The Watchers and the Gatekeepers
A Gatekeeper stands at a gate, deciding who gets through and who does not. The gatekeeper may be a person, group, or system that controls access to spaces, information, resources, opportunities—or even the truth about a particular issue. Gatekeepers can perform a valuable function, protecting resources from misuse and improving efficiency. Equally, they can act unfairly, creating unnecessary barriers and excluding people from opportunities.
Alongside the Gatekeepers are what I call the Watchers. If the Gatekeepers control access, the Watchers observe, monitor, assess, and report. The Watchers identify who is conforming to accepted narratives and who is challenging them. They gather information, monitor behaviour, and increasingly use technology and algorithms to track opinions, actions, and influence. While the Gatekeepers decide who passes through the gate, the Watchers provide much of the information upon which those decisions are made.
The relationship between the two is often symbiotic. The Watchers watch, classify, and report; the Gatekeepers decide who should be promoted, trusted, amplified, restricted, or excluded. In a healthy society, both perform useful functions by maintaining standards and protecting institutions. In an unhealthy system, however, they can become mutually reinforcing forces that suppress dissent and limit open debate.
In my last blog, I wrote about career politicians. Once in office, they often become some of the most powerful Watchers and Gatekeepers in society. They are frequently the individuals most committed to enforcing their party's ideological narrative and, therefore, the ones we should be most wary of. Their entire working lives are devoted to specific ideological politics, their political beliefs being central to their identity.
Consider, for example, Ed Miliband, who has spent most of his adult life in politics. He is firmly committed to single-mindedly taking the UK further down the Net Zero path, regardless of the cost and the views of others, at a time when the country is already carrying enormous debt following the Covid years. Many respected experts question aspects of current climate projections and policy responses, yet dissenting voices often struggle to gain access to mainstream platforms. In effect, they are prevented from passing through the gate and presenting alternative viewpoints to the public.
Control of the information narrative has a profound influence on public opinion and, ultimately, on the parties and individuals people choose to support at the ballot box. This is where the Watchers and the Gatekeepers work most effectively together. The Watchers help identify which opinions are acceptable and which are not; the Gatekeepers determine which voices are given a platform and which are denied one.
For this reason, the role of both the Watchers and the Gatekeepers is vital to a political party's popularity and its ability to remain in power. Those who control access to information, debate, and public visibility wield influence far beyond their formal positions. They help shape not only what people think, but also what they believe is acceptable to think.
The greatest danger arises when the same institutions perform both roles simultaneously—watching, judging, and controlling access. When this occurs, the distinction between oversight and control begins to disappear. The real danger is that the public may no longer be aware of how the boundaries of acceptable debate are being drawn around them.