during a leaders’ debate the party’s press
office temporarily rebranded its website as a
fact-checking service. The Labour Party has
also sought to co-opt the roll of independent
factchecker, rolling out a website called The
Insider, which calls on voters to “trust the facts.”
“It’s the Wild West out there,’’ said Matt Walsh,
who researches digital political communication
at the University of Cardiff. “The parties can
pretty much do what they want in terms of
putting political messages out there and they
can do what they want in terms of upsetting
social media users.’’
Britain’s electoral laws, like those of most
countries, were largely written before the dawn
of the internet, meaning social media campaigns
are mostly unregulated and open to exploitation
by a new generation of political strategists who
grew up with the technology. While Russia was
able to exploit these loopholes in an effort to
disrupt the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the
big story of 2019 may be the willingness of
Britain’s political parties themselves to push the
boundaries of truth, transparency and reality.
The stakes couldn’t be bigger. Prime Minister
Boris Johnson is seeking a mandate to take
Britain out of the EU by Jan. 31. Labour leader
Jeremy Corbyn promises a second referendum
that could block Brexit, along with left wing
economic policies including the nationalization
of railways, water companies and broadband
networks. And tactics applied in the British
campaign are but a harbinger of how digital
misinformation could affect other coming votes,
including next year’s U.S. presidential election.
The U.K. House of Commons’ media committee
last year called for widespread changes to