Lisa Nandy has announced she is leaving Elon Musk’s X platform, taking her entire department with her, in what she called a protest against a site that “now favours abuse and misinformation over meaningful debate”.
The culture secretary posted her final message on X, saying: “I’ve decided to leave this platform and my department will too. A platform originally designed for free speech and expression now favours abuse and misinformation over meaningful debate. It isn’t healthy for our democracy or our communities and I don’t want to support it.”
“Lisa Nandy quits X and takes her department with her, citing abuse and misinformation.”
Nandy said she would continue to use Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn for public engagement. Her decision makes the Department for Culture, Media and Sport the second government department to quit X, following the attorney general’s office, which stopped posting last month.
Attorney General Lord Hermer defended his ban on his office using X, telling MPs the platform “constantly descends to racism and misogyny” and that his department “can do better”. He told the Justice Committee in June: “I can understand why other departments feel they need to be on the pitch engaging with people, but that is not where the attorney general’s office needs to be. For the work that I can do, I can engage with people in serious debate, detailed debate, respectful debate, without being on a platform that constantly descends to racism and misogyny.”
Nandy’s departure comes amid a wider row over X’s role in stoking violence and division in the UK. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has accused Musk of using his platform to “whip up division” over the murder of student Henry Nowak last month. Violent protests erupted in Southampton after bodycam footage showed police handcuffing the 18-year-old Nowak as he lay dying; his killer Vickrum Digwa had claimed he was the victim of a racist attack. The footage prompted Musk to criticise police treatment of the teenager.
Several MPs, including Liberal Democrats Layla Moran and Vikki Slade, and Labour’s Darren Paffey, left the platform earlier this year after reports that Musk’s AI tool Grok was being used to create sexualised images, including of children. X has previously said: “Anyone using or prompting Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”
The significance of Nandy’s move is amplified because her department is responsible for media regulation, though enforcement against X has so far been left to Ofcom. The decision could be temporary: Andy Burnham is set to become prime minister within weeks, and a new culture secretary may take a different view. But it marks a symbolic shift away from the view that ministers must remain on X to get their message across, despite the platform’s ubiquitous far-right content and Musk’s own calls for the UK government to be deposed. In September last year, Musk told a far-right march in London via video link: “If this continues, that violence is going to come to you, you will have no choice. You’re in a fundamental situation here. Whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die.”