A TikTok army to stop the boats? It’s the Tories’ most crass idea yet

Are they seriously hiring influencers to warn migrants not to cross the Channel illegally? Yes, marvels Ryan Coogan, the Tories are pinning their re-election hopes on the same platform that gave us the Wednesday Addams dance challenge

If you thought ‘person who makes TikToks for a living’ sounded a dystopian career path, how does ‘government-backed person who makes TikToks for a living’ sit? (AP)

“Influencer” is one of the most dystopian-sounding job titles to have emerged in the 21st century. It’s basically a fake job with zero accountability or oversight, right up there with “AI artist”, “person who plays video games for a living”, and “GB News presenter”.

But you can’t deny how much sway some social media megastars have when it comes to our kids (and a depressingly large portion of adults). These self-appointed entertainers and lifestyle gurus pop up out of the ether without qualifications or a single background check, and start telling us what to eat, how to dress, and in the most insidious cases, how to think.

Sure, most older readers will minimise their impact, blowing them off with a tactical “who?” any time they see one of them in their Facebook or Twitter/X feed, but there’s no denying that some of these influencers hold a scary amount of… well… influence.

It seems that the government agrees with me (there’s a sentence I don’t want to get used to writing), and has put plans in place to begin paying influencers to post anti-immigration content on TikTok. The Home Office, under the direction of James Cleverly, will give taxpayer money to social media stars to warn of the risks of travelling to the UK by small boat.

According to The Times, a budget of £15,000 has been allocated to paying influencers in Egypt and Vietnam, and while a budget for Turkish, Iraqi and Indian influencers has yet to be finalised, a total of £576,500 has already been signed off. A further £30,000 has been earmarked to pay the Albanian influencers – including a rapper, two comedians, lifestyle bloggers, TV personalities and a travel writer – with a cap for each being set at £5,000 per person.

If you thought “person who makes TikToks for a living” sounded like a dystopian career path, how does “government-backed person who makes TikToks for a living” sit with you?

When the CIA funded Western art as a propaganda tool in the 1950s it gave us abstract expressionism. The best the Tories can cook up is somebody lip syncing Ice Spice while pointing at immigration stats. Who said culture is dead?

If the idea of handing hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of taxpayers’ money over to middling celebrities when the country is in a constant state of economic downturn doesn’t sound off to you, well, you’re probably the kind of person who gets your political news from TikTok. For the rest of us, this is yet another embarrassment from a Home Office that is starting to feel like it’s staffed exclusively by YouTube pranksters. “Okay James, now tell them that the solution to the migration crisis is TikToks. Look, do you want that silver button or not?”

I wouldn’t mind so much, but some of the “influencers” they’re collaborating with have a follower count in the low 100,000s. What, you couldn’t spend my money on somebody with a little more clout? I’ve seen Michael Cera stan accounts with more followers than that. With all the money you’re spending, the least you could do is spring for a Paul brother (probably the less good one).

When people accused Rishi’s “stop the boats” initiative of being performative, I thought they were talking about gesture politics, not split-screen duets and overly choreographed dance routines. It feels like we’re about a month away from Jacob Rees-Mogg trying to make it as a Soundcloud rapper.

We’re now at the point where our government officials are pinning their re-election hopes on the same platform that gave us the Wednesday Addams dance challenge. If that doesn’t signal the death knell of the Conservative Party as a serious force in British politics, I don’t know what does.