As the dust settles from this week’s local and mayoral elections, one thing seems clear: the UK’s political landscape shifted. Labour and the Conservatives lost their grip as voters fragmented towards Reform, the Liberal Democrats, and The Green Party. But beneath the headlines is a more troubling and unreported trend – how unregulated, misleading election advertising may be distorting these tight results.
Let’s look at just a few wafer-thin margins:
- Runcorn by-election – Reform beat Labour by 6 votes (0.02% vote share)
- Doncaster mayoral election – Labour held off Reform by just 698 votes (1% vote share)
- North Tyneside mayoral election – Labour scraped by with a margin of 444 votes (0.8% vote share).
- West of England mayoral election – Labour edged Reform by 5,945 votes (2.9% vote share).
In contests this close, advertising matters. And not just any advertising – but the kind that is deliberately designed to mislead and some of which hides party affiliations.
The Case of North Tyneside: A Warning Sign
Our ad monitoring project uncovered a striking example. The Conservative mayoral candidate in North Tyneside, Liam Bones, launched a Facebook page disguised as a local media outlet: “North Tyneside Matters”. It looks like journalism but it’s campaign propaganda.
One dramatic video post accuses the Labour candidate of benefiting from over £750,000 in council funding. Another post claims public land was sold to her company for £1. These ads didn’t declare who was behind them. They didn’t name Liam Bones or the Conservative Party. And yet, at the time of writing our election review had received over 30,000 views and has been shared 172 times. There has also been a paid promotion of the same video which Meta estimates has reached between 100,000 – 500,000 people. These are very significant numbers for regional election adverts.
This isn’t an isolated incident. Bones has a history of deceptive electioneering and was formally disciplined in 2023 for “deceitful and dishonest” campaign materials.
Why This Matters
It’s impossible to draw a direct line from a Facebook ad to a voter’s choice, just as we can’t see inside the ballot box. However, any seasoned advertiser knows how powerful messaging can be, especially in this instance when it masquerades as independent news. In local races decided by a few hundred votes (or in this instance when the margin of victory was 0.8%), this kind of deception can change outcomes.
It doesn’t just mislead voters. It also erodes trust in democracy itself.
Labour Promised “Action, Not Words.” Now’s the Time.
In 2020, the House of Lords Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee had as one of its key recommendations regulations to ensure factual accuracy in electoral advertising. It was a cross-party and unanimous recommendation. Labour should now take the opportunity to implement it.
Keir Starmer campaigned on rebuilding trust. His first speech said he was going to do that through: “action, not words.” This is that moment.
If Labour is serious about democratic integrity – and from its own perspective serious about winning – it must act now to implement those long-overdue recommendations.
Because next time, the margins could be even smaller – and the disinformation even more corrosive.
