Brandon Lewis in his office: The photo of Theresa May and the flag are nice touches, but he should devote more time to thinking about the consequences of his silly ideas [Image from Twitter].

The Tories have twigged that they can’t beat Labour on the social media using their own talent – they don’t have any – so they have decided to use their huge bank accounts to buy campaigning muscle instead.

Concerns have already been raised that this should be illegal – but This Writer has a sneaking feeling it already is.

If the Tories are paying people to do their campaigning on the social media, then it occurs to me that they should be declaring it to the Electoral Commission.

Some might object, claiming that we’re not currently in an electoral period – but I seem to recall that non-party campaigning has been stifled by an argument that it is very rare for us not to be in a period that could be described as the run-up to an election.

By-elections can take place at any time during the year, after all.

And people all over the country can read campaigning on Twitter, no matter who wrote it or where they were.

So the Tories would have to declare all money put towards social media campaigns as election expenditure – right?

It would seem so – there appear to be by-elections most weeks.

This could be amusing.

Either the Tories will bankrupt themselves paying for hired hands to publicise their useless policies – or they’ll criminalise themselves going over-budget in all forthcoming elections.

The Conservative Party is hiring an army of paid tweeters to take on Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters on social media, the Telegraph can disclose.

Brandon Lewis, the new Tory chairman, is recruiting hundreds of staff across the country in a bid to dramatically increase the party’s online presence and marshal groups of volunteers “on the ground” in every constituency.

The attempt to “professionalise” the Tories’ campaign operation comes amid fears among senior Tories that the party faces disastrous results in May’s local authority elections.

Source: Tories hire army of tweeters to take social media fight to Labour 

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