Normal people don't look at what politicians are saying on twitter. As a means to communicate our values with the public, it's terrible.

It's essentially a proxy to communicate with journalists, but we can see the harm that's doing. So change it!

I think there's an element of trying to convince his supporters there's an expectation an election should be called by then, so that when it (obviously) isn't called until 2029, they're convinced that Labour have done something outrageous by staying on rather than, you know, it being normal

So glad you covered this. I live in Brighton (30s, decent job, cant afford to buy) and have spent *years* trying to explain to people even in my local party that a) this will obviously get approved & b) that's not a bad thing, to little avail

Good location, well connected, brownfield site. Build. 🤷‍♂️

Yes - the impact of societal peer pressure is often underestimated I think

The worst biases some people have, if they vocalise them in person they'd be told to stop being a twat and they'd shut up. But online, they might see someone else say it too, so the confidence grows to say it themselves...

(Alternatively it just leads to them retreating further back towards podcast-style environments, where they can control it all far more efficiently. But I hope not)

Obviously more recently that trend is changing on places like Twitter and Facebook, but politicians haven't really got their heads around how to cope with that yet

I wonder if we'll see more of a trend towards publicising in person engagement as politicians start to ignore toxic online environments

That's true - possible that the rise in online comms causing echo chambers over the past decade has increased the positive feedback loop; politicians feel they just need to say something & most of their followers will agree with them, which is far safer & means they feel less need to convince others

Brown lost that election for a whole host of other reasons, but it feels as if politicians took that as the defining moment and stopped actually trying to *lead* public opinion, rather than follow

I find it remarkable to look back at Blair's earlier Question Time performances especially, how directly he'd take on the audience

I wonder how much it changed on Brown's 'bigoted woman' incident. Ever since, there's been an approach of 'the voter is always right', even when they obviously aren't

People are clearly not abusing LinkedIn wankers anywhere near enough tbh

Exactly. I'm fairly ambivalent on the 'liberal' case against them

If they said 'older people often dont have passports/photo ID, young people often dont get utility bills, lets make sure Windrush never happens again etc' I could get on board

But as a device to make people's lives harder? No thanks