Keir Starmer
Profile
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and former Director of Public Prosecutions (2008–2013). Starmer personally led the public messaging campaign during the August 2024 post-riot crackdown, warning that "the full force of the law" would be applied to online speech — including posts, memes, and reposts made years before the riots. Over 800 people were arrested; many received custodial sentences for individual social media posts. Starmer's government established a rapid-prosecution infrastructure — described by critics as a "conveyor belt" court system — that processed social media speech offences at unprecedented speed. As DPP, Starmer oversaw expansion of communications offences used to prosecute online speech. Critics including US politicians and civil liberties organisations described the prosecutions as the most significant peacetime crackdown on speech in a Western democracy in living memory.