UK Conservative Party caught openly using disinformation in their election campaign

This story hit the headlines, but has been brushed off by Conservative politicians in a series of interviews. However, it is a pivotal moment in the UK’s political journey through Brexit, Boris Johnson, Cambridge Analytica, Dominic Cummings, Russia, and more.

What happened?

During the first televised debate between the leaders of the Conservative and Labour parties, the Twitter account of CCHQ, the Conservative Central Head Quarters, was rebranded as UKFactcheck. That account then started criticising Labour claims made in the debate as being untrue or inaccurate.

It was clearly designed to mislead. Whilst they kept the handle @CCHQPress, they renamed the account UKFactcheck, and created a branded banner with the same name.

This illustrates a few things that we already know about the Conservatives:

1. They are using Social Media in an underhand way to mislead the electorate

2. They have no regard for electoral rules and social norms

3. They are not very clever, and are pretty incompetent

On its own, this story is just embarrassing. It was a pathetic attempt to mislead people, because the Twitter handle remained the same…