The best MPs on Twitter: Ten – Tom Harris
Ten: Tom Harris
17/30
Entertaining 5
Informative 5
Engaging with constituents 4
Regularity 3
Harris has long been required reading on Twitter. The Scottish Labour MP is funny, eloquent, honest, steely and impatient. He can be tough. His mockery of his attackers on Twitter shows a man who resembles a columnist as much as he does an MP. Nevertheless he is to be commended for standing up for his profession, in numerous tweets and blog posts, against a public which often associates being a member of parliament with being a criminal. "Just had some idiot on Twitter telling me I should be "MP-ing" instead of watching the tennis. #goodgrief" he wrote recently. His Commons commentary is also golden. "Dear front benchers – when you throw your head back ostentatiously to 'laugh' derisively, you look like an idiot." Harris is the opposite of those fake, positive Twitter accounts most MPs manage in a desperate bid never to cause offence. In actual fact, Harris really isn't nice at all. He's a political attack dog with a side-serving of Doctor Who trivia. Firm, workmanlike and delivered from the trenches: this is beefy stuff.
