Miles Bennington
Operations Director, Chamber UK
In nearly every election around the globe in 2024, incumbents lost vote share.
Across the democratic world, populists with simple, repeatable, and controversial messages are on the rise.
The dynamics of the attention economy mediated by smartphones makes our instincts about party and message management obsolete.
It’s time for a change.
The State of Attention
In 2025, people spend more time on their phones than they do watching TV. Half of that time is spent on social media, another 25 per cent on watching or listening to content, almost all of it curated by algorithms.
These algorithms maximise for attention. Each app has addictive features, like infinite scroll, push notifications, like buttons, and trending content, all designed to hold your attention captive.
Each recommendation algorithm traps you in your own preferences, shielding you from content you don’t engage with.
When Labour was last in power, journalists, editors, and programming directors decided what we saw. Now, the robots do.
Labour’s chief political problem is the same as incumbents across the world. Careful implementation of nuanced policy over the course of a Parliament does not hold attention.
So, the algorithms will not show it to you. Labour in Government is invisible. Voters don’t know what they are doing, what they care about, or who they are working for.
This is the perfect blank canvas for populists, the opposition, and even conspiracy theorists to paint on.
Omnishambles
If you were born in the last century or have watched The Thick of It, you will remember a time when message discipline was key. The iron triangle of strong leadership, party unity, and popular policies dominated political communication. The game was to emphasise these traits in your Party, and downplay them in your opponents.
The worst crime of all was the gaffe. The unintentional truth that slipped out, revealing that your leader is weak, your Party disunited, and your policies not so popular after all. The punishment was adverse headlines, scandal on the 6 o’clock news, and a dip in the polls.
What Robots Want
Times have changed. The worst crime today is message discipline. If you can get in front of a camera and ably parrot the Government line, you have failed.
The reason is that this type of message lacks all that is necessary to get attention on the Internet, and while it may feel good to deliver, nobody is watching it.
To gain traction with any of these algorithms, you need to grab attention, hold it and trigger engagement.
Grabbing attention is best done by triggering people’s base emotions. Whether it’s Twitter, TikTok, or clickbait headlines, feelings of threat, outrage, and sexual attraction are most effective.
The lizard brain rules that your first decision, and your moment’s hesitation in flicking away that short-form video, is noted by the all-seeing algorithm.
Holding attention once you have grabbed it is a full-time job. You need a story that holds people’s interest in both a short Tweet and a three-hour podcast, and a messenger that people like to watch, pay attention to, and spend time with.
Your content should also trigger “engagement”. Likes, comments, and other digital markers show the algorithm that people have strong feelings about this content.
Importantly, it matters little whether this engagement is positive or negative, indeed, a mixture of both is best, as ongoing conflict in the comments will yield more engagement, leading the algorithm to show it to more people.
Controversy is Good
Your instinct to get things right, maintain party unity and not give offence is out of date. You are not trying to get good coverage, you are trying to get any attention at all.
This mission is simple for irresponsible populists. Simply say things that will outrage people, and announce simple policies, the outcomes of which will be disastrous.
Reforming planning policy and adjusting builders’ incentives to add to the housing supply, thereby gradually bringing down the cost of housing is a terrible social media message.
It is too long to fit in a Tweet or TikTok, too uncontroversial, says nothing about the identities of those involved and evokes no strong images.
Bulldozing Glasgow to build a gleaming new “British MegaCity” is much better. That’s a message that merits a whole series of podcasts and newspaper articles, it has a nationalist angle, an architectural angle, we can talk about the merits of Glasgow as it currently stands and explore the outcomes of other megaprojects. All grist to the algorithmic mill.
Govern in Public
Wait! Please don’t bulldoze Glasgow, that was just an example. The way a responsible politician and government can take advantage of this new dynamic is to change the rules of engagement around messaging.
As His Majesty’s loyal opposition can oppose the Government without harming the country, “loyal rebels” should be encouraged to oppose party leadership without harming the Party.
Their work is to cultivate their expertise on particular issues, practice their performance on their platform of choice and act as a foil to the Government.
Their limit should be that they always explain the good-faith position of the Government and leadership before critiquing it.
The Government, rather than stoically taking hits from the rebels, should then respond.
Cabinet ministers should be explaining why the rebels are upset, and why the Government agrees but is taking the more pragmatic action for the good of the country.
Speaking across briefs should be encouraged. No minister will be good at every platform, but the Government must be represented across all of them.
The welfare rebellion was a split in the Labour Party, half of which were working to keep people out of poverty, and the other half trying to balance the books.
These are the tough choices the public wants! This was an opportunity for Labour figures to get out on the airwaves, suck up the oxygen and leave the voters with the impression that the Government is trying very hard to balance the books and that the Labour Party cares deeply about poverty.
This process will not look or feel great, and it will be risky, but the much greater risk is to leave a void that will be filled with populists peddling easy answers to nonsense questions.
To convince the public you are fighting for them, let them see the fight.
