When will they learn? We’d all be better off if politicians stepped away from Twitter

Labour MP Emma Lewell-Buck found herself in hot water last week after tweeting about a bookies in South Shields. Social media is not a politician’s friend, writes Marie Le Conte

Tweet in haste, repent at leisure: Labour MP Emma Lewell-Buck (UK Parliament)

If only politicians listened to middling columnists. A few weeks ago, I wrote for this very newspaper that MPs should consider logging off altogether for the duration of summer recess. It would be good for them, good for the internet and good for the country at large.

Emma Lewell-Buck did not listen. On Friday, the Labour MP for South Shields posted: “Thanks to the team @AdmiralSlots on King Street today for a great visit. Pleased to hear about how gambling safely and responsibly is an absolute priority for the staff. Regulars often pop in to socialise and have a cuppa.”

Alongside the tweet were pictures of her playing on one of the machines and posing with staff outside the bookies. Had it been posted on, say, a Facebook page for constituents, the visit would have gone largely unnoticed. There are bookies everywhere in the country and, to be blunt, Lewell-Buck is not an especially prominent parliamentarian.

Instead, the post was quote-tweeted over 700 times and, at time of writing, had prompted just shy of a thousand replies, nearly all of which were negative. The MP was criticised for “promoting a company and industry that profits from human misery”, “essentially advertising a life-destroying industry”, and called a number of things not worth repeating.

It does feel worth pointing out that, according to a select committee report, “60 per cent of [the gambling industry’s] profits come from the 5 per cent who are already problem gamblers, or are at risk of becoming so”. On top of this, “for each problem gambler, six other people, a total of two million, are harmed by the break-up of families, crime, loss of employment, loss of homes and, ultimately, loss of life.”

But this isn’t really the point I am trying to make. Instead, the Lewell-Buck tweet feels symptomatic of a wider issue in British politics (and, I’m sure, politics elsewhere). Because everyone is now on social media, MPs are expected to be active on it as well.

It is not inherently a bad thing; constituents deserve to know what their elected representatives do with their time on the job, and online posts are more practical than, say, physical newsletters. Though the choice of business was somewhat controversial in this case, it is also entirely normal for local MPs to visit local businesses and be pictured there, especially during recess.

The problem is that the place in which MPs can show off to their constituents – in this case Twitter – is also the place in which political journalists, activists, and obsessives of all stripes spend most of their time. Social media timelines also tend to flatten everything and everyone; it does not matter that someone happens to be a mere backbencher; if there is “MP” in their title, they may as well be a minister of state.

In this context, how can parties establish a neat and coherent image of what they represent? Both Labour and the Conservatives have always been broad churches, united by the fact that unless you were in a prominent frontbench position or a senior parliamentarian, no one really cared what you did or thought.

Local MPs could talk to their local papers and to whoever wanted to speak to them at the village fete, but their input was not needed at a national level. Now they can tweet to their heart’s content and speak directly to every political journalist in the country.

This makes it harder for leadership teams to make unilateral decisions on both what their parties should talk about, and where they stand on those topics. Did Keir Starmer want the Labour Party’s stance on gambling to be the main online discussion of the weekend? Almost certainly not, but he was not given a choice.

This was not the first time an incident like this happened either. Emma Lewell-Buck was merely the last in a long line of MPs tweeting then presumably regretting having done so. When will they learn?

My last appeal to members of parliament was not successful, but perhaps the second time will be the charm. Please, for everyone’s sake, just step away from your phones. You’ll thank me later.