Few MPs have mastered the art of TikTok, but Gordon McKee is determined to try. The 30-year-old Labour MP for Glasgow South has seen several of his short videos on the platform go viral, from assembling flatpack furniture to explain why Britain doesn’t build anything, to being stuck at an airport to reveal how Labour is working to cut delays to flights – drawing more viewers than most Westminster speeches or TV appearances could dream of.
McKee is clear about why he first logged on as a politician: because he already used the platform himself. “I think the key thing is that I actually do watch TikTok,” he said. “I spend about an hour a day watching this content, and I was seeing no Labour politicians. Nigel Farage, unfortunately, does it extremely well [so] we should try and be on the platform.”
For McKee, whose constituency is younger and more diverse, the appeal is obvious. “I’m very lucky to represent a very young diverse constituency, where probably more of my constituents use it than many of my colleagues, so it’s just a good way of reaching a young demographic.”
‘You can’t boringly sit in front of a camera and talk about policy’
Being on the app is not the same as being good at it, however. TikTok, like many other social media platforms, is a crowded place – where attention is scarce. “Twenty or thirty years ago, politicians were competing with The Weakest Link or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” McKee reflects. “They had their slot on TV [and] you either watched it or you didn’t. Now, on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, you’re competing with videos of cats on the internet. That’s much more difficult. That is much more difficult. You can’t boringly sit in front of a camera and spend four minutes talking about policy – it won’t work. You have to make it engaging and entertaining.”
For help, McKee received advice from people who already know how to thrive in that environment. Earlier this year, he did a collaboration in Parliament with Ukrainian content creator Max Klymenko, who has more than seven million followers on TikTok. “I tried to learn from him about what works. Making good, engaging videos is a real skill – I definitely haven’t mastered that yet. One of the bits of advice that Max gave was that you really want to minimise the effort each video takes. You’re not making a feature film, you’re just making a 30 second video – so you don’t want to spend hours of time thinking through that.”
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McKee’s best performing clip, with close to a million views on TikTok, was on the government’s Employment Rights Bill, which has sought to expand protections for workers. “Had we, as a party, done enough back then to sell the bill to the generation of people that it was really going to impact? Probably not,” he admits. “So the idea was: how we can we make this legislation really meaningful and really impactful and digestible in a 30 second video? We picked out the clauses that we thought would be most relevant to an audience on TikTok – zero-hours and flexible contracts, protections for young workers – and just ahead and made it.”
Since he started posting after the start of the general election campaign, McKee has noticed that certain content works better with his colleagues in “the bubble” around SW1, while others will perform best among the general public. While Employment Rights Bill video is McKee’s most viewed video, it did not get the same traction as another video of him touting the benefits of improved animal welfare rules for zoos, which saw him ‘interview’ a llama named Leo – which received around 14,000 views. “You realise how much cut-through you get with these videos. There are some things that do really well in ‘the bubble’ but don’t do really well in real life, and vice versa. I feel like your job as a politician is to try and communicate with actual people, not Westminster insiders.”
READ MORE: ‘Young people are locked out of homeownership – bold action is needed’
‘People can smell inauthenticity immediately’
If there is a golden rule, McKee believes it is authenticity. “Your content has to be authentic. People can smell inauthenticity immediately,” he said. That can mean sometimes leaning into humour and comedy to sell a message, while other times being serious. After Reform UK narrowly won the Runcorn and Helsby by-election left his team and the wider party downbeat, McKee recorded a short reflection of his thoughts.
“Everybody was a bit down about it and I was like ‘why don’t we just do a video where I just say what I think and just talk – not some manufactured thing’ – and we edited together a 45 second video of thoughts.” The clip is one of his best performing videos with more than 25 thousands views. “The key thing is to be yourself,” McKee said.
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‘Viewing habits are only going in one direction’
McKee is not the only MP investing in social media. He name-checks his Labour colleague Mike Tapp, whose videos take a different approach. “I’m not planning to go and sail a boat around Dover, but he clearly thinks about it, which is good.”
He also cites Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for Mayor of New York City in November’s election – whose online videos captivated younger voters and helped him secure a convincing win in his party’s primary. “I’m not saying it’s just because of those great videos he made, but it’s probably quite a big part of the reason that he got the momentum to get the position he’s in.”
The broader trend is undeniable, McKee argues. “Viewing habits are only going in one direction – they’re moving away from terrestrial TV and towards people sitting on their phones. Whether that’s good or bad for society, it’s definitely happening – and if you as a politician want to reach people, you’ve got to be where they are – and that’s increasingly on social media.”
That, for McKee, comes with an urgency. “We’ve got to be honest with ourselves: Nigel Farage has more followers than every other MP combined. He does well on that platform because he makes videos people engage with. I disagree with the content of them all, but you’ve got to recognise that he’s doing it. We’ve got to try and counter that.”
McKee insists much of the credit should go to his team, who help with filming and editing. He sees his approach as part of a wider shift Labour has to embrace if it wants to connect with voters outside the Westminster bubble.
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