Who the hell is Luke Bozier?

Jake Richards

Name:Jake Richards
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Luke Bozier has left the Labour Party to join the Conservatives. For those who follow politics via Twitter, this will be of some interest. For those that don’t, there is only one natural response – ‘who the hell is Luke Bozier?’ Well, it’s a pretty good question. A self-proclaimed ‘Former Senior Adviser to the Labour Party’, Bozier has only really become of interest due to his incessant Tweeting. He has tweeted over 35,000 times, most of which espouse Blairite feelings with the zeal of a besotted teenager.

Photo by OperationPaperStorm

Some would say he is a geek. But few can deny the relative success he has received promoting himself and his political beliefs by Twitter. Rumours are already doing the rounds about a Tory safe seat being offered at the next general election. He could very well become the first MP via social media.

If Bozier was successful in gaining prominence on Twitter, what is it about the political discourse online that favoured his rhetoric and comment?

A brief look at prominent Twitter politicos reveals a worrying trend that favours controversy and tribalism and overlooks rational analysis. The likes of Dan Hodges, Sunny Hundal and Owen Jones are all intelligent (Jones’s book on the demonization of the working classes is genuinely brilliant even if you disagree with every word of it), passionate and have honourable motives. Yet, they have gained notoriety online by fitting the desired template for a political Twitter star.

First, they are all prolific. For those 6,000 followers of Luke Bozier, there was rarely an hour that went by and never a political story that did not receive an apparently New Labour-slanted analysis or comment. Each are provocative and polemic, offering incessant tribal tweets. The very nature of Twitter often builds a dialogue of confrontation. 140 characters is rarely enough to be moderate and interesting. Its far easier to be controversial – and that also gets you more followers. Dave Hodges seems to thrive on spending all day (and plenty of the night) attacking the ‘flat-earthers’, otherwise known as people who support Ed Miliband and Ed Balls. Owen Jones honourably, if sometimes childishly, offers a passionately hard left critique of almost anything he can think of. And Sunny Hundal is the man who wrote a Guardian article arguing for Margaret Thatcher’s funeral to be privatised. It doesn’t get much more provocative than that in light of a certain film. In the Twittersphere, moderate, considered opinion is bland.

Whilst left-leaning columnists such as Polly Toynbee and Jackie Ashley (who, with all politeness, have been in this game a while) have shown their appreciation of Ed Miliband’s failings, they are also careful not to write him off. They have been journalists when the Labour party have been in much darker times, in 1983, and arguably 1992. They can offer a guide to the political landscape, with a calmness and an authority that cannot be gleaned in 140 characters. Although many of these political tweeters write blogs, their subject and analysis is too easily swayed by the furious and frenzied tribal nature of their Twitter conversations. Just read Dan Hodge’s sarcastic, bordering on nasty attacks on Ed Miliband.

Whilst such operatic, over-the-top debate can be entertaining, Twitter seems to be only a catalyst for febrile political comment, rather than the more intuitive and insightful traditional columns currently in the papers (another reason why papers may survive a little longer than many expect). For now, until Twitter has calmed down a bit, I would stick with them.

As for Luke Bozier, only three months ago he was co-editing a pamphlet about Labour’s future as the party of entrepreneurship. Perhaps he expected Ed Miliband to reform the party in the time it takes to Tweet. He might just find out, that unlike Twitter, politics and party reform often take a bit of patience and a lot of hard work.