Keyboard warriors of the world unite

A Brave New World?

Last week I attended a  talk in Swansea given by a gentleman called Mike Klein on digital activism. Mike who hails from the States but who now, very sensibly in my opinion, has made Swansea his home is the former presidential campaign manager for Congressman Dennis Kucinich. I have to admit to being a little sceptical about this whole digital activism thing prior to this talk but Mike gave me plenty of food for thought some of which I hope to share with you here.

Anybody recognise this?

Although this is a bit of a generalisation in the past life was more homogenised and centralised. People tended to live and work in one place, often for much of their lives and would get their news and information from a few sources as well: what was said at work, through the BBC and maybe the church. Today however we live in a very different world where people throughout their career often move from job to job and where populations are a lot more geographically mobile and where we are bombarded with information and views from many additional sources such as the plethora of television channels and social media platforms. In this multicultural, multifaith, multi voiced brave new world it would seem reasonable to argue that traditional forms of social and political activism need to be rethought.

In the past ten years, particularly since the launch of the IPhone in 2007, there has been a massive change in the way we use and interact with the media. In 2016 71% of the UK population owned mobile phones, up from 39% just four years earlier and among under 35 year olds the figure in over 90% and as of 2015 the smartphone is the most popular way to access the internet   Research has shown that more than a third of all adults (34%) use their smartphone within five minutes of waking up, a figure that rises to almost half (49%) of those aged 18-24.

A386 anyone

It would seem that the traditional model of people catching up on what is happening in the world by switching on their radio or television in the morning or reading the newspaper on the way to work is rapidly being replaced by people switching on their mobile phones and accessing their social media accounts. Any political or social movement that fails to engage with this change is at risk of going the same way as traditional newspapers seem to be going.

Love him or loathe him, and no prizes for guessing which one I do, but President Donald Trump has utilised this change in the media to great effect. Just 7% of the US population use Twitter although nearly 90% are aware of it and although I don't have hard statistics to hand I am pretty sure I am on safe ground to argue that the percentage that have read a Trump Tweet is also around the 90% mark as his Tweets are often faithfully reprinted word for word in various other forms of media.  I'll ask you to reflect yourself; now you may or maynot be on Twitter but it's a pretty fair bet that you at some point have read a Donald Trump tweet. Twitter has given him to opportunity to bypass the traditional filters and spin associated with more traditional forms of media and talk directly to the people and whatever you think of that it has worked, he made it to be president even against the odds.

Labour and The Left in general are not in a good place at the moment, there is no denying it but it would also seem true that we are bound to lose the next war if we use the same weaponry, tactics and strategy as we used to lose the last one.  Times they are a changing and while there is still a place for the old door to door door knocking and face to face interaction (for as Mike pointed out in his talk quoting that clansman of mine Tip O'Neill "all politics is local") the day of the keyboard warrior is now upon us and getting our message out there using these new forms of media is more important than ever otherwise we will become left behind and be seen as out of touch, particularly by the young who are our hope for the future.

Brexit bill: Damned if you do, damned if you don’t

Again I feel motivated to write this blog through some of what I feel is the unmitigated tosh that I have read and heard over yesterday’s vote on the Brexit bill and particularly the comments from certain sectors condemning Jeremy Corbyn’s three line whip on Parliamentary Labour Party members to vote in support of the bill.

Now let me get one thing clear at the start of this blog; I am a committed and ardent remainer.  In my opinion the simple in/ out referendum should never have been held, in many ways in itself it was an affront to democracy. The issue of whether the UK should or shouldn’t remain a member of the European Union is an extremely complex and nuanced one and one that simply could not have been effectively addressed by a simple in/ out referendum and certainly not by a referendum which in the end, let’s be honest here, was not about the EU but became about immigration and feelings of alienation from the political class. Again don’t get me wrong here, I do have serious misgivings about the EU, Just look at my earlier blogpost from June 2013 “A Blue Flag With Yellow Stars” and I am fully cognisant of the “Lexit” argument as to why we should leave the cosy, neo Liberal Capitalist club. Ultimately however the reason that I am an ardent remainer is that when you take all the pro and con arguments into consideration a Tory engineered Brexit, I am convinced, will leave the poorer people of the UK and Wales in particular worse off and I cannot see any benefit to the UK that will offset that.

OK so I have nailed my colours to the mast; I am a committed remainer, albeit a conflicted one. That said I am fully aware that we lost the vote and it is no good pretending otherwise which it seems to me some other remainers want to. This then brings me to the conundrum that Labour and Jeremy Corbyn are facing at the moment. To me it seems they are between a rock and a hard place. Labour campaigned for remain, don’t let anybody tell you different; but the vote was lost to the Leave camp. So now what are Labour to do? Ignore the views of the electorate of this country, many of whom are Labour voters and do all they can to block the Brexit process. It seems to be in doing this the Party will stimulate a political backlash from people who feel that their views, which they believe in passionately, are being discounted as unimportant. The other option which Labour seem to be pursuing and which seems far more pragmatic to me is to accept the vote has been lost and to put in process an approach which seeks to negotiate the best possible outcome to Brexit for the majority of people in this country.  

To be honest I despair when I see 47 Labour MPs have voted against the Party directive. Surely if the events of the past eighteen months for Labour have taught us anything is a disunited party is not appealing to the voters and that members of the Parliamentary Labour Party should show a bit more humility in respecting the views of their constituency members and supporters.  While I can maybe understand it for those MPs who represent areas that strongly voted remain but when you see the likes of Owen Smith and Chris Bryant who represent constituencies that voted strongly to leave vote against their Party and their constituents it beggars belief that they cannot see that this falls right into the hands of UKIP and their ilk who accuse Labour of becoming a party of the metropolitan elite that no longer represents the views of the working people of the UK.

OK these are not good times for Labour and I am not going to cast blame in any one direction other than to say that we all need to take a hard damn look at ourselves. Those that decry and blame Corbyn and accuse the party of selling out on the Brexit cause, rather than just moaning and complaining tell us your plans of how we move forward from this difficult situation and do what Labour says it will always do, take everyone with us and leave no one behind.