Give him an ‘O’ please. Ed Miliband gets his tweets in a twist

ONE might have thought that Labour had learned a harsh lesson about the perils of ill-advised use of Twitter following Diane Abbott’s racially insensitive tweet this week.

But barely 24 hours after Ed Miliband had given his front-bencher a severe talking to after she tweeted that white people were “playing divide and rule” over the Stephen Lawrence affair, the Labour leader made an embarrassing twitter-based faux pas of his own.

As if things had not been difficult enough for him after Ms Abbott’s gaffe, Mr Miliband compounded his own problems with a typo committed when he tweeted his commiserations on the death of Bob Holness, the former host of the Blockbusters quiz.

Excruciatingly, Mr Miliband’s official Twitter feed told his 114,500 followers: “Sad to hear that Bob Holness has died. A generation will remember him fondly from Blackbusters.”

The substitution of the “o” in Blockbusters with an “a” was particularly unfortunate, given that it suggested he was unable to cast Ms Abbott’s race row from his mind.

It was also a gift to humorists who remembered the teenage contestants on Mr Holness’s quiz choosing questions by picking letters from an electronic screen.

On Twitter (where else?), Tom Jamieson, a writer for Private Eye, tweeted: “Ed Miliband would like an O please, Bob.”

More seriously, the error, which was not corrected quickly enough to prevent people taking screen-grabs of the offending tweet, marked the end of a hugely difficult week for Mr Miliband and reinforced his reputation as a hapless leader.

The week began with an attack from his former adviser, Lord Glasman, who wrote in the New Statesman that the younger Miliband brother had “no strategy and no narrative”.

Furthermore, Lord Glasman had said Labour’s policies were “all crap” and added that the party had shown no signs of winning the economic argument.

As for Mr Miliband himself, Lord Glasman said he had “flickered rather than shone”, “nudged not led” and had not broken through with the voters.

More embarrassment followed when Lord Glasman’s verdict was contrasted with an over-enthusiastic leaked memo written by party press chief Tom Baldwin that described Miliband as leading the “best recovery of any opposition party in the history of opposition parties”.

His problems were exacerbated just before his tweeting nightmare when Jim Murphy, the shadow defence secretary, appeared to distance himself from Labour’s attacks on government spending cuts, saying the Labour Party’s credibility depended on rejecting “shallow and temporary” populism.

Mr Miliband’s apparent failure to co-ordinate his fingers accurately enough with a BlackBerry keyboard to construct an accurate tweet will simply add to the impression that Labour will be looking for a new leader before too much longer.

But such are the PR disasters that can result through injudicious use of Twitter.

In the Twitter-age, remarks, which previously would have been kept private or shared between close confidants, are blasted into cyberspace at every opportunity.

Luddites, who have yet to embrace the wonders of Twitter, will wonder why Mr Miliband felt it necessary to tweet about Mr Holness’s sad demise. Granted, Mr Holness was a fine quizmaster, but did his death really merit an off-the-cuff tweet from the Leader of the Opposition?

Perhaps, as Mr Miliband’s tweet suggested, the Labour Party leader was a huge fan of the geeky quiz show for teenage know-it-alls.

In fact, if he wasn’t so bad at choosing the correct letters, one could almost imagine a young Mr Miliband winning five Gold Runs, before positively revelling in the star prize of a fortnight’s rambling in the Lake District.

Despite a hasty correction of the offending tweet, the Twitter phenomenon ensured that it went worldwide. Within minutes, both Ed Miliband and “Blackbusters” were trending worldwide among the more than 100 million tweeters.

Among the comments was one from Elliott Clarkson, who remarked on the unfortunate timing of the error in the wake of the Dianne Abbott racism scandal.

He wrote: “Oh man, that @Ed_Miliband tweet is hilarious. Especially with the Diane Abbot thing from yesterday. Wow.”

Outraged user TapiwaOfficial tweeted: “’A’ and ‘O’ aren’t even near each other on the keyboard, so it clearly wasn’t a typo!!!”

keithyjames said: “Obviously done it on purpose, no one knew who he was until 5 mins ago, now he’s trending.”

Famous political tweeter Guido Fawkes mocked Mr Miliband, telling him to “stick to Rubik’s cubes”.

Another, Henry Scowcroft, joked: “Can @Ed_Miliband have an ‘O’, please Bob?”

PhilipHamilton_ added: “Just seen tweet from @Ed_Miliband about #BobHolness got to start thinking Cameron was right when he said “too many tweets make a tw*t”.

But not all Twitter users rushed to mock the Labour leader, with some having sympathy for his plight.

helenlewis joked: “To be fair to @Ed_Miliband this is the most pleasure and joy a politician has given me for MONTHS.”

But the reality for Mr Miliband is that his brush with Twitter has made a David Cameron gaffe look positively cool in comparison.

It was back in 2009 that the Prime Minister said he did not use Twitter because too many tweets “might make a twat”.