We need a new law to combat the threat to our democracy - Alex Cole-Hamilton

Elon Musk is promoting Reform UK Picture: Dimitrios Kambouris

While those fundamentals haven’t changed, that feels like a simpler time. After all, it was long before the days of the internet, the advent of deepfakes created by artificial intelligence or social media algorithms spreading political misinformation.

The reality of foreign interference in our democracy and the arrival of technologies that can distort the electoral playing field mean we urgently need to revisit and update the laws which govern the conduct and the financing of election campaigns in this country.

The first days of 2025 have been characterised by Elon Musk looking to make a personal plaything of UK democracy. Fresh from being rewarded with unprecedented influence in the White House in return for his massive financial contribution to the Trump campaign, the world’s richest man has turned his gaze to these islands.

In addition to dangling the prospect of giving an obscene amount of money to a UK political party of the hard right (only to apparently make that support contingent on the replacement of Nigel Farage as leader), he is using his colossal online reach to spread misinformation to the point where it has already triggered discussions in both our parliaments.

We’re not alone. Musk has signalled to his online supporters that the ultra-right-wing AfD are needed to “save Germany” in its forthcoming national elections, and he has been accused by French president Emmanuel Macron of intervening directly in the continent’s democratic processes

The point is that with big foreign money and the right heft across a social media platform, you can change the course of an entire democracy. Remember the Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018? Data was harvested at an industrial scale from social media platforms and used to spread misinformation that influenced several political campaigns.

Our laws just simply haven’t caught up with either the technological reach of those who would subvert our democracy or the money they might bring to change the playing field. Right now it is Elon Musk. Next time it could be Russia or China.

Over the past quarter century, the conduct of elections in the UK have been governed in large part by just a couple of comprehensive pieces of legislation. I’m talking about the Representation of the People Act 1983 and the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act (2000). This weighty brace of laws created the regulations around which every election at every level of government has been held for a generation.

Candidates and election agents alike have been versed in the detail of these acts, on pain of the nullification of election results and even prison. They set out in clear terms the rules of the road for the function of democracy in our country. They are out of date.

Our democratic process is precious but right now it is exposed to manipulation by bad actors.

That’s why we need a new ‘Representation of the People Act’. One which addresses the reach of online misinformation, which understands the implications of deepfakes and artificial intelligence and one which makes it impossible for international playboys to flood our domestic political space with foreign cash.

An assault on British democracy is already underway and we need to have the tools to meet that threat.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​