‘Tory Party Goes Full MAGA’: Backlash Over Tory Ad Attacking Mayor Sadiq Khan
The Conservative Party continued to face backlash Tuesday for a noir-style ad ripping London mayor Sadiq Khan on crime, in support of its own mayoral candidate Susan Hall.
The video claimed that “London under Labour has become a crime capital of the world” and that the city had seen “a 54 percent increase in knife crime since the Labour Mayor seized power.”
In criticism of Khan’s low emission zone initiative, an American accented voice over claims that “squads of Ulez-enforcers dressed in black, faces covered with masks, terrorising communities at the beck and call of their Labour Mayor master.” The city is further characterised as “teetering on the brink of chaos” and that “people seek a desperate reprieve” – a “blueprint for how Labour intend to run the rest of the country” if they win the election.
The party was already forced to delete a previous version of the video late Monday after i journalist Paul Waugh spotted that the footage included a clip of a 2017 New York City subway stampede.
The reupload, however, was met with continued criticism as users posted community notes correcting some of the claims made, like Khan had “seized power.”
Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan compared the post to electoral tactics of former U.S. President Donald Trump, saying that the party had “gone full MAGA.”
Max Daly, Global Drugs Editor at VICE News, remarked that nothing said in the video was true and called it “a really amateur attempt at totalitarian style propaganda.”
Left-wing columnist Owen Jones ripped the video as “deranged” and The News Agents host, former BBC chief correspondent, Jon Sopel questioned the American narration.
Meanwhile, News UK’s Director of Development Brian Whelan mused that the “real crime is creating a 4:3 video and letterboxing it.”
