Labour’s campaigns chief has told party members to get off Twitter and into communities.
MP Shabana Mahmood, Labour’s national campaign coordinator, called for party members to start “building bridges” in order to win over lost voters.
She said: “I would simply say I think we all need to get ourselves off Twitter. And if I didn’t think that I would accidentally delete my existence as a Labour MP I would 100 per cent have already deleted my own account.”
Mahmood made the comments at a fringe event at Labour Party conference in Brighton discussing whether they should call off the “culture wars”.
The MP for Birmingham Ladywood said a “de-escalation” of British politics could never occur on such a medium, adding: “The one thing I would like to see is Labour people not on Twitter basically and out in our communities making exactly the case for that bridge building politics.”
She stressed Labour was in the business of “winning a general election” and addressed some of the challenges facing them in order to win back former Labour voters.
Mahmood added: “Obviously we have to win over people who have very very different dispositions to each other.
“So we have to find a way of doing our politics, a practice of our politics, which is much more about bridge building about de-escalating about de-polarising.”
She said Labour needed to think more about acknowledging differences and not “sneering”.
“Making sure that our assertion about our values doesn’t just come across as bullying or intolerance,” she added.
New Batley and Spen MP Kim Leadbeater has been forced to miss party conference after testing positive for covid.
The sister of murder MP Jo Cox sent a video to the event hosted by British Future and Labour Together.
She said Labour should call off the culture wars, adding: “I believe that the Labour Party should be about bringing people together and not pushing or driving them apart.
“The more we engage with so-called culture wars, whoever starts them or wherever they come from, the more time we waste and the less focused we are on our mission of unifying the country and providing a vision for everybody to get behind.”
