Conservatives receive five times more censure than Labor for misleading messages on Twitter

The Conservatives are almost five times more likely than Labor to be criticized on social media for sharing false or misleading information online, new research says.

Senior government accounts including the prime minister, cabinet ministers and the Conservative Party’s official Twitter account received almost five times the number of community comments than the opposition party, a campaign group said.

UK Twitter/X began offering a fact-checking feature in January last year, allowing users to add context or clarification below posts containing false or misleading information. Contributors can leave a comment on any post, and if enough contributors from different viewpoints find the comment helpful, the comment will be displayed publicly.

Research commissioned by pro-European campaign group Best for UK The number of community notes accumulated by all members of the Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet on X and their official party accounts were examined.

A total of 73 posts from government party accounts were accompanied by community annotations, compared to 15 posts from official opposition party accounts.

The worst offender was the official Conservative Party account, which was mentioned 26 times for posts that included allegedly manipulated videos, false claims about the leader of the opposition and misleading statements about the economy.

A post saying the economy was “beating expectations” was accompanied by a community note that said “UK GDP fell last quarter against expectations of 0%, so it didn’t beat any expectations.”

Another post claimed that Sir Keir Starmer had “called for the abolition of the monarchy” in 2021, but community notes noted that in 2005 Sir Keir Starmer said he “had proposed the abolition of the monarchy”.

Not far behind was the Prime Minister himself, who despite promising “integrity, professionalism and accountability at all levels” has been trolled 25 times by social media users in just over a year.

Rishi Sunak’s posts, in which he claimed the government had cleared the asylum backlog, have been tagged nine times since the start of 2024, and five times in the first week of January alone , took credit for the drop in inflation and claimed the government had cut taxes.

More recently, Mr Sunak said the Spring Budget would bring “lower taxes”, while the community note noted that accompanying OBR forecasts said taxes would actually rise to 37.1% of GDP by 2028/29, compared with It was 4 percentage points higher before. That was before the pandemic.

By comparison, Sir Keir’s account received four community notes in the same period, the majority relating to last year’s local elections, while Labour’s official account received seven.

Recently, the Labor leader said it was “36 years since the first black MPs were elected”, while an accompanying note noted that James Townsend was a black MP first elected in 1772.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, home secretary James Cleverly, defense secretary Grant Shapps and leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt also all received more community votes than their counterparts in the shadow cabinet focus on.

The only shadow cabinet minister to receive more community attention than his Conservative counterpart was David Lammy, who received two, while Lord David Cameron received zero. Lord Cameron has been in the Cabinet for four months.

The results follow a shocking report from the Edelman Trust Barometer, which revealed the UK has seen the largest decline in public trust globally. Trust in government has dropped to 30%, down 15 points since 2021.

Activists say the ruling party’s habit of sharing misleading information on social media is further eroding public trust in politics.

Naomi Smith, chief executive of Best for Britain, warned that the findings “should not be taken lightly, especially in an election year when a lack of trust could fuel dangerous populism.”

She added: “If the public cannot trust the government to act with integrity and transparency – both of which are vital to a liberal democracy – then the government should not be in power. We need general elections, our public opinion Surveys show the public wants a general election now.”

The Labor and Conservative parties have been contacted for comment.