What does the Barnet Conservatives Twitter feed tell us about the local party?

If you really want to know what the values, work ethic and level of social engagement of our local Conservatives are, you need look no further than their twitter feed. Let's start off with the banner.

Barnet Tories Poster Boy

The main banner is a picture of Boris Johnson. As every Barnet Tory will know, Boris Johnson quit the cabinet six months ago in protest at Theresa May's plan to quit the EU. He is the poster boy of the hard Brexit elements of The Conservative Party. I find it extraordinary that the Barnet Tories have chosen him as their image, especially as Barnet is a strongly remain area. One can only conclude that this is a hard Tory right Two fingers up to everyone else. Given that two of the three local Tory MP's are hard Brexiteers (Matthew Offord and Theresa Villiers, no one really knows what Mike Freer's position is anymore. He capaigned to remain). Anyone who is considering supporting The Tories should be aware of where the local party stands.

And what is their most important message? It is typical for such organisations to pin a tweet at the top of their feed to state what they think is the most important current message. Agin this is quite interesting.

Thank you to everyone who showed their confidence in @BarnetCouncil by voting for us yesterday. We have spent the last 12 years doing everything we can to give you the best possible services at the best possible value. We will continue to do so over the next four years. pic.twitter.com/wiT1i2UYdB

— Barnet Conservatives (@BarnetTories) May 4, 2018

This was placed on May 4th. One would have thought that with the current chaos in the bin collections etc, the huge financial black hole, the massive Capita Fraud case, mass flytippings and the terrible state of our roads and pavements, they might have put something slightly more relevant and credible up at some point in the last seven months.

You may wonder what they do post? If they've not updated their pinned tweet in the last seven months have they tweeted anything? The answer is yes, they tweet constantly. This morning they have posted an impressive total of seven tweets. Given all of these issues you'd be thinking that they clearly have been on the case. Sadly, all they've posted are seven tweets slagging off the man they declared an "Enemy of the People". This is the latest, you probably get the drift, it seems that slagging off Mr Khan is actually far easier than addressing the problems they were elected to deal with.

RT GLAConservative "RT AndrewBoff: Sadiq Khan's junk food ad ban is poorly thought out & yet another example of the Mayor indulging in pointless virtue signalling & grandstanding.
It’s not just junk food ads which will be banned but everyday items s… pic.twitter.com/mAn9jdNrl6"

— Barnet Conservatives (@BarnetTories) January 8, 2019

Clearly these days not too many Barnet Tories are clever enough to read The Daily Telegraph. This detailed the problems that obesity will cause the Uk by 2045, stating that if nothing is done 50% of people will be Obese in the Uk by then.  To quote the Telegraph

"As long ago as 2007 Whitehall was warned that 50 per cent of UK citizens would be obese by 2050 and governments have continuously failed to take the action required to stem the epidemic," he added."

It is rather a shame that The Barnet Tories do not seem to recognise that an initiave is long overdue.  To be fair, all of these Tweets were simply retweets from the main Tory party, which shows that Barnet is not the only area in denial. In fact, if you want to see anything at all from Barnet Tories, you have to go back to Mid December when they posted this lovely Tweet

RT Offord4Hendon "Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to all my constituents.

Congratulations to the winner and runners-up in my annual design a Christmas greeting competition - Melissa, Michal, Elena and Leeyah. pic.twitter.com/OGA5CnSmdv"

— Barnet Conservatives (@BarnetTories) December 21, 2018

I often wonder what the point of such twitter feeds are. Just to show a bit of balance, I must say that the @BarnetLabour twitter is equally useless and depressing. They've managed two tweets this year, both about Sadiq Khan. It is truly beyond belief that with the bins overflowing all over the Borough and all of the chaos, they haven't managed a single tweet this year demonstrating just how useless our local Tories are.

Is it any wonder that the real winner in the Council Elections last year was the people who didn't vote. Only 43.7% of the electorate bothered. Is it any wonder why, with this sort of level of engagement?