Politicians & Twitter

When the candidates for leader of the Labour Party were announced what seems like years ago now so long and drawn out was the process, I decided to follow them all on Twitter. I hoped that I would be able to get a picture of the candidates outside of the rhetoric and be able to form an opinion of them as people.

Why am I disappointed that it didn’t happen? Most of the tweets from all five candidates consisted of saying “Thanks for your support!” ” Come and meet a b c d or e at such and such place” or how rewarding it was to attend events such as from Ed Balls “just cut a cake at ……. nursery school”.

Moreover, although it wasn’t specified, many of the tweets appeared to have been written by members of their team and not by the candidate themselves. Isn’t that deception?

So at the end of the campaign apart from learning that Andy Burnham supports Brentford, I have no more idea of what the candidates are really like. Trawling through the rhetoric hasn’t helped either as I am still unable to say if Ed Milliband will be a better leader than David, Andy, Diane or Ed would have been.

It’s a pity that the result of this experiment is no better than when I tried it with my local Labour party candidate during the general election. If politicians are going to use social networking sites it seems to me that they should learn how to use them first!