Fake claims that Newsnight photoshopped Jeremy Corbyn to make him look like a “Soviet stooge” had a social media reach of over 2 million, analysis by Guido can reveal. By contrast, tweets from the BBC debunking the untrue claims received just 2,400 retweets.

Owen Jones’ Newsnight performance in which he alleged “you had Jeremy Corbyn dressed up as a Soviet stooge, you even photoshopped his hat to look more Russian” – an untrue assertion that the BBC has debunked – was clipped up by Momentum and other prominent Corbynista Twitter accounts. The fake claim was also pushed by Labour MP Laura Pidcock. The numbers are a case study in how fake news can go viral:

• Momentum’s Facebook video falsely claiming the BBC “dressed up” Corbyn had 716,000 views and 20,000 shares.
• Momentum’s Twitter video had 266,000 views.
• The same video from the @Limitless_Josh Twitter account had a further 157,000 views.
• A video from the @jennie_bujold Twitter account had another 70,000 views.
• Newsnight’s Twitter video of the same section had 204,000 views.
• Owen Jones repeatedly pushed the claims on his own Twitter account, even after they had been denied and debunked. He has 738,000 followers, his tweets were retweeted 9,000 times.
• Similar claims by the @ToryFibs account were sent to their 93,000 followers and retweeted 3,000 times.
• Labour MP Laura Pidcock tweeted the untrue claim to her 40,000 followers, she was retweeted 2,300 times.
• By contrast… the BBC Press Office tweets denying they photoshopped the image were retweeted just 600 times. Newsnight acting editor Jess Brammar’s tweets debunking the claims had just 1,800 retweets.

This means the hat-gate claims were sent viral to a similar degree as the animal sentience fake news last year. This is not the first time Corbynistas have knowingly pushed untrue claims to millions of unwitting social media users. Owen and his comrades know what they’re doing…

Data Guido has been working hard in a dark room, crunching the numbers to see whether our top broadcast journalists really are impartial on Brexit. So far we have analysed Robert Peston’s relentlessly negative Twitter feed and Nick Robinson’s less than neutral musings. Next up we have Sky News’ Faisal Islam, the Remainers’ TV darling…

• Faisal has sent 1,467 tweets about Brexit since 24 June 2016.
• 87 tweets had a positive sentiment, that’s just 6% of his total tweets.
• 697 tweets were neutral, that’s 47.5%.
• 683 tweets were negative, that is 46.5% of his total Brexit tweets having a negative sentiment.

Faisal tweets a huge amount about Brexit, far more than Peston or Robbo. The vast majority of his tweets are split between having either a negative sentiment or a neutral sentiment. Only 6% have a positive sentiment. He has sent a massive 683 negative tweets about Brexit since the referendum, which is unrivalled among his broadcast peers.

Guido’s statistical analysis of Faisal, Peston and Robbo has found that three of the highest profile broadcasters covering Brexit tweet with overwhelming negativity. They promote opponents of Brexit far more than proponents, they report negative stories far more than positive ones, and they occasionally let their own pro-Remain opinions slip through as well. The BBC, ITV and Sky are supposed to be impartial – the evidence shows their Brexit journalists are anything but…

Data Guido has been hidden away in a dark room, crunching the numbers to see whether our top broadcast journalists really are impartial on Brexit. Yesterday we analysed Robert Peston’s relentlessly negative Twitter feed, categorising his tweets as having either a positive sentiment about Brexit (not many), a negative sentiment about Brexit (82%), or being neutral. Today it’s the turn of the BBC’s Nick Robinson…

• Robbo has sent 157 tweets about Brexit since 24 June 2016.
• 3 tweets had a positive sentiment, that’s just 2% of his total tweets.
• 65 tweets were neutral, that’s 41%.
• 89 tweets were negative, that is 57% of his total Brexit tweets having a negative sentiment.

You’d surely expect a Beeb man to be neutral, yet only 41% of Robbo’s Brexit tweets have a neutral sentiment. The overwhelming majority of Robbo’s tweets about Brexit – 57% – had a negative sentiment. As you can see above it is the stories and quotes he chooses to report that give the game away – negative quote after negative quote from France, Brussels, George Osborne and other Remainers. By contrast he has sent only three tweets with a positive Brexit sentiment since the referendum. Nothing listeners of the Today programme didn’t know already. Stay tuned for more Brexit Twitter sentiment analysis tomorrow…

It is often said half-teasingly that canvassers and pollsters are more likely to meet Labour voters than Tories because Tory voters are still at work. Now there is empirical evidence for the claim. Professor John Curtice, perhaps the only pollster with his reputation intact after he called the 2015 election, says there is no such thing as “shy” Tories skewing polls, they are just “busy“. Curtice’s study found that if polls were based on people who answered the door on a first visit, Labour would be six points ahead. If polls were based on those who needed three to six visits before answering, the Tories had an 11 point lead. His conclusion: Labour voters were more likely to be at home rather than out at work.

“Conservatives are just simply more difficult to get hold of. There is an availability bias. People who you can get hold of first time round, who say, ‘oh yes come in’ are disproportionately Labour voters. The people you can easily get hold of are not representative.”

As the old joke goes, the Tory voters really were still at work…

Guido has been crunching the numbers for May’s new Cabinet. There are only seven Brexiters, one more than in Cameron’s last Cabinet. There are only eight female members, one more than previously, hardly a march of the women. Most of the key Cameron and Osborne allies have gone though there remain nine Cabinet members who could be described as Friends of George. And there are just two ethnic minorities (half the number of Davids), though that is representative of the wider population. It’s still a heavily male, Remain Cabinet…

In his judgement Lord Justice Jackson effectively ruled that injunctions cannot remain in place once knowledge of the injucted information is widespread:

“The court should not make orders which are ineffective. It is inappropriate – some may used a stronger term – for the court to ban people from saying that which is common knowledge… Knowledge of the relevant matters is now so widespread that confidentiality has probably been lost”

Google search trends show that searches for “David Furnish” in the UK have increased to a trend score of 100 in the last few days, the maximum possible score relative to previous searches for his name:

Searches for “Daniel Laurence”, the man who claims he had an olive oil paddling pool threesome with Furnish, have also increased to a score of 100:

This data shows just those who already knew to search those specific names. Several times as many people will have discovered the identities simply by searching “celebrity injunction”:

Carter Ruck’s attempts to threaten Google into taking down search results revealing the identities failed completely. As Lord Justice Jackson says, knowledge has become widespread…