Lisa Nandy, the Indian-origin candidate vying to replace Jeremy Corbyn as the next leader of the Labour party, said on Wednesday she had removed Twitter from her phone because it gave activists a misleading view of what the public thought.
Labour is going through a leadership election after the party lost badly in the December 12 national polls. Nandy, daughter of academic Deepak Nandy, is one of the four candidates in the fray, the others being Keir Starmer, Rebecca Long-Bailey and Emily Thornberry.
As the candidates set out their stalls, Nandy responded to queries on LBC radio on Wednesday. According to her, the two factors responsible for the party’s debacle were Brexit and the leadership of Corbyn.
But her views on Twitter caught the attention of many.
She explained: “I’ve taken it (Twitter) off my phone, which means I’m slightly clueless about some of the things that people keep asking me about in the Westminster bubble. But it is a lovely place to be (being off Twitter).
“To be honest, if you start thinking that all of that is real (content on twitter), that’s where you get into real problems. And that has been a bit of a problem for the left in recent years. We spent a lot of time in this sort of hothouse of social media, particularly Twitter, when most of the country, if they are on social media, seem to be on Facebook”.
{{/usCountry}}“To be honest, if you start thinking that all of that is real (content on twitter), that’s where you get into real problems. And that has been a bit of a problem for the left in recent years. We spent a lot of time in this sort of hothouse of social media, particularly Twitter, when most of the country, if they are on social media, seem to be on Facebook”.
{{/usCountry}}“And we talk among ourselves. And we think that we are doing well when we’re not. And we think we’re doing badly when we’re not. And we just haven’t learnt how to understand the public. And we should be out there amongst the public if we really want to understand what’s happening,” she added.
The new Labour leader is scheduled to be announced on April 4.