Who Targets Me have dug into election advertising spending on social media. They find that, from 19th May to 16th June, Labour have spent £1,743,124 on social media adverts and got 549,378 views for their troubles. Reform, on the other hand, has spent only £26,245 – to get 1,547,538 total views. That means that Labour gets 0.315 views per pound spent compared to a whopping 59 for Reform…
Each pound the Tories spent got approximately 0.59 views. Reform’s popularity is, of course, driven by organic enthusiasm rather than advertising spending. Farage’s two meetings on Monday were broadcast on social media and reached almost 800,000. Even Marianna Spring has had to admit real people, not bots, are boosting Reform on the internet…
Starmer spoke to Nick Robinson for the Today Programme on Polanski’s criticism of the Golders Green police officers:
“I want everybody just to imagine what it might be like. You’re trying to arrest someone who has already attacked two people and has no regard for life. We know that tasers were fired. I know from my own experience with the police, that there are only two shots in a taser, and once you’ve shot them, there’s nothing left. There’s a guy on the ground, he’s got a rucksack on. And I don’t know what was going through the mind of those officers, but if I was there, I’d be thinking, he’s going to detonate something. He’s going to blow me up and everybody around here. In those circumstances, I think you can quite see why what could have gone through their mind is, we need to do whatever we can to disable this guy…
Now, when I then see Zack Polanski come out and retweet or support a criticism of that, I think it’s disgraceful… He’s not fit to lead any political party.”
