Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Brexit the first mass negotiation in history? We've had mass protests before, over the centuries and in our modern, tech-enabled times - Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street - but the whole interpersonal networking thing really comes of age with Brexit. Everybody has an opinion, deeply felt, and it's not only possible to break friendships - as it was in the nineteen thirties over appeasement, and subsequently over Suez, and no doubt in the US over Vietnam - but also to engage directly with the Powers (sic) That Be, if that phrase has any meaning at all any more.
We're told this morning that a senior member of the Labour shadow cabinet is working to bring about nationwide insurrection via mass industrial action over pay. To the extent that this constitutes direct action to destabilise the government, we are told by the (doubtless, legally qualified) journalists reporting - sorry, spreading the story, this might be illegal. I think I've got that right - although I have to admit that even my assumption might be flawed these days; I mean my assumption that getting it right still matters.
Anyway, somewhere in among the truth, truthiness, fake news and sheer fabrication that we might be facing here, there's the odd little fact that it's happening (in fact or fiction) in the public eye. I wonder if Lenin would ever have made it onto that sealed train to Petrograd if his advisers had been tweeting his intentions throughout. How would 1917 have played out, if they'd had access to today's range of screens, news sources and participant bystanders?
We're told this morning that a senior member of the Labour shadow cabinet is working to bring about nationwide insurrection via mass industrial action over pay. To the extent that this constitutes direct action to destabilise the government, we are told by the (doubtless, legally qualified) journalists reporting - sorry, spreading the story, this might be illegal. I think I've got that right - although I have to admit that even my assumption might be flawed these days; I mean my assumption that getting it right still matters.
Anyway, somewhere in among the truth, truthiness, fake news and sheer fabrication that we might be facing here, there's the odd little fact that it's happening (in fact or fiction) in the public eye. I wonder if Lenin would ever have made it onto that sealed train to Petrograd if his advisers had been tweeting his intentions throughout. How would 1917 have played out, if they'd had access to today's range of screens, news sources and participant bystanders?