Now I don’t often link to the Mirror, but Tim Farron has made a slightly unusual appearance (for a party Leader) as a prolific tweeter.
Apparently, the Labour MP Wes Streeting is the Twitter parliamentary champion, having tweeted 68,800 times in the last seven years. That is an average of one tweet every 36 minutes during waking hours. The Mirror reckons that he has written over one million words, which is half a million more than can be found in ‘War and Peace’.
Tim is very close behind Wes Streeting with 67,600 tweets since he started in February 2009, making his tweet- rate the same, at one every 36 minutes. Of course, a high proportion of those were retweets, rather than original tweets, but it is still pretty impressive.
But is it my imagination or has he slowed down recently? This was his total original Twitter output on Tuesday:
Being in Europe helps us fight for a fairer society. Find out why else we’re #INtogether this #IWD2016: https://t.co/t06taShZiX
— Tim Farron (@timfarron) March 8, 2016
Lib Dems want to legalise cannabis – raising up to £1bn a year in tax https://t.co/dOHkQHsOCb
— Tim Farron (@timfarron) March 8, 2016
…and none at all yesterday. But those were backed up with lots of replies to others, and several retweets – the kind of interactions which confirm his reputation as a great communicator.
Those of us going to Conference in York will be watching to see if he can keep his hands off his mobile phone during his speech.
* Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.



2 Comments
Mary
Surely it is quality , not quantity , that is impressive .Tim does tend to not only talk sense but , thus , one should say , tweet sense.Would this were true of everyone!
As a non twiterer or tweeter , I do not know if that makes me definitely not a twit , or very much a twit ! I also have to say I do know far too much of it is irrelevant chit chat better done in private over a cup of tea or while waiting for the bus , and with the use of that great instrument , the human voice !
Who is Wes Streeting? Perhaps the reason I don’t know is because he is forever tweeting rather than communicating sensibly?