Social Media, Permanent Psychodrama and the New Duty of MPs and Journalists

There is something profoundly unhealthy happening inside British democracy, The permanent agitation and outrage; an endless atmosphere of political hysteria in which every Prime Minister appears perpetually three bad headlines away from execution and every government seemingly exists in a state of rolling nervous collapse.

At the time of writing, sections of the media are once again convulsed with speculation about Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

• Anonymous briefings.
• Leadership chatter.
• MPs supposedly “on manoeuvres”.
• Journalists breathlessly counting numbers as though Westminster were a Roman senate preparing another palace coup.

And perhaps there genuinely are MPs discussing rebellion. But the truly important question is no longer whether Keir Starmer survives. The important question is this: Why does Britain now appear increasingly incapable of sustaining stable democratic leadership for any meaningful period of time?

This is not merely about Labour, or indeed the Conservatives. We may actually be witnessing the collision between democratic government and a modern information environment unlike anything Britain’s constitutional system was designed to withstand. If that is true — and I increasingly suspect it is — then MPs, journalists and the public alike now carry responsibilities they have not yet fully recognised.

 

The Revolving Door at the Summit of Government

The statistics alone should alarm serious people.

Between 2010 and 2024, Conservative governments went through:

• 5 Prime Ministers ★
• 7 Chancellors ★
• 8 Foreign Secretaries ★
• 8 Home Secretary appointments ★
• More than 11 No.10 Chiefs of Staff ★
• 4 Cabinet Secretaries ★

David Cameron. Theresa May. Boris Johnson. Liz Truss. Rishi Sunak.An astonishing degree of instability at the apex of government. And now Labour, scarcely settled into office, already finds itself subjected to the same atmosphere of permanent destabilisation. This did not used to happen with such relentless intensity. Edward Heath remained leader until challenged by Margaret Thatcher. James Callaghan succeeded Harold Wilson after Wilson voluntarily resigned. Margaret Thatcher herself endured years of hostility, recession and unpopularity before eventually reshaping the country and winning major electoral victories. One need not support Thatcherism to recognise the central point. Governments once possessed political space: 

• Time.
• Durability.
• The opportunity to govern before Westminster collectively lost its nerve.

Now governments scarcely survive long enough to establish direction before another round of political psychodrama begins. Why? That is the question some of our democratic institutions (trad. media) should now be investigating with seriousness.

 

Britain Now Governs Inside a Permanent Psychological Storm

Since 2010 Britain has undergone a communications revolution of staggering magnitude.

• Smartphones became universal.
• Social media became dominant.
• Algorithms increasingly determined what people see, what angers them and what emotionally engages them.

Political discourse migrated away from traditional institutions and into digital ecosystems designed fundamentally around emotional reaction and engagement. This matters enormously, because social media is now an industrialised attention battlefield. Every second millions of posts, clips, memes, slogans, outrage videos and manipulated narratives compete for psychological dominance inside the minds of the public.

• The loudest voices rise fastest.
• The angriest narratives travel furthest.
• The most emotionally charged content spreads most effectively.

And the algorithms learn from all of it.

• Fear.
• Rage.
• Humiliation.
• Contempt.
• Mockery.
• Outrage.

These emotions travel online with extraordinary speed. Moderation, nuance and caution do not. And increasingly there is evidence that these systems are not merely chaotic, but are also being deliberately manipulated. This year (2026), the Institute for Strategic Dialogue identified two coordinated pro‑Iran influence networks on X — “BRICS4CLICKS” and “Verified4War” — which collectively generated more than one billion views during the Iran conflict. Researchers identified coordinated posting behaviour, simultaneous username changes and widespread adoption of paid verification shortly before the conflict escalated. Meta has repeatedly reported dismantling coordinated influence operations linked to actors in China, Russia and Iran. Stanford researchers have documented how coordinated inauthentic behaviour networks can continue operating online even after being publicly identified. Parliamentary committees and independent researchers have repeatedly warned about the dangers posed by harmful algorithms, online misinformation and coordinated influence campaigns.

Now let us be careful. Can I prove that foreign states directly control British politics? No. Can I prove that social media alone removes Prime Ministers? No. But can anybody seriously deny that Britain’s democratic system now operates inside a communications environment saturated with (paid) algorithmic amplification, outrage incentives and coordinated information warfare? Surely not.

HYou can almost hear those behind the bots saying "how much s^&t do you need to throw before it sticks?" "How much disinfirmation can the public swallow?"

Once one begins viewing politics through these lenses, a troubling feedback loop emerges.

 

The Feedback Loop Nobody Wants to Discuss

• A (paid?) narrative begins online.
• A clip goes viral.
• A meme spreads.
• Thousands of (paid?) accounts amplify outrage.

Some are genuine. Some may not be. The atmosphere intensifies.

• The public absorbs the emotional climate.
• People repeat those narratives in pubs, workplaces and conversations.
• MPs hear it “on the doorstep”.
• Journalists report rising “public anger”.
• Westminster begins speculating about instability.
• Leadership chatter intensifies.
• Markets react.

Social media then amplifies the instability itself. And suddenly perception becomes political reality. This is the great danger of the modern information age. Not necessarily that any single narrative is false. But that the systems themselves continuously intensify emotional pressure upon democratic institutions. This is a permanent psychological storm and no constitutional system built for the twentieth century was designed to operate under such conditions.  What makes this especially dangerous is that the entire cycle is then treated as though it were wholly organic and wholly democratic, when in reality nobody yet fully understands how much of modern political emotion is being shaped, accelerated or distorted by algorithmic systems operating beneath the surface. And that, surely, is now one of the great elephants in the room of British public life.

While journalists are endlessly reporting the symptoms of instability — the rumours, the rebellions, the briefings, the leadership chatter — too few appear willing to investigate whether the information environment itself has become structurally destabilising to democratic governance.

In other words, the real story may not simply be that governments are becoming unpopular faster, rather modern societies are now operating inside communications systems specifically optimised for outrage, division, emotional escalation and perpetual psychological pressure; the vast majority may well be paid activists and bots. If that is even partially true, then our institutions can no longer behave as passive observers standing outside the process. They are part of the process. 

Journalists, broadcasters, political parties and digital platforms all now carry a wider civic responsibility to consider whether they are merely amplifying agitation or helping sustain a democratic culture capable of seriousness, patience, proportion and rational public discourse.

If every institution simply chases emotional engagement, immediate reaction and perpetual conflict, then democratic politics itself risks becoming trapped in an endless hall of mirrors — a self-reinforcing cycle of outrage, instability and psychodrama from which no government, regardless of party, can govern effectively.

That is why this debate matters. Its to ask whether the institutions of a serious democracy now have a duty to consciously elevate public discourse above the emotional logic of the algorithm.

 

SOME THOUGHTS ON SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

1. Trusted Journalists Should Stop Merely Feeding the Psychodrama

Journalism remains indispensable to democracy. Investigative reporting protects democratic societies.  Scrutiny and accountability matters. But journalism also carries responsibilities and modern media incentives are becoming increasingly distorted.

• Conflict generates clicks.
• Division generates ratings.
• Leadership speculation fills airtime.
• Psychodrama sustains engagement.

So what happens?

• A rumour emerges.
• Anonymous briefings appear.
• MPs are telephoned and pressed for reactions.
• The arithmetic of rebellion becomes a rolling national drama.
• Social media amplifies everything.
• Then the instability itself becomes the dominant political story.

This creates an uncomfortable but necessary question: At what point does political journalism stop merely reporting instability and begin actively generating it?

Because that line is becoming dangerously thin. The deeper story may not be: “Is the Prime Minister under pressure?” The deeper story may instead be: “How is social media reshaping the psychological conditions under which democratic government now operates?”

That is the investigation worthy of serious journalism and communication.

 

2. MPs Should Rediscover Their Constitutional Duty

This is where Parliament itself now faces a profound responsibility. For generations, leadership plotting and factional intrigue were treated as ordinary Westminster sport. But the environment is no longer ordinary. We are no longer operating in the age of measured newspaper cycles and occasional television bulletins. We are operating inside permanent digital agitation and because of that, MPs now carry responsibilities extending beyond internal party manoeuvring. They are custodians not merely of party interest, but of democratic stability itself. That does not mean governments should be immune from criticism. Nor does it mean leaders should never be removed. But it does mean recognising that constant destabilisation damages the country.

When voters elect a majority government, they expect that government to govern, to govern according to the manifesto and led by someone trusted to stick to the game plan; and for all this to be conducted for the full term they were mandated for; not to spend half its existence trapped inside internal civil wars amplified daily by social media outrage and media frenzy. This is what happened to the Conservative Party and that "change" agenda voted for in 2024 was in part directed at their psychodrama. Prime Minister Starmer promised the electorate no more of this, yet here we are - beyond his control - a Labour-psychodrama is at risk of emerging.

Because once the public begins believing elections no longer produce durable governments, democratic legitimacy itself starts eroding and that is dangerous territory. I truly believe political psychodramas are an existential threat to those in power: if you stick with the PM and it doesn't work out, you lose the general election; if you throw up someone else and shift policy in directions the public did not mandate, you might never get back in power. Look at the Conservatives right now.

At some point political parties must ask themselves:

• Are we serving democratic stability?
• Or are we merely feeding the machine?

So in this new world of social media demonisation and monsterisations of political leaders, should there be a new - or rejuvenated - responsibility of MPs to recognise this and buffer their leaders for any machine-led psychodrama? I believe not only to be so, but its a new responsibility of governance that all parties must embrace now. Why? Because it might be their turn next. For the current government I say this: the country voted for a party that puts country first, party second and personal ambition third. The MPs of the party in power are the only ones that can be the foot soldiers to ensure that remains the case. 

 

3. The Public Must Learn to Trust More Carefully

The public, too, now faces a challenge unprecedented in democratic history. How does one determine what is trustworthy inside an environment saturated with emotional manipulation?

Every citizen now lives inside a torrent of:

• memes
• clips
• outrage posts
• anonymous commentary
• selective framing
• algorithmically amplified narratives

Some of it is true. Some distorted. Some entirely manipulative and often people no longer know where information originated at all. That is dangerous because democracy requires informed citizens; and informed citizens require trusted sources.

So the public now has responsibilities too.

To ask:

• Who produced this?
• Why am I seeing this?
• Is this verified?
• Is this designed to provoke outrage?
• Is this emotionally manipulating me?
• Is this trying to divide society?

The age of passive information consumption is over.

Citizens themselves must now become more intellectually defensive.

 

4. The BBC and the Burden of Public Service

The BBC was founded to inform, educate and entertain. That responsibility may now matter more than ever, because public service journalism cannot simply imitate the outrage incentives of algorithmic media. Its responsibility is larger.  Its responsibility is to step back from the frenzy and investigate the structural causes reshaping British democracy itself: What is happening to the conditions of democratic governance in Britain?”

That is the real national conversation we should now be having.

 

Final Warning

Britain’s constitutional system was built for a slower civilisation.

• An age before smartphones.
• Before algorithmic outrage.
• Before viral political warfare.
• Before permanent digital psychological pressure.

Our institutions have not yet fully adapted, and until MPs, journalists and the public alike recognise the scale of that transformation, Britain risks becoming trapped inside an endless cycle of instability, panic, psychodrama and collapsing trust. The greatest danger is not that one party loses power, that is democracy. The greatest danger is that democratic government itself loses the ability to govern steadily at all.

Because once a society loses faith in the stability and seriousness of democratic institutions, history shows that far more dangerous political forces eventually emerge to fill the vacuum.