It’s been a mere two weeks since Keir Starmer sent a classroom of Year 2 pupils into a frenzy by doing the 6-7 dance, and it seems he’s got a taste for that world.
Yes, the PM is now an official user of TikTok – the platform where viral infotainment and nonsense memes are born and die, before being reposted on Instagram a few weeks later.
Starmer posted his first video just after 11am, showing him and his wife Victoria walking out the iconic door of 10 Downing Street for the Christmas lights switch-on last Monday.
Perhaps keen to avoid courting controversy with anything too complex, he says just three blunt words to the camera: ‘TikTok. Follow me.’
Then there’s a rather weak countdown and a blast of cheesy festive music, the lights are turned on by litter-picker Samuel Salamone, and we loop back to the start.
As you might expect, reactions to the post were… mixed.
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Among the first ten commenters was someone saying ‘Do one mate’, a contribution that appears to have since been removed.
Others have gained hundreds of likes for asking how long it will take for the PM’s team to turn the comments off, while there are more than a few calls for Starmer to resign.
Asked what was behind the move, a No 10 source told Metro: ‘We’re finding new was to share our vision of national renewal wherever people are – from TikTok and Substack to traditional media.’
(You read that right. The Prime Minister has also set up a Substack account, reaching a very different audience with his first 2,300-word post.)
According to Ofcom, 11% of Brits use TikTok to get their news – though this rises to an impressive 28% among 12 to 15-year-olds.
But the site isn’t without its controversies. After all, there’s a reason Starmer has waited 18 months into his term as PM to set up his account.
The app is not allowed on government devices, due to security concerns related to its Chinese parent company ByteDance, and the website is not accessible on parliamentary WiFi.
According to the PM’s official spokesman, there have been no changes to that policy and ‘security mitigations’ are in place with the new account.
As for us at Metro, we don’t mind what Starmer posts as long as he remembers to follow our Alright, Gov? account for all his political news.
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