Would-be MPs are losing the battle against an almighty enemy: their online selves

Sometimes I question the wisdom of the Bible and wonder how a holy text written by unseen hands thousands of years ago can still be relevant to us, living today, in a modern world where we have wifi and uncompleted coffee stamp cards. And then I see yet another candidate MP fall afoul of the old “delete your archive social media posts before someone finds them” rule, and realise that sometimes the ancient doctrines can still ring true. This is why they have to print warnings on haemorrhoid creams telling people not to eat them, isn’t it? Because no matter how many times you tell someone not to do something spectacularly dumb, they could still turn around and try to run for parliament despite having a history of easy-to-find racist Facebook posts.

As the BBC reported this week: “The deadline for wannabe MPs to throw their hats into the ring passed on Thursday afternoon – but some didn’t even make it that far.” Of the various candidates around the country – and I’m still astounded that this process seems less complicated than signing up for a SIM card – 23 were forced to pull out of the race by their various parties, with the BBC finding a third of them had done so because of social media posts.

From Labour, three candidates were nixed because of comments and actions made online – two for their tweets, one for a blogpost. Kate Ramsden, a potential candidate for Gordon, Aberdeenshire, was discovered by the Jewish Chronicle to have written a piece comparing Israel to an abused child that grows up to become an abusive adult, and swiftly stepped down afterwards citing “personal reasons”. I suppose “personal reasons” could be a coy way of saying: “A weary team of Labourvolunteers read my old blogs and realised that, yes, it’s probably bestnot to put me near a microphone.” But on we go.

Now, if you want a party that knows how to keep its squalid actions behind closed doors, to shush up its love children and to express its problematic opinions only in private members’ clubs with strict phone bans, look no further than the Conservatives. They also have an advantage in the not-having-to-deselect-people-for-their-Facebook-opinions war, because the closest many of their candidates get to having an online presence is posting a blurry photo of their wedding ring on a pathologically unmatched “horny ..... discreet” Tinder profile. They only had to get rid of one candidate for online infractions. Antony Calvert, Wakefield, got one-twoed after old Facebook posts were unearthed in which he had criticised the appearance of his Labour rival, Mary Creagh, and made a Colonel Gaddafi joke that it really wouldn’t be responsible of me to repeat here. Calvert said the posts were more than 10 years old, and not intended to cause offence, but he wouldn’t be running anyway.

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The Lib Dems had a couple: Kevin McNamara (Thurrock), who got done for decade-old alleged racist and homophobic social media posts (stood down, “deeply sorry”); and Galen Milne (Banff and Buchan), who said on social media that Tories should be hung, drawn and quartered, then “burned at the stake” (Was Milne deselected for being too goth?). Apologising, he said he deeply regretted the “offensive statements”.

It will probably not surprise you that the Brexit party struggled to find candidates with completely clean social media records, with the Venn diagram between “people who support the Brexit party” and “dads who post up to 40 times a day on Facebook” essentially being a clean circle: Phillip Walling was removed for tweeting support of Boris’s deal against party line; Prabhjit Dhillon gave up candidacy after social media posts were found that started “Moderate Muslims …” and only got worse from there; Jill Hughes stood down from Batley and Spen after it emerged she believed world governments and aliens were working hand in hand in a sort of hush-hush arrangement.

Again: how are these utterings all not being systematically deleted before even thinking about a candidacy? How do people who aren’t quite smart enough to lock down their Facebook privacy settings think they are at all equipped to serve as an MP?

I’ve long been fascinated by how this will turn out in the distant future. If you think about it, one of our future prime ministers is currently a 13-year-old tentatively signing up to TikTok. There are future leaders of the opposition out there, right now, being wildly inappropriate on Snapchat. The current president of the United States is essentially just an artist of shitposting, with Twitter his exquisite brush. There was a time when I could not have imagined that social media would become such a factor in elections. But we all have at least 10 years’ worth of thoughts expressed online, and all it takes is one person with enough time on their hands to scroll through them, and you’re done for. In 2019, as they contest a fraught and tense, once-in-a-generation election, it seems most would-be MPs’ toughest opposition is their own bad opinions, expressed badly online.

Other things to hate or enjoy – delete as appropriate

Much like Unai Emery’s Arsenal, the Lib Dems look alarmingly unsure of their identity under their new leader, and this week hasn’t much helped. On some days, Jo Swinson exudes the vibrating energy of someone who related too strongly to Hermione when they read Harry Potter and has carried it damagingly into their adult life; on others, I’m not sure she isn’t a cold-blooded Tory plant tasked with whipping up a voting bloc of baffled centrists to offer themselves as a blood sacrifice during a hung parliament, and usher in another era of coalition.

Now, here’s a development that doesn’t really unmuddy the puddle: the BBC Election Ads project found that Lib Dems were using Facebook advertising to target, uh, Margaret Thatcher fans in Bedford. It’s not on the level of Cambridge Analytica – nobody is going to make an overblown movie about this in which a Zuckerbergesque Swinson is guilty only of thinking too much – but it is interesting nonetheless. What do you want, really? Hard-edged party values? Or a handful more likes on Facebook?

It’s simple: if the Conservatives are going to win this cursed election, they need a celebrity get. This week Labour enjoyed the endorsement of Stormzy (genuine, creditable, across-the-board cool), Susan Boyle (hovering somewhere between “semi-ironic cool” and “actually, if she came out at Glastonbury, we’d all go bananas”) and Wiley (he tweeted “Big up @jeremycorbyn” on Friday and Corbyn responded with “Thank you Wiley” which is, honestly, about all you can say). The Lib Dems have Eddie Marsan, remember. But where is the Conservative endorser with the pulling power to turn on some Christmas lights? So far, so quiet. You assume that, deep behind the scenes, various government aides are putting out feelers, seeing if “one of Little Mix hates paying tax enough to want to say something about it”, or whether Ant or Dec feel like doing a to-camera bit about privatising the NHS.

• Joel Golby is the author of Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant