Keir, you’re too old for TikTok — but if you must use it ...
Just before he headed off for an official visit to China, Keir Starmer announced that he’d joined TikTok via a short film of the PM and his wife switching on their Christmas tree lights at No 10 Downing Street. This despite the popular social media tool being technically restricted on government devices (too many scary security breaches from China) and, ironically, also banned in China (the CCP not wanting to encourage any form of western-made content reaching Chinese people).
My heart sank. TikTok? Really? Starmer is 63 years old. Doesn’t that make him — like me — about 40 years too old for something as grimly shallow and mind-numbingly ephemeral as a platform whose most popular users are a siloed bunch of vacuous nobodies (Khaby Lame? Charli Grace D’Amelio? Bella Poarch? Nope, me neither).
I had TikTok on my phone for a few months and had to get rid of it. Mainly I was looking at my youngest daughter Maddie’s fabulous make-up and styling content (“teethandlove Morbid Mills” 9,099 followers, 418.3k likes — have a look). But elsewhere I couldn’t bear the medium’s thing for reductive politics, talking heads and spaceinvading faces. I found the dumb dancing and earworm music moronic and the way the TikTok machine thought I was really into something because I’d looked at it for more than 20 seconds was very annoying. (Just because I watched a spectacular car crash clip doesn’t mean I want to see 30 more of them.)
Why has Starmer done this? Actually, the more pertinent question is why on earth didn’t he do it months (years) ago? Here are the figures: nearly 38.7 per cent of the UK population — approximately 23 million people — is expected to be on TikTok by the end of 2025. The largest demographic of users (more than 83 per cent) is those younger than 35, with 18-24-year-olds (aka young voters) the biggest group.
TikTok is now the third most-used social media platform in the UK, even bigger than X. And the UK ranks fifth globally in the total number of TikTok users. To put that in perspective, BBC2’s Newsnight attracts between 300,000 and 500,000 viewers, the majority of them older than 60.
The PM joins a whole raft of other politicians — Emmanuel Macron (6.5 million followers), the Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (aka “Lula”, 5.3 million), Nigel Farage (1.4 million) and Jeremy Corbyn (283,000) — who have also chosen to engage with the public by way of a communications platform dominated by endless footage of hooded yobs on ebikes swiping pedestrians’ mobile phones and teens showing off their goofy moves.
Talking of which, Donald Trump has 15.38 million TikTok followers and, with help from his 19-year-old son Barron, seems to know how to engage with it. Trump does his dumb YMCA Dad-dance thing, talks about Joe Rogan and frequently refers to how he “saved TikTok”. Sitting at his Oval Office desk looking like an orange Marvel comic rendering of a president, Trump tells his young audience that “one day, one of you kids will be sitting right here at this desk”. It’s loud, clear, brash, short-attention-span, straightto-camera, in-your-face stuff that follows TikTok’s “three-second rule” of engagement and sets a benchmark for staying popular and down with the kids in 2025.
I had TikTok on my phone for a few months. I had to get rid of it
Exactly what content should Starmer be posting? How can he attract more followers than Farage? I asked the Google Gemini AI model to help. Here’s what it suggested: “Authenticity, entertainment and reactivity are key. The platform favours raw, natural and authenticfeeling content.”
Easy. I’m thinking plenty of England football shirt action during the World Cup in 2026, more stuff with Starmer’s gorgeous “sassy” wife, Victoria, and her deeply “ human” and “authentic” NHS job. And yes, I know they are shy, but let’s see a lot more of the kids. That letter you wrote to your daughter (and posted on Instagram) would have been ten times more engaging and effective on TikTok with a voiceover of you reading out loud.
“Mix policy with humour/meme culture: content that incorporates popular memes, cultural references (like using clips of TV shows) or light-hearted political ridicule (aimed at the opposition) tends to be highly shareable and effective at gaining views.”
Oh dear — this bit might need some serious workshopping. Starmer’s recent (and quite hard to say) political catchphrase “delivery, delivery, delivery” is never going to worry TikTok trends such as “the Roman Empire” or “6-7”. Ditto “another future is possible” and “security, prosperity, respect”.
Can’t see his “Plan for Change” going TikTok viral either.
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