Rishi Sunak has been publicly corrected on 25 different occasions for his misleading posts on social media, according to a new report.
The research, conducted by pro-EU campaign group Best for Britain and first reported by The Independent, also found that the Conservative Party is almost five times more likely to be corrected than Labour.
Best for Britain came to that conclusion by comparing the number of community notes added to posts on X (formerly Twitter) from the prime minister, cabinet ministers and the official Conservative account to their opposition counterparts.
What are community notes?
Community notes are a feature in the social media platform which were added in January 2023 to allow other X users to add context or clarifications to posts.
Users who sign up to be “contributors” can add notes to posts offering different points of view. If enough of these notes are rated as helpful by fellow contributors, it will appear below the post in question as a community note.
According to X, “community notes aim to create a better informed world by empowering people on X to collaboratively add context to potentially misleading posts”.
How many times have the Tories and Labour been corrected in this way?
Best for Britain found 73 community notes attached to government accounts in total, compared to 15 from official opposition accounts.
Twenty-six of those posts were attached to the Conservative Party’s official account, and 25 were from the PM who vowed at the start of his premiership to lead with “integrity, professionalism and accountability”.
In the first week of January, Sunak was rebuked three times for posting misleading claims about clearing the asylum backlog, suggesting tax was cut, and claiming responsibility for halving inflation.
Meanwhile, Labour leader Keir Starmer has accrued four community notes in the same period while the Labour account has seven.
David Lammy was the only shadow minister to receive more community notes than his counterpart, David Cameron – Lammy has two, while the foreign secretary has none.
The group’s CEO Naomi Smith said the findings “shouldn’t be taken lightly, especially in an election year where lack of trust can feed dangerous populism”.
“A government that the public can’t trust to act with integrity and transparency – both essential for liberal democracy – is a government that shouldn’t be in power,” Smith continued. “We need a general election and our polling shows that the public want it now.”
