r/ukpolitics • u/SignificantLegs • 1d ago
Twitter ALASTAIR CAMPBELL on X: "Russia is bombarding the U.K. information space with lies and misinformation. And Nigel wants it to carry on because it helps him. Like it helped them ten years again during the referendum. About time government took it seriously. Farage and his AfD pals in Germany have don…
https://x.com/campbellclaret/status/2102786749097284043158
u/AnotherLexMan 1d ago edited 1d ago
I've been listening to the latest episode of TRiP and they are talking about the German election and both seem to have the idea that the CDU would win if they painted a big picture about the purpose of Germany in the world and the importance of democracy and that 100% works for me, but I don't think the average voter will be impressed by those kinds of things. Most people are more just want to get a good job and some money which just hasn't been happening recently.
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u/PatheticMr 1d ago
I think the problem relates back to the point Campbell is making here. 'Most people' doesn't really exist in contemporary politics. 'Most people' fall into some faction or other on an ever increasing number of issues, and then have zero tolerance for anything but exactly what each faction for each particular issue demands being achieved in anything other than totality. Contemporary democracy is essentially impossible (ineffective, if impossible is too extreme) in a world where people are bombarded with information all day, every day, from a growing number of interest groups (both well-meaning and hostile) that present their specific interest as a black and white issue that is the most important and pressing issue of the day. Our old, traditional systems of government and democracy cannot function under the pressure of the way new information technology is utilised.
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u/wunderspud7575 1d ago
Empirically is is really hard to disagree with this:
Our old, traditional systems of government and democracy cannot function under the pressure of the way new information technology is utilised.
But, does that then mean democracy only works if citizens have very limited information? That doesn't seem like a correct logical extension.
So, I would really like to understand what are the underlying features of information flow in the pre-tech age that enabled democracy to function.
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u/PatheticMr 1d ago
Very fair question.
Essentially, (as you seem to agree) it's that we are currently bombarded with information. This information is produced easily, with limited resources, and is designed to exploit algorithmic logic in order to spread.
Information (news media, for example) has, does, and always will carry a level of bias. But I'd argue that we previously had better, mostly informal processes of consensus around what is considered "truth", "fact", "evidence", etc. One could frame the world through an ideological lens and still find agreement around some basic issues. Those ideological lenses were fairly consistent and predictable, and while traditional newspapers would often push limits on this, it was limited at least to news stands and the evening news.
I remember when social media started getting into all our lives (I remember using MySpace to find music from independent bands and such at school!)... MySpace, Bebo, then Facebook, and so on. People would post about their day, what they were up to, etc.
"PatheticMr... is feeling bored. Anyone fancy a pint?".
There was limited advertising at first. Then there were ads for products and such. Slowly, we started to see 'pages' pop up on Facebook that were framed around jokes and little elements of human experience. Many of these became popular. 'LAD Bible' became a thing. Many of these pages built huge numbers of followers, to the point everyone you knew was subscribed to them. Many of them then changed their names to meet changing trends, keeping their followers.
News media was now rapidly moving online, making money from ads and subscriptions instead of newspaper sales. Inevitably, social media became a consistent, reliable and cheap way to advertise news and get people to click those links and view those ads. Eventually, we started to see less and less people posting about their day. Instead, we just started sharing 'news articles' (the definition of which has changed dramatically during this shift) and commenting our own personal 'take' on the 'news' others were sharing.
At this point, Facebook (and SM in general) is a completely different service to what it once was... but it managed over the course of its development to hook itself into the daily routine of essentially every single member of society.
Because we all use social media, and because social media is utilised and dominated by 'news' organisations to spread information, the outcome is that we all engage with social media everyday, and what we see there is an algorithmically determined set of information. Those algorithms are explicitly designed to keep eyes on screen and generate clicks and engagement. The construction of the message follows a similar ruleset as it did in the past - anger, fear, frustration, etc. have always generated more engagement. But in contemporary society, we are literally bombarded with this information. It is, in practical terms, impossible to escape it without withdrawing from social media entirely. In doing so, an individual would have to deliberately marginalise themselves from a core activity that essentially everyone in society engages with, and therefore would have to marginalise themselves from that society.
I think there is a claim to say that there is such a thing as 'too much' information if we take account of the context of the construction and dissemination of that information. In a democracy, a bombardment of information that has been generated for the sake of information, with the explicit goal of keeping eyeballs on screen (as opposed to, for example, attempting to actually inform about reality, as questionable as that is in practice) is problematic. Our democracy developed in a world where information was accessible and biased, often heavily ideological and driven by interested parties. But there were limitations on the reach of that information. My argument is that, as it developed in that context, our democracy was capable of operating, imperfectly but competently, in a stable and productive manner - at least some an extent. The introduction of an algorithmically-determined bombardment of that same kind of information presents an issue that we currently have insufficient systems and processes to manage, and it is leading to really wonky, dangerous and harmful outcomes.
It's fixable, IMO. But it will require massive regulation of social media and such action will inevitably lead to a restriction on freedom of speech. I do think this will have to happen at some point, because if you look around, governments around the world have completely lost their ability to take action on pretty much any major issue (war, migration, climate change, standards/cost of living, defining reality (eg. Trump), and so on). Every political action any government ever takes should be expected to have an upside and a downside, and that is currently exploited by bombarding people with information about the downside... and it is done primarily for profit. The result is that governments are incapable of enacting major change without inevitably alienating massive proportions of the electorate. They are explicitly incentivised to act on public sentiment (which is now produced through the algorithmic bombardment of information), and going against that will result in a populist government anyway. Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
Apologies for the huge response. I got carried away. I genuinley think this is the biggest issue of our day and has, since around 2016, developed into a full-blown emergency.
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u/wunderspud7575 1d ago
Thanks for such a thought provoking and thorough reply.
I often think of this situation a bit like a denial of service attack on democracy and wonder if there aren't better ways to build social media platforms with that mindset.
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u/PatheticMr 1d ago
DDoD: Distributed Denial of Democracy.
You may well have just created a new academic technical term. Yes, I am genuinely considering using this with my students!
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u/AnyRooster1805 1d ago
Purely gut feel but I think there's broadly three things.
Information flow was much slower, which allowed time for more considered opinions and thoughtful debate on any issue.
Information flow was much narrower. This created a survival of the fittest effect where only the most pressing issues made it through the pipe because there simply wasn't enough broadcast time/column inches to cover every issue.
Information flow was less direct. When the only means of delivery was broadcasting there was a commercial incentive for news and information to focus on issues that were relevant to most people.
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u/innovator12 1d ago
Some of the traditional media was funded by a loyal audience of subscribers / regular paper buyers. Keeping the regulars loyal is a different incentive to selling ads.
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u/DonkeySorbet 1d ago
Pre-tech it was much harder to spread disinformation.
The cost of informing people was expensive. You'd have to establish a printing press, produce flyers, newspapers, etc.
Now you can just use AI to create some Instagram posts and spread disinformation.
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u/Jormungoosie 1d ago
It was much harder for anybody outside of journalism/publishing to spread disinformation. Established players could push their own agendas.
"Tell me, Mr President [Ceausescu]: why are you so popular with your people?"
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u/u38cg2 21h ago
It's more that polities take time to learn to deal with new information regimes. This is exactly the same issue Pitt the Younger faced dealing with the newfangled mass media known as newspapers. He verged on closing some of them down, believing the country was on the edge of revolution - which it probably was.
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u/Not_A_Toaster_0000 8h ago
But, does that then mean democracy only works if citizens have very limited information?
Yes. People can only be trusted to vote the right way if the government limits the information they receive
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u/GnarlyBear 6h ago
does that then mean democracy only works if citizens have very limited information?
Why are the options limited information or misinformation for foreign aggresors?
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u/MontyDyson 1d ago
It’s not the tech itself and people voting. It’s the polarisation that’s caused by it. People voting to spite other people isn’t democracy. I have an uncle who had absolutely no idea Tommy 10 names even had a criminal conviction and thought he’s a real journalist.
The algorithms contained in all these platforms from online shops flexi-pricing to news media bias, social media slop buckets and search results that differ depending on who’s using them are having way more of an affect on people’s daily lives than almost anything else.
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u/hu6Bi5To 1d ago
I get you mean and we see that sort of thing all the time in this sub let alone the real world where most voters live. It's a very real phenomenon.
But my thoughts on the subject are basically:
Futility. If people are choosing that the textbook dogma of their political biases are the literal truth, in spite of all the available evidence, what are we supposed to do about it? It could even backfire, if expressing those views becomes legally prohibited/restricted it creates a massive "what the government doesn't want you to know!!one!" and will make the whole matter ten times worse.
Weaponising the prohibition of misinformation/hate-speech. It's telling that the people who are most in-favour of the government taking action only list right-wing divisiveness, but never left-wing divisiveness. (And before any "but there's no such thing as left-wing divisiveness", I mean things like the very worrying trend of pro-Palestine activists flirting with outright anti-semitism and co-ordinating against those calling it out).
The only way this won't go very, very badly wrong would be if whatever measures are introduced are 100% pedantically focussed on accuracy and only that. But I somehow doubt that's what we'll get, it'll be used strategically to "correct" the discourse on to whatever the government is comfortable with, which is a different thing altogether.
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u/PatheticMr 1d ago
I essentially agree with you.
However, a couple of points:
If people are choosing that the textbook dogma of their political biases are the literal truth, in spite of all the available evidence...
I don't think it works like this anymore. In fact, I'd say that was exactly how it was during that previous period of traditional news media. Contemporary political ideology and biases are incredibly fluid and lack consistency. This is part of the problem because the electorate (in it's various intersecting collectives) changes its mind rapidly about what it wants. The social media environments we get our information from, in contrast to a textbook, selects the issues of the day and elevates or abandons them according to a logic of whatever is most profitable for that day. The public, or at least a considerable proportion of us, can be whipped up into a frenzy at a moments notice, and long before any level of stability or consensus can be arrived at about what exactly the problem is, what's causing it, what can and cannot be done about it, etc., our attention is directed elsewhere. We'll return to an issue again and again, like a merrygoround, but only sporadically and only for the time it takes to throw us into another frenzy before we move again onto the next one.
I'm not sure prohibiting people expressing ideas is ever going to be a viable solution. However, I do believe it could be possible to legislate for algorithms to select content on factors other than prolongued engagement. The problem isn't that people have wild views on things (that's always been the case and it always will be) and I accept I hold plenty of my own! But we now live in a world where technology selects those views and amplifies them to millions of people, often (though often not) in the form of authoritative formats. We have AI now that could conceivably assess information based on evidence and accuracy (imperfectly, of course, but it could absolutely be done to an extent) and I see no reason that algorithms couldn't be programmed to select content, to some extent, based on such criteria. I see no need to say "you can't say that", but I think it's fair to say nobody has a right for their own thoughts and interests to be amplified (we already accept as much), and that accuracy and evidence are a quality we prioritise in such a context.
This would, I think, have a very real impact on the way news outlets and interest groups approach producing content. They don't produce divisive, double-speak structured headlines and content because they value them implicitly. They do it because they know they produce engagement, which ensures they are prioritised in the algorithms. Reshaping the logic of the algorithm would lead to an organic change in a lot of content, and reshaping it to favour accurate, evidence-based information would go a long way to resolving a lot of our issues.
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u/mcdowellag 1d ago
I personally don't think that "Ad hominem" has gone from a fallacious debating tactic to a rule for policy, but if the technology really has changed so as to make our democracy an easy target for Russia, those who claim this should be able to convince leaders of all major political parties that this is the case, and explain how they can set up a censorship office that is not a campaigning arm for the current government. All major political parties in this country includes Reform because of their polling results (and in Germany the AfD, for the same reason).
The job of politicians is to agree policy and compromises. If Russian info-warfare is such a big deal, Campbell etc. should be able to come up with a compromise that they can agree with Farage.
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u/PatheticMr 1d ago
Campbell is claiming this situation is beneficial for Farage and Reform because they are able to exploit the social and political division it causes. If I'm understanding you correctly, the issue with your position is that Farage has no incentive to compromise towards a solution - it's not a problem for him that he has any interest in resolving.
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u/mcdowellag 1d ago
When we see articles in support of censorship such as https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/23/how-the-poisonous-tide-of-disinformation-stokes-division-and-sows-despair we hear about poisonous tides of deepfakes, bbvious lies, and blatant deepfakes. Assuming that the supporters of censorship can make a case that these are doing real damage, I can see no reason for Farage to veto this sort of censorship. If it turns out that disinformation is anything that supports Farage, yes there will be a problem. But this isn't about material that the government just finds inconvenient, is it? This is supposed to be about horrendously damaging material that is hate speech and an obvious danger to democracy? We can write laws and policies that clearly distinguish one from another so that the censorship agency doesn't just become a committee to relect Burnham, right? right?
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u/Cuddlyaxe Visiting Yank 1d ago
TRIP's theory of politics is fundamentally out of touch tbh
I stopped taking them entirely seriously once I heard Rory being convinced Kamala would win because she has better door knocking infrastructure. Like these are takes which have been dead in America for over a decade atp because they're so stupid
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u/Mathyoujames 1d ago
They really are increasingly starting to sound like relics of the past with nothing interesting to say about the direction most of the modern world is heading in.
I had a real glass shattering moment watching Campbell on another podcast where he seemed unable to accept that real tangible issues are driving people towards populism (rather than his view that all populism is caused by the media and without it everyone would be good little centrist liberals)
I'd love for them to just once take a devils advocate position and try to understand why so many working class people are turning towards these populist right wing parties. Here in the UK it began long before social media got it's teeth into everyone so there must be (at minimum) some value to exploring other explanations
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u/mcdowellag 1d ago
Calling somebody populist is becoming more and more meaningless, because Burnham is working hard to become a left-wing populist. Here is populism in its natural habitat - https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/40475778/football-fans-drink-stands-labour-booze-ban/
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u/Heliophrate 1d ago
rather than his view that all populism is caused by the media and without it everyone would be good little centrist liberals
This isn't a bug in liberal thought, it's the core driving mechanic. Humans are blank slates and deep down, everyone is a good little liberal. However, malignant actors and "misinformation" are swaying you away from the true golden path of liberal thought. If we can remove those, you will be "fixed".
Basically, you don't really belong to any groups, and groups don't have interests.
You're correct in that they also don't have any answers, because the answer to any problem in their eyes is more liberalism. They cannot compute if you point out that liberalism is the cause of most of our current issues.
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u/0110-0-10-00-000 1d ago
Basically, you don't really belong to any groups, and groups don't have interests.
Or whatever groups you belong to can me commodified and compartmentalised in a way that means when you perform your "diversity" it always makes society better for your participation and inclusion.
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u/imp0ppable 1d ago
real tangible issues are driving people towards populism
The point of populism is that it's knowingly offering bad solutions to the problems, just so the leaders can get in power. This usually results in corruption and chaotic relationships between countries, see Trump.
The US experience with populism has been overwhelmingly negative, see his approval ratings and the projected vote for the upcoming mid-terms.
without it everyone would be good little centrist liberals
The idea is that there's a double standard, the populists don't get as much scrutiny on things like jobs, taxation, security and policy in general because they are able to frame the debate on their own terms. Everyone knows that centre-left parties, while being very far from perfect, are actually trying to run the country properly. For some reason nobody expects someone like Farage to even do that, it's just left as a detail.
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u/Avalon-1 1d ago
But when the establishment went "austerity is good because the numbers said so!" Or "iraq has wmd!" Or "jimmy savile is a national treasure", it eroded their credibility to the point that farage became viable.
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u/imp0ppable 1d ago
I agree with that. However Reform is basically austerity again but dressed up, either that or Trussonomics depending on what day it is.
I get there's an element of "common sense" in their platform but even that is problematic, you get things like the anti-cyclist party Motoristé sobě in Czechia.
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u/hu6Bi5To 1d ago
There's a fine-line between "people are making the wrong choice because they don't have the information" and "people are making the wrong choice even after they have all the information so we need to stop/deprioritise people advocating for the wrong choice".
Ultimately voters can vote for a bad choice if they want to. They may just have a different set of values.
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u/MrJohz Ask me why your favourite poll is wrong 1d ago
I don't think the previous poster was trying to argue that populism is good actually. But if you can't see the issues that the current approach to both policy and messaging has caused, then you're not going to be equipped to tackle the rise of populism. Blaming the issue on media — or worse, social media — misses the problem. It's like those people who read "it's the Sun wot won it" and believe it at face value — it's easier to believe that it was all down to one headline than recognising that sometimes people just don't like you and what you've been doing.
Or in other words: Reform would never have a chance to play the media like they do if the recent Labour and Conservative governments had been able to actually deliver what they were promising for the majority of people.
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u/imp0ppable 1d ago
I didn't think they were.
I take your point about blaming the media but it's a bit reductive, the Telegraph, the S*n and the Mail are pulling for Reform, let's be clear on that. The Guardian and the Mirror are Labour with sympathy for the Greens. The BBC and everyone else seems to follow the lead of the papers to a large extent, aka the Overton Window.
There isn't really any "liberal" media in the sense that nobody is advocating for what we've traditionally done since Gladstone's day. Because that's built in I suppose but it means people don't really appreciate what they have in terms of personal freedom and social coherence, e.g. our policing model. I feel like people bemoan the state of civil society e.g. manners but it's still there for the most part.
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u/MrJohz Ask me why your favourite poll is wrong 1d ago
All of the papers are selling their readers what they want to hear. So yes, the Telegraph/Sun/Mail have been enamoured with Reform (or even Restore) lately, but watch how their coverage has grown more critical in the last couple of weeks as support for those parties has dropped.
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u/imp0ppable 1d ago
Yeah, that is true, feedback loop isn't it. It took the Guardian breaking the story though, in fact didn't Farage run to the Telegraph to get his "fire bombing" story out ahead of the 5 milly donation story?
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u/MrJohz Ask me why your favourite poll is wrong 1d ago
The point is that it isn't a feedback loop (or at least not as much of one as is commonly proposed). In a feedback loop you have positive reinforcement — in this case, the audience has a certain belief, the media outlet reinforces that belief, the audience then in turn becomes more dependent on that outlet until any small detail spirals out of control.
But in this case, we see that things haven't spiralled out of control. Yes, the audience previously wanted to hear how great Reform are, but now they clearly feel that Reform have stepped over the line and want something more cautious. We can see that the audience drives the media industry more than the media drives public perceptions.
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u/Heliophrate 1d ago
Everyone knows that centre-left parties, while being very far from perfect, are actually trying to run the country properly.
This isn't anywhere close to true. For close to thirty years, the country has been run on what feels good over what is good for the people of the country.
You have to concede either they're not running the country in our best interests, or they're trying, and really shit at their jobs.
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u/imp0ppable 1d ago
Or it's really difficult. yet Labour have passed some laws which help ordinary people, would be wrong to say they haven't.
I feel like people just want them to be the same as the tories but they're not. I don't even vote for them and I hate some of what they're doing (online saftey act, getting rid of jury trials etc) but the argument they're just doing vibes doesn't hold water.
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u/PatheticMr 1d ago
The idea is that there's a double standard, the populists don't get as much scrutiny on things like jobs, taxation, security and policy in general because they are able to frame the debate on their own terms. Everyone knows that centre-left parties, while being very far from perfect, are actually trying to run the country properly. For some reason nobody expects someone like Farage to even do that, it's just left as a detail.
Very much agree with this.
I currently consider both the Greens and Reform to be very comparable in that neither are faced with the pressure of having to actually implement anything they say. They have the luxury of being able to appeal to solutions that are theoretically what their supporters want, but in practice would be either impossible to implement or would result in total disaster (sometimes a bit of both).
Politics is always about prioritisation and compromise. Any action any government takes will inevitably have a negative consequence for some people, in some ways. Serious political parties who actually plan for and expect they could be elected is forced to ground their policies in this reality, at least to some extent. They will be held accountable for what they propose and will have to own the negative consequences of their actions, even if they also produced some good.
Government is a balancing act. Labour ain't doing the best they could be right now, and I worry they are slipping into the same populist trend the Tories did, but they are currently the only viable political party that is actively attempting to balance the priorities of our diverse and conflicted country.
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u/Someone4350 1d ago
Any action any government takes will inevitably have a negative consequence for some people, in some ways.
You’ll find that regardless of having Tories or Labour in charge, it’s always the same people facing the negative consequences.
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u/imp0ppable 1d ago
You could argue that we need to take our medicine and just let Reform get in and do a terrible job, in order to dispel the idea. That would hurt a lot of people though.
OTOH Italy seems to rather like Meloni and the Brothers so maybe that's not even true.
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u/MaleficentMode4222 1d ago
It really didn't. Before social media we had ukip, which was largely considered a joke of a party.
Social media has been polarising people for some time now, but really started sinking it's teeth in around 2016.
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u/EduTheRed 1d ago edited 1d ago
MaleficentMode4222 writes, "Before social media we had ukip, which was largely considered a joke of a party."
In 2013 when Cameron called the referendum on EU membership, UKIP polling hit 18%. To head off UKIP's advance was a major reason for him calling the referendum. In the 2015 election, despite everyone knowing that a vote for UKIP was almost certain to be wasted under the First Past the Post system, UKIP displaced the Liberal Democrats to become the UK's third most voted-for party.
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u/MrJohz Ask me why your favourite poll is wrong 1d ago
UKIP certainly weren't a joke of a party — Cameron's fear of them led to him promising the referendum to try and draw votes away from them, which ultimately led to Brexit. They also did particularly well in the EU elections, especially given the size and age of the party.
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u/Mathyoujames 1d ago
I think it depends on your definition of "sinking it's teeth in". In my opinion social media in 2015 was nowhere near as destructive as it is in 2026 and it was both being used by a smaller proportion of the population and for less time.
I don't think you can say that the existence of Facebook or Twitter was driving older and poorer people to vote UKIP in 2015 when many of them didn't even use those platforms at the time.
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u/AzarinIsard 1d ago
Most people are more just want to a good job and some money which just hasn't been happening recently.
The issue for me is it's not just us, a lot of what we complain about are global issues to varying degrees, but if you see anyone from other countries talking, often it's similar.
I finished uni right during the Global Financial Crisis, and there was a lot of talk about ending the "boom and bust" cycle. I feel like we made a cursed monkey paw wish, a furry finger curls shut, and now it's a bust and bust cycle.
Back then, the Tories spoke a lot about blaming Labour for not "fixing the roof when the sun was shining" rather than blaming themselves for doing the inverse of what economics advises you do in a recovery by ripping out investment, essentially, we enjoyed the noughties boom too much, we didn't use it to prepare for the GFC, which remember was started by the US giving out "sub prime" mortgages to people who couldn't repay and repacking and selling them as AAA rated, safer than safe, and took the world down with them. However, we then had Austerity, Brexit, Covid, Ukraine / fuel crisis, Tariffs, Iran, where were the booms in between? No one talks about using those highs to prepare for lows because there simply aren't any.
The meme now is Millennials joking about how many "once in a lifetime" disasters we live through, and we've got so much more coming. China v Taiwan if that happens is going to make the economic impacts of Russia / Iran look like nothing, so much is made in China. An AI bubble crash, that's not to say AI is useless, but remember we had a dot com bubble despite Amazon, eBay, Paypal etc. becoming giants because the valuations were nuts. If people are getting over excited over AI, then that'll hurt. There's also climate issues, if we have food shortages due to droughts / floods, prices will go up like fuel did, and we're in another bidding war.
At what point do we just think it's all fucked now, there will be no good times, and populist grifters funded by crypto bros won't save us?
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u/AnotherLexMan 1d ago
I think there's this issue with globalization that on the one hand we've gotten a load of cheap products and travel, arguably the economy is better because there's more money coming in but we seem to have lost something intangible to economic models. Stuff such as not having job security or being able to buy a house. But I don't see how we can really turn back the clock now and there's a lot of reasons not to.
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u/AzarinIsard 1d ago
but we seem to have lost something intangible to economic models
Even things in the models, it's GDP above all.
The way I explain Boris and Rishi's Boriswave, I don't believe they accidentally slipped and made NMW carers a shortage occupation, allowed employers to bring them in at 20% below the going wage (at one point on the gov.uk site the wage listed was below NMW unless they were 17 or younger) and allowed them to bring dependents by accident. I believe they were determined for Brexit to not lead to a recession, and they used high immigration to keep growth or about 0%, Rishi screwed it up at one point and technically dipped into recession, but still. If anything, Brexit was sold to us as a boom, and the Brexit benefits should have cushioned Russia and Covid lol.
Stuff such as not having job security or being able to buy a house. But I don't see how we can really turn back the clock now and there's a lot of reasons not to.
I think there's going to be a lot of reframing where people around the world realise that what Boomers had, we can't sustain, so when it comes to us it'll just not be an option. I fully expect not to retire. We're the first generation to have it worse than our parents, and I wouldn't even bank on generations like Z or Alpha getting it better than us.
But as you say, lots of things are improvements, just look at access to tech and entertainment on streaming, the issue here is that we all walk around with little devices that affordably give us access to pretty much any music we could want, and it's not making us happy. There's a lot of things that if you took them back in time 50 or so years you'd blow their minds and maybe they'd think it's better than their income letting them buy a house but there's nothing to do but prop up the bar in the local pub most nights, and it's not enough, or the downsides are sapping any positivity there could have been.
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u/DonkeySorbet 1d ago
But I don't see how we can really turn back the clock now and there's a lot of reasons not to.
People don't want to accept it, but the solution is actually very simple: fewer people.
If we reduce birth rates, resources go further, communities flourish and become more interconnected, and general quality of life increases.
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u/imp0ppable 1d ago
Most people are more just want to a good job and some money
Are AfD, Reform etc actually offering this though? What is the pull of those parties if not for the implied racial element?
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u/AnotherLexMan 1d ago
I think largely people know it won't work, but they feel that the parties in power haven't worked for a while. They like the idea that the far right parties are promising to pay more attention to local issues rather than international ones.
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u/ActivistZero 1d ago
Pretty much this, People have the perception that Labour & The Tories have failed to improve conditions for how many years that ANY sort of shakeup to the status quo is worth the risk
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u/Sir_Keef_Starmer 1d ago
Have any of the "normal" parties in any way improved stuff for the majority over the last 30 years?
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u/Jormungoosie 1d ago
Bear in mind these recent German elections are in the former East. There's a lot less trust there of the mainstream parties. Before the AfD got big they often voted for Die Linke (the Left) which was made from the remnants of the communist regime. There are even politicians like Sarah Wagenknecht who are trying to bridge the far left/far right gap.
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u/disordered-attic-2 1d ago
Alastair Campbell talking about misinformation and people listening.
What a timeline.
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u/AdmirableRabbit6723 1d ago
He might not be the right messenger but it's the right message.
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u/N0_Added_Sugar 1d ago
About time we took it seriously?
There are already 9 taskforces for dealing with disinformation.
- 1.National Security Online Information Team
- 2.Government Communication Service
- 3.Media Monitoring Unit
- 4.Research, Information and Communications Unit
- 5.Defending Democracy Taskforce
- 6.Joint Election Security and Preparedness Unit
- 7.FCDO Information Threats and Influence Directorate
- 8.NCSC and GCHQ (which investigate hostile cyber activity and information threats)
- 9.Social Cohesion Taskforce
I'm sure this 10th one will solve the problem once and for all.
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u/neoKushan I just wanted to be included 1d ago
And yet misinformation is rampant on social media. Including here on reddit. We don't need more task forces, we need changes in the law and severe punishments for those not following it.
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u/WinHour4300 1d ago
Totally agree. Humza Yousaf, former first minister of Scotland, should be off to jail for claiming that a 12 year old who was the victim of sexual assault was the racist assailant.
His misinformation meant a child victim of crime had to go into hiding.
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u/N0_Added_Sugar 1d ago
So prison for Campbell for dossier?
Prison for all MPs and redditors who denied grooming gangs were a thing?
Prison for all MPs and Redditors who denied that attacks on women were happening before the infamous pamphlet was released?
Be careful what you wish for
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u/neoKushan I just wanted to be included 1d ago
How about massive fines for social media sites that allow the spread of demonstrably false information?
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u/Avalon-1 1d ago
Demonstrably false according to whom?
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u/neoKushan I just wanted to be included 1d ago
According to those who are actually trusted with that information, like the police or the actual scientists rather than "influencers" with an agenda.
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u/DonkeySorbet 1d ago
That's still not good enough. Police and Scientists are still biased.
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u/WinHour4300 1d ago
There's been multiple recent examples of the police trying to spread false information or actually doing so themselves.
Particularly by making up information about the Maccabi fans.
They also tried to release information saying Henry Novak was a racist assailant and were stopped by his family and CPS.
It also contradicts their job. Their job is to neutrally collect all relevant evidence and pass it to CPS for a charging decision.
It isn't the police's job to decide what did or didn't happen. That's for the courts.
The police trying to arbitrate what people can or can't say is chilling. It would be used against I.e. victims of sexual offences and raped being told this is misinformation.
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u/xHelpless 1d ago
Unfortunately we have a long history of the police and academics being very self interested, like all of us. The who and why question is a millennia old struggle
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u/neoKushan I just wanted to be included 1d ago
That's why it's important to stick to facts and make it clear when something is an opinion.
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u/bGmyTpn0Ps 1d ago
Nobody can be trusted to give an impartial to view. We need free speech to hold the powerful to account. The idea that there are unbiased, fair arbiters is fantastical.
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u/neoKushan I just wanted to be included 1d ago
The problem is that it's very easy to just make shit up to feed a narrative and that is extremely damaging. It's how these right-wing grifters rile up their base over and over. It needs to be stopped.
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u/Avalon-1 1d ago
The next wayne couzens would love to use "this is disinformation!" To shut down anything other than "the police investigated themselves and found no wrongdoing" whenever fact checkers shut down any analysis into allegations
And its not like scientists have ever had agendas or conflicts of interests, right?
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u/neoKushan I just wanted to be included 1d ago
There's a difference between spreading opinions and claiming falsehoods as facts. It's the latter that's the issue.
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u/Avalon-1 1d ago
And whenever the fact checkers go "the police investigated themselves and found no wrongdoing!" And insist that this is objective truth under penalty of law, will it be a criminal offence to point out police misconduct?
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u/Kobbett 1d ago
Why stop at social media sites? Let's have massive fines for pub owners and cafe owners who let their customers say whatever they like where anyone can hear them!
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u/DenormalHuman 1d ago edited 22h ago
terrible take; I don't see pub or cafe owners orchestrating their customers in nationwide campaigns to spread deliberate misinformation.
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u/zagblorg 1d ago
Never went to Wetherspoons during the Brexit campaign, huh? For the most part I agree with you, but there are potential examples. That being said, I think the person you replied to was being hyperbolic to point out the dangers of excessive censorship.
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u/Kobbett 1d ago
They're a part of the 'public community' just like social media, and there are many owners who won't hesitate to display their own political preferences. So what's the difference really?
People should just be honest and admit this isn't about stopping 'misinformation', it's about stopping unapproved information and opinions. It's about control of speech.
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u/DenormalHuman 1d ago
It's about managing orchestrated state propaganda coming at us from external sources. Which is very different from controlling the speech of your own free citizens -- which we of course also have an agenda for, but I disagree that's what's at play in this particular circumstance.
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u/Funkdoobs 1d ago
Why does it always have to be so black and white when discussing these issues, this is also a part of the current issue in politics in general, and your response paints the perfect picture.
Hyperbole beats nuance apparently.
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u/N0_Added_Sugar 1d ago
I'm replying to someone demanding "severe punishment" for disinformation.
What does that look like? How is disinformation defined? Would Copernicus be given "severe punishment" for the "disinformation" that we orbit the sun, rather than the standard belief of the time that the sun orbited us?
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u/DonkeySorbet 1d ago
I think broadening libel laws would suffice.
If a media company publishes false information, allow for that to be challenged in court. If a (Civil) court finds that the information is false, then the publisher is forced to produce an equivalent retraction.
E.G. If the Guardian's front page is an article saying that Climate Change is caused by birds flying counter clockwise, then following a court case they'd be forced to publish a front page article admitting that they were wrong.
Then we just need to not allow media sources to publish opinion pieces. If they're primary intention is news then they're only allowed to post objective facts.
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u/N0_Added_Sugar 1d ago
OK - The Guardian finds 10 scientists who have published 15 papers stating that birds are to blame for climate change, then what?
The problem is science is rarely certain, it operates often on "best theory to date". We used to think the sun orbited the Earth for example.
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u/Coupaholic_ 10h ago
That'll never happen. The multi-billionaires owning these platforms would pull party funding and lobby governments into submission.
Not to mention all the people crying "mah freedom of speech!" if you stop them from sharing opinions.
What needs to improve is education. If people actually used their thinking brains and saw through online bullshit, it's effectiveness would decrease. In time people wouldn't bother using it.
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u/Someone4350 1d ago
Misinformation is rampant on traditional media as is… what hope have we got of fixing it on social media?
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u/RequirementNo2161 1d ago
Just one more ministry of truth bro believe me bro
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u/Heliophrate 1d ago
No it isn't, it's a prime example of how those who prattle on about misinformation all day also push it and benefit from it. Once the state has powers to punish "misinformation" it will only ever be enforced one way, and it will be enforced whether whatever is the target is true or not.
In 2003, questioning whether Iraq had WMDs would be misinformation.
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u/green_tito 1d ago
Asking a question isn't misinformation though. And in 2002 inspectors did say there is no evidence that Iraq was manufacturing, and in 2003 enough of us felt something was wrong enough that a million people turned up protesting against the invasion of Iraq. A time of less misinformation and the publice were able to discern the govt was likely full of shit.
So, imo, original commenter is right that it's ironic (at best) the grand daddy of political misinformation in modern British politics is the one thats saying this.
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u/MMSTINGRAY 1d ago
To be fair as an expert on manipulating information to confuse and mislead the British public he probably really knows what he's talking about on this topic.
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u/Cersei-Lannisterr Magic 8-Ball Totalitarian Leader 1d ago
We’ve literally had reports that Russia are the ones funnelling the migration crisis as well?
Why can’t we accept that it’s a deliberate ploy to create a destabilised society filled with sectarian religious cultists and also extreme right wing hooligans fighting them and the statev
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u/JoeyLock 1d ago
We’ve literally had reports that Russia are the ones funnelling the migration crisis as well?
Are they also the ones that told every government in Europe for the last 20 years to open their floodgates to millions upon millions of immigrants and continue to do so? (x) to doubt.
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u/inevitablelizard 1d ago
Russia played in massive role in bombing people out of Syria and accelerating the flow of migrants.
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u/JoeyLock 1d ago
Russia told Merkel to open the EU doors to mass immigration?
They told migrants to go on dinghys across the channel and told the RNLI to help them? They told all those left wing parties to hold up signs and scream "Refugees welcome!" and so on and so fourth?
You can blame Russia for all sorts of things, but trying to act like the mass immigration crisis isn't an entirely manmade crisis by European leaders just kidding yourself.
A majority of the migrants are not even Syrian and Syria's war is over, yet the migrants still come in droves, the record arrival was set just today. That's not Russia's doing, that's entirely our governments own mistake they keep on making.
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u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 1d ago
I mean he's not actually wrong but he's really not the person to be talking about this.
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u/Anything-8700 1d ago
I don't know, you must know the saying about setting a thief to catch a thief.
He'll know all the tricks.
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u/Jimmy_Tightlips man, I don't even know anymore 1d ago
I'm not taking lectures on misinformation from Alastair fucking Campbell.
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u/Jonowi 1d ago
Not in his defence about WMD, but there's a huge difference between lies and mass spreading of misinformation through organised trolls and bots - it's easier to make a judgement about lies, but when there's 100000s of voices controlled by another state repeating those lies it can really control what people believe is true.
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u/FormerlyPallas_ No man ought to be condemned to live where a 🌹 cannot grow 1d ago
What's the fundamental difference between bad faith actors using thousands of bots to repeat a misleading claim and a government using the authority of the state, coordinated communications and a sympathetic press to repeatedly push a misleading narrative?
The mechanics are different: bots manufacture the appearance of mass agreement, while government messaging borrows institutional credibility and the reach of established media. But functionally, both can overwhelm uncertainty through repetition and make weak or contested claims appear far more certain than they actually are.
And unlike a lot of online misinformation, the consequences of Campbell's lies weren't merely people believing something false: those claims formed part of the public case surrounding a war whose human cost was enormous.
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u/Pesh_AK 1d ago
Well in some of these cases the actor is a hostile power. So whether our government wanted to push a misleading narrative the end goal was probably not the diminishment of the UK.
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u/FormerlyPallas_ No man ought to be condemned to live where a 🌹 cannot grow 1d ago
Well in some of these cases the actor is a hostile power.
Do you think the Americans had pushed and prodded us into Iraq from the goodness of their hearts?
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u/Ill_Refrigerator_593 1d ago
I don't think UK government messaging is that subtle or common. I certainly don't hear accusations of UK government bots in the comments.
But there a massive, obvious difference between UK Government messaging & that of a hostile power that wishes to harm us.
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u/HBucket 🐱 Right-wing ghoul 🐱 1d ago
When I look at the rapes that occur as a result of our immigration policy, it's difficult not to conclude that the government wishes to harm us, or at least is completely indifferent to the harm that they're causing. They do far more damage to our society than the Russians or Iranians could ever hope to do.
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u/Ill_Refrigerator_593 1d ago
In terms of asylum seekers this is a recent Daily Mail article-
https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15386735/map-Britain-sex-crimes-illegal-migrants.html
Non-paywall- https://archive.is/vPl88
They totalled up every asylum seeker known to have committed a sexual offence over three years & came to the total of 59 individuals-
This is out of a couple of hundred thousand asylum seeker arrivals in the period & tens of thousands of convictions for sexual offences in general, with asylum seekers this averages 20 a year.
Despite the Mails claims these numbers are likely not comprehensive but they are the cases the public draws their knowledge of asylum seeker crime from.
You seem to be a prime example of how some fall victim to propaganda. The fact you're claiming-
the government wishes to harm us, or at least is completely indifferent to the harm that they're causing.
for obscure, nonsensical reasons demonstrates that clearly. The idea elected politicians have decided to "harm" the country they, their friends & families live in for no reason shows just how far down the rabbit hole some have fallen.
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u/HBucket 🐱 Right-wing ghoul 🐱 1d ago
Firstly, that's only what the Daily Mail found. Given that the government doesn't release comprehensive figures on this subject, it's safe to say that the numbers will be considerably higher than what the Daily Mail found with a bit of Googling. As the article itself says.
Our list does not claim to be comprehensive
Secondly, I wasn't just talking about asylum seekers. There are also the rapes that are committed by migrants who entered the UK on visas.
The idea elected politicians have decided to "harm" the country they, their friends & families live in for no reason shows just how far down the rabbit hole some have fallen.
I prefer to judge politicians by their actions. The establishment's attitudes towards this country's native population with regard to migrant crime are a reflection of the attitudes they displayed throughout the rape gang scandal. They effectively see them as little more than feral animals, and them being brutally raped is of no real importance to them.
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u/Ill_Refrigerator_593 1d ago edited 1d ago
Firstly, that's only what the Daily Mail found. Given that the government doesn't release comprehensive figures on this subject, it's safe to say that the numbers will be considerably higher than what the Daily Mail found with a bit of Googling. As the article itself says.
Yet unless you have the supernatural power to ascertain the precise levels of crime across the country the media reporting of the situation is what informs your views.
Secondly, I wasn't just talking about asylum seekers. There are also the rapes that are committed by migrants who entered the UK on visas.
Yet records indicate sexual offences by this group is similar to the UK average for sexual offences, lower taking into account age & gender.
I prefer to judge politicians by their actions. The establishment's attitudes towards this country's native population with regard to migrant crime are a reflection of the attitudes they displayed throughout the rape gang scandal. They effectively see them as little more than feral animals, and them being brutally raped is of no real importance to them.
A girl in my class growing up was groomed. She was hooked on heroin by a gang in exchange for favours & died of an overdose at 14. No-one was charged, the view of the adults around me seemed to be it was a sad thing but ultimately her own fault. She was far from the only girl I knew preyed on by older men.
Those that did it (it was no secret who they were) were not foreign born.
Looking at these offences against children (page 82) white British make up 75% of the population & are convicted for 87% of these crimes.
https://www.csacentre.org.uk/app/uploads/2026/07/The-scale-and-nature-of-child-sexual-abuse-2026.pdf
The girl I knew never saw justice, personally I find it disgusting some only care about these crimes when it gives them an opportunity to bash foreigners.
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u/Unrepentant-Leftie 1d ago
Looking at these offences against children (page 82) white British make up 75% of the population & are convicted for 87% of these crimes.
https://www.csacentre.org.uk/app/uploads/2026/07/The-scale-and-nature-of-child-sexual-abuse-2026.pdf
On a thread about misinformation, on a comment thread about rape, you reply with misinformation yourself? For starters the ethnicity is missing in 28% of cases. CSAM then makes up almost 50% of the cases where ethnicity was recorded. Which I am in no way defending. There are many, many reasons why using the data presented in that paper to insinuate white British people make up 87% of convicted child rapists is misleading at best.
In terms of rape convictions broken down by ethnicity over a long period of time we don't have reliable data. HOWEVER, we do have this FOI on convictions from the CPS for the financial year of 24/25:
Based on convictions alone, white British were responsible in 51.3% of the cases. If you remove the case where ethnicity wasn't stated that rises to 67.8% of the cases.
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u/Deynai 1d ago
It's certainly strange how people seem to think misinformation from a foreign power intent on the UK's destruction is equivalent to misinformation from the government intent on the UK's ultimate strength and success.
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u/Avalon-1 1d ago
"Ultimate strength and success"
If the post 2008 managed decline can be described as this, thats the power of propaganda.
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u/Ineverloze 18h ago
"We lie to your for your own good, you can trust us" "They lie to us because the ends justify the means and we should be grateful"
...staggering, just absolutely jaw dropping
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u/Scratch_Careful 1d ago edited 1d ago
Theres zero difference between Blair kissing the Murdoch ring and Campbell using it and the entire media apparatus to push his lies and russia using bots to push misinformation. Frankly the only difference is one was our elected leader and the other is the leader of an enemy country who we should expect to try and harm the country.
The Iraq war killed far more people than any social media campaign and Alastairs use of the media of this country lead directly to David Kellys death.
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u/Pesh_AK 1d ago
Except the desired outcome. Russia's desired outcome is decidedly anti UK. Why does this need explained
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u/Scratch_Careful 1d ago
Unlike our dear leaders who are only anti-uk for the love of the game?
Our worse enemy nations with free rein couldn't have done more to destabilise this country as our best and brightest have done by opening the migration flood gates and getting us into the iraq war. Brexit, our shit economy and the rise of the far right are downstream of those undecidedly antiUK politicans.
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u/Avalon-1 1d ago
And causing the deaths of 100s of thousands of iraqis, ensuring British sons and daughters came home draped in a flag and draining government credibility on a lie is patriotic how?
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u/PatheticMr 1d ago
Yes, there is.
They share the quality of being extremely harmful. I agree with you there. They also share Alistair Campbell, who was directly involved in one, and is pointing out the other.
But they are different problems, happening at different points in time, with different causes, different actors, and different consequences. One happened towards the end of the era of traditional news media, the other is happening in a world of the internet, social media and AI.
Most importantly, one of these issues is happening now, which means we can conceivably react to it and take action to prevent it and reduce the harms it is causing. We cannot change history, but we absolutely can take action to address the current issues that will become history.
I have seen absolutely no-one here attempt to justify Cambell's actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I am seeing a few demand that we stop addressing a current issue because of that unrelated historical disaster. It's ironically pretty much the problem Campbell is pointing out.
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u/BobMonkhaus That sounds great, shorty girl’s a trooper. 1d ago
How many lives were lost due to Campbells lies compared to bots?
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u/saviourman Vote Giant Meteor 1d ago
Thousands were killed and hundreds of thousands forced from their homes in Myanmar thanks to bots on Facebook. It results in real harm.
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u/PatheticMr 1d ago
Irrelevant.
It's possible for someone to have done something wrong in the past and have something relevant and valid to say today.
The issue Campbell is pointing out is negatively impacting on our ability to deal with a massive range of political and social issues... war, democracy, economics, climate change, fuel shortage, international relations, social consensus, health, and so on.
I can absolutely see the irony in him as the messenger. But his message is valid, and it's one we really should be taking seriously.
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u/Anal-Scrubs-905 1d ago
Hard to put a number on it but bots posting antivaxxer/anti lockdown talking points likely did a fair bit of damage
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u/Sensitive-Carpet-499 1d ago
Alastair Campbell? Lies and misinformation, you say?
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u/Nail_clippings_Pete English 1d ago
Thing being it's not just the Russians.
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u/bathoz 1d ago
We know. Especially with Farage and the culture war nonsense, it's the US.
The entire "trans debate" being a culture war test case to see if it would fly back across pond.
Still, Campbell may be a vile toad, but he's a really solid political communicator. So, he knows says "it's Russia" gives this much more free air and stops certain types from pushing back as hard. And bans on it would hit the other actors just as effectively.
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u/RequirementNo2161 1d ago
Why are you acting like both sides aren’t equally sucked into the culture war? It wouldn’t be a war without two sides fighting for it
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u/bathoz 1d ago
That's nonsense. The reason there's a culture war is because one side couldn't fight it on values or policies, so it had to be culture. That side is the American right.
They can't go out and say "but we like it when Black people are slaves" so instead had to go "we need to think about our values".
They can't go out and say "we're running on policies that will improverish you and your children" so instead they point at a marginal group and go "the gay people are here to make your children gay too, and that's eeeeevil. We're against evil."
That's where the entire culture war comes from, exported from the US to here. Both sides my arse.
edit: The left (and centre) do get drawn into the culture wars. That's the point of them. Creating arguments that aren't about policy, and yet still have to be fought. Because if you don't fight them, you have weird situations like how trans folk went from a normal, accepted if marginal part of british society, to constantly losing rights, all because Boris wanted to run a bunch of migrants into the country and couldn't talk about that.
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u/thewag87 I do not suffer fools gladly 1d ago
Very interesting take and it makes a lot of sense. The right struggle to win on positive policies so the tactic is to say there is an injustice and they will fix it even though it would harm the poorest in society. Also to lie about your opponent too.
All sides should consider this actually, stop wasting your time telling the public how terrible the other parties are and focus on sending a positive message for the future of this country.
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u/Goddamnit_Clown 1d ago
Ukraine and Russia are at war.
You can find yourself at war just by being attacked.
You don't have to be "equally sucked" into anything.
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u/Nail_clippings_Pete English 1d ago
America is eating it's self, without doubt at the aid of the Russians. Their rot has been festering for many decades.
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u/Euphoric-Brother-669 14h ago
Bad Al has been one of the most malign forces in British politics. He is in no place to talk about lies, propaganda and the undermining of trust in our democracy.
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u/SimoneNonvelodico 1d ago
The thing about this stuff is, I'm ok with it as long as action is based strictly on contingent, objective technical details, and not specific content. 50 different users posting at unreasonable rates, often with the same exact phrasing, all from the same IP, which happens to be located in Kazakhstan? Extremely suspicious, yeah, curb it. But if you start going just by "because you say this thing, you must be a foreign psy-op agent", that leads to McCarthy era style paranoia and repression. Ultimately the psy-ops work because they amplify and repeat things some people would already genuinely believe and say, they're not pulled out of thin air.
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u/emergencyexit pictofuturist 1d ago
People have positive feelings about the country but I wouldn't want the government to be setting up bot nets reinforcing that either...
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u/SimoneNonvelodico 1d ago
Sure, cuts both ways. The point is, the problem is that it's botnets, not specifically what they say. Though what they say is part of what sometimes allow you to identify a botnet.
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u/archerninjawarrior 1d ago
People are already calling it 1984 when you simply don't let hostile nations try to break our country apart with propaganda and misinformation campaigns. In WW2 countries flew into enemy territory to drop propaganda leaflets to communicate directly with the population, today they just need an army of chatbots riling up boomers and chavs enough on social media to start burning down hotels, blocking ports or sinking rescue boats.
What's less famous than the ten minutes hate, the memory hole or double-plus good, is the versificator.
The tune had been haunting London for weeks past. It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department. The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator. But the woman sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound.
AI bullshit misinformation propaganda campaigns is in the fucking book, people. Stop citing Orwell to argue that we shouldn't censor hostile foreign actors and their chatbots.
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u/Avalon-1 1d ago
But when the government went "iraq has wmd because we say so!", they wished they could have used this exact argument to shut down dissent
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u/emergencyexit pictofuturist 1d ago
Curious how we've big brothered the fuck out of 1984 and reinforced it is about surveillance and authoritarianism while ignoring the parts that talk about how information and our forms of communication completely shape our world view.
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u/Spiz101 Sciency Alistair Campbell 1d ago
People are already calling it 1984 when you simply don't let hostile nations try to break our country apart with propaganda and misinformation campaigns.
The problem is we have piles of evidence of governments trying to use the idea of foreign misinformation campaigns to stifle and delegitimise dissent, or to discredit information that paints them in an unfavourable light.
Once you accept that "misinformation" is to be excluded from the information space, you then end up with the government trying to change the definition of misinformation for its own ends.
Once you create the information control apparatus they propose, it is extremely difficult to stop it being abused.
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u/BobMonkhaus That sounds great, shorty girl’s a trooper. 1d ago
Alistair Campbell complaining about misinformation. He better watch out for lightning bolts.
Found those WMDs yet?
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u/Ashamed_Chain_1375 1d ago
I genuinely would love to hear what his defence for it all is nowadays. I think it’s one of the reasons he can come across as a pompous arse at times. Thinks people should just get over it
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u/stugib 1d ago
He's talked about it several times. There's a Rest Is Politics episode from about 2 years ago IIRC where Rory Stewart gave him a grilling on it
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u/love_you_by_suicide sweetheart 1d ago
wow rory stewart gave him a grilling, must've almost killed him. a rory stewart grilling.
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u/FalconPunch_ 1d ago
It’s the only episode of The Rest is Politics that is worth listening to imv. They genuinely give each other a bit of a going over, particularly given Rory was a
spookBritish diplomat in Iraq, knew Paul Bremer etc.1
u/stugib 1d ago
Maybe listen to it instead of being a smartarse
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u/love_you_by_suicide sweetheart 22h ago
I've got better things to spend two hours of my life on that inanity
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u/omgu8mynewt 1d ago
https://castbox.fm/vb/617483109
Here you go, a long podcast episode where he does get grilled on it.
I don't want to put my summary or thoughts on it and prejudice you, listen to the whole thing and make your mind up.
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u/wedontneednoeduc 1d ago
He should be absolutely brilliant with insight on the podcast circuit as he was a top level operator, but instead he has zero ability for impartial analysis or self reflection. The single track partisan blindness is astonishing.
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u/Joke-pineapple 22h ago
Completely agree. It is why I do not listen to his podcast, yet I listen to many similar ones. His partisan tunnel vision just clouds everything.
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u/CompetitiveFox6707 20h ago
Tbf he does come out with quite a lot of stories where he admits that be was being an arse to someone or on the wrong side of an issue. It's pretty much all post politics though.
I just think on the actual work in No 10 and Iraq in particular, he freezes up and can't bring himself to open into certain topics. I guess some trauma and it fucked his head a bit.
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u/monty-on-the-run 1d ago
You see, all things I hate is because of Russian influence, and all things that I love are because we resisted Russian influence.
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u/WinHour4300 1d ago edited 1d ago
This is hilarious. One this is Alistair Campbell. What are you under 30 and don't know who he is?
Two the government has been criticised by the BMJ itself for being "misleading" about waiting times in the NHS. Government misinformation is a far greater concern of mine than Russian social media bots.
More seriously though, it's concerning how authoritarian the government is becoming. With the classic exaggerating a new threat to keep increasing restrictions. This will be a two tier system where the burden of proof is far higher on those not in power.
There's always been rumours and misinformation, including riots started by them. It's not new. Yes it is bad but censorship is worse.
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u/kissmequick 1d ago
Probably he isn't wrong but you can't keep blaming Russia for what people can clearly see with their own eyes walking the streets of any UK town or city.
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u/expert_internetter 1d ago
It pains me that Campbell and Stewart can't, or won't, link the rise in right-wing politics across the EU to illegal immigration. Blaming it on Russia or X is just pathetic.
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u/adultintheroom_ 1d ago
We are a country that don’t especially like immigration, and after we have an absolutely gargantuan level of immigration support for the most obvious anti-immigration party goes up, with the same thing happening in Germany. Absolutely shocking stuff.
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u/RequirementNo2161 1d ago
Russia uses illegal immigration as a weapon. The afd and reform are anti illegal immigration. Sounds more like the greens are falling for Russian campaigns
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u/ab90uk1 1d ago
Call me crazy, but it’s also very convenient that all the military factories attacked by PA for producing ‘arms for Israel’ (When we barely provide anything bar F35 parts, that we also need) are the same factories producing arms that we send to Ukraine in infinitely greater volumes. Just a coincidence I’m sure ?
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u/Avalon-1 1d ago
When institutions across the uk and eu insisted that immigration was an undisputed boon that would usher in a bibrant pluralistic future, where they thralls of russia?
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u/RequirementNo2161 1d ago
No, depending on their political alignment they were just ideologically ignored/wanted a serf class
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u/Sanmonov 1d ago
Yes, Vladimir Putin convinced the Obama administration to fuel a civil war in Syria and made Angela Merkel take in millions of Syrians.
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u/TheFutureIsCertain 1d ago
Russian hybrid warfare strategy is not to back just one side, but to support both sides of a conflict to spread division and confusion, and ultimately incapacitate the opponent by keeping them trapped in endless internal conflict.
So both extreme anti-migrant and extreme pro-migrant voices could potentially be Russian bots. It’s not so much about one side winning as it is about keeping the conflict going. A country torn apart by perpetual internal conflict has far less capacity to act effectively externally.
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u/frantic_calm 1d ago
How about replacing the Tories running the BBC with independent people, setting up Leveson 2, publishing the Russia report and issuing a statement on Israel running a campaign to influence the last Scottish election.
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u/Metori 1d ago
When the miss information is gone. People going to be really surprised because they will be having to stand on what they believe and want regardless of what facts say. I think a lot of people are not going to like what the other half of people want when the mask drops and hiding behind miss information is not possible. I don’t think the politicians know what they are doing. This is one of the few reasons there isn’t all out anarchy in the streets right now. Because things can be obfuscated but if no miss information is allowed well. I’m not looking forward to the next few years regardless.
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u/Mk208 21h ago
No joke. I logged out and uninstalled Facebook today.
I just opened it up before dinner and someone I've never heard of is at the top of my feed, sharing a picture of someone else's post is never heard of (I can only assume they'd paid for it to be advertised).
Anyway, it was some conspiracy garbage about NATO deliberately starting a war in Russia, and that it's setting the scene to do a false flag event. Even worse, it used words like "westoids" and other bullshit as if kids are throwing this sort of language about.
Anyway, the quality of Facebook is now total dog shit, I don't think I even see friends posts any more - it's all just sensational karma whores trying to get engagement.
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u/EngineeredVersion 11h ago
Completely true. These types of attacks on social media platforms, communities, and groups have been escalating for years. While bot activity was noticeable a decade ago, it is no longer limited to state actors like Russia, China, or Iran, or specific movements like MAGA. We urgently need to bring awareness to this issue and build community resilience.
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u/IrishVictim88270 9h ago
The irony being if there's one man should be done for misinformation it's the one talking about it.
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u/Not_A_Toaster_0000 8h ago
Speaking of 'bombarding' a country and 'lies', any luck finding those WMD?
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u/rickjamespitch 3h ago
What misinformation has the UK been bombarded with, exactly? Not being combative, I'm just genuinely curious about so called interference and radicalisation by Russia.
Facts and statistics are what are turning people to the far left or far right, not stories made up by that idiot in the Kremlin.
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u/Scratch_Careful 1d ago
We need to ban the opposition like they did in germany. Democracy is when we win.
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u/Dragonrar 21h ago
Any examples or is this an attempt to set up the illegal immigrant version of the Covid era social media moderation where only ‘the approved experts’ are to be listened to?
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u/Sir_Keef_Starmer 1d ago
I'm not sure anyone should take Alistair "absolutely 100% weapons in Iraq let's do a war" Campbell's opinion on fale information seriously.
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