How a Tory MP's tweeted apology proves Labour is still winning at social media

Congratulations to Ben Bradley, Conservative MP for Mansfield, who, in little over a week, has managed to clock up more retweets – 55,000 – than all of the Tory party’s tweets in 2018 combined.

Unfortunately for Bradley, the tweet in question was part of a legal agreement following a defamatory post sent about Jeremy Corbyn, in which he said that the Labour leader had “sold secrets to communist spies”. A slur related to a right-wing press fabricated story that Corbyn cooperated with a Czech intelligence agent in the 1980s.

Nothing new about political mudslinging on Twitter., but the reach of Bradley’s single tweet, dwarfing Theresa May’s 27,000 retweets for all activity in 2018, demonstrates a clear divide in social media savvy. Labour insisted the final sentence of Bradley’s apology be “please retweet”, which sent it skyrocketing.

Political apologies are normally quietly issued via statements from spokespeople. On Twitter too, it is often the case that a fake tweet has been retweeted hundreds of thousands of times, but a debunking barely passes the low hundreds.

Source: theguardian