Twitter, Starmer and the madness of the mob

Elon Musk’s Twitter motto is Vox populi, vox Dei (‘The voice of the people, the voice of God’). This obviously appeals to the lawyer in Sir Keir Starmer since Twitter (being the voice of God) cannot be sued and therefore gives him scope to sail close to the wind. There is much he can learn from the example of the Romans.

The mob is in full song on the walls of Pompeii. ‘Amplicatus, I know that Icarus is buggering you. Salvius wrote this’; ‘Phileros is a eunuch’; ‘Nero’s finance officer says the food here is poison’; ‘Secundus likes to screw boys’ and much else of this sort.

Roman orators too went the full Starmer. Curio described Julius Caesar as ‘every woman’s husband and every man’s wife’. In his attacks on Marc Antony, Cicero remarked: ‘You started out a common rent boy, with a fixed, and pretty steep, fee; you took on the man’s toga and at once converted it into a prostitute’s frock.