Truth is the casualty in British election ad wars

Prime Minister Boris Johnson rallies the troops in Colchester, England. Picture: Getty Images

Greta Thunberg is curled in a corner, wearing a yellow oilskin jacket, looking both angry and sad. “I can’t vote on Dec 12,” says a placard next to her. “But you can.” The advertisement, posted on Facebook to voters in key British marginal seats, included the message “Vote Green — Make your vote count for the future”.

There was even a link to the local Green Party website, attached to the slogan “Vote for the Planet!” According to the Facebook ad library, more than 300,000 people saw this message, which was targeted at voters in Remain-supporting towns including Southampton, Oxford, Sheffield, Bath, Cambridge and Brighton.

It clearly touched a nerve but it has nothing to do with the Green Party. The ad was promoted by an organisation called 3rd Party Ltd, set up last month by Thomas Borwick, the former chief technology officer of Vote Leave and deputy chairman of the Cities of London and Westminster Conservative Association. The purpose appears to be an attempt to split the Remain vote in certain constituencies in order to boost the Tory candidate’s chances of winning and make it more likely that Boris Johnson stays as Prime Minister.

In this hall-of-mirrors election campaign, nothing is quite what it seems. While Brexiteers are urging people in some constituencies to vote for Remain-supporting parties, Remainers in other seats are pushing voters towards the Brexit Party. An ad posted in Leave-voting areas by Advance Together, the pro-European centrist party, includes a photo of Nigel Farage with the message: “Farage’s verdict is in: If Boris abandons no deal, we’ll never be free.” It is designed to suppress the Conservative vote in the so-called “red wall” of Labour seats in the north and the Midlands. “We have to fight fire with fire until nobody is allowed to play with fire any more,” says Advance Together’s Kyle Taylor.

Even as the political parties engage in public battles, a guerrilla war is being waged on their behalf through social media. More than 60 “third-party organisations” have registered with the Electoral Commission in the past few weeks in order to campaign in the run up to next Thursday’s election.

A campaign called Working4UK, created “to give a voice to British business owners”, has spent £21,107 ($40,000) on Facebook ads attacking Labour’s plans for corporation tax rises and nationalisation plans.

Although there is no mention of the Tory party, the founder of the campaign is Suraj Sharma, a Conservative councillor. “Technology has led to the democratisation of opinion, with individuals able to participate in the democratic process in a way they’ve never been able to previously,” he told me, but most voters will not be aware of his own political loyalties.

Almost £10,000 has been spent in the past week alone by Right to Rent, Right to Buy, Right to Own, which describes itself as a campaign to “defend both property owners and renters against potentially damaging changes” in a “turbulent market”. The ads include the claims that “Labour wants to punish those who own their own home” and “Jeremy Corbyn wants to decide who gets approved for a mortgage”. Again the word Conservative does not appear anywhere in the ads but the content is sponsored by Jennifer Powers, a Tory activist and former party intern.

The Fair Tax Campaign, run by former Downing Street aide Alex Crowley, has paid more than £17,000 for Facebook ads criticising Labour’s economic plans. Parents’ Choice has been highlighting the educational backgrounds of Corbyn and his team. “Labour’s top 4 all either attended or sent their children to private or selective schools,” says one Facebook ad that has been viewed more than 100,000 times. This is not a message that the Tory party could officially promote, given that Johnson went to Eton, but it could be effective in the working-class areas the Conservatives need to win. The organisation is registered in the name Richard Tracey, a former Tory minister.

None of this is illegal but there is a lack of clarity. The all-party parliamentary group on electoral campaigning transparency concludes, in a report to be published next month, that there is a “large loophole that needs to be addressed” in the governance of third-party organisations.

In the era of fake news, truth has become the casualty of a depressingly dishonest election campaign. Liberal Democrats leader Jo Swinson was forced to deny a made-up story that she enjoys killing squirrels. Labour has repeatedly suggested that the National Health Service is “for sale” although there is no evidence to back this up.

Bizarrely, Johnson told the BBC TV on Sunday that the Queen’s Speech had been “blocked by parliament” even though this was one of the few votes he won.

When the Prime Minister insisted that he believed the truth matters” the TV audience laughed in his face. At a time when trust in politicians is at an all-time low, that ought to worry the Tories, but they should perhaps be more concerned that their leader simply doesn’t care.

The Times