Back to the old tropes

The Observer shows a reversion to old 'black propaganda' techniques devoid of much subtlety or use of modern 'black arts'. The technique is guilt by association, smearing (sic)  allegations between parties and issues. Rather sad and neglected whistleblower SSanni is allowed tomake the case:

'"The Electoral Commission has already found that both Vote Leave and Darren Grimes broke electoral law. And of course if you don’t value the law, then it makes sense that you don’t value the morals and values that underpin those laws. The total lack of respect here for someone’s passing and for the agreement that they’d publicly made, it just shows you something very important about this campaign and who these people were.”'

The specific case was an accusation that Vote Leave did not respect an informal agreement not to campaign for 'around three days' after the murder of J Cox, a Labour MP, by a 'right-wing extremist'.

There is some dispute about whether VL ads were circulated the day after the murder or not. D Cummings says they were put in the pipeline but not circulated, but Sanni has leaked some emails suggesting they were placed online later on the day after the murder.

There is a smear that VL had broken the agreement because their posts  'came just a week before the referendum on 23 June, and with the Leave campaign desperately trying to make up ground on Remain.' The evidence for Remain hgaving been in the lead then must be based on some of the opinion polls that got the overall result so wrong? The implication is that this 'desperate' action snatched back the lead somehow.

For the Observer, 'The ads highlight many of the issues the [DCMS] committee is seeking to address: the use of “dark ads” by campaigns to target people in secret, based on unknown data using messages hidden from public view.' Quite how these ads were hidden, and how effective the targetting campaigns actually were is questioned by the Observer's very own sister the Guardian as in the blog below. 

However, having established the nasty immoral character of VL, which has offended two modern-day saints, J Cox and S Sanni, we can now believe the worst.


Meanwhile, and I am sorry I missed this frst time, the Guardian published an article by N Cohen attacking Cummings and noting that:

In February, the pro-Remain group Best for Britain conducted private polling on what would persuade the public to accept a second referendum. A fall in living standards (and they’ve already fallen) made no difference: a majority would still say we’d had one referendum and that was enough. The NHS suffering (and it is suffering) produced a tie. But when the pollsters asked: “What if there was confirmation of cheating during the referendum campaign?”, 49% wanted a second vote and only 30% opposed. If the trolled public should realise it’s been cheated, the future will be up for grabs.