LABOUR are so desperate for any sign of an electoral boost that one of their MPs fell for a fake poll posted by a Twitter account called “Britain Erect”.
The fact that the account only has 12 followers, joined on April Fools' Day and had only one tweet was apparently not enough to stop Rupa Huq, Labour MP for Ealing Central and Acton, sharing a fake post.
Neither was the bio line "The UK's most erect poll aggregator".
The account, a parody of the verified Britain Elects account which regularly tweets Westminster voting intentions, went so far as to have the same logo and banner head in a bid to fool the public, but managed to snare a politician as well.
READ MORE: Rory Stewart starts Twitter frenzy with wild April Fool post
And what was the dream-like claim that lured Huq into sharing the fake poll? A 12 percentage point boost for Labour which the account claimed would give them 47% of the vote share.
On the real Britain Elects account, the latest YouGov poll shows a stagnating Labour vote with no growth or fall, sitting at 37%.
The 8 point drop the parody account assigned to the Conservative Party was also well off the mark, as the YouGov poll showed only a 2 point drop.
The parody account used the same branding as Britain Elects
The official account has a verified tick and hundreds of thousands of followers
At least Huq appears to have noticed her mistake pretty swiftly.
According to Politwoops, who keep a log of all tweets politicians delete, she removed the post five seconds after retweeting it.
Huq wasn’t the only one to be tricked, with social media users commenting that they had almost fallen for the joke post.
One wrote: “I almost had a heart attack!”
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While another added: “Almost fell for this.”
And another Twitter user added: “Only decent April Fools' I've seen.”
Although the juicy numbers must be enticing, Labour must be aware that even with the rage and fury against partygate and the actions of Downing Street staff during the Covid-19 pandemic, they haven’t capitalised on it enough to boost their vote.
Huq swiftly deleted the retweet but it was logged by Politwoops
Leader Keir Starmer may have eventually called on Boris Johnson to quit as PM, but his reluctance to do so during the other scandals - Owen Thomson, cash for honours, the list goes on - showed a failure in leadership.
At its core, the party hasn’t changed, and that’s why their vote is stagnating. It’s not hard to see.
It’s time for Labour politicians to grasp reality, and also double check who they are retweeting.
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