Achi news desk-
Conservatives have problems with their socials again. After claiming last month that London was the “crime capital of the world”, the party is now emulating another incentive on social media not to let “lawmen and dissenters” talk about Britain.
The X post claimed Britain was the second most powerful country in the world, illustrated by images including a Canadian-owned Aston Martin, an American F-35 fighter jet and a Eurofighter Typhoon developed by a European consortium while Britain was in the EU.
But the photo may have been removed from social media because it included an image of King Charles – a breach of protocol as parties are designed to avoid dragging the royal family into a political debate. Buckingham Palace did not respond, but it is understood the post was noted by senior palace officials before it was deleted last Friday.
It also included a picture of the England men’s football team lining up for their friendly against Brazil last month – a game in which they were second best. But sports teams, like the royals, are generally thought of as a gateway to politics.
Political parties are free to make up any facts they like in political advertising, as long as they do not make false statements about a candidate’s character or conduct. But despite using phrases taken from Boris Johnson’s thesaurus, there was a grain of truth in the post – a BrandFinance report placed Britain second in its global soft power index.
However, British soft power is more about a thriving cultural scene than fighter jets, and the film’s director Nick Murphy specified that the party celebrated the arts with a picture of Oscar winner Christopher Nolan weeks after arts funding was cut – what campaigners called a “national emergency” for arts venues.
The non-judgmental post follows another gaffe last month, when Conservative Central Office released a video attacking London’s Labor mayor, Sadiq Khan, with false claims about London’s ultra-low emission zone and footage of passengers fleeing a tube station that appeared to have been filmed. at Penn Station in New York in 2017.
Dragging the king and the England team into politics was a bad idea, said Mark Burkowski, a PR consultant and author.
“It says a lot about how no strategic thought goes into social media,” he said. “This is a medium for clickbait and dog whistle politics. The mistake most parties and members of parliament make is that they don’t think before they tweet. Now dragging the king into a political debate shows how stupid and thoughtless it is.”
Burkowski compared the move to the fact-free attacks made by Donald Trump during his presidential campaigns.
“There is a generation that is bewitched by this kind of approach, a Trumpian way of using social media. People see it as a notebook for ideas about propaganda, but these are not disappearing tweets. It just shows a lack of strategy.
“It also shows how bloody the fight is going to be in the run-up to the election. We’re in fake war mode now, but there’s going to be full-on mudslinging and really dirty fights on social media platforms. So if it’s the Tory HQ team deployed at this stage, God help us for the future.” .
The Conservative Party did not respond to requests for comment.
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