Farewell to a golden voice, revolutionary librarians
And congratulations Sarah Dyke MP and Keir Mather MP
You know you’re an ex-MP, a proper Labour veteran, when you go to bed and don’t fret about the result of a by-election. I’d poured the water into the coffee pot before I’d even checked the Guardian for the results but was happy to read them.
Keir Mather, the new Labour MP for Selby, sounded tired in his victory speech, or was that his voice breaking? At 25, he becomes the youngest MP in the House of Commons. Young Keir had one of the biggest ever swings to Labour.
I’m so old that I ran a campaign centre in the Dudley West by-election 1994 that remains the biggest by-election swing Labour has ever had. The record still stands, but Keir Mather got very close to it. Back then, legendary Labour campaigner Fraser Kemp had created the notion of the Tory Switcher. These were lifelong conservative voters who proudly and publicly switched to Labour. More of this please.
Sarah Dyke in Somerton and Frome had a great result too. If I wasn’t the former deputy leader of the Labour Party, I might have voted for her because she has the finest dog in Parliament.
Sarah’s win confirms that the recent local election results were not a blip for the Lib Dems. The recent results show them challenging in nearly every South West of England seat. They can easily double their MPs at the general election and possibly more than that. This will be as significant a concern for Rishi Sunak as the Labour resurgence in the Red Wall and 1997 marginal areas. Nearly all their gains will come from Conservatives.
I’m not ducking Uxbridge but there’s only so much you can write about by-election results.
Have you joined Threads?
I did, but I haven’t posted much. In fact, I hardly tweet these days. I dug out the draft newsletter piece I wrote nearly five years ago to show why I probably don’t.
From the Archive, August 2018:
The anatomy of a Twitter tempest is quite something to behold. Having exhausted all private channels to share my thoughts on how Labour should deal with antisemitism, I contributed to the public debate in the Observer newspaper. In so doing, I joined Margaret Hodge, Jon Lansman of Momentum and others from all wings of the party, who shared my concerns.
I didn’t imagine the contribution would lead to the hashtag #ResignWatson reaching the No1 global trending spot 24 hours later!
It started relatively slowly on Saturday night after the interview was published. But at 2.18am on Sunday, Damian from Brighton (sleep, Damian, sleep) called out for a collective storm of tweets for 7 pm that day.
By the time the real morning came around, some of my serial detractors and squawkers were also piling in, and at 7pm, the hashtag went viral - soon to be No. 1 in the UK, then allegedly, the world. The MSM followed up by Monday, and a bystander might have confidently predicted my demise.
Yet an excellent analysis of this particular Twitterstorm by Gizmodo social media analysts paints a much greyer picture of the whole affair.
Their data shows 89,000 tweets, including RTs, were sent during a 32-hour period using #ResignWatson. But one-quarter of those were sent from 121 unique Twitter accounts, and 1,220 accounts were responsible for 55,000 tweets. Hardly a mass uprising!
What's fascinating about this experience is that 121 Twitter accounts could influence the Twitter trending algorithm that ultimately influenced the Main Stream Media (MSM) to write stories about the online campaign.
And more depressingly, several commenters in the campaign used clear anti-semitic tropes a dozen of whom appear to be fellow Labour members. It's a very sad state of affairs.
Gizmodo also points out that not all hashtag tweets were necessarily against me, some might have been in support, and some - as pointed out elsewhere - appear to be Russian bots. (https://twitter.com/DavideSands/status/1026447393963892736)
And as a final twist in the tale, Gizmodo reveals that during the study period, the single tweet with the most retweets came from...
(https://twitter.com/tom_watson/status/1026168323732647936)
So, thank you to the 3,280 people who retweeted my tweet and the 13,247 people who 'liked' it.
Reading
Behind every revolution, there is a librarian.
Communicating hand to mouth.
Suppose you’re thinking about the influence of Donald Trump on the Biden administration. In that case, you won’t go wrong with reading ‘No trade is free’ by Robert Lighthizer, an Ohio Republican who became Donald Trump’s trade representative. Lighthizer took on the neo-classical orthodoxy of the laissez-faire Republicans and, arguably, won. Slapping huge trade tariffs on China, Lighthizer believes that the US economy should produce and consume to remain strong. There are lessons for many in this argument, for Joe Biden and even Keir Starmer.
Ted Gioia’s tribute to Tony Bennett
Listening
The Banksy Story tells how a ‘hood rat’ became the most famous artist in the world.
Who else? To all the late-night guests of Luigi, this is for you:
If you’re new here, welcome! Perhaps you’ll consider joining us? Subscribers receive this newsletter every week and occasional extracts from my books. Paid PoP Club members get access to exclusive members-only content and behind-the-scenes insight. Plus, you’ll earn my everlasting gratitude for supporting the work I share on here for free!
If quoting from this newsletter, please mention “Tom Watson’s newsletter on Substack.” Thank you.
Tony Bennett in the studio with Amy Winehouse... duetting Body and Soul. As if their singing wasn’t beautiful enough, see how they got it there. YouTube
Bit of a cheap comment about our new youngest MP from Tom Watson. Why not a genuine congratulation? Keir Mather seems to be very clever and active in Labour politics from a young age. He will just have to put up with these kind of comments from those who can't see beyond his youth. Well done Keir.