Why Britain needs legislation to criminalise media manipulation, fake news, cheating and a huge change in politics.
Michael Heseltine voiced concerns this week that the general election campaign was going to be one of the most dishonest campaigns of his entire political career. Hesa, who was born in 1933, is one of our most experienced politicians. He speaks his mind. He also talks a lot of realistic common sense, especially about Britain’s Brextremist cabal.
Cabal is a fitting tag for the current government. Electioneering, policies made in office, tenders awarded to friends and huge budgets spaffed on enriching business associates and themselves. The term cabal defines a “conspiracy, intrigue, machination, and plot, a plan secretly devised to accomplish an evil or treacherous end” and is typically applied to political intrigue involving persons of some eminence’.
Electioneering via socials powered by technology and media agencies
A mail campaign from Labour this week highlighted the risks of social media manipulation vis-a-vis the forthcoming elections:
“We need you to understand the challenge we are facing. £34 million.
“If they’re going to reach election spending limits, that is what the Tories will spend by polling day. And we’ve got good reason to believe they’ll do it: it was the Tories themselves who recently changed the law to double election spending limits.
“To put it in perspective, £34 million could put digital ads attacking Labour in front of the entire voting population over 50 times.
“The impact? Labour loses votes. Crucial votes. It shouldn’t be like this, but they’re banking on their ability to outspend us to win. And they’re primed to do it. In 2023, they outraised us by £17 million.
“Now more than ever, we need you to help close the gap.”
The concerns voiced here apply to any form of opposition to Tory right-wing ideology. The Liberal Democrats, the Greens, the SNP and anyone who is pro Europe and closer ties with the single market.
While I am in total disagreement with Labour’s strategy on single market membership and appalled at many Labour MPs who abstained from the recent vote on the criminalisation of sewage dumping penned by Tim Farron, I agree with these concerns. Just who did these massive donations come from and how will they be applied to the election campaign? The current government has sown the seeds to allow itself greater financial spending for the election.
Concerns on spending: Electoral Reform Group
Jessica Garland, Director of Policy and Research, at the Electoral Reform Group already raised concerns in November 2023 on several issues that that the government had not corrected, and the way in which it had actually strengthened possibilities for its empowerment in the form of donations.
58% of the public voiced concerns on big money in politics and a lack of transparency on political donations, but the British government increased the amounts it may spend and receive, ignoring public opinion.
The government passed a statutory instrument which ‘increased the amount of money that an individual can donate to a party without declaring who donated it, from £7,500 to £11,180’.
This paved the way for more money to flow anonymously into our politics.
How convenient for the government that the ‘statutory instrument increased the national election spending cap by 80%, from £19.5m to about £35m’ just months before a date for a general election might be set. This cap applies to what party HQs can spend; there is another cap for how much local candidates can spend. When questioned, the government argued they were simply raising the levels in line with inflation. Using a ‘statutory instrument’ was very convenient for the government, ‘a legislative tool that can pass without a full debate or vote’. MPs and the public therefore had no say about it and can do nothing to stop it.
There are still worrying loopholes that already exist in our system. The scandal of unincorporated associations which can donate under £25,000 a year without declaring the source is one of these. The government chose not to fix that.
The Electoral Reform Group described it as ‘politics for sale to the highest bidder, where the greatest influence is not wielded by ordinary voters but those with the deepest pockets’.
We the public can expect no less that this behaviour from the current government, which favours its own above the interests of the public and the country at every opportunity.
Powerful social media and influencers
Last year, the Good Law Project revealed that tech giant Palantir hired Topham Guerin to pay influencers to attack Good Law Project on social media under strict instructions that the source of the money was to be kept ‘confidential’. Palantir was disgruntled by legal camapgins Good Law project ran in order to protect NHS patients and their data, questioning the large contract Palantir would be awarded for an NHS federated data platform. As we now know, government awarded this massive deal.
‘Emails and a secret briefing document reveal a paid-for campaign to attack Good Law Project on social media. Influencers are asked what their “fee expectations” are for agreeing to send two tweets, one a video and the other a follow-up written tweet. Those who accept the offer – which bears the branding of Topham Guerin – are told they must “keep the brand confidential and not tag Palantir”.
The British public should be made highly aware that Topham Guerin is a controversial PR firm which worked for the Conservative Party. Birds of a feather flock together goes the saying.
Would Twitter (X) put a stop to any of this? No, and at least not in time to repair the damage done via fake news. How long before thousands of people have seen these manipulated tweets and denigration campaigns? They can go viral in minutes, especially if those issuing the tweets are influencers with tens of thousands of followers. Media and communications strategists are fully aware of the value of hashtags and social media optimisation. These strategies, which were traditionally applied to marketing products to consumers, are applied to politics and smear campaigns against those who hold those in power to account.
The Good Law Project reminds us that in 2022, ‘Jolyon Maugham was mentioned ten times in a press release sent out by Rishi Sunak – and branded “Public Enemy Number One” in the Express Newspaper’. Both Maugham and Good Law Project are subject to frequent attacks in the Daily Mail, the Times and the state backed BBC. Jolyon Maugham is not public enemy number one. He would be an adversary of the prime minister, whose family own Infosys and benefit financially from any deals it does. Infosys is a technology partner of Palantir.
The Good Law Project is a particularly strong opponent. They speak the truth to power and have many supporters. They have forced the government’s hand to do right and exposed the especially financial treachery of the current cabal during the pandemic with its dodgy PPE deals.
They have the power and mindset to thwart treacherous acts performed in detriment to the country and our treasury by government officials to serve only themselves and associates.
Plants in the audience
Social media is not the only target for media manipulation. This week, Rishi Sunak engaged in a Q&A Session during a site visit to a warehouse in Derbyshire. Two members of the audience dressed in high visibility workwear, Ben Hall-Evans and Ross Hills, were exposed as local tory councillors, one of them from a different county by Byline Times journalist, Adam Bienkov, which picked up on this subtle media manipulation strategy.
The story subsequently propagated to larger news outlets like the Guardian.
What is going on behind the scenes
Any party or institution which would oppose prioritization of welfare over profit would be called out in some way as being incorrect, corrupt or weak.
Worse still, AI comes in to play. DeepFake generated AI models of politicians in videos like Keir Starmer, who was falsely depicted swearing at staff, are one of the tools at their disposal. It is easy for those producing Deep Fakes to source images and sounds of politicians presented on the Hansard. Disinformation on steroids and costly to fund. Videos like this as proven by the Starmer image incident, can continue to circulate and rack up views long after a complaint is lodged. The UK’s Online Safety Bill barley tackles the problems posed by Generative AI, which campaigners described as a “missed opportunity” to enforce safeguards. How convenient for those in office with links to tech giants with interests in AI and the ruling cabal.
‘The bill empowers regulator Ofcom to make sure platforms keep users, particularly children, safe from “harmful content,” but when it comes to disinformation, platforms set and follow their own policies. All Ofcom can do is to check they are following them.’
[…] platforms’ terms of service don’t stop the spread of disinfo. X’s policies state that users “may not share synthetic, manipulated, or out-of-context media,” but that has done nothing to stop the Starmer clip. (ibid)
Ofcom claimed it would set up an advisory committee on DeepFake videos, but it admitted its own research on deepfakes and watermarking was at an early stage.
There are no regulators with legal power to stop electoral disinformation. The Electoral Commission only looks at campaign finance, which as we have seen had its cap raised generously under the guise of the inflation argument.
Political adverts are exempt from the scrutiny of the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA).
The Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum (DRCF) could potentially be involved in processes, but this is a voluntary group of regulators with no statutory powers. (Ibid).
Lack of provisions in the Online Safety Bill to force platforms to take action against content which undermined democracy concerned lawmakers on the democracy and digital technologies committee which also recommended regulators establish a powerful committee to look at political advertising. The Lords’ Committee on Democracy and Digital Technologies, once chaired by now retired Labour peer David Puttnam, already voiced concerns on digital misinformation in 2020.
David Putnam, who is still active in this area through a group called Reform Political Advertising (RPA), had this to say:
“We’re wandering into a general election a year from now, with no party actually putting their hand up, saying this has got to stop.”
Here here!
Europe, the European Court of Human Rights, the Greens. Anyone who would prioritize the environment and human rights above profit becomes a target, in particular any legal entity which could hold a government to account about the very wealthy evading tax. I refer here to the EU Tax Avoidance Directive, which would have cost the likes of Rees Mogg at least 2 million in tax per year. Brexit failed to stop immigration. ONS figures demonstrate immigration actually skyrocketed since the end of the Brexit transition. Immigration from the rest of the world that is, not from Europe. EU migrants coming to our shores decreased.
The anti-migrant rhetoric was a convenient ‘smoke screen’ to stir up public sentiment against Europe; the real motives behind Brexit were deregulation to empower the British government, the current reigning cabal, to satisfy its own needs.
This freedom to manipulate permitted in British law abounds, while new legislation criminalizes genuine peaceful protestors who usually act according to their own beliefs to help a particular cause. The next government in office has some very murky waters to clean up, not only in our waterways and drinking water supplies, but in the form of reforms to clean up our broken political system. Transparency must be enforced by law if need be and we must go forward based on principles of respect for improved healthcare, human rights and safeguards for the environment.
Labour is indeed right to be concerned about the amount of money flooding into politics. However, they should also look back at the legacy left to them from that dark money, the elephant in the room that is Brexit. No one has seen the Russia report. Brexit was one of the triumphs of Russian interference and the cabal in service of itself, not the people. Please Sir Keir, remember that background context or your government in waiting will put itself on the path of continuing to enforce not the ‘will of the people’ but the ‘will of the (financially) powerfull’. When/if your party wins the next election, you and the public have been had whether that is by right wing tax avoiders or Putin’s troll army, intent on weakening both the UK and Europe, should you proceed without a high degree of realism on our position outside of the single market, which underpins revenues for our national services, especially the NHS.
