It reminds me of the issue of ‘Battle Buses’ during election campaigns which was broken open by Channel 4 News. This had been an ongoing issue for YEARS. ALL of the parties had campaigned LOCALLY using buses coming out of Central Funds which then didn’t show up in the local campaigning costs. EVERY SINGLE PARTY did this, they ALL broke the rules and so NONE could report the other, a kind of ‘gentleman’s agreement’ (but without the gentlemen)

They are ALL hoping to drive a bus through the regulations and break spending regulations, lie, mislead and propagandise their way through this campaign – AGAIN.

We can’t trust politicians to self regulate, we know this. But they are already exempt from rules on truthfulness in advertising and now they will abuse this (relatively) new platform to lie EVEN MORE as they can claim not to be connected to advertisements, memes etc. All sides will do this and they think they’ll be doing it better than the other lot so why report them for what they themselves are ALSO doing.

I saw this up close and personal when I was targeted by dodgy advertisements and memes from the ‘Better Together’ campaign in the Scottish Independence Referendum in 2014. Alistair Darling, his office and his personal associates produces a stream of lies and propaganda which would NOT have been legal in any other setting. They breached campaign rules and made me ashamed to have ever voted Labour.

But I’m being unfair, now the Tories are getting in on the kind of vile behaviour Darling exhibited back then too.

Again, it’s being left to a few brave individuals to raise this as an issue. Our politicians want a free for all, they want the kind of ‘attack ads’ that proliferate on US television during political campaigns, Trumpian language and action too.

We HAVE to stand up to them and tell them we aren’t going to take it. They are the least of us but they would have us believe that somehow, in their ivory towers they care. They don’t…