A short thread about Boris Johnson, the media, and Jeremy Corbyn. Boris Johnson won the election. Lots of reasons why - but one that keeps getting suggested is that it was a choice between Johnson and Corbyn, and wasn’t Corbyn terrible... 1/n
This is the reason generally given by people who supported Boris Johnson and are now beginning to realise it was a catastrophic error, and by people in the media who now spend their time attacking Johnson, and have forgotten what they did in the election. 2/n
The thing is, it’s a false argument from the outset. The choice was never between Johnson and Corbyn in any real sense. The choice was qualitatively different. It was between giving Johnson a stonking majority and electing a minority Corbyn coalition government. 3/n
Corbyn was never going to get a majority. Under no circumstances was that ever going to be a possibility - so yes, he could have been in Number 10, but only with the help of the SNP, the Lib Dems and the Greens and PC. That’s a different story. 4/n
So whatever you thought about Corbyn - and I’m not going to get into that here - you weren’t ever going to give him the power to do his worst. The way you *did* give Johnson the power to do *his* worst. And by God is he doing his worst. 5/n
The ‘it’s Johnson or Corbyn’ narrative which was all over the media, and all over the campaigns of both the Tories and the Lib Dems, was a false one to start with. And we see the consequences now. This is what that narrative did. 6/n
And if anyone seriously thinks that a Corbyn government dependent on Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP would have been anywhere near as catastrophic at dealing with either COVID or Brexit as Boris Johnson has been, they need to take a long hard look at themselves. 7/n
So no, voting for Boris Johnson wasn’t a lesser of two evils choice, even if you detested Corbyn. It was something quite different. Personally I think the media is the biggest culprit in all of this, but that’s just an opinion. We all have them. /ends
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
This past week has shown (once again) that the biggest harms of social media are not the ‘trolls and bots’ but the big accounts that magnify, corral and spread the harm. (Short thread) 1/4
These are not anonymous accounts, these are not ‘foreign’ accounts. These are our mainstream media people, our politicians, our ‘influencers’ and ‘commentators’. Amongst other things, this is yet another demonstration of how badly focussed the Online Safety Act is. 2/4
We spend our time looking at individual ‘harms’, at specifically harmful ‘content’ rather than at the structural issues (algorithms etc) and at the obvious ‘bad guys’ rather than at the overall effect. 3/4
A few points about Starmer’s majority on a small vote share - and a comparison with Johnson’s situation in 2019. First thing to remember is that *as of this moment* it doesn’t matter how many votes they got, but how many seats. 1/7
That’s the problem with FPTP - a seat is a seat is a seat. In terms of governance, that means Starmer’s position is incredibly strong. He can basically do what he wants - just as Johnson could do whatever *he* wanted. 2/7
That i puts the emphasis on what Starmer actually does. There’s the rub. How did Johnson turn a massive majority into a crushing defeat? By governing abysmally. By being corrupt, incompetent and dishonest. He couldn’t fulfil his promises - because his promises were lies. 3/7
I have a little theory about Sunak. There are many reasons he’s in the mess he is, but one of them is his decision to go ahead with the Rwanda Scheme. He had a chance to step back from it, to abandon it. Instead he chose to push it. 1/4
He knew it was batshit. He knew it was unworkable. He just thought it would resonate with the nutters and the racists, and give him credibility with the far right. With the GBeebies audience, with the Braverman fans. 2/4
The trouble is, its failure to function was then on his hands. The nutters and racists still don’t like him, and its failure gave Farage (and Braverman) room on the right. The Overton Window is shifted, and the last remnant of Tory ‘competence’ is extinguished. 3/4
A few small points on ‘serious harm’, which was the crux of the Laurence Fox defamation actions. Firstly, the requirement for serious harm was added in the Defamation Act 2013 - the most recent reform of defamation law. 1/6
It was brought in specifically to make it harder to succeed in a defamation action. To stop trivial cases from succeeding. To help free speech. It adds an overall requirement before you even look at the words at issue. 2/6
The act says ‘A statement is not defamatory unless its publication has caused or is likely to cause serious harm to the reputation of the claimant.’ There are two parts to this. Is the harm ‘serious’, and did the statement ‘cause’ it. Both have to be shown *by the claimant* 3/6
A short and somewhat simplified thread on defamation law and the Laurence Fox case - and why it’s currently proceeding as it is. There are a number of key issues about the way the law works that need to be understood. 🧵 1/12
After Fox’s appearance on BBC’s Question Time in 2020, a number of people called him a racist on Twitter - and he responded by calling them paedophiles. They sued him for defamation for saying that, and he counter sued them for calling him a racist. 2/12
To count as defamatory, since the Defamation Act 2013, a statement has to cause ‘serious harm’ - which is why we’re hearing Fox describing all the jobs he’s lost as a result of being described as a racist. Significant loss of income would count as serious harm. 3/12