As seen in the New World
When that More In Common poll dropped this week showing Andy Burnham comfortably ahead of Reform, SW1 was flabbergasted. But as an avid follower of social media trends, a millennial journalist who began digital first, I was only surprised that the bounce hadn’t been bigger.
All weekend my WhatsApp groups have been buzzing with the latest Andy Burnham online viral memes. In ‘Babe.net class of 14’, a video from X was shared of Pat McFadden, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, having a Brat summer. In another called ‘Soho Reading Society’ someone posted a clip of Sue Gray doing the Cinnamon Challenge and Douglas Alexander hitting a perfect whip and nae nae on College Green.
Thanks to thousands of hours spent doomscrolling on their phones, your average Brit doesn’t want policy
And this is just the start. I can already see what comes next. The man from the Chocolate Rain viral video dancing the Harlem Shake with the entire PLP. John Healey and Yvette Cooper re-enacting ‘Charlie bit my fin-ger’. At the start of PMQs Burnham could refuse to respond to questions and just perform the Cup Song to throw Kemi Badenoch off. The vibe’s the limit. And look, this isn’t necessarily my application for a job with the social team in No. 10, but email clairh@ucl.co.uk for my full CV.
You may sniff at all this. But we’re living in a post-literate world. We’re a dying breed, we lovers of the printed word. It’s a neglected subject, but you may have noticed that people are reading fewer books than they used to. There was a time when all sections of society gorged themselves on the classics. In the late 19th century, a Liverpool docker would leave the house every day with a Thermos of tea, a cheese and pickle sandwich and a hardback copy of Sally Rooney’s latest novel. Unfortunately, those days are long behind us. Being able to read at all is increasingly a privilege reserved for people like you and me.
Andy Burnham is our first English graduate PM and a lover of poetry but he knows which way the wind is blowing. Thanks to thousands of hours spent doomscrolling on their phones, your average Brit doesn’t want policy, but positive vibes. This is especially true when it comes to Generation Z, who have spent their first two decades being banged about from the Great Recession to Brexit and then straight into the pandemic.
It should come as no surprise to us then that the creators at the vanguard of Burnham’s digital positivity drive are mostly young. They’ve had enough of our hard-bitten millennial cynicism and are now determined to turn cope into hope. When I think about my first dabbling in viral content, I remember my two-week digital internship at Vice some time in the early 2010s. This was at the height of the Great Recession, so as recent graduates we were begging to work for free. I think the content back then reflected our anger: gangbangers in Seoul; cannibal warlords in Sierra Leone; the epic queue outside Berghain (need I say where? OK, fine, I will: Berlin).
(I have a reminder on my phone not to start writing about the cultural legacy of Vice again, lest there be a repeat of the disaster of spring 2024, when I had to leave Stoke Newington, move back into my parents’ home in Watford and witness my income from freelancing dry up completely, so we shall leave it there.)
Back to Andy. When Gen Z sees the new PM with his salt-and-pepper hair, his thick-frame glasses, his paunch pressed against his black T-shirt, they don’t get wound up like the middle-aged broadsheet columnists. Instead they Snapchat each other about how Andy is giving ‘dad-core energy’. It’s giving security. It’s giving safety. It’s giving comfort. It’s giving reassurance in an era of anxiety. It’s giving two terms in government.
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