Sorry, tacky emoji won’t fix our broken politics

The weirdest week in politics just got weirder.

As Europe falls apart, Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton rolled out her latest tacky attempt to “engage” with the youth of today. Yes, politics have reached a new low, with the introduction of Hillarymoji.

At a time when youth engagement in politics is worse than ever (look at the level of youth participation in the EU referendum and weep), iPhone-toting millennials will of course be delighted to download Hillary’s new keyboard with 20 stickers to share with all of their politically non-engaged friends. That’s the theory at least.

Think that’s bad? It gets worse.

Although it’s unofficial – bets are on if Team Theresa will claim her emoji for all to share.

Politicians can’t seem to stop screwing up on digital channels. Remember Cameron’s cringe messages on Tinder, urging young people to vote in the referendum? That worked out well didn’t it.

And Hillary’s already got history with this, when her attempt last year to ask millennials to describe how the felt about student debt in 3 emoji tragically backfired.

We need to stop patronising young people.

Politicians: parachuting your way into their modern ways of life is like breaking into student union night and pretending to fit in. Not cool, not cool at all.

As I wrote earlier this week, social media has made the divide in society even worse. Corbynistas are shouting at other Corbynistas (with Snapchats and all) while Britain First fanatics can believe (wrongly) that they’re bigger than they are by endlessly flooding Facebook.

Future Government of Britain (whoever you are) I beg you, forget the digital gimmicks and get to work on the real issues.

That would be the smartest move we’ve seen all week.