Another day, another public spat between a cabinet minister and a Secretary of State over a clipped screenshot and a clever caption. The media treats these digital rows like high-stakes political chess matches. They dissect the timing, the tone, and the supposed subtext of a 280-character post as if it were the Treaty of Westphalia.
It is theater. Expensive, distracting, taxpayer-funded theater designed to draw your eyes away from the ledger.
When an economy minister and a senior official trade barbs about mischief-making on social media, the consensus reaction is to gasp at the breakdown of governmental decorum. Observers clutch their pearls and wonder how governance can function when leaders treat public forums like a high school quad. That reaction misses the point entirely. The decorum is not breaking down; the decorum is serving its exact purpose. It keeps you looking at the personality clash while the actual structural deficits go unaddressed.
I have sat in enough budget review rooms to know how this script plays out. When growth stalls, debt piles up, and structural reform stalls out, the easiest play in the book is a manufactured row. A public disagreement creates the illusion of friction, of two distinct visions colliding in real-time. It suggests that heavy lifting is happening behind closed doors, represented by the sparks flying on your phone screen.
Do not fall for it.
Real economic policy is boring. It is slow, technical, and full of compromises that nobody wants to post online. It involves painful tax adjustments, regulatory pruning, and hard choices about capital allocation. None of those things generate engagement metrics. None of those things win the morning news cycle.
So what do we get instead? A carefully choreographed exchange about who started a rumor or who misrepresented a policy timeline. It gives both sides what they want. The minister looks combative and protective of their portfolio. The Secretary of State looks unfazed and resolute. And the public gets a dopamine hit of righteous indignation, walking away convinced that politics is a battle of wills rather than a failure of execution.
The media apparatus feeds this cycle because outrage scales better than balance sheets. A breakdown in government communication makes for good headlines. A granular analysis of capital expenditure efficiency does not. But if you want to understand why productivity numbers remain flat and investment capital keeps heading elsewhere, stop reading the social media back-and-forth. Look at the empty legislative schedule underneath the noise.
The truth is that these public exchanges require cooperation. You cannot have a high-profile digital duel without tacit agreement from both camps on the rules of engagement. They know each other's schedules. They know when the press gallery is watching. They time their replies to maximize the ripple effect across the news cycle. It is a closed loop designed to consume your attention span until you forget what they were supposed to be solving in the first place.
When politicians accuse each other of mischief-making, translate it accurately: they are distracting you from their mutual inability to govern.
Next time you see a cabinet-level spat trending online, do not pick a side. Do not quote-tweet with your own take. Check the national debt clock instead. See what bills quietly passed committee while everyone was busy watching two adults argue on the internet.
The real mischief is not happening in the public exchange. The mischief is that you are paying for the show.
