Brillo Ben And Jerry’s Blowback

Twitter. Some find it difficult to talk about. Others find it difficult to do. And in the latter category this morning are a number of routinely clueless Tory MPs, some of them of senior rank, and … Andrew Neil. The former Murdoch stalwart and long-term editor of the Sunday Times, now overseeing the increasingly alt-right Spectator magazine but also given a berth by the BBC, does well in broadcast interviews, but not social media.

Part of this is that those responding to his questions live on TV must pony up a response there and then; on Twitter, respondents have time to formulate a bon mot to fire back at Brillo, and more often than not, leave him covered in rather more than confusion.

The latest example of this phenomenon came as a result of someone at Ben and Jerry’s - yes, the Ice Cream brand - taking Priti Patel, who is alleged to be Home Secretary, to task over the Government’s hostile attitude to refugees. “Hey @PritiPatel, we think the real crisis is our lack of humanity for people fleeing war, climate change and torture” they chided her. And the response was staggeringly petulant.

“Priti is working day and night to bring an end to these small boat crossings, which are facilitated by international criminal gangs and are rightly of serious concern to the British people. If that means upsetting the social media team for a brand of overpriced junk food, then so be it”. James (not so) Cleverly then waded in on Ms Patel’s behalf.

“Can I have a large scoop of statistically inaccurate virtue signalling with my grossly overpriced ice cream please” he sniggered. LBC host James O’Brien felt obliged to rebuke him: “The largest recession in the G7, the highest excess death rate in Europe, A-Levels in meltdown, unemployment rocketing, catastrophic Brexit imminent and *government ministers* are shouting at ice cream on Twitter”. And then came Brillo.

“Stop posing as some kind of hippy ice cream play. You’re now wholly owned by a massive global conglomerate called Unilever. Perhaps if it paid the taxes HMRC thinks you should pay we could afford to accommodate many more asylum seekers”.

Dan Davies? Paging Dan Davies! Is Dan Davies in the Twitter building? He certainly is: “Stop posing as some kind of tax justice crusader. You're the chairman of Press Holdings Media Group, owned via a Jersey corporation by Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay. Ask them to bring the ownership of their UK businesses onshore and maybe HMRC wouldn't have to beg ice cream”. BOOM! OUCH! Anyone else fancy putting the boot in?

Certainly. “Odd, you conflate a paucity of tax receipts for the UK government's poor and mean spirited handling of migrants, but have criticised politicians who have made clear their intentions to increase corporate tax receipts, which way do you want it, you can't have it both ways … Complaining about lack of social responsibility after a career in the employ of the infamous tax dodging Barclay brothers is a exercise in hypocrisy. It's more two faced and sanctimonious than Neil attacking people who wear hairpieces”. DOUBLE OUCH!

A corporate social media account shows how to do Twitter effectively. Representatives of our Government refuse to learn the lesson. And neither does a supposed media titan.

It might have been a Brillo Twitter intervention. But it wasn’t a very brill one.

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