Tories ‘rush to smear Labour’ – and get their central, simple number wrong

Last night, the Conservatives’ Twitter account put out a tweet clearly intended to try to turn Brexit supporters away from the Labour Party:

The tweet was copied by numerous Tory MPs and functionaries, as well as by bot and sockpuppet accounts – with some adding a more explicit claim that Labour was trying to ‘block Brexit’, such as the lamentable James Cleverley:

This was completely untrue, as the bill had nothing to do with whether Britain leaves the EU and was about how laws will be applied after Brexit.

Labour had warned they were going to vote against it if it wasn’t amended to protect our human rights – but the Tories defeated the amendment to protect human rights, which says a lot about their ultimate goals post-Brexit.

However, the Tory tweets contained another fake ‘fact’.

Labour MPs voted against the bill – but not 243 of them:

We asked Conservative HQ:

“Your @conservatives Twitter account tweeted last night that 243 Labour MPs had ‘voted to try to block the EU Withdrawal Bill which is essential for a smooth Brexit’.

This is untrue – the number was 241 who voted against the bill, which did not protect human rights.

• how can UK voters trust the Conservatives to run the country when they are in such a rush to put out a smear that they can’t even get a simple number right?
• how can UK voters trust a party to run the country that is yet again happy to mislead them?”

Pertinent questions that the Tories did not answer by the time of publication.

A senior Labour source told the SKWAWKBOX:

The Tories’ whole propaganda effort last night was dishonest, but getting the simple number wrong that was central to their claim is just sloppy. Clearly they were in such a rush to smear Labour that they didn’t even do a basic fact check.

That speaks volumes about the Conservatives’ approach to running the country – and we see it in their Brexit negotiations as well, where they’ve been woefully underprepared.

The Tories will no doubt be counting votes by two MPs who are suspended and are therefore not currently Labour MPs. But if so, this displays a no less worrying tendency to play fast and loose with the facts.

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