This week both Cooper and
Burnham were given a telling off by the Kendall camp. Liz Kendall’s campaign
director, Toby Perkins MP sent a sternly worded letter after, ‘a source close
to’ the Burnham and Cooper camps branded Liz’s followers, ‘Taliban New Labour.’
And during yesterdays televised hustings Andy Burnham had a little slip up, regarding
a question on another possible leadership contest in 2020. He suggested that
whatever the political landscape, ‘the party comes first.’ Kendall capitalised.
‘The country comes first,’ she noted. Just as before, more unattributed
comments emerged from ‘a source close to’ a candidate, this time from the
Burnham camp saying that, ‘Liz tried to score a cheap point by taking [what Andy
said] out of context.’ With all the candidates pledging to conduct a civilised
campaign, is all the mudslinging to be done by the unnamed and will it continue
unfettered?
There is a psychological phenomenon
as outlined in a paper by John Suler in 2004, called the Online Disinhibition Effect.
In lemans terms the theory says that, those who converse via telecommunication,
the internet especially in a text base mode, is likely to express themselves in
a far more unrestrained manner, feeling able to share in ways that one would ordinarily
feel unable to do so. Now, although this theory pertains predominantly to
telecommunications I can see parallels between it’s principles and the way each
Labour leadership camp is conducting itself now. As the candidates wish for a
clean fight, publicly at least, there has become a place for a ‘source close to,’
weapon in the armoury.
The Jeremy Corbyn camp have
been rather more upfront. His greatest proponent, Dianne Abbott MP, the
candidate for London Mayor stated that, “Blairite New Labour ghouls” must not
be allowed to take over the party. She and Corbyn were together at a campaign
meeting in central London when these comments were made. Abbott went on to talk
about the party’s need to push forward thinking policies and campaign in a more
progressive way. Jeremy Corbyn made it particularly clear that neither he nor any
of his followers would seek to campaign in a negative way.
That said, it is most likely the
unattributed briefings will only get more vicious. For the purposes of the Online
Disinhibition Effect theory suppose a candidate should attack another anonymously. According John Suler’s paper, the attacker
should by their anonymity, have an opportunity to separate their remarks from
their in-person lifestyle and Identity as they are made. This is for the reason
that, the online self is compartmentalised and is separate from the real self.
It is a question of proximity from the effect of the attack. However, for cases
that do not involve the internet or telecommunications could this principal not
hold steady? Could it not be such that, due to ‘sources close to’ candidates
being able to brief anonymously on behalf of a third party (the candidate,) the
‘sources’ could separate these actions, even though they are real life actions,
from their own personal identity. ‘Sources close to’ are much more likely to be
disinhibited in their comments than the candidates themselves or sources espousing
views in defence of their own self defined values.
Harriet Harman commented that
she absolutely deplored the ‘sources close to,’ Cooper and Burnham camps and
although both camps deny any link to the ‘Taliban New Labour’ comments about
Liz Kendall, the words of Kendall’s campaign manager should perhaps be
considered by all, before things get really disinhibited; “This sort of language makes
that task more difficult and only serves to damage us all.”