Spoken on behalf of the Government on BBC Radio 4's Any Questions, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury wants pornography gone from the UK on the basis of protecting women's and girls safety and fighting misogyny in society.
Bear in mind, this is separate from the Online Safety Act about to be enacted and the age verification plan any website not "suitable for children". Also bear in mind VPN's operating in the UK are also required to comply with the law.
The UK Government is about to go to war on pornography and appease both the feminists who believe it is exploitative and harmful to women while turning men into misogynists and the traditional conservatives who also believe it is harming masculinity, encouraging bachelorhood and contributing to the decline in birth rates.
I think they're more envious and inspired by the Kwangmyong internal network in North Korea. However, cutting off the UK from the Internet completely would be overplaying their hand massively to the point they would collapse a good proportion of their economy.
But they are currently using pornography as a central pivot and an easy target for a moral panic around misogyny in society.
Yeah? Maybe the brits will grow some balls and take out the trash then
I suspect the vast majority of people will be happy as long as they can still access the likes of Google, YouTube, Reddit, Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, eBay, Facebook/WhatsApp (even without encryption), TikTok and X/Twitter. Which could still happen in a UK intranet with UK based services on UK based servers and restricted Internet access via large corporations as a middle man (not VPN's) if anyone wants anything from overseas. You'll only see backlash if any of those disappear.