and institutions clung to it like a lifeline, muttering about “reach” and “engagement” as if those words justified platforming extremists and amplifying hate. But Nandy has finally done what too many of her colleagues are too afraid to do: she walked away. In what will be her final post on the platform, she made it clear that X “isn’t healthy for our democracy or our communities” and that she refuses to support it.

The response from the usual suspects was predictable. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch immediately chimed in with the kind of take that perfectly illustrates why the Tories are still stuck in the past, suggesting that the culture department should “deal with” misinformation rather than “run away.” But here is the thing: you cannot “deal with” a platform whose owner actively participates in the rot. You cannot reason with a system designed to reward outrage, boost bots, and bury truth under an avalanche of algorithmic chaos.

So good for Lisa Nandy, even if it took too long. But one minister leaving is not enough. If Labour wants to show it understands the digital environment it is operating in, it needs to stop acting like X is unavoidable. It is not. The sooner politicians, journalists and institutions stop treating it as the centre of public life, the sooner its grip weakens.