The Online Safety Act came into effect on July 25

Additional reporting by Lewis Henderson

Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf has declared Britain is “descending rapidly into some kind of dystopia”.

The ex-Reform UK chairman, who now heads up its Doge unit, said the Online Safety Act “does absolutely nothing to protect children” and instead “suppresses freedom of speech”.

Outlining his interpretation of the “couple of hundred pages long” act, Yusuf said it gave the Secretary of State the “ability to force Ofcom” to rewrite the rules about what speech social media platforms “must censor”.

“That is a pretty terrifying thing for a single individual to have,” he said.

PA | Yusuf slammed the Online Safety Act, calling it ‘pretty terrifying’

“In fact, it’s the sort of thing that I think Xi Jinping himself would blush at the concept of.”

Yusuf said the management teams of social media companies were being “threatened with jail time” and that even “the mighty Elon is going to struggle” to get his team to “put their freedom at stake”.

Yusuf went on to address the Government, creating “an elite police force” in response to the migrant situation.

“You might think that was because of the risk of so much anger around crimes being committed by illegal migrants,” he said.

They don’t have to track it, it is everywhere!

“Of course you’d be wrong … the opposite … to monitor anti-migrant sentiment … I use the word dystopia advisedly.”

He finished by saying “the way countries slip into this authoritarian regime” is through legislation that “cloaks tyranny inside the warm fuzz of safety”.

Sir Keir Starmer has defended the Online Safety Act over claims it damages freedom of speech.

The Prime Minister said the UK would protect free speech “forever” as he insisted the Act was about “child protection”, not censorship.

GETTY | Starmer insisted the Government is ‘not censoring anyone’

Speaking alongside US President Donald Trump in Scotland, Starmer said: “We’re not censoring anyone. We’ve got some measures which are there to protect children, in particular, from sites like suicide sites.

“I personally feel very strongly that we should protect our young teenagers, and that’s what it usually is, from things like suicide sites. I don’t see that as a free speech issue; I see that as child protection.”

The comments come as the Government imposed new rules, which came into effect on July 25, stating that online platforms such as social media sites and search engines must take steps to prevent children from accessing harmful content such as pornography or material that encourages suicide.

This includes introducing age verification for websites showing pornography and ensuring algorithms do not work to harm children.