The Tory party tries to game the internet to attack Labour, again. It fails spectacularly.

Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn
Tracy Keeling


When the Conservative Party recently changed its campaign Twitter profile to make it look like a fact-checking outfit, all it faced was a slap on the wrist from the Electoral Commission and the social-media platform. And its latest move suggests the party was buoyed by that free pass. Because the Tories bought the domain name “labourmanifesto.co.uk” and filled it with claims about Labour’s future plans. Essentially, the site rubbished the opposition party just as Jeremy Corbyn released its highly well-received manifesto.

The plan failed, though, for the same reason as the Tories’ fact-checking site: it was debunked by the public. Clearly, the Conservatives didn’t learn a lesson in humility from their initial attempt to game the internet, just arrogance.

Cost of Corbyn?

On the new website, the Conservatives made the highly misleading claim that:

Hardworking taxpayers would have to pay an extra £2,400 each year in tax on average to cover Jeremy Corbyn’s reckless spending.

A video the party put out claimed the same, telling taxpayers this is the “Cost of Corbyn”:

But even a cursory glance at Labour’s plans reveals what spin this is. Because the manifesto clearly says:

We’ll ask those who earn more than £80,000 a year to pay a little more income tax, while freezing National Insurance and income tax rates for everyone else.

The party says it can generate £6.4bn from the top 5% through higher income tax. Meanwhile, it has costed that its higher rate of corporation tax will raise an extra £19.4bn. In fact, there are a number of changes to taxes proposed in its manifesto, such as an anti-tax-avoidance programme raising £6.5bn. But these tax changes don’t focus on the UK’s “hardworking taxpayers”; they focus only on those who can afford to pay more tax – high earners, corporations and the like. As the manifesto says:

Labour will rewrite the rules of the economy, so that it works for everyone. We will rebuild our public services, by taxing those at the top to properly fund the services we all rely on.

The UK “can’t afford NOT to have Corbyn”

People were quick to call the Tories out:

Cost of the Tories

Before the Conservatives even had a chance to pat their own backs over the domain-name skullduggery, meanwhile, the ‘Cost of Corbyn’ had morphed into the ‘Cost of Tories’ and ‘Cost of Tory Rule’ too:

Underhand Tory tactics fail again

In short, the Conservatives are continuing to use the internet in underhand ways to try and pull the wool over the public’s eyes. But bullshit doesn’t hang around on social media for too long before people call it out, exposing its disseminators as the untrustworthy goons they are. For now, it appears that’s an understanding beyond the Tories’ grasp.

Featured image via ITV News and Guardian News

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  • Show Comments

    1. What Conservative/NeoLiberals can not get their head around regarding Socialist Government tax is weather you pay 5% or 45% Tax you get more that that moneys worth in return Free Health, Free Child Care, Free School Meals, Free Transport etc, You will get more than your moneys worth.
      Whereas the Conservative/NeoLiberals Push Taxes up/down but take far more services away than the moneys worth they only understand Take, Take some more, give a teeny bit back when the stuff hits the fan and start planning where to take some more than that somewhere else!

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    2. I’ve already lost about £1200 a year under the Tories, after they stopped my “lifetime award” for PIP. My paralysed arm is no better than it was, they just paid an ATOS quack to say it is.

      People and families are even worse off than that. Fucking Tories. Life-sucking parasites. Corbyn needs to commission a public inquiry into their atrocities against the poor and disabled. They need to be made to answer.

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      1. Hell yeah there needs to be an inquiry into this, Fucking Tories indeed! They need jailing for life, or better yet, suffer the same fates they forced on others, indeed I would go as far as to temporarily re-introduce public executions just to ensure that justice is properly served, and evil fucks like them never raise their rotten thoughts into our society again.

        I know, I know, not exactly a socialist, peaceful, caring way to deal with them and people like them, but they really do deserve to be sanctioned like they have done to others. If they don’t get punished, that just emboldens more evil cunts like them to take more and more British lives just so they can have our money, fucking evil criminals the lot of them!

        The undeserving filthy rich and powerful are literally the biggest scroungers on the planet, relying on OUR socialist values to strengthen their Neo-Liberalist ones, and then they have the sheer gaul and effrontery to tell us that Socialism is evil. To them it is evil if we get lifted up from poverty, but oh so very holy and noble when they are literally stealing our money, whilst claiming they are the only ones deserving of social benefits.

        It really is time to show these vile excuses of humanity that there are consequences for the murders and thefts they have perpetrated on a vast scale, but no, we let them continue to murder family, and friends with impunity, protected by a Law which exists to punish us for anything they decide, whilst shielding them from what they truly deserve, which is death for the death and suffering they have wilfully, and willingly visited upon others en masse.

        They do indeed need to be made to answer for their evil.

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