How smartphones broke British politics – POLITICO

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POLITICO Pro

June 11, 2026

4:00 am CET

Stand still for a moment in Westminster and watch; you could be forgiven for thinking the lawmakers coming and going are in love with the smartphones glued to their hands.

But ask one how they feel about their device and you might get a surprising answer: “I hate my phone. I hate it, I hate it with a passion,” said Clive Lewis, a member of the U.K. Parliament and an influential figure on the resurgent “soft left” of the ruling Labour party.

“I hate my phone,” echoed an MP from an opposition party.

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“I bloody hate the freneticism” smartphones cause, said a second Labour MP, a serving minister, bemoaning “the lack of attention, focus and real listening.”

Be that as it may. Just like the rest of us, Britain’s lawmakers are hooked on their devices. Tune in to the House of Commons live feed during any given debate and count how many are scrolling.

Economic stagnation, Covid-19, energy crises, the furious debate over Brexit — there are plenty of reasons why the U.K. has been plagued by a decade of extraordinary political instability in the 10 years since it voted to leave the EU. Six prime ministers — potentially soon seven — have tried and largely failed to control the chaos.

And yet there’s another force that has helped disrupt British politics, one so ingrained in the daily business of Westminster that its effects are rarely considered: the rise of smartphones and the hyperfrenetic pace of politics they’ve engendered.

“It’s changed political thinking, changed political consciousness, changed modus operandi,” said historian Anthony Seldon, biographer of seven of the eight prime ministers the U.K. has had in the 21st century. “And it’s made life more difficult for the prime minister at No. 10. Significantly more difficult.”

Westminster in your pocket

While it’s not easy to pin down the precise effect of smartphones, there’s no denying that their reach penetrates deep into Westminster. They are woven into every aspect of how MPs, ministers, journalists and party officials gather news, communicate, plot, scheme and maneuver.

“It’s the first thing I reach for in the morning and the last thing I put down at the end of the day,” said the opposition MP, who was granted anonymity to speak in frank terms about his personal smartphone use — which includes “sending WhatsApps and checking emails at four in the morning.”

“X, Instagram, Facebook, it’s never-ending,” the MP said. “Even when away or on recess, due to smartphones, you now carry Westminster with you everywhere you go.”

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Political grievances are amplified, while demands for change gather momentum and culminate (faster than before) in calls for drastic action — such as, say, ousting the prime minister.

“It definitely contributes to the churn,” said the MP, who outwardly appears to enjoy the cut and thrust of political life. “No one switches off, takes time to reflect or think. Everyone has to be commenting on everything, all the time. If you haven’t commented on a news story within 10 minutes of the BBC Breaking News alert, then you’re yesterday’s news.”

James Lyons, who served as director of strategic communications in Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Downing Street between 2024 and 2025, calls it “swipe-right culture.”

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer facetimes while attending a defense summit in Helsinki in March. | Pool photo by Adrian Dennis via Getty Images

“You can order a takeaway, you can buy a book, you can even organize a date [on your smartphone]. That kind of instant gratification culture doesn’t lend itself to … long-term fixes for the country,” Lyons said. “Via social media on their smartphone, MPs are at the beck and call of constituents and can be pressured by lobby groups all the time.”

Even those who see their relationship with their phone as toxic acknowledge it’s too deeply embedded in political life to abandon. “I would love to get rid of my phone, but I’m terrified,” said Lewis, the Labour MP, speaking (on his smartphone) in a rare quiet moment one afternoon during the May parliamentary recess. “Terrified I’ll lose out on the things that are going on.”

When historians look back at the last decade of political upheaval, Lewis believes “there will be whole books written on this, about the impact of this technology; how it affected people’s brains.”

Groupthink

Smartphones have done more than make politics faster and more frantic: They’ve changed how power is organized. The phenomenon exploded during the years after the Brexit vote of 2016, as the U.K. debated how exactly it should leave the EU — and WhatsApp emerged as the country’s (and the world’s) favorite messaging app.

“Many was the occasion, when I bemoaned the existence of WhatsApp groups,” former Prime Minister Theresa May complained in her recent memoir “The Abuse of Power,” reflecting on the events...