WhatsAppening

Labour scandal reminds us of the most important app in UK politics.

You may or may not be outraged by the “Trigger Me Timbers” scandal, which is engulfing a corner of the Labour Party. The comments made between those activists are obviously crass and unfortunate. Whether they deserve to end political careers is a slightly different consideration, playing on some of the tricky questions of freedom of expression, personal responsibility, and the threshold of so-called “offence archaeology.” Most will probably reach conclusions on this driven by their partisan loyalties to party or faction. The scandal, however, highlights something else too – the primacy of WhatsApp in politics, and the effects it is having.

It is an influence that rarely gets much attention. Discussions of social media usually focus on public networks, where most of the content is accessible to everyone. Facebook, Twitter (X), and TikTok are the things that spring to mind when we talk about the impact of platforms. WhatsApp, which by its very nature is far more private, rarely gets a mention except in the context of end-to-end encryption and its usefulness to nefarious actors. I’d hazard, however, that the messaging service is probably the most vital and powerful in UK politics.

Westminster itself largely runs on WhatsApp. At the highest levels, it has replaced discrete tea room conversations as the place where policy and plots get formulated. For those plugged into the Bubble, it is where stuff happens, with group chats far easier to pull together than any sort of face-to-face gathering. From wonks to MPs to Ministers, it is where a lot of the ideas buzz, for good or for ill. The same is true of much of the lower bits of the party organisation, with groups like the now infamous “Trigger Me Timbers” pulling together local activists. Even among ordinary voters, the app is an underestimated vector for political content – and for risks like false stories and undue influence.

The importance of WhatsApp goes beyond politicians saying stupid things and getting caught. It plays into how our politics functions on multiple levels. That lays traps for people who say silly things but also influences our political culture. It is something that we need to be just as alive to as Facebook data or Twitter trolls. Indeed, given its prevalence in every aspect of UK politics, it is perhaps the most important app around.