They may have had the best starts in life, been educated at the finest schools and dined on the most exquisite chow Britain has to offer, but Tories are finding something a little hard to swallow – Twitter.
The poor politicians just cannot bear the mass abuse from the masses. Criticism from left-wingers is turning young Conservatives off a career in politics, it is being claimed.
Brandon Lewis, the Tory Party chairman, said: “If you look at what happens on social media, if somebody on the right or the centre puts out a message, the attack from the hard left is sometimes unbelievably abusive and vitriolic,” the MP told the House magazine.
“For some people, if they suddenly get attacked by a huge number of hard-left people they’ve never met, that can put them off.” Lewis has insisted the Tories will take the ground against the left online. But, judging by recent performances, that’s going to be tough.
Court-out
Social media training is important for most businesses in the 21st century. Tips like: don’t post your naked body on Facebook or call your boss names on Twitter, are common. Yet the Tories appear to have missed out.
This week, Tory MP for Mansfield Ben Bradley was forced to delete a potentially libelous tweet about Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. While coming to the defense of a colleague in a spat on Twitter, Bradley alleged Corbyn “sold British secrets to spies.” Defamation 101 was obviously missed out in the Tory training manual – and Corbyn is suing. The tweet has since been deleted.
Career blows
Prime Minister Theresa May’s chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, insisted it was a horrible accident when he tweeted hardcore porn from his account. Tory followers – and well, everyone else – were left in fits of LOLs when the jaw dropping X-rated scenes were visible on his social media page.
Barwell says he responded to a Tweet from the page “in error,” meaning his reply, and the original vid, came up on his feeds.
A Downing Street official told the Guido Fawkes website: “Gavin Barwell replied to this tweet, which was in his timeline, in error. He has deleted the reply and regrets the embarrassment this has caused.”
The best in the biz… or not
The second house also seems to be struggling with social media. When they’re awake, the Lords in the Tory Party are apparently also oblivious to setting traps for themselves. Tory peer Michelle Mone was forced to clarify a boast about the size of her business empire in January after she got into a row with an SNP MP.
Baroness Mone of Mayfair lorded over the size of her “9 biz interests” on the internet. But, when someone checked her register of interests with the house – there were only five.
A spokesperson for her office said some projects “haven’t officially launched as yet.” SNP MP Stewart McDonald can take the win on this one. Awkward.
Grab your popcorn… It’s a Tory on Tory Twitter tiff
While the bosses in the party paint a picture of a united front, the Tories on Twitter are scribbling all over the master plan by fighting like children – with each other. Yes, Tories, here is lesson one.
Although you are only tweeting that one person, WE CAN ALL SEE IT. This month, former Tory Housing Minister Nick Boles and Treasury Chief Secretary Liz Truss got into a tiff over housing. Boles’ hint that he would back an idea from Corbyn on housing reform ruffled center-right feathers, while Truss branded the idea “deeply sinister.”
The plan involves forcing landowners to sell plots for a fraction of their market value to build council houses. We’ll spare you the details of the mild-mannered Tory tiff. Until next time…