This article is part of POLITICO’s Westminster Survival Guide.
LONDON — The game has been reset. The relationships, networks and interests that define who wields power and influence in Westminster have been shaken up by the election. And though it may be hard to detect exactly who is up and who is down in the tea rooms and taverns, we do have one empirical measure of who matters — at least online — in 2020: Twitter.
Last year, POLITICO revealed the contours of the Westminster Twitter bubble by looking at whom MPs were following to reveal which politicians, journalists, celebrities and even dog-rating accounts were really being listened to.
Now that many MPs have changed, we’ve totted up the numbers once again to reveal who wields the most influence on Twitter for the new parliament.
Top of the twits
BBC Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg retains her crown as the most followed by an impressive 459 of the 561 MPs who have Twitter accounts. The list also suggests that — to no one’s surprise — MPs use Twitter as a news source and are pretty obsessive watchers of British politics.
The top of the table is much the same as when we downloaded the data last April, but what is striking is that the overall total number of MP follows on most of the top accounts has fallen, perhaps suggesting the new intake haven’t been as completely consumed by the Westminster bubble yet.
The biggest upward mover across every account MPs follow is new Conservative MP for Bishop Auckland, @DehennaDavison, who increased her MP following by 108. Newsnight Policy Editor Lewis Goodall has also added 100 more MPs since last year.
The wooden spoon for the biggest fall in MP following goes to erstwhile Labour, Change and Liberal Democrat MP Chuka Umunna, who is today followed by 71 fewer MPs than he was last year.
Journalists
If the above table tells us anything, it is that journalists matter more to MPs than their colleagues. But, of course, some journalists matter more on Twitter than others.
Strip out just the journalists and you can see broadcasters and right-leaning publications are particularly well represented. Here they are ranked by their number of MP followers:
Politicians
One relationship that has dominated British politics over the last decade is that between erstwhile schoolyard rivals David Cameron and Boris Johnson. With a majority in parliament of 80 compared with Cameron’s four, you might think Johnson has once and for all beaten his rival.
But there is still one place where Cameron is winning: Twitter. He remains the most followed politician by U.K. MPs — with 308 current MP followers, five more than the current prime minister.
Theresa May (remember her?) is followed by 291 of the current crop.
Labour leadership
The data also gives us a glimpse into the Labour leadership race to see which of the candidates are commanding the most attention from their parliamentary colleagues. The chart below shows the number of Labour MP followers of each of the contenders. Just as in the wider race, Keir Starmer leads the pack — with 164 Labour MP followers, and Lisa Nandy slightly behind at 162.
Twitter may also reflect one challenge faced by Rebecca Long-Bailey, whose candidacy has stumbled. She is only followed by 136 of her colleagues.
Brussels interlocutors
It appears MPs have been slow to react to regime change in Brussels. 105 MPs do follow @eucopresident, the account that new European Council President Charles Michel inherited from Donald Tusk, but only 33 follow Ursula von der Leyen, the new president of the European Commission. Michel himself has a little work to do if he wants to woo the British parliament.
Sabine Weyand, the Commission official who was chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier’s deputy during the first phase of Brexit talks and now runs the trade department, puts in a strong showing. However, European Trade Commissioner Phil Hogan, who will be crucial to the next stage in the Brexit process, is followed by 12 MPs.
Across the pond
Of course, Brexit isn’t the only thing on Britain’s mind. MPs are also watching who might take the White House from U.S. President Donald Trump in November.
So who is winning the all-unimportant “British legislators” demographic in the race to be the Democrats’ contender?
Bernie Sanders currently has a commanding lead, with 73 MP followers. Perhaps most interestingly, Elizabeth Warren is attracting more attention than former Vice President Joe Biden, with 50 MP followers compared with his 44.
The beautiful game
And finally, perhaps the most important question: Which football teams do MPs follow? Top of the table by some distance is Liverpool, whose account is followed by 22 MPs. Their rivals Everton are followed by just 5. Strong showing from Brighton and Hove Albion, who come in sixth.
The fun bit — try it yourself!
Now for something exciting. You’ve read our highlights but how do you score?
Enter your Twitter name — or the name of any other Twitter account — and our tool will show you how many MPs follow your account.
Don’t worry, no one will know if you search for yourself — unless you post the result on Twitter with hashtag #MPtwitterbubble.
Pro tip: Enter multiple usernames, separated by a comma, to compare the total MP followers on multiple Twitter accounts.
This is optimized for display on a desktop.
The methodology bit
To build the dataset, we downloaded data on the followers of every MP we could find who is active on Twitter (we based our list on the excellent website MPs on Twitter). The following data is a snapshot and is not updated in real time — so if an MP has followed or unfollowed someone since we collected the data in early January, then that will not be reflected in the results.
To build the search tool and keep our database at a manageable size, we culled any Twitter accounts from our database that are only followed by one MP, so all of the accounts listed are followed by at least two MPs.
Any data inputted into the search tool is used only to scour the database and provide results, it is not stored.
James O’Malley tweets as @Psythor, and is still only followed by five MPs.