No prizes for the correct answer. Perhaps this shabby impersonation of a respected local paper is no surprise: for decades, politicians have been ripping off their local news services and burying their names in tiny type under a heap of dubious or outright untrue claims while wrapping themselve…

We held a parliamentary event with the APPG Compassion In Politics this week titled “Honesty in politics. What is it and how do we get it?”. Taking part in the panel discussion was Debbie Abrahams MP, Gina Miller, Jennifer Nadel and Lord Puttnam who joined virtually. You can listen to Lord P…

UK politics is suffering from a dishonesty crisis. Repeated mistruths and misrepresentations have led to the corruption of standards and the withering of basic ethics and honesty. This in turn has fuelled the escalating disengagement of the public from the political process.This panel discussion wil…

The tweet from the Conservative party (tweets are subject to regulation for most advertisers, incidentally), which includes the claim that ‘Labour are backing the strikers’ is the kind of unfounded assertion that wouldn’t survive in a commercial arena but which continues to be permitted in thi…

Misleading political ads that aren’t deemed electoral are in the scope of the ASA. So we’ve decided to complain about this one. The fact we can highlights the gaping hole in regulation for electoral ads which you can’t complain to anyone about! You can read it below. We’ll keep you posted as t…

Probably not the best advertising in the world, ‘greenwashing’ – deceptive environmental marketing – is very much in the regulators’ sights. Only recently, the ASA have ruled against Unilever, Tesco and Innocent Drinks, no less. And the government’s own statutory authority the Competition an…

The public are hungry for change. They want to see politicians turn the page on months of dishonesty and deception. Our proposal – to properly regulate electoral ads – offers them a way to do that. And in the in last year we have taken some huge strides towards this goal.  We’ve made si…

Well after a protracted election contest we now have a new PM. Liz Truss has not yet shown her cards when it comes to the question of regulating electoral advertising so there is all to play for in terms of getting this issue up the agenda and on to the statute books. Of course, just because Ms T…

A single voice, but he spoke for all of us. The opening question at the Channel 4 debate on July 16th, involving five candidates at the time was, the moderator Krishnan Guru-Murthy told us, “the one subject that had dominated questions from our audience.” The question, delivered by a memb…

That’s the thing with a loophole like no regulation of electoral advertising content – some people take advantage. Others demand ‘something must be done about it,’ instead of ‘I must do something about it.’ The result is that nothing gets done. And another big bus with a big lie …

Liz Saville Roberts presenting her Bill in the House of Commons. The momentum behind regulation to prevent lies in electoral advertising continues.  For it to continue we need your support. We are the only organisation in the UK campaigning for electoral advertising regulation to prevent …

Whoops. In our recent report of local election advertising from the three main parties, we accused the Lib Dems of doctoring a Telegraph headline. They didn’t. The headline they showed in their advertising did appear in the Telegraph and despite best attempts we couldn’t find it at the time of …

Reform-Political-Advertising.-COST-OF-LYING-CRISISDownload

At Reform Political Advertising, most of us are advertising people. We’re doing what we’re doing because we don’t like the way that politicians use (or abuse) advertising to make what are frequently highly misleading statements. Election advertising isn’t regulated, which means that politi…

At Reform Political Advertising, we’re a bit nervous of buses. Ever since the big fat £350m lie on the side of a big red bus rolled into Westminster, we’ve been keeping a wary eye out and, sure enough, three turn up at once. There’s the Conservative bus, which likes to pretend it isn’t…