The cheeky move by CCHQ to rebrand themselves as a fact-checking account during last night’s debate may have got everyone talking, but could backfire as Twitter have said “Any further attempts to mislead people by editing verified profile information – in a manner seen during the UK Election Debate – will result in decisive corrective action”. Judging by the backlash this wasn’t so much a dead cat as a dead elephant…
Even right-wingers like Julia Hartley-Brewer and Susanne Evans called on CCHQ to reverse the rebrand, calling it “plain wrong” and “very stupid”. As Emily Maitlis then later pointed out, Boris was, in fact, answering questions in the debate on integrity at the same time as CCHQ was pretending to be something it wasn’t…
.@maitlis: “You were misleading the public. You were trying to coat your propaganda as hardened fact.. You dressed up party lines as a fact check service: that is dystopian.. You know that people do not trust you, so you have to put something out and call it a fact check instead” pic.twitter.com/UOyLgCx7hi
— Damon Evans (@damocrat) November 19, 2019
Still, not the worst interview performance Emily’s sat through this week…
Guido’s still waiting for the commentariat’s reciprocal outrage towards Labour’s own ‘fact-checking’ account, which, even worse than CCHQ’s stunt, doesn’t mention its Labour origins in either its name or its handle.
CCHQ’s Twitter backlash wasn’t the biggest faux pas on the social media site last night, however, as Alastair Campbell rebranded his account as ‘Boris Johnson’ and posted a number of misogynistic tweets, with one particularly distasteful one directed at Carrie.
When he changed his name back it kind of backfired:
He really didn’t think that through did he?
