Some readers may be aware of the curious case of Harry Leslie Smith, a 92 year old Labour-supporting war hero and author who is regularly published by the Mirror and the Guardian. Mr Smith’s name is attributed to a Twitter account which posts a large amount of bizarre, sometimes downright offensive material. Over the last few weeks, many Labour supporters and tweeters have questioned whether Mr Smith is responsible for the posts, or if his account is – rather distastefully – controlled by someone else using his name.
https://twitter.com/mePadraigReidy/status/681102412959092737
https://twitter.com/J_Bloodworth/status/680120631640371200
@RossFootball @NickCohen4 what's going on with that account? If it's not him it's quite profoundly sick
— Chris Deerin (@chrisdeerin) January 31, 2016
Those who have met Mr Smith say it is impossible he controls the account.
Multiple sources in the Labour Party and elsewhere tell Guido that in fact several people have access. Sources with intimate knowledge of the account claim Mr Smith’s son is responsible for some of the tweets, as well as an agent and someone working with his publisher, Icon Books. Labour sources distance the party from the account, insisting it is nothing to do with them.
To try to get to the bottom of this rather odd tale, Guido contacted Icon Books to politely ask if anyone from the company had access to the account. Given the opportunity to deny this well-established rumour, Icon Books failed to get back to us. Instead, they rather strangely decided to leak Guido’s email online. It would be pretty grim if someone has been exploiting this 92 year-old war hero by tweeting under his name…
Martin Durkin, Guido’s favourite documentary producer, has a new film project: “Brexit The Movie”. Durkin is aiming to produce a powerful, polemic, Eurosceptic equivalent of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”. The film will strongly argue the case for Britain to leave the European Union and how this can be achieved, while also developing stronger cultural ties and trade links with both continental Europe and the rest of the world. The film is targeted for release in April – two months before the earliest possible EU referendum date in June – and distribution channels are expected to include theatrical exhibition, broadcast TV, DVD and the Internet. Brexit: The Movie is independent of the ‘Leave’ campaign groups. But this film can’t be made without funding – and that’s where the Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign comes in.
He’s already raised over £65,000 from individual donors, he is aiming to take the Kickstarter funding up to £100,000 and ideally up to £300,000 more. The crowdfunder runs for for just 30 days…
Back Brexit the Movie via Kickstarter.
Tom Watson is one of the more savvy digital operators and he is promising to revolutionise Labour’s digital campaigning in this video released on YouTube. Unfortunately it has – after being up over a week – only managed to chalk up 748 views. This is despite Labour’s YouTube channel having 16,279 loyal subscribers. Why?
Well it doesn’t help that the video is unlisted and hidden from search traffic, with sharing on social media actively discouraged. Doh! Clearly the revolution will not be shared…
Uncharacteristically Guido will offer some digital campaigning advice for free. Spend more money on targeting online advertising during campaigns. It works. Don’t rely on tweeting to your most dedicated supporters in the Twitter echo chamber. Also, this chap is right:
Hope that helps…
Tory MP Lucy Allan has been under pressure since Guido revealed she doctored a constituent’s email to add a death threat. It’s fair to say she could be handling the ensuing scrutiny a little better. At around 11 pm last night she posted this regrettable status update on Facebook, making a series of allegations against local councillors and dramatically concluding: “It was never about me. You got that wrong. It was always about Telford”. The post has since been deleted.
Strangely, Allan claims in the post that it is all a “disgusting lie”, despite previously fessing up. You know how it is, you post a Facebook status late at night then regret it in the morning and delete your account. A word of advice from Guido: ignore the trolls and put down the keyboard …
UPDATE: She’s deleted this fightback video as well:
“I know I should not have engaged with these people on social media..” Just stop…
The launch of the Scottish Labour party conference is going well, then. They had to remove from YouTube within minutes this new PPB urging Scots to take a “fresh look” at the party after cocking up the spelling of the giant word in the middle of the screen. Leading to joyous Nats mocking them with the #genertaion hashtag…
I hope @scottishlabour have a good conference in Preth! #illgetmycoat #generation https://t.co/mwWSqeACtR
— Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) October 30, 2015
Here is the original in all its glory, for Guido readers only…
Vid via @MorayMacdonald
An unfortunate tweet for Jeremy Corbyn’s offical Twitter account to favourite this afternoon:
That is no way to talk about your ex…
