The Tories just tried to attack Jeremy Corbyn as #UnfitToGovern - the backlash was absolutely monumental [TWEETS]
Even at the best of times, the Conservative Party aren’t exactly famed for being savvy with social media. You only need to take a brief look back at the inexplicable online exploits of the attempted (and now defunct) Tory Youth movement, Activate, or the Tories’ hilariously poor attempts at using Instagram, for evidence of this. More often than not, the Tories’ social media team manage to combine a catastrophic technological illiteracy with a canny knack for being completely and utterly out of step with the views of the general public. But their latest attempt to attack Labour via social media was so outrageously hypocritical - and so devoid of any self awareness whatsoever - that the backlash against them was both near-universal, and hilariously brutal. Following Jeremy Corbyn’s interview on the Andrew Marr show on Sunday morning, the Conservative Party Press Office attempted to attack the Labour leader and his Party over their failure to rule out another Brexit referendum, tweeting:
".@jeremycorbyn on #Marr says Labour will back a second referendum if their conference votes for it, breaking his manifesto pledge and betraying millions of voters who voted in good faith to leave the EU"
However, in an attempt to get their attack on Labour trending, Tory HQ accompanied their tweet with what what can only be described as a desperately ill-advised and monumentally hypocritical hashtag. Yes, despite Theresa May managing to completely embarrass both herself and the reputation of Britain during failed Brexit talks in Salzburg last week, and despite the UK now being in absolute chaos, both socially and economically, because of the Tories’ brazen incompetence and disastrous policies, Tory HQ attempted to accuse the Labour Party of being “#UnfitToGovern”. Seriously. https://twitter.com/cchqpress/status/1043844530116669441?s=21 The hashtag quickly began trending, but, unsurprisingly, not for the reasons the Conservative Party were hoping: https://twitter.com/rachael_swindon/status/1043854722904543232?s=21 https://twitter.com/paulbernaluk/status/1043923338060595202?s=21 https://twitter.com/alex_lummy/status/1043881577246347264?s=21 https://twitter.com/thomaspride/status/1043902217416314880?s=21 https://twitter.com/rachael_swindon/status/1043862920487145472?s=21 https://twitter.com/naj562/status/1043872520271745025?s=21 https://twitter.com/theprolestar/status/1043890818090700800?s=21 https://twitter.com/andysearson/status/1043856603395608576?s=21 https://twitter.com/andysearson/status/1043921493179207681?s=21 https://twitter.com/kened/status/1043882258564886529?s=21 https://twitter.com/dancingthemind/status/1043922607408640001?s=21 https://twitter.com/coralivesey/status/1043909543376416768?s=21 https://twitter.com/paddyjpf92/status/1043862313021902853?s=21 https://twitter.com/rednorthuk/status/1043856557514141699?s=21 https://twitter.com/sherbetk13/status/1043857656916701184?s=21 https://twitter.com/andriafh/status/1043985388459749376?s=21 https://twitter.com/sparklyb/status/1043981057446596608?s=21 https://twitter.com/stephenpaton134/status/1043859428007661568?s=21 https://twitter.com/shaunksmith85/status/1043958312172163072?s=21 https://twitter.com/dancingthemind/status/1043921350853894144?s=21 https://twitter.com/hepworthclare/status/1043937574132371466?s=21 https://twitter.com/bonn1egreer/status/1043933868418568195?s=21 https://twitter.com/jobaker46/status/1043862790950268929?s=21 Even the Bath Labour Party Twitter account - who have just under 3,000 followers, compared to Tory Press Office’s 61.4k - managed to get more than double the amount of retweets that the Tories’ original attack received: https://twitter.com/bathlabourparty/status/1043874742057521157?s=21 In fact, the Tories’ hashtag was so catastrophically unsuccessful, that when you search for it on Twitter, rather than linking it to the Labour Party as Tory HQ intended, the only account that now accompanies #UnfitToGovern happens to be the official Conservative Party Twitter account!
It’s safe to say that Tory HQ will think twice before attempting to start a hashtag again.