Rarely has there been a more potent medium for political self-harm than twitter. That chirruping little app makes it so easy for our elected representatives to comment, so simple to give an immediate view that sometimes the brain cannot keep up with those furiously prestadigitating fingers.
Last night, while sitting distractedly in the House of Commons chamber, David Lammy gave the viewing public a little insight into his unmediated thought process. Observing the latest BBC tweet on the election process for the pope, he was outraged. What was all this talk of black smoke? And what? White smoke? This would never do. Onto twitter immediately:
That showed those purveyors of “crass and unnecessary” prejudice at the Beeb.
Whoops.
The comments soon started to pop up. Tentative explanations that the BBC tweet was about how the pope was selected. Others opined that maybe this was a rather wry joke by our battling hero.
David was soon back on, clarifying his position,
Ah, right. Cue the follow-up questions from the crowd. Some sought guidance on how to describe a chess board in a non-prejudiced way. Or a photograph that wasn’t in colour.
As the tweets piled in, David saw the error of his ways and owned up to his mis-tweet mistake.
In all, a comparatively minor episode, barely registering on the Aidan Burley scale of complete and utter tweeting disaster. But a salutary lesson nonetheless for MPs everywhere: when idling in the chamber choosing between your bird based apps, stick with the angry variety and give the little blue one a miss.
I sometimes wonder, what is the point of David Lammy?