Tori Peck: Why our politicians should return to Mumsnet

Tori Peck is a campaigner, writing in a personal capacity. She is also a Co-Director of Women2Win.

For the uninitiated, AIBU or Am I Being Unreasonable?, is often the opener to questions posed on Mumsnet – the internet forum used by 8 million women monthly which recently celebrated its 25^th birthday.

Popular threads have lately covered everything from children’s health concerns, disappointing birthday presents, workplace dilemmas, ‘going-out’ tops and an impending pensions crisis. Essentially, the stuff of women’s lives.

In its infancy, politicians couldn’t get enough of Mumsnet and answering users questions about their favourite biscuits (famously chips and gravy for now Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham). 2010 was considered to be the first online election and Mumsnet was at the heart of it.

Politics, the internet and the intersection between the two have altered drastically in the intervening 15 years, but the key lessons from the early adopters of Mumsnet are even more true today, particularly for the Conservatives.

Politicians time is well spent where the electorate spends theirs. As Reform can attest, more votes are won through the TikTok algorithm than the Today programme.

Efforts to tailor messaging both to different audiences and platforms pays off. Tariffs will hit both tech bros living in Peckham and working mums in Pontefract, but we won’t reach and resonate with both audiences using the same messages and mediums.

Fortune favours the bold. Those who ‘get’ the new online frontiers and use them to spread their message will fare better than those too easily influenced or distracted by the old.

The most important lesson to learn from Trump’s ‘new media’ campaign success is that it is not the act of going on podcasts that matters, but which ones you go on and what you say. As the Democrat’s Pete Buttigieg described it, people listen to Joe Rogan for tips on workout supplements but in hearing Donald Trump found a politics that resonated with them. That’s what shifted the votes of certain demographics like nothing before.

Smart politicians today shouldn’t be thinking about making cut through on the platforms where they spend time, but actively seeking out where normal people do.

As more and more people ‘nope out’ of the news and opposition leaves us less amplified in the traditional forums where political views are heard and forged, we would do better to prioritise finding and engaging new audiences and platforms, as well as new ways to speak to those who stopped listening to us.

Conservatives may also find themselves pleasantly surprised by what people are choosing to listen to instead.

Podcast listenership is only increasing and the most popular genres in the UK are routinely history podcasts which celebrate rather than apologise for Britain’s history and place in the world, alongside self-improvement podcasts where people aspire to lead happier and more successful lives. Clearly there are more people with Conservative values than the last election would suggest, but we cannot talk to ourselves and expect people to find us.

When politicians started appearing on Mumsnet there were the inevitable smug sniggers about talking politics on a site predominantly used by women. Not much has changed. The idea of talking to women in the places they consume media is still considered at best niche and at worst pandering to DEI.

Women make up 51 per cent of the population and 51 per cent of the electorate are moving left.

We cannot win the next election without them and we cannot go into the next election with the women’s vote as an afterthought. We must start building a presence where women are spending their time (consuming more social media a day than men and more on Instagram than X) and talking to them about the things that impact their lives (have a look on Mumsnet if you are stuck for ideas).

The occasional Instagram post on the Tampon Tax isn’t going to cut it.

At the last election, the cost of living was the biggest driver of women’s votes. We had a good story to tell but we only spoke about it in terms of national economy rather than what it meant in day to day lives. Not all women lead the same lives as each other, just as men don’t, but women are more likely to be paid less, be stuck in the cycle of working to pay for childcare and are more likely to do the food shopping and therefore see the tangible impact of inflation. We do not need to move left to appeal to women voters, but provide evidence that Conservative values are their values and Conservative policies deliver for them.

This is not to patronise women by saying all they care about is the price of milk, but to understand the lives women lead is to understand what motivates their vote. They are more likely to be the person making medical appointments for their families, more likely to engage with local authorities on school places and SEND provision, less likely to have access to or capacity for upskilling at work or finding new opportunity. Their views of Westminster are inevitably shaped by how what is decided in Westminster impacts their lives.

And this isn’t just true for women. The message I heard again and again on doorsteps in every part of the country at the last election was that politicians were for themselves, not for us. People will only start listening to politicians again when they think they are being heard.

It is the stuff of people’s lives that we should be hearing from politicians about – the shoplifting witnessed every time you pop to Tesco’s, what kids are learning and seeing in school, what financial decisions people make when they’re thinking about hiring or investing in new equipment for their business or the financial decisions they make when they’re opening their banking apps on payday.

The most successful Conservative leaders are the ones who best evidence a real understanding of the public mood and individual lives, from Margaret Thatcher harnessing the aspirations of both the white van man and thrusting yuppie, to Boris Johnson’s unique understanding of and appeal to people and places that felt left behind.

They both also teach an important lesson in capturing the zeitgeist but not being dictated by it. These are times again when big decisions are needed and direction must be set from the top, based on conviction and values, strong in the global headwinds, not distracted by ephemera.

Good politics and policy comes from paying attention to the internet, and knowing when to ignore it. Starmer chose what seemed like an easy win, riding the wave of an internet sensation in Adolescence but is now facing a backlash – not just because he called banning phones a gimmick only a week before, but because asking schools to screen the programme has been richly derided by teachers. He would have better spent a week focusing on saving skilled manufacturing jobs, the increasing scarcity of which are a far bigger factor on the likely success of young men’s futures.

Kemi Badenoch is absolutely right that it is not the duty of political leaders to watch TV. It is better to be resolute in beliefs then to change them with passing trends, and beliefs must be heard to be believed. Badenoch didn’t need to read Mumsnet to form her views on gender and biological sex, but there was an audience very responsive to listening to what she had to say during the last election.

So Happy Birthday and thank you to Mumsnet and all that have followed her. If you want to see how the Spring Statement or PIP changes really landed, don’t look at the following day’s paper headlines, see what people are still talking about a week later in chat threads and Instagram reels. The Chancellor herself might want to have a look at some of the very informative budgeting tips available on TikTok.

It is these forums, social media sites and podcasts that are the spaces where people are spending their time and living their lives; having their experiences and politics shaped by those who are bold enough to participate in them. If we don’t join them, we will be beaten by them.