Twitter is great – but it’s no doorstep

I love Twitter. I love the instant reaction to whatever is happening in the world. I love the silly jokes and memes . I love the people I talk to regularly from all over the UK and the genuine sense of community that is built up. I’m a long-time advocate of the power of online relationships, it’s how I met my husband – through a discussion forum. There were a small handful of people at my wedding that I’d chatted to night after night for years, but had never before met in the flesh.

Grant Shapps recently wrote a rather good 10 point guide for politicos on using Twitter. However I would add a very real 11^th point (well 13th actually, like most things Grant gets up to the figures in his 10 point guide are so skewwhiff they contain  12 points – Grant is no numbers man).  This point may seem obvious, but you’d be amazed at how easy it is to forget: Twitter is no substitute for the doorstep.

I see a great deal of self indulgence on Twitter that you simply don’t get away with on the doorstep. I see a lot of pseudo-intellectual pondering that would leave you unarmed and unready to face voters when it came to the real questions of the day.

For example, this week, Ken got himself in hot water again through injudicious use of language to make what was in fact a perfectly good and valid point. The first thing to be clear on is just because everyone’s talking about it on Twitter, really, really does not mean everyone will be talking about it on the doorstep. Where I live the big concern is crime. I was canvassing in Brixton last week, and people wanted to know if they’d be safer or not under Ken. I will go out again on Saturday week (It’s Ken’s manifesto day this Saturday) and I will give every reader of LabourList a big sloppy smooch if Ken’s slip up is the thing mentioned to me. Few but a tiny minority will bring up these attacks.

Secondly there opened up a weird sub-debate about Ken’s candidature. That’s fantasy politics, suitable to Twitter, but easily blown away when it comes to the real world. This fight isn’t between Ken and your own fantasy Labour candidate. It’s between a Labour Mayor and a Tory one, between Ken and Boris. And if you think Ken’s slips of the tongue are bad they’re nothing compared to Boris “watermelon smiles” “Chicken Feed” Johnson.

Which brings me to the final way in which you can tell the difference between a doorstep warrior and an armchair one: The “why do you only highlight the Tory errors” gambit. Possibly the stupidest gambit of them all, and one that you rarely see outside of Twitter.

For anyone who hasn’t yet grasped the true nature of politics, it’s a winner takes all game and we want to win. We want to win because we know we can better help those people we meet on the doorsteps and Ken is the man we have chosen to lead that fight. We’re up against a particularly hostile media in London, and it’s the fight of our lives, for the lives of 8 million people in a city we love. I want my home to be run by a mayor who cares about the things I care about. To win that, it means not only highlighting the excellent work Ken is doing, but also showing the many, many ways in which Boris is an inadequate, second rate and very, very Tory politician. Showing Londoners how different his priorities are to theirs and drumming that message home in every way.

I urge every member of the London Party to join the thousands of us already taking action and get out on the doorsteps. Meet the real voters of London. Listen to the experiences. Work hard to make sure that in May, we elect the Mayor they deserve.