I have to confess that, like many other commentators, I thought that the coming of the Labour government would mean – at least for a bit – that things might get a little quieter, at least on social media. I was quite looking forward to that. But it all seems to have got even madder.
This century has brought many wonders, but the sight of Carol Vorderman criticising somebody else for being overpaid for their TV work – that’s surely the most stupefying of them all
When Twitter first materialised in the late noughties under a Labour government, it was – honestly, straight up – a quite sociable place. People pottered about on it, in an innocently affable manner, despite the pressing issues of the day. Jokes in incredibly bad taste were made, and people either laughed at them or ignored them, because it was still understood in 2009 that not everything had to be taken literally. Significantly, the CPS prosecuted a man in 2010 for an obvious joke about blowing up an airport. The conviction was later quashed by the High Court, but sources at the CPS told the Guardian that the appeal was ordered to be fought by the then Director of Public Prosecutions, one Keir Rodney Starmer.
The socials got steadily crazier and more headbanger with the coming of the Tories into government. Users got into a Tory-hating frenzy, with more and more unlikely celebrities – Carol Vorderman, Gary Lineker, Jedward – frothing themselves up into an incredible lather about the dark ‘far-right’ deeds of the (actually incredibly timid and centrist) Conservative party.
What a naive hope it was, to imagine that such sensibles might wind it back a bit with the Tories gone.
In the six weeks since Labour slipped back into power there has been, if anything, an increase in head-banging from these people. It’s as if there’s been a horrified realisation that the Tories getting voted out doesn’t actually matter very much. Chris Packham has told Barclays customers to stick their heads in a bucket of fuel and set themselves on fire. Carole Cadwalladr has returned to the pages of the Observer with a breathless, boggle-eyed ‘join-the-dots’ screed that is less journalism, more the kind of ramble you might hear being shouted by someone at a provincial bus depot before a policeman kindly moves them on. And astonishingly Carol Vorderman has come out swinging at Nigel Farage’s pay packet from GB News. The twenty-first century has brought many signs and wonders, but the sight of Carol Vorderman criticising somebody else for being overpaid for their television work – that’s surely the most stupefying of them all.
Of course much of this hysteria has come about because of the riots. The sensible class, including the new government, has decided that Elon Musk was the spark that ignited them, sending them into a spittle-flecked red mist rage and flouncing off X in disgust. They seem to have forgotten that a dance class of little girls were stabbed. Do they really imagine that the riots would not have happened if not for Musk? (Here I add the usual caveat for the hard of understanding, that the riots were bad and were rightly prosecuted with the full force of the law.)
Imagine the current sensible regime reacting to people talking about earlier public ‘disorder’. Actually, we don’t have to. The government in 1819, after the Peterloo massacre, had a remarkably similar response. Don’t address the issues underneath, and have a blue fit about people even talking about it in the new media, which in that day was national newspapers. The Home Office responded to a report in the Observer detailing the events, telling their lawyers ‘as it cannot be otherwise than grossly libellous you will probably deem it right to proceed by arresting the publishers’. Reformist Sir Francis Burdett was jailed for three months for publishing a ‘seditious libel’.
The quiet we all hoped for – that ‘sensible’ people from Anna Soubry to Andrew Marr to Krishnan Guru-Murthy were looking forward to basking in after the election – has not come. Things have got more febrile.
It turns out things are a little more complex than the final scene of a pantomime, with the villains booed off and everyone in Storyland singing a jolly song, happily ever after.
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