By Chris Harris.
In Aesop’s fable, the boy who cried wolf did not lose his flock because of the wolf. He lost it because he steadily drained the value from his own voice. Each false alarm weakened the link between what he said and what was true, until even the truth carried no weight. The lesson is not really about wolves. It is about credibility. When words and actions drift apart, trust erodes quietly, then all at once.
That is the uncomfortable territory Lewes FC now occupies.
The political theatre this week at the heart of Government, with cabinet ministers lining up on X to declare loyalty to Keir Starmer, exposed a wider contradiction. A centre-left movement continues to rely on a platform whose culture, ownership and algorithmic direction increasingly jar with its stated values. Think about it, in years to come it will be seen as gobsmacking the hypocrisy of the centre and left of this country utilising a far right medium for the sake of convenience.
That hypocrisy maybe slightly justified temporarily in Westminster as the wheels of change turn so slowly, incidentally not a view I ascribe to, you just get on with these things. At Lewes FC , it is not.
Lewes FC had built a small national reputation around equality, feminism and progressive governance, that it still trades off. The club presents itself as a pioneer. It speaks confidently in the language of fairness and moral leadership. But it continues to operate on X, long after the platform has become synonymous with rising hate speech, toxic discourse and weakened moderation. For a club that trades so heavily on principle, this is not a minor inconsistency. It is a test of whether words still carry weight. Its communications, after all, are not bound up with X like the machinery at Westminster.
The Legitimacy Problem of Staying on X
The most common defence is familiar: if progressive voices leave X, the platform becomes a right-wing echo chamber. It sounds noble. It feels responsible. But it also misunderstands how influence works.
Platforms retain power because credible institutions validate them. X shapes debate because governments, media organisations and civic bodies continue to treat it as indispensable. Participation sustains legitimacy. Withdraw that participation and legitimacy begins to thin.
Lewes FC is not a government department bound by emergency communications protocols. It is a football club with a modest digital footprint and a relatively small engagement base on X. The practical consequences of leaving would be minor to zero. The symbolic consequences would be meaningful. In fable terms, this is the moment where words either retain their value — or lose a little more of it. It is inexcusable the club lazily, still utilises the platform.
Alternatives exist. BlueSky exists. Instagram exists. Direct email communication exists. Club websites and community forums exist. The argument that there is nowhere else to speak is simply not credible.
For context, I used Twitter for the fanzine and built 1,000-plus followers. I left for BlueSky and haemorrhaged numbers in the process. That is what happens when principle has a cost. Sometimes you lose audience in order to keep integrity. Since leaving my content as grown as I simply found other ways to generate traffic.
Progressive Branding Versus Progressive Action
Equality, safeguarding and feminism are not decorative badges. They are commitments that demand alignment between rhetoric and behaviour. They are supposedly important to the club, but are they now just instruments for convenient branding, I think so, and most people agree.
Continuing to operate on a platform widely criticised for amplifying abuse and misinformation while presenting the club as a beacon of morality creates a visible gap between identity and action. The more that gap widens, the more supporters begin to question whether this language is conviction or branding.
That is where the fable becomes relevant again. Credibility is not destroyed in a single dramatic moment. It fades incrementally, each time behaviour contradicts principle. Each time convenience overrides conviction. Each time the wolf is invoked rhetorically, but the action does not follow.
What Leadership Would Actually Look Like
Leadership here would be simple. Announce a departure from X. Explain the reasoning clearly and calmly. Invite supporters to follow elsewhere. Frame the decision as consistent with the club’s stated commitment to equality and responsible governance.
Instead, there is inertia. We have not even actioned the bare minimum, which is to indicate a shift to the aligned Blue Sky.
Be aware, inertia is not neutral. It signals that convenience outweighs conviction. It suggests that progressive rhetoric is easier than progressive action. With every week that passes, the club’s voice risks sounding a little less authoritative when it speaks about equality.
Lewes FC cannot continue to present itself as Equality FC while ignoring the reputational and ethical implications of remaining on X. The opportunity to lead still exists. But credibility, once thinned, is harder to rebuild.
In Aesop’s story, the real tragedy was not the wolf. It was the moment when the villagers stopped listening.
In Aesop’s fable, the boy is not punished by the wolf; he is punished by the collapse of belief. Once the villagers decide his voice no longer corresponds to reality, he is finished. That is the real warning. Lewes FC has invested heavily in the language of equality, fairness and moral leadership. But branding built on principle only survives if principle is visible in action. If the club continues to speak in the tones of Equality FC while behaving in ways that jar with that identity, the damage will not arrive in a dramatic headline. It will arrive quietly — in dwindling trust, growing cynicism and the slow erosion of meaning behind its most cherished words. And once that erosion sets in, reclaiming credibility is far harder than protecting it in the first place.
It all contributes not only to the dramatic decline in women’s attendances, but, less talked about, though equally noticeable, a drop in the men’s crowds as well. Volunteers are increasingly hard to find. Board members haemorrhage away. Activity on social media and supporter forums declines year after year. Election turnout is negligible. Attendance at AGMs and Town Hall meetings is, frankly, embarrassing. The board has steadily eroded the meaning of fan ownership and Equality, reducing what were once powerful principles to little more than fashionable slogans. The institutional rot is palpable as everything we were told to believe in becomes a meaningless fad. Remaining on X stands as a monument to that reality.
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The Rights of Fans. 