Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Exclusive: MPs advised to stay off Twitter accounts

Remember when, as a child, you were astonished to discover that not only did your teacher not retreat to the resources cupboard to charge overnight, but that they had a life outside work and even a family? Some adults still seem not to have grasped this about MPs.

Last night, Labour MP Luciana Berger posted a thread on Twitter in which she justified not attending a rally for the NHS’s 70th birthday in London at the weekend. It was quite a lengthy thread, in which Berger set out all the NHS-related work she had done that week, and rather plaintively said that while also knocking on doors over the weekend in Liverpool, ‘I also spent some precious time catching up with my partner and 1 year old daughter’. Why bother setting out what sounds like a perfectly acceptable working week with a bit of family time thrown in? Well, Berger was receiving a barrage of tweets criticising her for not turning up, and she clearly felt somewhat stung by the criticism.

Comments

Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.

Already a subscriber? Log in