Attorney General Richard Hermer has barred his staff from Elon Musk's platform — the first UK department to restrict X, and a pointed split from Downing Street's view that the platform is essential for reaching the public.
The Attorney General's Office has quietly told its staff to stop posting on X, in what the Guardian reports is understood to be the first such restriction by a UK government department and a pointed departure from the rest of Westminster's line on Elon Musk's platform.
Attorney General Richard Hermer has instructed officials at his department to refrain from using the social network, except in narrow cases where the specific purpose is combatting disinformation on the platform itself. The AGO last posted on Friday, according to the Guardian, and staff have been told the change is tied to concerns that X is being used by bad actors to divide communities and to incite violence and racism during recent UK riots — specifically disorder in Southampton and Belfast earlier in June 2026.
That puts the government's chief legal officer on a collision course with Downing Street, which has repeatedly defended other departments' continued use of X on the grounds that the platform is necessary to reach the public. The AGO's move, as the Guardian frames it, is a signal that at least one senior UK minister has concluded the platform has become an institutional risk, even as the rest of the government continues to treat it as a routine communications channel.
The Guardian's account draws on insider sourcing. The policy change itself, the rationale tied to the Southampton and Belfast disorder, and the characterisation of the AGO as the first UK department to restrict X all currently rest on that single Guardian report. Independent confirmation from the Attorney General's Office, and fuller detail on the specific 2026 incidents the policy is responding to, would strengthen the piece before any of those points are carried as confirmed standalone fact.
Two claims in the Guardian's reporting also warrant a second source. The paper describes the AGO as the first UK government department to restrict X — a superlative that needs a comparator to verify. And it characterises Elon Musk as having called for the UK government to be overthrown, citing his remarks at a far-right rally in September 2025 where he called for a "dissolution of parliament" and a "change of government" and warned that "violence is going to come to you." A direct link to or transcript of those remarks, or an official UK government statement citing them, would solidify that framing as established record.
What the policy change does put on the table, on the record available, is whether other UK departments, devolved administrations, and peer governments in the EU, France, Germany, and Australia will follow. None has yet announced a parallel move. The fact on file is a single department, the government's chief legal adviser, deciding that for his own staff the cost of remaining on X now outweighs the reach it provides.
Richard Hermer was appointed UK Attorney General in 2024 and serves as the government's chief legal adviser. The Online Safety Act gives Ofcom powers to act against platforms that fail to remove illegal content, though those powers have yet to be deployed against X.