The BBC quotes Kirsty as saying that the online abuse she and other politicians had received was "unforgivable", and it was this level of trolling that forced her to leave politics:
Speaking to politician Lee Waters - who has said he will step down next year - on the Fifth Floor podcast, she said the way she was targeted "badly" affected her children.
She added that when she told them about her new role as chairwoman of the Cardiff and Vale health board, her daughters told her "don't do it, we can't go through this again".
"I didn't realise how badly it affected my family," she said, adding that once news of her new role was made public the "pack" were back online "telling everybody what a terrible person I am".
Williams said that being a politician was "no worse or better than many other jobs that people do".
"Most sane people would run a mile from putting themselves into that environment," she said, referring to the level of criticism received.
"I'm worried that it's baked in now. People who go for that job accept that this is how they're going to have to live their lives.
"It's not pleasant."
She was speaking to Waters, who was Welsh Labour's former deputy minister for climate change and who previously received "insults and abuse" for the introduction of the 20mph law.
Kirsty Williams was speaking to politician Lee Waters, who said he received "insults and abuse" for the introduction of the 20mph law
Williams feared the wrong type of person would be able to sustain a life in politics because "you have to have a certain kind of personality" to put up with abuse.
"And I'm not convinced that the people who can put up with that, and ignore it, are perhaps not the people that you need in the political environment getting things done," she said.
She described that as "probably the greatest threat to liberal democracy".
As somebody who served with Kirsty in the Welsh Assembly for seventeen years, I know what a talented and capable politician she was. We are fortunate that she continues to serve the public in other roles since standing down in 2021, but she is absolutely right, this level of abuse is unacceptable and undermines the whole democratic process. It is sad and deeply regrettable that it continues to this day.
I wonder if the whole system we use for electing our political representatives is an inadequate replication of democracy in which, in many cases, we elect people whom we do not trust to make decisions on our behalf, and where all the candidates have been preselected by small, self-appointed, unrepresentative groups of people. There are better ways of doing this.
ReplyDeleteInteresting point re whether those who can cope with the onslaught of press/media/online attacks are actually the right people to have in politics. Would those types be less likely to understand and respond to ordinary people's real problems? Hard to avoid such onslaughts as they've become 'normalised' but would an intermediary help, who could just deal with all that and sort the real problems from the dross? Should those in politics just switch off a bit more from media and especially from online sites?
ReplyDeleteI have no idea whether I am being abused on X or Facebook (or indeed nost other Social Media sites) because I no longer have a presence on them. It is surely time for sensible politicians to abandon Social Media until such time as its owners properly regulate abuse. Social Media as it is, is simply a free for all where many of its contributors feel able to abandon all forms of civility in favour of ignorance and abuse. Well this politician refuses to participate.
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