Earlier this week I swapped twitter comments with someone tweeting on behalf of a local political association. They were criticising the sitting MP from another party for comments he was deemed to have made. These comments raised doubts about the wisdom of Russell Brand, discouraging people from voting and also of young men and women standing in Parliamentary elections, the language reported was a bit intemperate. My response was to check if the association were recommending that people did not vote in the same way that Russell Brand was, I was being a bit mischevious! The person behind the tweet came back reasonably quickly and pointed out that whilst they did not agree with Russell, they nevertheless believe that elected representatives should use appropriate language. I responded with a question about a neighbouring MP who is from the same party as they are, who referred to another MP in the House of Commons as ‘bonkers’ and was reprimanded by the Speaker for doing so. I asked if they would distance themselves from this MP as well as their own. Three days later I am still waiting for a reply, I don’t expect to receive one anytime soon.

Yesterday I met with someone from the same party who I occasionally exchange tweets with. One of the points of conversation was his tweeting activity. He holds a high profile role within a Political Party, and regularly criticises the other Political Parties, and promotes the good work that he sees taking place in his own Party. My challenge was why was he unwilling to admit the failings on his own side, when his Party clearly get things wrong, why does he not acknowledge this with the same level of clarity that he applies to criticising other parties? He responded with the defence that he reserves his criticism of his own party for private conversations, and he assured me that he was not slow to do so.

Twitter and other Social Media is a context in which our comments can be seen from far and wide, from those who love us and those who don’t. I am probably very naïve in expecting political parties to admit to their own mistakes and failings in a public context. On the other hand when things are so obviously wrong, having the grace and integrity to admit this, should not be a black mark on the careers of people in the public eye. If they have so little confidence in their own parties that they simply never speak out apart from when things are going right, then one wonders what else they might be hiding from their supporters? Perhaps some parties find it easier to admit to their own failings than the one referred to in the two examples above. According to the so called Miranda rights used by the Police when people are arrested, adverse inferences may be drawn in certain circumstances where people fail to mention things which might later have been expected to have been expressed earlier. Our Political Parties already have so much adverse inference to deal with, perhaps it is time for a bit more frankness and then slowly perhaps we might change our views of them? Or is that naïve too?