Home / Blog / Our review of the 2023 local elections “Lies, Defamation, Deceit and Incompetence”

Watch David Puttnam discuss Reform Political Advertising’s work over the 2024 General Election

9th July 2024
You can read about the significant progress of our campaign and donate here. We’ve done all of this on a shoestring and by relying on unpaid volunteers. However, the reality is that following the 2024 General Election we really need your help to achieve our campaign goal of making electoral adver…

Our final review of election advertising for the 2024 General Election

6th July 2024
You can read about the significant progress of our campaign and donate here. We’ve done all of this on a shoestring and by relying on unpaid volunteers. However, the reality is that following the 2024 General Election we really need your help to achieve our campaign goal of making electoral a…

Opinium research shows that 56% would trust electoral ads more if they knew they were regulated.

6th July 2024
You can read about the significant progress of our campaign and donate here. We’ve done all of this on a shoestring and by relying on unpaid volunteers. However, the reality is that following the 2024 General Election we really need your help to achieve our campaign goal of making electoral a…

Reform Political Advertising’s Electoral Advertising Review Panel (EARP).

24th June 2024
“Electoral advertising regulation can’t work in a busy election period, can it?” This is probably the only challenge we (rarely) hear as to why electoral advertising regulation for fact-based claims might not work.  It isn’t the case of course, as the precedent in other countries …

The £2k debate. Neither factual truth nor lie. Possibly rational truth. Certainly opinion. Probably misleading.

14th June 2024
June 12th 2024Today may be the perfect day to write about the Tory party claim that a Labour government will add £2k to tax bills. Because today sees the Labour party claim that ‘the Tories will cost you £4,800 more on your mortgage’ and it also sees publication of the National Centre for Soci…

Andy Burnham signs up to our ad code for his Greater Manchester mayoral campaign

25th April 2024
We thank Andy Burnham for his leadership in signing up to our ad code for his Greater Manchester mayoral campaign that commits to making “every reasonable effort not to mislead voters”. You can read a copy of the ad code here. ……………………………………

Plaid Cymru signs up to our ad code for the various elections this year

20th April 2024
We are delighted that Plaid Cymru have agreed to sign up to our electoral ad code for the general election. The code makes a commitment to make “every reasonable effort not to mislead voters”. You can read a copy of the ad code here. ……………………………………

Sadiq Khan signs up to our ad code for his London mayoral campaign

16th April 2024
We are delighted that the Mayor of London Labour’s Sadiq Khan has signed up to our ad code that commits to making “every reasonable effort not to mislead voters”. We’ve now 6 London mayor candidates signed up including Zoë Garbett (The Green Party), Rob Blackie (Liberal Democrats), Natalie Ca…

Reform Political Advertising is working with Full Fact in 2024

14th April 2024
We are delighted to be working with Full Fact in the run up to the various 2024 elections in the UK. Their latest Report has just been published and has lots of sensible recommendations including “the next government should legislate to end deceptive campaign practices” and to “introduce indepen…

A simple ad code for all political leaders

14th January 2024
Lord Puttnam, January 2024 “When, as Chairman of a cross-party House of Lords Committee in 2020 I was responsible for recommending the regulation of ‘fundamental inaccuracy’ in political advertising, I wasn’t necessarily expecting it to be nodded through, but neither did I think the governm…

Your turn to listen, please, Lindy. We have a solution for political disinformation.

16th November 2023
On Tuesday morning Lindy Cameron, the CEO of the National Cyber Security Centre, spoke on Radio 4 about the ‘more complex threats’ posed by AI.  Prominent among the threats discussed was the one to voters from political disinformation (PD), as the upcoming election will be “the first in …

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it the NHS? Or is it the Tories?

17th October 2023
    First, our thanks to those who kindly sent in the ‘NHS survey’ conducted in the South Cambridgeshire parliamentary constituency under the auspices of the Conservative party candidate. Before we set out our response, we should explain how we assess electoral material. We do so using three elem…

What should Labour tell voters at the General Election?

8th October 2023
The truth.Analysis of thousands of ads from all political parties reveals that it’s in short supply.Electoral Commission research from 2019 confirms that “people were concerned about misleading campaign techniques from across the political spectrum.”Electoral advertising should be regulated so that …

Let’s settle this over a pint

4th August 2023
The tedious spat between the Labour party and the Conservatives over the Rishi Sunak ‘rolled eyes and poor pint’ deepfake did not surprise in the sense that it’s a conventional political exchange with all the value of two bald men fighting over a comb.Neither were we taken aback by the epic hy…

Taking advantage of the rules (the ones they wrote) In Uxbridge and Ruislip, of all places.

26th July 2023
The recent Conservative party retention of Uxbridge and Ruislip was generally attributed to their anti-ULEZ campaign. The campaign took many forms; one of the most significant was the imaginatively named ‘Stop Ulez Times,’ which looks like doing what it said on its ‘tin’: stopping ULEZ. It als…

Ping pong with the Lib Dems in Somerton and Frome

19th July 2023
This note sets out our views on the issue that has become something of an online debate after our tweet that we regarded the Lib Dem letter to voters in Somerton and Frome as a ‘terrible’ campaign.  To those who may have missed this edifying exchange, a reference to the campaign material…