Josh Simons, newly elected MP for Makerfield and close ally of Starmer, is continuing his new campaign against Elon Musk’s Twitter. Simons complains that Musk’s tweets are too visible to people and claims that letting consumers who are disattisfied leave voluntarily is not enough:

“Waiting for Westminster to voluntarily quit X risks a very long wait… it’s a mistake to focus on individual choices… the question has to be: What do we expect of this platform?

Rising star Simons, who headed up Starmerite think tank Labour Together before his election and is now trying to get himself onto the Technology Select Committee, complained on Politics Live: “I do not want any man or woman to have that kind of power over our public debate.” Helpfully ignoring that Twitter closely managed reams of content before it was taken over by Musk…

He went on to spell out his personal dislike of Musk:

“Musk is a problem. I don’t like him. But Musk is symptomatic of the fact that he has this power… Think of the algorithm like a newspaper editor. Newspaper editors have values, they have standards, they have integrity. The people who build the algorithms should have the same values and integrity and professional standards.”

The key difference between a democratised social media and the legacy dead tree press is, of course, that editors and hacks operate in collusion with politicians. Now that information is no longer so closely controlled authoritarian politicians are itching to regulate a free social media to exctinction…

Josh Simons, newly elected Labour MP for Makerfield who also happens to be executive director of Starmerite think tank Labour Together, has been making quite the song and dance of his powers of persuasion. At his acceptance speech and in subsequent media interviews he told the story of a Reform voter, Patricia, who he valiantly re-educated:

“She had a Reform UK poster outside her house. She was going to vote Reform, she joined Reform as a party member. After speaking to her for half an hour, 45 minutes, it was very clear to me that she essentially thought that who she voted for in a parliamentary election made no difference to her life. But when I explained how a Labour government could make a difference to her life, she was willing to place a bet on change but that bet was tentative, it was full of scepticism, and our job now as a Labour government is to make sure we demonstrate that that bet was worthwhile for her and for millions of others like her.“

An inspiring story. The only problem is, some people involved dispute several of the facts. Patricia herself goes on record now to say she actually voted Reform, donated £50 to the party when the election was called, and had convinced all her friends and family to vote for Farage’s party. On seeing Simons’ self-congratulatory tweet thread, she says:

“He had no right to use my photo and now all my friends and family will think I’m a traitor voting for Labour when I’ve told them all to vote Reform“.

In Simons’ Twitter story (which has been seen 130,000 times) , he goes on to say that Patricia complained about a local overgrown alleyway, which he immediately had dealt with. Turns out she also disputes that – some Reform volunteers turned up after the fact and strimmed it themselves. Looks like Simmons’ powers of persuasion may only be matched by his talent for creative writing…