Screenshot of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer's TikTok profile homepage

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer launched a TikTok account on Monday local time despite the app being banned from government devices, as he attempts to connect to younger voters, accord to media reports.

With his launch onto TikTok, Starmer has followed Western leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron and the US President Donald Trump onto the platform.

"TikTok, follow me," Starmer said in the first video posted on the account, which showed him with his wife at the ceremony to switch on Downing Street's Christmas lights.

A spokesman for his office said "security mitigations" were in place to operate the Prime Minister's account, according to the AFP News.

"Restrictions on the use of the app on most government devices remain in place and there's no changes to our security policy when it comes to TikTok," Starmer's spokesman said, per the report.

AFP also noted that registering a TikTok account is seen as "Starmer's latest attempt to connect more directly with voters, as he and his government struggle with stubbornly low popularity ratings."

At the time of press, Starmer's TikTok account shows 15,800 followers and 37,000 likes while following no one.

This is not the first time that UK politicians have used TikTok to aid their election campaigns. During the 2024 election, the UK media outlet The Guardian even described the 2024 campaign as "the first TikTok election" after both major parties opened accounts on the social media platform. Sunak himself also appeared on TikTok to appeal to voters.

TikTok was banned from government-issued devices in 2023 following a review by Sunak's government in response to concerns about its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, The Independent reported Monday local time.

It seems that the UK government's attitude towards TikTok has always been inconsistent. Before that ban, an official "10 Downing Street" account was launched in May 2022, when Boris Johnson was prime minister, but it stopped posting videos just three months later, according to the AFP News.

The Telegraph reported in 2024 that "Although security fears around TikTok have not disappeared, the political reality appears to have trumped them," and also noted that "Rishi Sunak embraced the video-sharing app, appearing in the Conservative Party account's first official TikTok to promote his policy of national service for every 18-year-old."

In response to the so-called security fears, a spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy in the UK commented in 2024 on the UK's hype over so-called cyber attacks.

"The so-called cyber attacks by China against the UK are completely fabricated and malicious slanders. We strongly oppose such accusations. China has always firmly fought all forms of cyber attacks according to law… we oppose the politicization of cyber security issues and the baseless denigration of other countries without factual evidence," said the spokesperson.

"We urge the relevant parties in the UK to stop spreading false information and stop their self-staged, anti-China political farce," said the spokesperson.

Notably, TikTok remains one of the world's most popular social media apps, with around 1.5 billion users worldwide and more than 30 million regular users in the UK, according to AFP. The number of regular users is close to half of the UK's officially reported population.