When Keir Starmer was interviewed for the Sun’s YouTube livestream last week, only around 10,000 people tuned in to watch him pledge to crack down on illegal immigration.
Pressed to show he would speed up deportations, the Labour leader highlighted one particular example: “At the moment, people coming from countries like Bangladesh are not being removed because they are not being prosecuted.”
Two days later, Labour was in a panic: a clip of Starmer’s comments, which went largely unnoticed by the dozens of journalists covering the Sun debate, was being retweeted thousands of times in WhatsApp groups in the Bangladeshi community.
Amid anger from his own MPs and the resignation of several councillors, Starmer broke his campaign schedule to give an apologetic interview to London-based television channel ATN Bangla UK.
Exclusive interview with #Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer clarifies his comments on Bangladeshi migrants in an interview with ATN Bangla UK.
@Keir_Starmer He stresses that he did not intend to offend. #KeirStarmer #ATNBanglaUnited Kingdom #Labor Party” image.twitter.com/RC8n6uDnUP
— Councillor Mohammed Islam (@MohammedIslam_1) June 27, 2024
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In some constituencies – often, but not always, with large Muslim populations – parallel elections have been held over WhatsApp over the past six weeks in which the big issues have been Labour’s policy towards Gaza and the party’s tough talk on immigration.
A Labour candidate in a constituency with a large Muslim population said the Bangladesh video was a real problem for the party. “Things are circulating on WhatsApp in a way that they haven’t in previous elections,” he said. “We are rebutting it at the front door, but the correction doesn’t fly on WhatsApp.
“When they hear the response, they are very shocked. Keir Starmer’s first trip was to Bangladesh. We are just trying to get people in the community to know and spread the word.”
Dr Patrícia Rossini, from the University of Glasgow, who has studied the effect of WhatsApp on elections in her native Brazil, said the messaging app is a “completely hidden information environment” which can lead to big surprises when votes are counted.
“It is virtually impossible to verify or remove content once it has gone viral,” he said. “It is not even possible to know to what extent something has gone viral.”
She said people are more likely to trust texts, memes and videos sent to them by people they know, adding: “What I find fascinating about WhatsApp is that there is no algorithmic amplification. It’s completely driven by people and peers.”
As a result, if there is one big unknown ahead of Thursday’s election, it is whether Labour’s success in winning over former Conservative voters across the country will be undermined by the loss of some previously safe seats, where campaign activity is often fuelled by rapid retweeting of content on the messaging app.
Activists in nominally safe constituencies in the West Midlands and Greater Manchester are being told to stay at home and campaign in constituencies where Labour might have hoped for majorities of 20,000 votes but now fear losses to pro-Gaza independent candidates or George Galloway’s Workers’ Party.
This alternative peer-to-peer distribution model means that news that matters to communities can be disseminated widely, even if traditional media outlets don’t focus on it much.
One of the first signs of this was a video of Starmer on LBC radio, in which he pledged to support Israel’s right to defend itself after the deadly Hamas attacks on 7 October. This video, and others related to Gaza that have gone viral on WhatsApp, contributed in part to Galloway’s victory in this year’s Rochdale by-election.
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A young woman interviewed for the Guardian project analysing voters’ media habits in Birmingham’s supposedly safe Labour constituency of Hodge Hill said she had never heard of a conflict between Israel and Palestine until last October.
Now horrified by the content about Gaza she had seen online (on TikTok, Instagram and WhatsApp), she called it one of her top issues, prompting her to switch her vote from Labour to the Green Party.
By comparison, domestic campaign coverage of Gaza as an election issue has been limited, with the war barely featuring in the leaders’ various televised debates.
Labour activists said there was no doubt that the Bangladesh video had been viewed by far more people than had seen the original interview in The Sun. A viral edit of the video omitted the fact that Starmer was talking about illegal immigration from Bangladesh. prompting the Labour Party to call him “disinformation”.
Rossini said WhatsApp could change elections because it rewards politicians who “focus on micro issues that are really emotional” in an election, rather than a broader issue.
“Rather than thinking of an election as an election to choose a government on economic issues, health care or other issues, you’re thinking about their position on something in particular that you care deeply about,” he said.
She said all of this reflected a different approach to consuming political news than in the past, saying, “You don’t have to follow the news because the things that matter to you or your community will come to you.
“This is an inadvertent discovery. A small minority of users consider WhatsApp to be an important source of news, but more and more people who use WhatsApp are being discovered by the news.”