Bang-average British girl band The Sugababes started in 1998 with Siobhán Donaghy, Mutya Buena, and Keisha Buchanan (according to my research!). Over the years, Siobhán left and was replaced by Heidi Range. Then Mutya left, replaced by Amelle Berrabah. Finally, Keisha—the last original member—was ousted in favour of Jade Ewen, apparently.
By that point, not a single founding member remained. Yet, they were still called The Sugababes.
At what point did The Sugababes stop being The Sugababes? Or did they ever?
This is the Ship of Theseus problem—a famous thought experiment about identity and change.
Imagine a group of Vikings from Vikingland setting off to raid, trade, and generally cause mayhem across Europe. Every time their ship took damage, they replaced a plank here or a sail there. After years of conquest, every single piece of the ship had been replaced.
Is it still the same ship?
And what about we humans?
Biology tells us that every cell in our body is replaced over time. We shed old skin, grow new neurons, regenerate tissue. Psychologically, we change too—our values evolve, our perspectives shift. The person you were at 18 is not the person you are today (which begs the question as to the moral sense in punishing people for crimes they committed when none of those “criminal cells” remain).
Andrew Gray, aged 45 in 2025, has little in common with Andrew Gray from 25 years ago.
But the digital world won’t let us forget what we did.
Our Digital Footprint That Won’t Let Us Evolve
I was thinking about Viking ships and The Sugababes while in Sheffield on Friday, 27th February 2025, at a democracy conference. Speaking with some exceptional young people, one thing became clear: I was lucky to grow up without a digital footprint.
When I was 18, I could say something stupid, change my mind, and move on. At 18 today, you say something stupid, and it follows you forever—archived, searchable, and weaponisable.
Just ask former Scottish Nationalist Party MP, Mhairi Black.
Elected as an SNP MP at just 20 years old, she became one of the youngest MPs in Westminster history. But other than her age, what made the headlines? The media dug up offensive tweets she had posted years earlier while drinking as a teenager. Some of her tweets are quite funny!
Never mind that she had grown up. Never mind that teenage stupidity is universal. Those tweets became a defining moment in how she was perceived.
Our generation – the pre-internet generation – got to reinvent itself. Whereas younger people today feel that they’re stuck with a permanent, public record of every dumb joke, every regrettable opinion, every bad decision.
I find this troubling.
Because if every thought, every experiment, every flawed belief is recorded, does that stop us from thinking in the first place?
They say true moral character is revealed in what you do when nobody is watching.
But in the digital world, someone is always watching.
Thinking the Unthinkable
Tony Blair once said that his greatest mistake wasn’t Iraq—it was the Freedom of Information Act. (It wasn’t: it was Iraq).
His exact words:
“Freedom of Information. Three harmless words. I look at those words as I write them, and feel like shaking my head till it drops off my shoulders. You idiot. You naive, foolish, irresponsible nincompoop.”
Because it made honest internal discussions impossible. Civil servants and politicians stopped interrogating difficult problems, fearing that unpalatable ideas might be leaked. They became performers, more concerned with how things looked than how things worked. As I do, many of us write in order to think. By avoiding writing – for fear of the future – we stop thinking.
Blair believed the FOI Act stifled discussion, because officials became too worried about what could be leaked rather than tackling the hard problems.
For all his recklessness, even Boris Johnson needed a place to think privately. The problem isn’t just that his messages ‘disappeared’—it’s that in a digital world, we expect everything to be on record. But if leaders can’t discuss the unthinkable in private, how do they ever solve difficult problems like Covid?
That’s why, in part, I co-founded Suffrago—an anonymous, AI-driven democracy tool inspired by Polis. A space where people could speak without fear, where their political soul could be unearthed.
Because in this digital world, what we say seems to matter more than what we do. That’s wrong.
In the digital age, words last forever—even when actions prove them wrong. But as Benjamin Franklin put it: “Well done is better than well said.”
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Unrelatedly, my ugly mug appeared on this piece in The York Press.
