Social media is key to winning the youth vote

THE blazing row going on at the top of the Tory party only proves two things that most of us knew already. One is that the commonest characteristic of the self-styled great and good is the ability to be wise after the event. It is a trait that consumes not only the higher echelons of those in public life but the media as well.

At the time (and I mean the time the snap election was announced) the received wisdom was that the party polling showed the Conservatives to be so far ahead that an increased parliamentary majority was virtually a foregone conclusion with an outcome offering a triple whammy: Theresa May would have a personal mandate rather than an inherited one, the Tories would have a five-year mandate rather than three years left to run (and thus ample time for Brexit negotiations with no electoral pressure) and a majority in the House of Commons capable of overcoming all opposition.

The “received wisdom” was that it was a very shrewd tactic, even if expensive and tiresome. And who said all this? The opinion polls, in which the panjandrums and the media utterly believed. So what have we learned? That public opinion is a fickle brute and can swing like a weather vane in a gale.

And possibly a third new truth. That in the modern world you cannot calculate the electoral mood any more unless you understand and control that modern phenomenon, social media – those trillions of messages and opinions without which an entire generation (the young one) cannot get through a day. It was the young generation that swung the outcome and the Tories simply did not understand it. To judge from their recent utterances, they still don’t.