The 'nothing' politicians who measure progress in 'likes' and victories in reposts

In days long since passed, it took effort to write a threatening letter to an MP. Now, one may fire off an endless stream of slurs and threats with ease.

Unsurprisingly, because a lot of men really hate women, the vitriol directed towards female members of parliament is especially threatening and degrading.

On occasion, police have acted (the case, in 2021, of Grant Karte, an SNP member who pleaded guilty to sending messages that were “grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character” to then nationalist MP Joanna Cherry, springs to mind) but the problem continues and it grows worse.

Politicians, of course, are not the only popular targets for online hate: Jews should expect to be denounced as baby-killers by righteous “anti-Zionists”; feminists fighting to preserve the integrity of women’s single-sex spaces have long since grown accustomed to accusations of transphobia, often accompanied by rape and/or death threats.

With all of the above in mind, the behaviour of Liberal Democrat MP Ben Maguire is disturbing.

During a Westminster debate last week the member for North Cornwall mocked JK Rowling’s involvement in the campaign to defend women’s rights against the demands of trans activists.

The moment was bleakly entertaining, like a scene from a watch-through-your-fingers comedy. Maguire told fellow MPs Rowling was “desperate for attention and relevance”. The pathos was almost unbearable. I cringed for the man.

Had the Lib Dems’ shadow attorney general – yes, really – left things at that, then we could comfortably have continued to ignore him. His words confirm him to be a default-setting sexist.

In response to Maguire’s pitiful bid for attention and relevance, Rowling evoked the words of the late Labour MP Denis Healey who once said debating Conservative Geoffrey Howe was like being savaged by a dead sheep.

I fear the pain of Rowling’s barb may have lingered for in the early hours of the following morning, Maguire was still smarting about those feminists and their demands.

Following another positively masochistic engagement with Rowling, Maguire turned his ire on the feminist campaign group For Women Scotland. At 12.57 am on Wednesday, the MP responded on X to a post by the group – which brought the recent case that saw the Supreme Court rule, in law, sex is a matter of biology rather than feelings – claiming it had a “fascist agenda”.

Hours later, Maguire closed his X account. A non-apology followed.

The MP said he regretted the comment which had been made in “the heat of the moment”.

“This whole debate,” added Maguire, “has become quite toxic, so I felt it best to step away from X for a while.”

Suggesting the problem was the tone of debate rather than his behaviour, Maguire was riffing on that old classic “look what you made me do”.

I struggle, even when squinting, to detect any difference between Maguire’s behaviour and the behaviour of the sort of trolls who revel in making the lives of MPs as miserable as possible.

At 12.57 am, Maguire was just another loser lashing out at women who dared to talk back.

Is it the place of an elected politician to make wildly defamatory claims about an organisation that’s only crime is to have forced governments across the UK to meet their responsibilities when it comes to the protection of women’s rights?

Obviously not. Nor, if we wish to be cynical about this, is it at all wise for a politician who wishes to appeal to the all important reality-aligning demographic to attack an organisation whose objectives are supported by a clear majority of voters. A YouGov poll in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s April ruling found that 63 per cent thought it correct while just 18 per cent reckoned the wrong decision had been made.

In Maguire, I see the archetype of the dopamine-hit politician. These caricatures of the radical, who see posting something provocative online as an act of leadership, who eschew such basics of politics as diplomacy, intellectual curiosity, and a grasp of the law, while chasing ultimately worthless plaudits from ideologues and social media users, enjoying their own dopamine-hits, with every like and re-post.

The contemporary pseudo-iconoclast politician thrives both on the adoration of those who support their positions and the anger they provoke among those they don’t. Driven by the need for another roar of approval from the cool kids, they state all-or-nothing positions that betray their failure to engage in the issues they proclaim to care about.

Ben Maguire does nothing for the case he wishes to advance by smearing his opponents. Rather, he helps reinforce the position of the majority which believes him to be on the wrong side of the argument over the impact on women’s rights of the demands of trans activists.

Labour MP Zarah Sultana is another dopamine-chaser who favours virtue-signalling provocation over reasoned persuasion.

When it was announced, last week, that the group Palestine Action faced proscription as a terror group after members broke into RAF Brize Norton, Sultana posted on X the message: “We are all Palestine Action”. A statement which was as provably wrong as it was needlessly offensive.

Intentional damage to any part of the UK’s defence hardware goes far beyond the principle of freedom of expression and into the serious realm of national security. Members of Palestine Action understood this when they broke into Brize Norton. That was the point.

Like Maguire, Sultana measures political progress in “likes”, sees victories in reposts, and gains validation from outrage. She cannot imagine the existence of someone who might feel sympathy for, even rage on behalf of, Palestinians while simultaneously believing the UK’s national security is important.

For dopamine-hit politicians like Ben Maguire and Zarah Sultana, the rush of unearned righteousness, in all of its nothingness, is everything.