I know exactly why Labour MPs keep losing their WhatsApp messages. The Mandelson Files have shown it is perhaps sensible to 'disappear' embarrassing DMs if you don't want to be sent to Siberia – but at least when my teenage daughter does it she makes it look chic, says Sophie Heawood.
The Curious Case of Vanishing Messages
Even my most damning messages remain less significant in the grand scheme of things than those sent by Peter Mandelson to the rest of the British government. When I slag off the government, I'm not doing it from public office, which always helps. Still, like seemingly everybody in Westminster, I accidentally and unwittingly set my WhatsApp messages to 'disappear' the other day. This short experience was as mortifying as it was exhilarating. Who would everyone think I thought I was, suddenly deciding that our mildly salacious bitching deserved a level of secrecy akin to global espionage, when the truth was I'm simply the middle-aged owner of a pair of fat thumbs?
I'm not convinced the same defence holds for the likes of Mandelson and Keir Starmer. No 10 has confirmed that the PM uses the controversial feature on WhatsApp, meaning conversations between the prime minister and Lord Peter Mandelson may have been deleted and lost. Rachel Reeves and David Lammy are reported to do this, too. Whoops.
A Teenage Perspective on Digital Disappearance
My digital native teenager's generation, by contrast, have always been big on making all communication disappear on purpose, partly to impede nosey parents like me from snooping around and reading their messages, but also partly because they find it chic to leave no trace. Their Snapchat posts disappear in 24 hours, and if they even use Instagram it tends to only be the Stories feature that does the same. Their main grids are like ghost-towns, because what 16-year-old wants a photo hanging around from when they were, like, a completely different person aged, like, 14-and-a-half? God! So what they'd make of Peter Mandelson and his endless silly WhatsApps telling all his colleagues to vote for him as Chancellor of Oxford University – well, there aren't enough eye rolls in the land.
Highlights from the Mandelson Files
Other highlights of the data release include the barrage of texts sent to Ed Miliband only to receive an automated response indicating Ed wasn't using that phone anymore. Plus Mandy telling David Lammy, as foreign secretary, that if he agreed to make him ambassador to the US it would be 'the last thing I do in public life', unwittingly one of the most starkly honest sentences in the whole business.
I set my own messages back to 'appearing' and thought no more about it, but one wonders if, after this latest embarrassing public data dump, we're all going to think twice about sending anything more detailed than a 'see you at 7pm' through a messaging service without running the risk of being sent to Siberia.
The Third Government Humbled by WhatsApp
But it's getting a bit tired now that this is the third government to be humbled by the little green app: no MP worth their salt is going to leave anything much on there, are they? These WhatsApp losers only have so many WhatsApps to lose. At this rate we'll all be reduced to having actual conversation and writing notes in our leather-bound diaries. Which sounds romantic, but is probably bad.
After all, a friend complained to me that their relative loves to use disappearing messages, but equally loves to set up group chats for birthday dinners, holiday arrangements et cetera. Thus ensuring that by the time the big day arises, the crucial information has disappeared and you're frantically scrolling back trying to remember what was agreed. Don't do this to us, stupid politicians! Don't keep messing up so much that we're all made to live with the resulting madness! Although maybe this is exactly what has happened. What is this government, after all, if not a big, confused group chat, frantically scrolling to try and rediscover what exactly the plan was in the first place.
A Glimpse into the Past: Tony Blair's Digital Refusal
Still, at least Mandelson can actually use WhatsApp. His former employer Tony Blair was such a digital refusenik that he only got his first mobile phone the day after he left office in 2007. Yes, there were security concerns at the time, but you'd think he'd have at least been familiar with how they worked from those around him. Nope – he apparently texted Alastair Campbell with 'This' followed a minute or two later by 'is just amazing' followed by a third text saying 'you can send words and everything'. How far we've come.
