Labour party pays to promote spoof “Tory Party Conference” website

The Labour party has launched a mock Conservative party website under the URL: https://torypartyconference.co.uk. Labour has even paid for ads on Google to ensure the dummy site appears at the top of search results for “Conservative conference”.

The site, which features Michael Gove and Boris Johnson in the header, is emblazoned with the slogan: “CONS£RVATIVE PARTY CONFERENCE // OUT FOR OURSELVES”. 

For those with any doubt as to the site’s origins, the privacy notice at the bottom of the page reads: “Copyright Labour Party. All rights reserved. Promoted by David Evans on behalf of the Labour Party”.

As for the page’s content, under the sub-header entitled “Conference Agenda”, Lizz Truss is billed as “Dropping commitments to the Paris Climate Agreement”; Rishi Sunak as “Hitting working families with an unfair tax hike”; and Priti Patel as “Cutting police funding and letting antisocial behaviour soar”.

While tricky, this site is far from the first of its kind. At the last election, several websites surfaced which used wily domain names to falsely present as from the Conservatives, Labour and even the Brexit Party.

Notably, the Conservative party created a mock Labour party manifesto website to promote claims about their rivals’ tax and spending plans.

The Conservative party was also widely criticised last election cycle for rebranding one of its official Twitter accounts as “FactcheckUK” for the first televised debate on November 20.