The Chicxulub meteor did for the dinosaurs; Netflix saw off Blockbuster. When the time comes to write the history of the Conservative party, the period from 2016 to today might be termed the ‘Whatsappocalypse’. If the Online Safety Bill genuinely wants to make Britain a better place to live, it should start by banning MPs from using social media.
Politics is not meant to be conducted over each of the day’s 24 hours, with every minor event demanding an instant response. Everyone reading this piece can think of a moment where their snap response to something – their gut instinct, or initial emotional flare-up – differed from what they actually did in the end, once they’d had time to calm down and think it over. Running politics without downtime pushes MPs to react to things as they occur. This is not a recipe for good governance.
The constant plotting and panics that have marked British politics for the last six years feel in part like a consequence of a significantly tightened decision loop; governments do not feel as though they can let things play out before responding.
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