I’ve had the last laugh over my Whatsapp-addict colleagues

The Telegraph’s Lockdown Files prove that it’s no longer the cover-up that kills you, but the Whatsapp messages. Across the Conservative benches, my colleagues are frantically scrolling through their tens of thousands of old exchanges (it is a wonder outside Whatsapp that the politicians find time to do anything else) to identify any injudicious or overly blunt communications with Matt Hancock.

This paralysis of fear is surprising because for years colleagues have selfcensored their emails, knowing that anything sent from a computer or handset could well end up in a newspaper. The constant threat of Open Access and Freedom of Information requests provides us all with an added incentive not to be egregiously rude about an irritating constituent (at least not in writing). But with the advent of Whatsapp and its siren promises of privacy, the wise caution attached to more prehistoric forms of electronic communication has gone missing in action.

Whatsapp’s seductive marketing spiel about secure chatrooms has been swallowed almost hook, line and sinker across Westminster and Whitehall. Politicians are a chatty lot by instinct, so we need no second invitation to “let it all hang out” and tell other “like-minded” colleagues what we really think.

The trouble is that “minds” change, and an ally one month might become a frenemy the next. It is then that the temptation to release juicy Whatsapp exchanges to cause embarrassment, or worse, may become overwhelming.

Now, I am no angel when it comes to my own conduct. At times, the tongue in my head becomes acidic and my thoughts darken in relation to my colleagues. But I have long eschewed smartphones and their anti-social media applications in favour of an old-fashioned Nokia, at a cost of £29.99 if you can still find one.

And oh how my colleagues laugh at my quaint, eccentric ways. But I have taken this good-natured teasing in my stride, as I have always suspected – and had enough evidence to suggest – that I would have the last laugh.

Whatsapp messages may be great for family chats, but they are not “match ready” for the hurly, burly world of politics. They sit in their thousands on colleagues’ handsets like unexploded mines. You may never be minded to release your part of the exchange, but what about the person on the other end? Can they be relied on to maintain your confidence? And what of a scandal or an inquiry? How would they look when published in a newspaper? The answer to that question, as Mr Hancock and many Covid-era ministers are now finding out, is not good.

It is now certainly the case in Westminster that the golden age of Whatsapp is over. Exchanges will become drier and more factual. The emotive and flowery language of the past will be reined in and users will become choosier about the groups that they engage with.

Politics is a serious business and we must be seen to take it seriously. Although they are natural emotions, expressions of temper, frustration and disappointment should be of the moment, there one minute gone the next. Capturing them in electronic form, in perpetuity, is always best avoided.