Last Friday, in an attempt to inject a bit of substance to the political debate on Twitter, we organised a day of positive politics for Mother’s Day. And as you can tell from the title of the post, it went extremely well.

First I was delighted with the general uptake: from each and every side of the political spectrum people were anxious and willing to join in; and reassuringly we even attracted Twitterers who had been alienated by the tone of the debate recently. Perhaps our the greatest achievements were the decision by #labourlost to suspend tweeting for 24 hours [thank you!] and the involvement from the political establishment. This was a sentiment that many people were genuinely interested in and receptive to; a sentiment that reflects the peril of the Bubble and how detached from reality the day-to-day mudslinging is.

Second we had a fantastic impact. Not only did Tweetminster detect the change in sentiment but my own very crude analysis of my feed and the #positivepolitics hashtag reflected this. Simply stated: Twitter was a more positive place when it came to politics on Friday. So well done to everyone for that. In fact we can go a little further: since there was a greater engagement from the Conservative half of the Twittersphere, we saw greater positivity come through in their numbers.

On the other hand it was somewhat disappointing to see the lengths that some people would go to avoid it. As a whole most of the MPs were extremely receptive towards the idea with a single exception. On balance the Labour crowd was less willing to engage — and indeed seemed happy to gleefully misinterpret the sentiment behind it! — and we can see this reflected by their less positive sentiment scores. As anyone who has followed my protests at stat-abuse will know, I’m extremely wary of drawing conclusions from a single event as there are a number of unique contributing factors that can skew it; however combined with a quick analysis of the last two months of my timeline, I respectfully submit that after Friday we have the evidence to suggest that if any party is deserving of the “Nasty Party” tag it is certainly not the Conservatives or their supporters.

I was really grateful and touched to receive so much support for this — a campaign started simply because the tone of the political debate on Twitter had descended to the lowest, most childish, form of name-calling — and I’m deeply reassured to discover that I’m not the only one out there. I think that the Great British electorate is a bit fed up of name-calling; of point-scoring; of negative, non-issues-oriented campaigning: we here; we’re engaged; and we want to hear how you intend to fix the status quo, not how the other party is going to break it. All of the parties were able to come up with good ideas (in the end) and all of the parties had supporters willing to support ideas from other parties. We were even content to let the latest shameful example of expenses abuse pass without too much comment!

To everyone who showed that it is possible to have a grown-up difference of opinions on the internet: a massive thank you. You know who you were, and you did a great job. We did it [link NSFW].

And this is for all of you.