Behold the latest episode of the Westminster Puppet Theater, where the protagonists—if one can use such a generous term for these careerist mannequins—have decided that the most pressing existential threat to the United Kingdom isn't the crumbling infrastructure, the stagnant wages, or the fact that the national dish is now essentially 'despair,' but rather the existence of TikTok. Kemi Badenoch, the current temporary custodian of the Conservative Party’s scorched-earth legacy, has emerged from the wreckage of her party’s credibility to demand that Keir Starmer 'just get on' with banning social media for under-16s. It is a demand flavored with the kind of performative urgency one usually associates with a captain shouting orders at a ship that has already reached the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Badenoch, wrapping herself in the twin capes of 'Conservative' and 'Parent'—titles she wields like a blunt instrument—claims that any delay in this ban is a dereliction of duty. It is a fascinating pivot for a party that spent the better part of fourteen years treating 'duty' as an optional garnish for a career in private equity. To hear a Tory leader express sudden, agonizing concern for the mental health of children is like watching a pyromaniac offer advice on fire extinguisher maintenance. One wonders where this maternal instinct was during the years of gutting youth services or overseeing the slow-motion collapse of mental health provision across the country. But no, the culprit for the malaise of Britain’s youth isn't the lack of a future or the impossibility of ever owning a home; it’s the presence of an algorithm.

On the other side of this intellectual vacuum stands Sir Keir Starmer, a man who appears to have been laboratory-grown to occupy the precise center of a Venn diagram titled 'Bureaucratic Inertia.' In response to Badenoch’s demands, No. 10 has signaled that it will 'consult' on the policy by the summer. Of course they will. If Starmer were presented with a house on fire, he would likely announce a feasibility study into the chemical composition of water, followed by a stakeholder engagement session with the local arsonists. The 'consultation' is the ultimate political stalling tactic—a way to look busy while doing absolutely nothing, ensuring that by the time a decision is actually made, the technology in question will have evolved into something even more unmanageable.

The absurdity of this entire debate is breathtaking. We are witnessing two political entities vying for the title of 'Grand Protector' of a generation they clearly do not understand. The idea that a government—any government—can effectively 'ban' the internet from sixteen-year-olds is a delusion of such magnitude that it borders on the clinical. These are the same politicians who struggle to manage basic payroll software for the civil service or secure a digital border, yet they expect us to believe they can outmaneuver a generation of digital natives equipped with VPNs and a fundamental disdain for authority. It is Luddism dressed up as pastoral care, a pathetic attempt to put a parental lock on a house that is already fully engulfed in flames.

Furthermore, the timing of this moral panic is suspiciously convenient. When you cannot fix the economy, and when your foreign policy is a series of polite, embarrassed shrugs at international summits, you turn to the children. 'Protecting the children' is the last refuge of the incompetent. It provides a moral high ground that is impossible to argue against without sounding like a monster, allowing Badenoch to posture as a crusader and Starmer to posture as a cautious, responsible statesman. Meanwhile, the actual issues—the structural decay, the hollowed-out public square, and the lack of any tangible hope—remain unaddressed because they require more effort than simply hitting a 'delete' button on a teenager's phone.

The cynicism is palpable. Badenoch needs a win, any win, to convince the remaining three Tory voters that the party still possesses a pulse and a sense of moral direction. Starmer needs to avoid making a definitive statement that might offend a donor, a tech lobbyist, or a focus group until he is absolutely forced to by the sheer weight of public boredom. They are two ghosts fighting over a sheet. The 'mental health crisis' they cite is real enough, but attributing it solely to social media while ignoring the material conditions of the country is a spectacular act of intellectual dishonesty. They are treating the symptom while actively poisoning the patient with their own brand of administrative incompetence.

In the end, this is not about child safety or the sanctity of the adolescent mind. It is about control, or more accurately, the pathetic illusion of it. It is about a political class that has lost the ability to govern the physical world and has decided, in its infinite arrogance, to try and police the digital one instead. We are being asked to cheer as one side demands a ban and the other promises a meeting. It is a race to the bottom of the human brain-stem, and unfortunately for the rest of us, both parties are already well past the finish line, leaving the rest of the country to suffocate in the vacuum of their combined uselessness.