The official launch of Boris Johnson’s campaign isn’t until 7.30pm tonight, but the dishonest Tory spin machine is already at full throttle. The party has doctored a video of Keir Starmer on Good Morning Britain seemingly unable to explain Labour’s Brexit policy.
The presenter Piers Morgan asks Labour’s Brexit spokesperson why the EU would “give you a good deal if they know you’re going to actively campaign against it”. Starmer blinks, licks his lips, and stares blankly at the camera. Then the video ends.
Except that’s not what happened. Starmer answered immediately and fluently, rattling off information on the parameters for a possible Brexit deal.
The video is a shabby trick. Even Conservative MP Johnny Mercer was upset after sharing it, saying the video had “inexplicably been doctored at the end”.
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The rest of his party is sadly brazenly doubling down. When Morgan criticised it, the Consrvative Party press office replied with another disingenuous version of the video where it cut out Starmer’s response and froze the frame – continuing the misleading impression that he hadn’t answered the question.
James Cleverly also went out to defend it. The party chair told Good Morning Britain the party had edited the video “because we needed to shorten” it. On BBC Breakfast, he changed tack and called it “light-hearted and satirical”. Perhaps sensibly, he didn’t appear on Sky News, getting empty-chaired by presenter Kay Burley as she reeled off a list of Tory campaign blunders.
We’ve seen this dishonest behaviour from campaigns Johnson has fronted before. Remember the lies of the 2016 referendum? He got away with it then. We mustn’t let him do so again.
