In the battle for the media’s attention Danny Alexander’s infrastructure statement is losing out rather badly to George Osborne’s choice of burger — a more easily digestible subject than the specifics of the government guarantee for a new nuclear power station. When he was asked about it on the Today Programme, Osborne seemed rather baffled by the amount of interest the tweet had generated.
But what I was struck by was Osborne’s explanation for why he was on Twitter in the first place. He said that one of the challenges for politicians is that the public only ever see them when they’re on TV or in the Commons. He continued that ‘the point of Twitter is to try and say something about what you’re up to during the day.’
One of the beefs of MPs is that they feel that the public don’t really know what they do all day. When I asked one Labour frontbencher why they tweeted about every single engagement in their diary, they admitted that it was actually a rather passive aggressive way of showing just how busy they are.
Twitter also appeals to MPs because they feel they can use it to show voters that they are flesh and blood. They hope that this might allow them to cut through the anti-politics mood.
But, I think, the key to getting past anti-politics is authenticity. Be frank about who you are and you’ve probably got a surprisingly good chance of being given a hearing by the public. I doubt that many voters would have been offended if Osborne had told Evan Davis that he preferred Byron Burger to McDonalds.
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