Omnishambles

April 27, 2015 12:08 PM

In the Torygraph 5,000 small business owners wrote an open letter supporting the Tories in the UK election. So far so predictable, until people on Twitter started taking a closer look and found some strange discrepancies in the list...
posted by MartinWisse (43 comments total)

Politicians in lying bastards shocker - film at 10.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 12:14 PM on April 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

Never change, Torygraph.
posted by klangklangston at 12:15 PM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

[walking around the cemetary, Lisa and Bart realize that Sideshoe Bob has falsified voting returns with the names of deceased persons]
Lisa: [sees Snowball I's gravestone] Oh, my poor dead kitty, not you too!
[she looks at the voting list: "SNOWBALL I."]
Lisa: All right, Bob! NOW it's personal!
Bart: Hey! Uh, he did try to kill me.

posted by Fizz at 12:18 PM on April 27, 2015 [7 favorites]

I would guess that a lot of these signatories are just as pissed, judging by the disclaimer for the submission page:

"We will not share your details with anyone outside of the Conservative Party"
posted by Think_Long at 12:19 PM on April 27, 2015 [6 favorites]

I can see the Torries talking about this now:

Ok, what lessons can we learn from this? By that I mean how can we not get caught next time?
posted by Nanukthedog at 12:20 PM on April 27, 2015 [5 favorites]

I was hoping for a comment from Mr. Jablomi or Maj. Woody.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:23 PM on April 27, 2015 [4 favorites]

You'd think they'd be able to do something like this fully legitimately. After all, people do seem to vote for them. Surely some thousands of those people are in fact small business owners. I guess the Conservatives are lazy, in addition to being wrong.
posted by wierdo at 12:26 PM on April 27, 2015 [4 favorites]

Sometimes, I bemoan the fact that everyone can chime in on everything all the time online, but sometimes, it's just a glorious thing.
posted by xingcat at 12:26 PM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

You'd think they'd be able to do something like this fully legitimately. After all, people do seem to vote for them.

Yeah, but you don't admit to it.
posted by dng at 12:27 PM on April 27, 2015 [5 favorites]

I am actually quite impressed that people have bothered to dig into this and out the astro-turfing and badly handled PR aspects of this. It seems that the Tories aren't paying their PR consultants enough to do a proper job running their propaganda department.

Warms my cackles that more people are actually paying attention to this stuff, though. Hopefully it will mean more people will stop just reading headlines and thinking they represent reality.
posted by daq at 12:28 PM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

I am actually quite impressed that people have bothered to dig into this and out the astro-turfing and badly handled PR aspects of this. It seems that the Tories aren't paying their PR consultants enough to do a proper job running their propaganda department.

Maybe they left Grant Shapps in charge again.
posted by dng at 12:30 PM on April 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

I suspect most real small business owners prefer to avoid public controversy. It might put off some customers. They prefer to mind their own business.
posted by Segundus at 12:32 PM on April 27, 2015 [3 favorites]

There was a little note on UK Polling Report recently:

Turning to attitudes towards business neither leader is perceived as being in the right place. Only 29% of people think Miliband’s attitude to business is right, 33% of people think he is too hostile. 27% of people think Cameron’s attitude to business is about right, 50% that he is too close.

On those figures, while the political debate is often about whether Labour’s positioning towards business is right or not, it’s David Cameron who has the bigger problem.

The media always seem to report it as "Labour's business problem" though.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 12:33 PM on April 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

At least in the UK; in the USofA, being on the wrong side of an issue can get you a gofundme campaign that raises $100K.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:34 PM on April 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

"We will not share your details with anyone outside of the Conservative Party"^*


*Other that The Telegraph and the entire world. Other than that? Nobody. Nobody at all. We Promise!
posted by eriko at 12:35 PM on April 27, 2015 [3 favorites]

Warms my cackles

I'm hoping that's just a typo, but if your heart is cackling you should see a doctor right away.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:40 PM on April 27, 2015

I doubt they even care that much about getting caught out like this. The strategy for this sort of thing seems to be; just get the message you want out there, and if you get called on your bullshit that information will not reach as many people as yours did.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:47 PM on April 27, 2015 [7 favorites]

I find it fascinating, heartening and hilarious that, ten years ago, if any politician or political operative had been revealed as being online or internet-savvy, he'd have been derided as a weird, spoddy saddo who had no business with the serious affairs of government.

Whereas in 2015, we laugh at people who don't know what an IP address is, don't understand metadata and don't realise Wikipedia records every single edit.
posted by Happy Dave at 12:47 PM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

*grabs popcorn*

What I wouldn't give for a PMQs time for Ed Milliband to rake Cameron over the coals about how much of an embarrasment the party is for deliberately (and probably willfully) misrepresenting the difference between interest and support.

The list was sunk when a labor candidate was listed in the list.
posted by Hasteur at 12:51 PM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

OK, perhaps only 4,500 ( or make that 4,000 ) small business owners signed a letter endorsing the Tories. I alternately read the Telegraph and the Guardian. My observations--both fail to separate their editorializing and reporting. The Guardian is more transparent in its efforts to mix and match news/editorials, The Guardian has no readers over the age of 50 because the font/type face is too small. The Telegraph has better pictures, TV coverage and weekly magazines. The Guardian goes on and on and on--it is only for the most serious, or wanna be serious, readers.
posted by rmhsinc at 12:52 PM on April 27, 2015

Getting 5000 out of the UK's 5.2 million small and medium-sized businesses to sign a letter is hardly an impressive feat, even if it was all totally genuine.

The Tories really should be seeing if they can get a refund from Lynton Crosby. "Master of the dark arts" my arse.
posted by sobarel at 12:52 PM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

I would guess that a lot of these signatories are just as pissed, judging by the disclaimer for the submission page:

"We will not share your details with anyone outside of the Conservative Party"

Oh my Data Protection Act.
posted by Thing at 12:54 PM on April 27, 2015

I think it is important to note that "small business" has none of the electoral power in the UK that it does in the US anyway. It isn't a campaign point then way it is used in American politics because there is much less valorisation of entrepreneurship in british culture. The effect of the election on small businesses is literally a non-issue in this campaign until now. If I was a Tory strategist, I would not be too disappointed by lefty activists trying to "seize" on this as a gaffe - it seems much less damaging than David Cameron's football team gaffe. This is a story about pdf creation metadata and campaign tactics - that was a story about an elitist chump in language that everyone can understand and they choose to focus on the PDF story? Cameron seems to be puling back a consistent few points in the polls over last few days so I doubt he is too concerned about a story technical enough too only show up prominently in the grauniad and indie.

Labour is really trying to win tory C1C2 votes in most of England and this story is basically irrelevant to that narrative.
posted by Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory at 1:44 PM on April 27, 2015

It just seems like a strange thing to do. Surely you expect someone to notice when you put their names in the paper, I'd assume that you would want only the most full-throated for such a list. What's the point in tossing in random people?

If this was the Thick of It, I'd certainly expect Malcolm to have been behind it. Perhaps Olly edited the list over at his girlfriend's.

Sadly (or luckily), actual politics is more stupid than scheming.
posted by Trifling at 2:01 PM on April 27, 2015

The PDF metadata is a minor gaffe. Everyone knows these things come from the party HQs. The real issue is that they, and the Telegraph reported this as 5000 individuals signing, when some signed 0 times, some 2 or 3 and one guy signed his name 4 times spelling it wrong each time*. They didn't bother to clean the data by even sorting in Excel, and it shows I think a lack of respect in the electorate. They just took what appeared on a web form and stuck it out thinking noone would look twice and treated everyone like fools.

*ok, I know that happens easily from copy and paste, but that just highlights even more the issue.
posted by edd at 2:05 PM on April 27, 2015 [4 favorites]

Back in the 1840s Tory politicians mocked one of the Chartists' monster petitions because it had fake and duplicate names. I feel revenged.
posted by Thing at 2:12 PM on April 27, 2015 [12 favorites]

Say what you will about the United States — and I will say a lot, given beer and a soapbox — but aside from the (Murdoch-owned) New York Post (and perhaps its craven imitator the Daily News) I can’t think of an American newspaper that would be complicit in this sort of thing.

Yes, I know we also have (Murdoch-owned) FOX News, but television journalism was largely about artifice even before FOX landed on the scene. And the vast majority of our broadcast and print media outlets at least pretend not to have already made up their minds for their viewers and readers.

I'd almost prefer that the headline said VOTE FOR LABOUR = VOTE FOR FREELOADERS or something like that, because at least then it’s nominally about policy. The Wall Street Journal makes those same arguments, albeit more subtly, and on their editorial page instead of the front page. But this is a PR stunt, and would be one even if it had all been above-board. It’d be like a newspaper breathlessly reporting that 5,000 Coke drinkers had taken the Pepsi Challenge™ and switched their loyalties.
posted by savetheclocktower at 2:35 PM on April 27, 2015

We will not share your details with anyone outside of the Conservative Party

Sharing it with the Torygraph (who are independent from the Conservative Party though firmly and loyally in its camp), who then share it with the rest of the world, may count as a technical loophole.
posted by acb at 2:37 PM on April 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

Wow, this is so hacky.

I guess this is what you get when your campaigns are so short. Your political operatives don't get nearly as much practice as ours (Americans') do. I've run two local campaigns and I could literally do a better job than this ... like, to the point where I started thinking, "I wonder what the market is for election managers in the UK?" I don't really understand the finer points of class as it relates to your campaigns ... but from what I can tell, the people running them don't either, and they don't understand the finer points of things like "mailers" and "social media" and "press releases" so I guess I'd be ahead anyway.

(Didn't Tony Blair hire American campaigners, maybe Clintonites, and isn't that part of what made him so awful?)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:02 PM on April 27, 2015 [4 favorites]

Wow, this is so hacky.

Indeed, it feels like an episode of VEEP.
posted by Fizz at 3:16 PM on April 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

The thing about partisan newspapers in the UK is that the English newspaper industry developed at pretty much the same time as the railway, and with overnight trains from London to all parts of the England and Wales, it's always been a national industry, so much more congruent with national politics. With the US newspaper industry being, until USA Today, technologically limited to being a regional press, it's had to serve smaller markets in a non-partisan, or less-partisan fashion.

The Scottish newspapers and the Scottish editions of the English titles do have a different leaning in terms of party politics. Most notably The Scottish Sun is pro-SNP with the English edition virulently anti. It seems the Scottish Daily Mail is toeing the national line, though.
posted by ambrosen at 3:36 PM on April 27, 2015

Duplicate names, promising to keep names a secret and then broadcasting them anyway and the like are all tremendously entertaining, but it does leave me to wonder: who was it who convinced the Conservatives that a spontaneous, simultaneous outpouring of support for the party in the form of a letter signed by thousands was going to be more convincing than arousing of suspicion?
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 3:51 PM on April 27, 2015

Eyebrows McGee...
Ballot Monkeys
posted by asok at 4:46 PM on April 27, 2015

It seems that the Tories aren't paying their PR consultants enough to do a proper job running their propaganda department.

Betcha they won't make that mistake again.
posted by sneebler at 5:52 PM on April 27, 2015

Yes they will.

The defining characteristic of silvertails is their unshakeable belief in the righteousness of their being in charge. The think of themselves as adults, and the rest of us as children (naughty children at that) and can self-justify any amount of tawdry crap like this on the basis that keeping themselves in power is not only desirable but in some absolute moral sense necessary.

Some Tories are cynical pricks, no doubt about it; but I don't think the proportion of cynical pricks among the Right is any greater than it is among the Left. The notion of being born to rule, though, absolutely is; and it dies very very hard.
posted by flabdablet at 7:55 PM on April 27, 2015 [5 favorites]

Wow, this is so hacky.

Indeed, it feels like an episode of VEEP.

Or something Siobhan Sharp and her marketing consultants would come up with on W1A, which Ian Fletcher would have to spend an episode fixing up and apologising for. Followed by him getting completely overlooked for his clean up job and then leaving the BBC offices at 2330 looking confused and dejected.
posted by Sonny Jim at 2:27 AM on April 28, 2015

Yeah; this does seem incredibly bad politics all round.

Firstly, their last letter from '100 business leaders' seemed a bit of a damp squib, but I assume escalating it to '5000 small business owners' was either part of the strategy or just an attempt to try and make this stick after that one failed. I assume we're going to get '20,000 employees who really like zero hours' next.

Secondly, surely it's not much effort to make this a better grounded open letter; it can't be that hard to find 2500 people who do support the Conservatives. (I do find the "AHA THIS LETTER WAS ACKCHEWERLY ORCHESTRATED BY CCHQ" a bit funny. Like we'd normally assume they bumped into each other at the Rotary Club and decided to put a letter together)

Thirdly, as someone who has stopped buying Warburton's bread (Kingsmill4Lyfe) as they donated money to the Conservatives , it seems pretty rude to do this unless it's been explicitly allowed by the companies and not just an online form filled in by any old employee.

Fourthly, and this one is actually completely different but I started the numbered points thing so now I need to finish it: oh The Telegraph. I have a very small soft spot for it as I find their cryptic crossword easier than The Guardian's and they used to have a really good sports section (which is now actually pretty bad), but their desperation over the last few months for the Conservatives to win is slightly staggering. Becoming such overt propagandists seems slightly off for a broadsheet.
posted by Hartster at 3:49 AM on April 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Thirdly, as someone who has stopped buying Warburton's bread (Kingsmill4Lyfe)

Your MeFi membership maybe in danger if you do not find an artisanal baker immediately.
posted by biffa at 4:24 AM on April 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

Your MeFi membership maybe in danger if you do not find an artisanal baker immediately.

I think you're mistaking The Blue for The Grauniad.
posted by acb at 4:47 AM on April 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yes, the crossword is the best thing about the Telegraph. Reliable and solid, without any of the logobatics of the Guardian one (although logobatics have their place, obviously). That said, you can buy collections of them in paperback. You don't need the paper.

(Yes, I just made up the word "logobatics". I'll feel very proud until someone tells me it doesn't work as a word at all, and I should feel bad, which I will.)
posted by Grangousier at 5:25 AM on April 28, 2015

surely it's not much effort to make this a better grounded open letter

Well, considering that Karren Brady was involved, I can only assume that the whole thing was cooked up by two competing teams of young, desperate, slightly clueless Bright Blue sociopaths after rushing around London for a day and this is the inevitably half-arsed result.
posted by Sonny Jim at 6:25 AM on April 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

"Firstly, their last letter from '100 business leaders' seemed a bit of a damp squib, but I assume escalating it to '5000 small business owners' was either part of the strategy or just an attempt to try and make this stick after that one failed. I assume we're going to get '20,000 employees who really like zero hours' next. "

I assumed it came from an intern joking about over 9,000 and then not being able to pull it off so settling for a dodgy 5k.
posted by klangklangston at 12:21 PM on April 28, 2015

Hoo, hah, hooo, hahhahhah. "[S]tated work FOR and AS waiter.'" Can't read more.
posted by No Robots at 1:55 PM on April 28, 2015 [1 favorite]