Tweeter: “I’ll only vote Corbyn if he wears a silly hat”. BBC: “Come on TV!” #GE17

An inability to identify obvious satire has led to the BBC revealing a… let’s say, over-eagerness to feature people who don’t want to vote Labour.

Manchester man Elliot (@Langho) tweeted – tongue clearly firmly planted in his cheek – that his vote in the General Election would depend on whether Jeremy Corbyn would wear a silly hat:

The original tweet was a brilliant – and certainly not subtle – piece of satire on the various bots and ‘astroturfers’ who tweet nonsense along the lines of ‘I’m a lifelong Labour voter but’, as part of paid or coordinated anti-Labour propaganda campaigns to try to create the impression of a grassroots desertion of the Labour leader.

A BBC producer – assuming the account is genuine, of course – failed to spot the humour, though, and messaged Elliot, eager to speak to him and his supposedly anti-Labour family.

Seeing an opportunity for a little fun, Elliot played along at first:

The penny still appeared to fail to drop, even as he pushed the joke to extremes, as the producer continued to press for any members of his family to appear on the Beeb:

So eventually, he had to put his correspondent out of her misery:

This whole exchange, of course, raises two interesting questions. Firstly, what does it say about the BBC’s supposed impartiality if it’s so eager to get anti-Corbyn voters on TV?

Secondly, if Labour are really as far out of the General Election race as the Establishment media are keen to portray them – why is the BBC so desperate that even clear jokes attract this kind of attention?

Of course, you only need to watch any BBC ‘vox pop’ to receive a strong impression that the broadcaster is either specifically seeking out the one person in a northern town (for example) who doesn’t have time for Labour under Corbyn or is interviewing hundreds but editing out everyone who doesn’t fit an ‘Corbyn has no chance’ narrative.

But this little Twitter exchange seems to escalate everything to a new level. Well played Elliot, to whom we’ll leave the last word:

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