Labour MPs try TikTok to beat back Farage

3 months ago 2

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LONDON — How do you fight a surging populist? Post and pose.

With Britain’s electoral landscape in flux, the U.K.’s governing party is in a race to create down-with-the-kids content that can show it’s delivering for voters — and can speak their language.

Social media feeds are full of newbie lawmakers desperate to show they’re busy, with selfie-style videos of their days in parliament, snaps of them on constituency business and graphics talking up Labour achievements sent from on high by party HQ.

But, below the surface, rifts are developing over how exactly to balance Labour message discipline with the kind of freewheeling content that can go viral.

And there’s suspicion from some more traditionally minded colleagues about MPs charging ahead and building their own brand at the expense of bread-and-butter local work.

One skeptical Labour MP, granted anonymity to speak frankly, said many of their colleagues are now behaving like “influencers.”

‘War for attention’

Vying for power at last year’s general election, Labour threw itself into the social media fray.

It offered up TikTok memes about Tory rival Rishi Sunak sending 18-year-olds “to war” and got uber-nerd frontbencher Ed Miliband to talk up his obsession with pop princess Chappell Roan. The party spent a whopping £3.9 million on Meta ads during that election alone.

Don’t expect a let-up after last week’s local elections saw Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK surge at the polls.

Labour MP Gordon McKee, elected in Labour’s 2024 national landslide, is one of the very-online MPs doing his bit. He’s hired his own digital content creator, and tells POLITICO that using social media is really “new-age door knocking.”

“The way the vast majority of my constituents consume their entertainment? Their news is on their phones and on social media. And politicians, I think, are generally terrible at meeting them where they are,” he reflects. Social media is “not just a way to communicate, it’s basically the way to communicate for huge swathes of people,” McKee adds.

“If you as a politician take the view that communicating what you do is not one of your top priorities, you just end up accelerating the trend we have at the moment, which is the serious decline in the trust of politicians.”

Referencing an eye-opening recent report which found 52 percent of British Gen Zs believe the U.K. would be better run under a dictator, McKee warned: “That is a symptom of politicians not communicating with that vulnerable group about what they’re doing and how they’re benefiting them where they are. And so I think it’s very dangerous for people to opt out of how most people of a certain generation are consuming content.”

Fellow newbie Labour MP Mike Reader tells POLITICO he will eventually need a specific member of staff in place to focus just on “full-time digital marketing, viral content and digital advertising” — particularly with Reform UK snapping at Labour’s heels, and making big inroads on TikTok.

“We are in a war of attrition and a war for attention,” Reader says. “Everyone has really short attention spans; they’re bombarded with views … and so to get a message across, you have to keep driving it a lot harder. I think Reform has got this very well, and I think Labour had it very well in elections — just a small number of key messages you drive, drive, drive.”

While Reader acknowledges that “the vast majority of my social media is read by people who would already know” him and his work, he argues it’s still important to make a mark. “All the people just see you and they become conscious that you’re there,” he says. “And by 2029 [the date of the next planned election] they will know the name Mike Reader.”

‘Insurgent and entertaining’

The Labour Growth Group, a backbench pressure group boasting more than 100 members, has been urging all MPs to get on TikTok and YouTube.

The group’s director, Mark McVitie, says the center-left has in recent years “heavily struggled to influence online culture — which largely remains downstream of X, YouTube and major podcasts.”

“Meanwhile, the right, especially Reform in the U.K., has built ecosystems that have amplified their ideas through memes and influenced large online subcultures more significantly than the left has,” he adds. “Insurgent and entertaining ideas win on the internet, not political talking points. The left urgently needs more platforms for new voices to experiment, find their style, and speak directly to online communities.”

The Labour Growth Group has recently been working with a major British YouTuber who boasts over a million followers (although wants to stay anonymous at this point). The YouTuber recently wrote a memo encouraging MPs to take more risks: prioritize appearances on clippable podcasts, TikTok and YouTube — and even cause a bit of trouble for the reach. “Nothing sells like negativity,” they said in the memo, seen by POLITICO.

That advice stands in stark contrast to Labour’s strategy of intense message discipline for its MPs — who are regularly asked to repeat carefully honed party lines and have their public activity watched closely by the party enforcers.

The party itself is pushing for MPs to have a social media presence — but in a much more tightly managed way, and with a hefty price-tag attached.

Just after the election, Labour HQ offered to provide MPs with a “social media package” with digital content agency 411 for a monthly fee ranging from a cool £700 to £1,700, depending on the level of content they required, five Labour MPs said. The offer included digital packages for MPs tailor-made to seats, with bespoke video content, graphics and online ads.

None of those who spoke to POLITICO went ahead and paid for the services, and one said the steep cost being proposed “left a bad taste” in their mouth after having just worked to fundraise for their election campaign. Others pointed out that they had already had staffers to manage their social media feeds.

The cost of the packages has since been reduced to between £250 and £500 per month.

Outside of the packages, the party also sends its MPs semi-regular guidance on social media best practice.

McVitie is heartened by the “very capable people” he believes are working in Labour on social media. But he wants the party to prioritize “greater investment in online-first talent, stronger collaboration between creative outsiders and political insiders, and politicians ready to take risks to gain the rewards.”

Labour HQ did not respond to a request for comment.

The politics of logging off

While social-savvy MPs debate the right way forward, certain corners of the Labour party remain wary of their selfie-loving colleagues.

One long-serving Labour aide accused MPs of being “obsessed” with clips for social media simply to “prove” they are busy. “It’s in the interest of the [top of the Labour party] that MPs are busy taking stupid pictures with ‘Save the Lobsters’ rather than asking awkward questions” and holding them to account.

The first MP quoted at the top of this article acknowledged that elected officials now “have to have a profile to be listened to about anything,” but lamented that the role is “less about your acumen, about legislative scrutiny, and now more for people with a bigger public profile.”

The same MP complained that their job is “not to smile and pose at random events,” but to work on knotty constituency issues and tackle casework for local people.

Elected to parliament in 2017, the MP said there had been a shift in skills needed for the job — from mastery of emails and speechmaking to knowing how to make and edit smartphone-friendly vertical videos and market them in an algorithm-friendly way.

As the MP spoke to POLITICO in a quiet corner of parliament, the conversation was briefly interrupted by someone doing a social media photoshoot.

Esther Webber contributed reporting.

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