In the upcoming British elections, Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labor Party, is campaigning on a radical proposal: to nationalize part of the country’s telecommunications giant BT, to provide free, government operated broadband internet access to every person in the United Kingdom.
Corbyn has touted the national internet service as “our treasured public institution for the 21st century,” in what appeared to be a nod to the U.K.’s highly popular National Health Service.
But Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson dismissed the free broadband plan as a “crazed communist scheme.”
At a campaign stop in Lancaster, Lancashire, however, one audience member hit Corbyn with a question that the Labor leader apparently had not anticipated: would the proposed, now-national ISP ban porn sites?
According to a report by the British tabloid The Sun, Corbyn simply had no answer, just looking down at a notepad and appearing to jot down a note.
With Corbyn clearly disinclined to answer the question, or simply stumped by it, local Labor parliamentary candidate Rebecca Long chimed in. But her answer also failed to address the question directly.
“We’ll be rolling out a charter of digital rights to protect users of the internet,” she said.
In 2017, the British parliament passed a law that would have restricted online porn sites except to people who were willing to upload “age verification” documents proving that they were at least 18 years old. But after two more years of delays and at a cost of $2.5 million, the government simply scrapped the anti-porn law altogether.
If Labor wins the election and manages to create a nationalized free ISP, whether online porn will remain available in the U.K. or be blocked, for now, remains unclear.
Photo By Telegraph YouTube Screen Capture
