Tory Momentum will have to do more than use social media to hurl abuse
Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner received tweets from right-wingers after her appearance on The Andrew Marr Show yesterday (July 9) claiming she was “thick” because of her northern accent.
What would a Conservative version of Momentum be called, anyway – ‘Inertia’?
The Tories have realised that they lack a decent Momentum-style campaigning movement and have started proposing ways of addressing this.
According to the New Statesman, the call for a Tory Momentum is made up of three wishes – two of which have already been addressed on Tory blog Conservative Home.
The first is for a youth strategy that goes beyond “young people don’t vote”, as one young activist derisively describes it. Here is the ConHome article on the subject.
The second is to compete with the manpower that Labour and its “standing army” of campaigners in Momentum has at its disposal. ConHome discussed this here, but ran off-course a little, ending up questioning the validity of the left-wing campaigners.
The third is a social media strategy that will make its messages go viral; videos like Momentum’s Tory broadcast spoof “Daddy, Why Do You Hate Me?” which was viewed more than 7.6 million times and reached 30 per cent of UK Facebook users.
At the time of writing, Conservative Home has not addressed the last issue – yet it is the most pressing, because right-wing social media users are currently ruining their own good name and that of their party.
Here’s just a smattering of the responses to right-wing Twitter users on my feed right now:
Made it to 50 mutes in one day for the first time ever today. I've been called thick, fake, a man, a bitch, you get the idea.
— Rachael Swindon (@Rachael_Swindon) July 9, 2017
I've had threats of violence, rape, even my kids have been publicly 'exposed'.
But please guys, don't be calling Yvette Cooper a Tory.
— Rachael Swindon (@Rachael_Swindon) July 9, 2017
https://twitter.com/MxJackMonroe/status/884006611064410112
Anonymous hard right accounts attacking my accent again saying l am thick etc, l will reiterate l am proud of my accent and will not change!
— Angela Rayner 🌹 (@AngelaRayner) July 9, 2017
I know it’s the people who usually get targeted by the trolls, but isn’t that the point?
This Site – and This Writer – have had their fair share of stick from Tories and right-wingers, but these people have, by and large, gone away by now; it’s hard for them to keep going when they’ve run out of insults and I’ve still got a stack of reasoned arguments to send their way.
Despite the pointless smears sent its way with monotonous regularity – especially the nonsense claims about anti-Semitism, Momentum (and pro-Labour campaigners generally) don’t resort to the low and common abuse that is the hallmark of the Tories on the social media.
We* rely on strong, solid arguments, backed with facts, and a healthy degree of comradely good behaviour.
Until the Tories can muster up similarly-intelligent personalities and campaigns, it won’t matter how many youngsters support them, or how many sockpuppet third-party campaigns they set up.
Abuse is unattractive. It’s time the Tories learned that lesson.
*No, I’m still not a member of Momentum. I’m referring to pro-Labour campaigners, a group of which I am certainly a part.
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Sneering insults is what Tories are good at giving, but they don’t like it when the insults are directed at them. Good to hear some regional accents and notjust plummy Eton school “posh-boy” nasties like the Rees-Moog.
Well said, Mike. Excellent article.
As I’m feeling generous, and getting very confident about unity in the Labour party, may I suggest we let them have “Progress” as their new activist group. I don’t mean just the name, I mean the whole organisation! I heard they were looking for new sponsors now Sainsbury has tired of them.
I’m getting used to the Northern power house accent that is used by the BBC with their northern representative every morning presenting usually the street stuff and butty van tours of UK etc. Thanks to BBC I completely understood Angelas very robust and user friendly appearance. Only failed to answer the Marrs direct question about her boss JC possibly getting his university poor grads figure wrong. if JC did get his figures wrong I personally would have preferred her to have given the correct figures but emphasised the poor drop out rate was mainly the parents and students economic problems bought about by our Cons friends. If Labour follows the Cons attitude to not correcting key data then they will never be adopted by the population……we have to many years of dodgy daves data and spin.
I had a run in with a right wing troll the other day, he had a very particular interest in you, Mike. I told him I hope you sue the arse off him.
Could you send some details along via the message system on the Vox Political Facebook page? You could do it in a comment to the blog, marking it “not for publication” if you want, also.
Done