UK government launches WhatsApp channel – and everyone made the same joke

In yet another case of jokes about UK politics writing themselves, the government took to Twitter/X on Monday morning to share a WhatsApp-style graphic saying “something exciting is coming” and, of course, that went as well as you’d expect.

The “exciting” announcement was that the government would be using the messaging app to send “the latest news, updates and helpful information” to anyone who’s interested, but the use of WhatsApp by ministers in the past has not come without controversy.

Just last month, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told the Covid inquiry he had no copies of WhatsApp messages from the early months of the coronavirus pandemic because he changed his phone “multiple times over the past few years”, while ex-PM Boris Johnson denied deleting messages after it was revealed he couldn’t provide the inquiry with texts from February to June 2020.

Back in June the government found itself arguing with the inquiry over releasing what it considered to be “unambiguously irrelevant material” from Johnson, going so far as to launch a judicial review against the request which it lost a month later.

Then, in October, shocking messages from former chief of staff Dominic Cummings were made public which saw the Vote Leave architect brand the Cabinet Office as “terrifyingly s***” when it comes to handling the pandemic, complain he had to sit with Boris Johnson for “two hours just to stop him saying stupid s***”, and label the cabinet “useless f***pigs”.

As such, everyone was left asking the same question when the tweet was posted:

The first message posted to the WhatsApp channel – which currently has more than 1,000 followers at the time of writing – reads: “Hey WhatsApp. We’ve arrived.

“From now on, if there’s information you need to know from the UK Government, we’ll WhatsApp you.”

More than 180 people have reacted to the message so far, with the ‘tears of joy’ laughing emoji being the joint-most popular reaction alongside the ‘thumbs up’ emoji.

They followed this up three hours later with a sticker of a town crier.

So that’s gone down well, then…

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