MPs Approach "Tipping Point" To Move Away From Elon Musk's X
Multiple Westminster figures have started to use Bluesky as an alternative to X (Alamy)
8 min read
A growing number of MPs are weighing up whether to leave social media website X and move to alternative platforms, with some encouraging the Government to do the same.
A number of parliamentarians have told PoliticsHome that this week has felt like a “tipping point” where high-profile figures have started to explore alternative options to Elon Musk’s X platform, formerly known as Twitter.
Earlier this week, Labour MP Sarah Owen wrote a “break-up letter” to X and deactivated her account. She described how until very recently, she had seen X as a “necessary evil for anyone in politics. But I know my presence on X no longer benefits my role or the people I seek to serve".
Asked by PoliticsHome whether she felt political institutions also needed to start moving away from X, she said: "Look at the figures. The usage of X is plummeting, and the use of other platforms is growing.
"Go to where the people are that we need to be engaging with and that need to hear what it is that this government is doing, particularly on some of the fantastic work that they're doing. We don't need to constantly just be wedded to a platform that is hell-bent on creating division when we need to unify our country."
Labour MP Chris Curtis has also stopped using the app, with the MP for Milton Keynes telling PoliticsHome others should do the same.
Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election last week appears to have led to a surge in people joining other platforms, with X owner Musk having played an instrumental part in Trump's campaign and now been appointed to head up Trump's new Department of Government Efficiency.
Bluesky, which was originally set up by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, has said its membership increased from 9m in September to 14.5m in the week to 12 November, mostly made up of people in the US and the UK. PoliticsHome has identified more than 60 MPs who have set up Bluesky accounts at the time of writing – many within the past week – with the majority being Labour MPs, as well as some Lib Dems and Greens.
There are no Conservative MPs on the app at the time of publication, however.
Labour MP Owen, who chairs the Women and Equalities Committee, stressed that she "definitely" does not want Bluesky to "be an echo chamber" dominated by people with left-wing views.
"The more the merrier in terms of the diversity of opinion," she told PoliticsHome.
"I don't love an echo chamber. It's weird. So the more people that come over with diverse opinions, but having good arguments, not foul ones."
Owen was echoed by Carla Denyer, co-leader of the Green Party, who joined Bluesky this week.
"It's probably not good for democracy if everyone to the left of a certain line of the left-right spectrum is on one platform and everybody else is on another.
"That feels like the kind of political polarisation that we're seeing in the US, and I don't think we want to emulate that here," she said.
No government departments have joined Bluesky yet and neither have the Labour Party or No10. PoliticsHome understands there have not yet been discussions in No10 about either leaving X or joining Bluesky.
But some backbench MPs have called for the Government to proactively start moving away from X and explore other platforms such as Bluesky or Meta's Threads.
Elon Musk supported Donald Trump in his US presidential campaign (Alamy)
Patrick Hurley is the new Labour MP for Southport, where the stabbings of young girls in the summer led to riots which then spread across the country – in part fuelled by misinformation, including on X. The MP is concerned that Westminster relies on an app which spreads dangerous false news, and that the algorithm seems to promote graphic and disturbing content.
"There's viral content on there which is almost pornographic and I don't want that on my phone at the best of times... I certainly don't want that on my phone when I'm in the Commons chamber," Hurley told PoliticsHome.
He said that since the summer, he and other MPs had had "realistic and serious discussions about how we can all move as MPs, as the Westminster ecosystem, to a new platform".
"But we all have to do it as a leap of faith together,” he said.
While the MP is not leaving X yet, he has started posting on the Bluesky site, joining multiple other MPs, journalists, and political experts. He said he hoped that soon, Westminster would use Bluesky instead of X as its primary social media platform.
“I expect by the end of November, we will see hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people across Westminster joining the exodus, and I hope that by Christmas, X is essentially a deserted wasteland with tumbleweed passing.
“It isn't Twitter anymore. Twitter's dead… it died two years ago.”
Hurley said he wanted to “play his part” in encouraging colleagues and political institutions to move to Bluesky.
“The next step is for government announcements to be made on Bluesky, because we all appear to have moved en masse to Bluesky,” he said.
“I would very strongly urge whichever authorities it is that would make that decision to make that decision and make it quick.”
Another backbench Labour MP told PoliticsHome that a mass movement of MPs from X to Bluesky would require “leadership” by these institutions. Another said that ministers moving to a new platform would be particularly influential.
One Labour MP staff member said that moving MPs away from X was an “ongoing conversation” in parliamentary staff Whatsapp groups, but that some new MPs were particularly reluctant to leave because they had worked hard at building a profile on X over the last few years.
A backbench MP suggested that Labour HQ staff were also reluctant as they wanted the party to keep communicating “where the masses are”.
However, Toby Perkins, chair of the Environmental Audit Committee and Labour MP for Chesterfield, told PoliticsHome the "masses" were simply not on X anymore and “the ground has been ceded already” to far-right commentators, internet trolls and AI-generated bots.
Perkins said he was thinking about leaving X soon, as he finds it “increasingly useless”, with a feed full of graphic images and videos and hate comments.
However, he admitted using the website was a “hard habit to break” and it would need lots of people to switch to another platform to get the same effectiveness as a source for breaking news: “Twitter was told before the BBC that the Queen had died.”
Labour MP Toby Perkins said X is a "hard habit to break" (Alamy)
The Chesterfield MP said he was encouraging other people in the party to follow him to Bluesky and that while he would urge the Government and Labour to use “any sources they can” to communicate, they needed to be weary about getting information from X.
“There is a real issue of government continuing to use it as an official news source,” he said.
“There’s a real question to consider there and serious questions for the Cabinet Office.”
Multiple other MPs said that they would not leave X altogether yet, but were seriously considering it in the coming weeks. Others said they have been using the platform less anyway and that their staff members wrote the majority of their posts.
Denyer said that while she said she was “certainly not about to leave [X] tomorrow”, the Greens were “actively looking” at which platforms would be best to put resources into.
Jonathan Brash, the new Labour MP for Hartlepool, however, insisted he would not leave X yet as he does not want to “actively de-platform” himself.
“You have a responsibility to try and put the alternative point of view and reach as many people as possible, and X is part of that,” he said.
However, he added that MPs had a responsibility to try out new platforms “where the public is” and would leave if it no longer served any purpose.
In the last few days, the Liberal Democrats party has started posting on Bluesky and The Guardian newspaper announced it will no longer post on X on its official channels. Multiple leading political journalists have also started posting on Bluesky, with Sophy Ridge of Sky News writing on Bluesky that "X has a disproportionate influence over the stories the media covers and our political debate".
Southport MP Hurley said: "It feels now that over the last week, for reasons we could all speculate on, whether it's the US election or Remembrance Sunday services which memorialise the fight against fascism, this has been a turning point.
"Over the last week, we have now reached our tipping point where more people are joining the [Bluesky] platform."
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