The Tory party is currently offering a campaigning masterclass on James Wharton’s Private Member’s Bill. As Coffee House revealed last night, any member of the public can sign up to co-sponsor the backbench legislation, and the party has spent a great deal of time squaring backbenchers on the wording of the bill to prevent further amendments clogging it up unnecessarily. And MPs continue to tweet about #letbritaindecide, #labourdoesn’ttrustpeople, #onlytorieshavetheanswer or perhaps #itweetthisbecausemywhipaskednicely.
But how easy is it to replicate this sort of slick campaign with other policies? When it comes to more conventional legislation and policy rows, the Tories are struggling to work out how to get their message across, particularly when it comes to social media. I was nattering to a backbencher recently when his phone buzzed. He muttered darkly under his breath as he read the message, and explained that CCHQ were asking him to tweet support for a certain policy. ‘I’m not doing that, I’m not a robot!’ he exclaimed. Clearly a few of his colleagues decided that being a robot wasn’t so bad, as they did take up the offer that day, dutifully tweeting their backing for the minister in question.
Last week Jeremy Hunt held drinks for Conservative MPs in the Health Department. Those who attended tell me they were asked by his aides to sign up to a list of backbenchers who might quite fancy being sent ideas for tweeting nice things about the Health Secretary and his policies.
That’s very proactive on the part of Hunt’s team, but it doesn’t suggest much understanding of how Twitter works. A string of matching tweets (here’s an example from a little while ago) makes backbenchers look loyal in a bad way on a network that is supposed to offer sincerity. And Lynton Crosby’s instructions to MPs a while ago about deciding between being ‘commentators’ or ‘participants’ suggested the party has been toying with being more controlling over its MPs on social media. Surely a more effective way of ensuring the parliamentary party sticks to its key messages is to manage it properly, rather than trying to crack down on disloyal or off-message tweets from MPs who feel they aren’t getting sufficient attention.
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