August 17, 2013 12:00pm by David Farrar

10 mandatory tweets of the Left

Dan Hodges provides his 10 mandatory tweets for the left:

1) “Great day campaigning on #Labourdoorstep”. To the uninitiated this may seem like some sort of code. But it simply means “I have pushed 30 leaflets through various letterboxes. I am a hard-working Labour party member. Now can I please be selected for a safe seat?” If possible, tweet with an attached photo of you standing next to Luciana Berger.

2) “Typical. [name of evil member of the Right] constructs another straw man”. This must be rapidly tweeted any time you see another member of the Left losing an argument on Twitter. It can also be combined with some sort of imaginary scoreline, such as “Oh dear. [name of member of the Left] 1 [name of evil member of the Right] 0”.

3) “Prayers/thoughts with Nelson Mandela”. Actually, that’s wrong. If you want to be a real member of the Left, you must always refer to the former South African president as “Madiba”.

4) “Why is it we never get any women x”. The x doesn’t actually matter. “On the Today programme” is a particular favourite, but any other current affairs news program will do. Women in positions of influence. Women talking about lumberjacking. Women elephant racing. Basically, the subject is up to you.

5) “Solidarity with x”. Every member of the Left must send a “solidarity” tweet once a month. You can express solidarity with anyone or anything, so long as they’re not officially an evil member of the Right. The great thing about this tweet is it neatly fits into 140 characters. You don’t need to bother explaining why you are in solidarity with your subject, or even what “solidarity” actually means in this context. In effect, solidarity becomes a verb. So having expressed your solidarity with, say, a group of Venezuelan miners stuck 500 feet underground, without air, water or hope, you can then go and make yourself a nice cup of tea.

6) “Louise Mensch”. One tweet a year must include a reference to the former Conservative MP for Corby. Why isn’t exactly clear. Some people on the Left have been pushing for her to be officially replaced on the LMT list by Melanie Phillips, without success. So for the moment, stick with Mensch. All tweets must be harsh and critical. But not sexist.

7) “Ed Miliband needs to be more x”. This is a relatively new addition to the list. Until recently the LMT would have been “Thank you Ed Miliband. Finally a Labour leader is saying x”. But the Left are now becoming a bit concerned about Ed. “He may win, he may not win. Ed Miliband needs to be [more proactive/clearer about what he believes in/taking the attack to the Tories more/etc]” is a much safer bet at the moment.

8) “Why don’t you just go away and join the Tories?” This should be tweeted at anyone on the Left ever caught disagreeing with anyone else on the Left. “Go away” is not compulsory; any hostile phrase will suffice. In fact, the more hostile the better. Can also be combined with the epithet “traitor”.

9) “It’s good, but not as good as the Shawshank Redemption.” For some reason, the Shawshank Redemption is the greatest film any member of the Left can ever see. As with many other LMT’s, the reason for this is shrouded in mystery. If, for some reason, you have never seen the Shawshank Redemption, it is now permissible to tweet something positive about “The Spirit of ‘45” instead. Or anything by Mike Leigh.

10) “Time to boycott x”. At least once a year every member of the Left must find something to boycott. The boycott has in effect become the Left’s version of Lent. Since the collapse of apartheid things to boycott are a bit thinner on the ground. But persevere. If you look hard enough you will eventually find something to not buy, watch or attend. And remember, it is not necessary for you to even have to been buying, watching or attending these things in the first place. It is perfectly permissible to boycott things you would never dream of touching with a barge-pole.