‘The next right-wing talking point is already online. We must learn to spot it early’

Being good at political communications often means being good at reacting. Reacting to a front-page scoop, a tough on-air question, or a sudden announcement by a political rival. 

Politics comes thick and fast, and often it seems like it came from nowhere. But it didn’t. 

Ideas, questions, policies have all spent days, weeks or months being tested.  Increasingly, tested by small social media accounts or niche podcasts or Telegram groups. 

If progressives want to be less reactive and get on the front foot, we need to pay more attention to that upstream layer. 

I have been building a watchlist of public accounts that play three broad roles: originators, incubators and translators. 

Originators introduce a phrase, argument or policy demand. Incubators are the accounts, podcasts and publications where an idea is repeated and refined. Translators take something niche, ideological or inflammatory and turn it into a form that journalists, politicians and ordinary voters can easily understand. 

We have already seen what that journey can look like. The best-known example of this is the ‘Boriswave’, which was being discussed by originators and incubators for months before mainstream papers or Reform politicians picked it up. 

But even just this week there have been some early warning signs of topics being discussed that progressives might need to prepare for.

A few days ago, Big Time Charlie (@shadowcanman) claimed his examination of the  asylum-accommodation supply chain has uncovered financial connections involving 21 sitting MPs, through donations, campaign funding or paid roles.

This has already been amplified by @frankwrighter who ‘translates’ it into the accusation that MPs are financially benefiting from mass migration. 

Whether it’s true or not is irrelevant. A donation from a company is not evidence that an MP was bribed into shaping asylum policy for personal gain. But if the claims start to gain more traction, the distinction may be difficult to establish. 

The mere possibility that voters could start believing that the companies profiting from asylum accommodation are financially connected to a bloc of MPs who sustain mass migration is exactly why progressives need to understand the claim now, before they are forced to answer it at speed and the allegation hardens into accepted truth.

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This account has previous. Only the week before, @shadowcanman published a ‘National Lottery migration audit’ identifying 1,694 grants worth £114.7 million to charities supporting refugees, asylum seekers or immigrants. The accusation: buying a lottery ticket means you are funding the “migration industry”. Eight days later, it was picked up by GB News. 

Social media has dramatically reduced the distance between a fringe formulation and a mainstream argument.

This is where monitoring becomes useful. The purpose is not to manufacture rebuttals to everything the online right says. Publicly attacking a tiny account can give a claim attention it would never otherwise receive. 

Instead, an early-warning system should help people in politics spot crises before they appear and give them the time and space to monitor it, establish the facts and prepare a response. 

That is why I am launching a fortnightly Substack that will track this layer of British politics: what right-wing, alt-right and far-right accounts are discussing, what is genuinely new, and what appears likely to cross into mainstream debate. 

It will not be a catalogue of outrage, and it will not assume that an argument is false simply because of where it originated. The aim is simpler: to listen without sneering, take notes without amplifying, and be ready before fringe posts become mainstream. 

If politics is increasingly downstream of the internet, we should spend more time looking upstream. 

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