We must fight the use of disinformation as an election campaign technique

This election may feel existential on all sides, but the battle should not come at the expense of the codes of conduct and standards of decency in our political life.

By Sophia Gaston

SALFORD, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 19: (AVAILABLE FOR EDITORIAL USE UNTIL DECEMBER 19, 2019) In this handout image supplied by ITV, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn answer questions during the ITV Leaders Debate at Media Centre on November 19, 2019 in Salford, England. This evening ITV hosted the first televised head-to-head Leader’s debate of this election campaign. Leader of the Labour party, Jeremy Corbyn faced Conservative party leader, Boris Johnson after the SNP and Liberal Democrats lost a court battle to be included. (Photo by Jonathan Hordle//ITV via Getty Images)

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts,” wrote the late American diplomat and sociologist Daniel Patrick Moynihan. It is hard to imagine what Senator Moynihan, who died in 2003, would have made of a UK general election campaign where the idea of “fact” has become weaponised as a tool of deception.

For the course of the televised ITV election debate on Tuesday evening, the Conservative Party’s official press account on Twitter rebranded itself as “factcheckUK”, in the manner of an independent fact-checking website. Its tweets were, of course, focused solely on exposing the alleged untruths spoken by the Labour Party’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn.