Anything rather than go out and meet the ordinary people

On yesterday's Sunday Politics Michael Dugher made the dubious statement about the Bradford West by-election:  "I think this was the first by-election in history fought and even won on social media".  This claim was requoted by Juliette Jowit in an article in today's Guardian.  But is it true?

If you go to George Galloway's Facebook page you find that there are 83,000 "Likes".  This is not the same as 83,000 supporters (as Juliette Jowit maintains in her article).  A "Like" is an ephemeral momentary jab of an index finger by anyone anywhere around the world - to interpret these eighty-three thousand finger jabs as committed support from people within the Bradford West constituency is stretching credulity.

If you go to George Galloway's Twitter site you can see he has 67,000 followers.  You can look at who these followers are (and if you were a thorough journalist, actually do a survey on them).  They are a disparate group, even including Guardian journalists, but from my brief overview they do not strike me as being Bradford West residents.

In any case Bradford West is a very poor constituency - is it likely that the disadvantaged and dispossessed who voted for George Galloway are the sort who can afford laptops and the kind of indulgent lifestyles where social media is a significant factor?

It seems to me that Michael Dugher MP is trying to find excuses for what must be reckoned a lamentable performance by Labour.  He is trying to imply that forces outside of Labour's control were responsible for the defeat of the Labour candidate.  In reality, Labour probably lost because their team was lazy and complacent.

If Labour had carried out a full canvass of the constituency so that everyone on the electoral roll was marked, then had tellers at all the polling stations, and then "got the vote out" on the night it would have been impossible for them to be taken by surprise.

But politicians (all parties) are too lazy to do this with any degree of consistency.

They would much prefer to issue Tweets and update their Facebook pages.

Anything rather than go out and meet the ordinary people (which is what George Galloway seems to have done).


https://twitter.com/#!/georgegalloway


http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/apr/01/labour-muslim-women-bradford-west

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01dzbg7