Tories dubbed ‘fakers’ after adverts found to be lies

The vast majority of Tory Facebook adverts in the run up to the 2019 General Election were misleading, independent fact checking has found.

The not-for-profit journalists’ group First Draft – which exposes fake news – analysed every party political advert on Facebook in the first four days of December 2019.

It found nearly every Tory advert’s claimed facts and figures had been challenged by Full Fact, the UK’s leading fact-checking organisation.

In comparison, First Draft said ” it could not find any misleading claims in ads run by Labour “on Facebook over the same period but had found nearly one in every six LibDem adverts made fake claims.

Earlier that year, Amber Rudd, then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, had spent £250,000 of public money on DWP propaganda printed in the country’s most widely read paper as a news investigation which sang the praises of the hated Universal Credit (UC) benefit system.

The Metro, a London free paper owned by the Daily Mail, was condemned by the National Union of Journalists and the Public and Commercial Services Union for carrying the 10 weeks of fake news which claimed to “challenge the myths” about Universal Credit programme.

Food bank charity, the Trussell Trust, which claimed UC had driven thousands more into poverty, ran a counter-campaign called Universal Credit Uncovered.

Within a month 80 charities had complained to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) about the “misleading Universal Credit adverts in the Metro”.

The ASA investigated and a month before the general election upheld the complaints, saying the DWP adverts had been misleading, “exaggerated” and carried “unsubstantiated” claims.

As critics had claimed, they were blatant propaganda sheets trying to hide the harm suffered by so many subjected to the Tory inspired and deeply flawed benefit system.