Despite a spirited effort from Tory digital operation, unleashing fresh memes like BorisWave and provoking hatesharing of their quirky Twitter content, the Labour Party has stormed ahead on the social media sites native to the party’s core demographic.
Labour are busy gloating about their impressive retweet and video view counts. They boast:
- Labour achieved more than three times the video views compared to the Tories
- Rob Delaney’s scaremongering video about NHS alone achieved a total of 13.3m views.
- Corbyn has received 2.4 million retweets, compared to the Tories’ 372,000
- 649,000 people have shared Corbyn’s content on Facebook, of whom 432,000 have never shared a Corbyn post before.
Follower growth on Twitter and Facebook for the Labour Party, boosted by celebrities, has been impressive:
In 2011 the “Yes to the Alternative Vote” campaign were surprised to discover that their social media sentiment analysis, which gave them a 2:1 lead, was wrong. Yet still this garbage persists, for example analysis designed & built by idiots at Mediaworks, using AI apparently, Caroline Lucas has the most positive sentiment on social media. So what?
Ultimately, as David Cameron reminded us all in 2015, and Vote Leave proved again in 2016, Britain and Twitter are not the same thing…
Corbyn’s sole mate put her best foot forward today at the polling station, but Guido spotted something up with her election outfit. Would have thought Hackney Labour would be shoe-ins…
UPDATE: Clearly Diane was caught on the back foot; Meg Hillier has deleted her photo. Although Guido reckons the hilarity of the photo still has legs…
DT Diane Abbott: RT MegHillierMP: Great to link up with Diane Abbott to remind people to #VoteLabour #GeneralElection19 Hackney Labour Hackney South Labour… https://t.co/l9TEQD58jl
— Tweets MPs Delete (@deletedbyMPs) December 12, 2019
Corbynistas and even Dragon’s Den’s Deborah Meaden are now claiming the picture is Photoshopped:
The claim is trending on social media
The claim falls down, however, when you notice their ‘proof’ is taken from Diane’s Instagram yesterday
Guido’s always happy to fact check…
Two Brexit Party MEPs are embroiled in a spectacular Twitter bitch fight following yesterday’s announcement that the party will stand down in 317 sets next election. It led South East MEP Alexandra Phillips to declare she will abstain from voting. London MEP Lance Forman was not impressed…
Alex. You are not 16.
What’s the point in spending your life fighting for democracy and then not voting.
Vote.— Lance Forman MEP (@LanceForman) November 12, 2019
Would you like to hold the biro for me? Parties must earn support. I expect people to vote on the virtues of the party they choose as a personal private choice. It’s not for you to coerce me to vote for a party I was NOT elected to represent. Perhaps YOU should think about that https://t.co/5WF52fzllZ
— Alexandra Phillips MEP (@BrexitAlex) November 12, 2019
Guido has got out the popcorn…
Appearing on Sky News, Guido’s Tom-off-the-Telly left the studio with a spring in his step after another successful TV appearance. However the smile soon slipped from his face after discovering Twitter has suspended him for 12 hours. The crime? Calling on the police to tackle Extinction Rebellion protestors…
Tom got suspended for calling on the police to be authorised to taser the Lambeth Bridge blocking rebels, just days after Priti Patel pledged £10 million to equip 60% of the boys in blue with tasers. Guido expects Twitter to be going after Priti’s account imminently… Unfortunately, Tom Couldn’t be DM’d for comment…
Since 2012 Sunder Katwala and Guido have been promoting the idea of the last Friday in August being one day of positive exchanges on Twitter. The political Twittersphere in particular can be a horrible nasty place, what with the culture wars and political extremists generally being unpleasant. Brexit has made even usually reasonable people bad tempered. None of us are immune from negativity, Guido is a repeat offender. Wouldn’t it be pleasantly calming if, for at least one day, we all tried to be nice and civil in our tweets? We sorely need to try again…
Last year a lot of mental health charities got involved and helped spread the message, this year Twitter are hosting an event at their London HQ. Spread a bit of civility in these polarised times. Twitter can be a place for the exchange of information rather than the abuse of political opponents. It is not just pay day on Friday, it is #PositiveTwitterDay. Let’s try for one day to make Twitter a positive experience for everyone…
To tweet your support just click this link: #PositiveTwitterDay
“Rachael Swindon” is a Corbyn superfan social media account of dubious provenance (see Buzzfeed’s profile) which tweets hard left slogans, regular calls for Tom Watson to resign and anti-Tory hate. Nothing unusual nowadays. It is of course it is followed by dozens of Labour MPs and directly encouraged by the Labour leader’s office. Yesterday it tweeted out a video of ‘cowardly Israeli soldiers’ roughing up Palestinian youths. Except it was, as many replies pointed out, a well know viral video of Guatemalan troops roughing up Guatemalan youths.
That didn’t stop it being retweeted thousands of times including by Grahame Morris, a Shadow Cabinet Minister, adding his ignorant insight in. Despite being told by dozens of respondents his claims were a falsehood, it remained up. Last night he even got a reply from the Israeli Defence Forces:
It is still up this morning…
