Notes on modern Britain: when I looked on Friday morning, some 2,200 Mail Online readers had commented on the Rochester result – and 3,000 on Emily Thornberry’s white van tweet. The online Guardian’s scorecard was very similar: 2,300 to 2,600 or so. So a tweet matters more than a vote (at least on Twitter). And Twitter, in the dark hours of Thursday evening, can unseat a shadow attorney general. Who rose up to smite Thornberry for a “posh” supposed sneer? Not actual White Van Man, flying his English flags. “I don’t care who it pisses off,” he told the Telegraph. “I know there is a lot of ethnic minorities that don’t like it.”
Thornberry is a prolific Twitter user, with 7,426 tweets since 2010, and 14,300 followers. Read back through them and you’ll find a lot of comments full of wry, earthy honesty: just the kind of human connection politicians are supposed to make. She laughed at Labour voters as well as Ukip ones in Rochester, too. But one tweet – yanked from a series of “images” by sharp-eyed stirrers – is enough to blight a career. Live by the digital, die by the digital? Or grow up, and search for a sense of humour?
