Labour’s flashy new website was outsourced to an American digital firm that worked on Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. The source code for the new site shows Labour commissioned Washington DC based Wide Eye Creative, a trendy web design and branding shop that worked for, among others, the Sanders campaign and airbnb. They designed Sanders’ campaign logo – further confirmation that Jezza fancies himself as the British Bernie. For all the Corbynistas’ boasting about how good their digital operation was, they’ve had to call in expensive American consultants to do the actual work. Not sure John McDonnell will be pleased with this sort of outsourcing either. Was there no British digital firm Labour could have hired?

Not only are Labour sending money offshore, they’re also saving themselves a VAT bill by hiring an overseas firm rather than a British one. Political campaigns can’t claim the VAT back on expenses, so by hiring an American company Labour will have saved 20% on their bill. A handy dodge…

UPDATE: A Labour spokesman said:

“Labour’s established lead in online campaigning has been cemented by our successful new website. We use world-class tools to power our campaigns, as well as developing proprietary systems in-house. In common with the Guido Fawkes site, we use WordPress, the software powering 28% of the internet. Unlike Guido Fawkes, our site is hosted in the UK.”

UPDATE: Labour gets back in touch to say the party self-charges 20% on its VAT return for the work done by Wide Eye Creative.