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In its usual delightfully mischievous fashion Guido Fawkes recently highlighted FullFact slamming the Labour Party for telling lies.  However, is there more to this story? Does FullFact’s latest “fact-check” of Labour’s local election campaign tell us something about FullFact’s ambitions? Has it crossed a line?

FullFact Slams Labour for Continuing to Push False Cost of Living Sums

By Guido Fawkes

Despite an ongoing holier-than-thou campaign about truth in politics, this morning [22 April] Labour has been slammed by fact-checkers for continuing to publish statistics claiming the average household will be “£2,620 worse off” as a result of the “cost of living crisis”. This calculation is, in fact, 274% off the real figure…

On 8 April, FullFact first called out this statistic, labelling it as false as it’s “based on unreliable assumptions, and it excludes wages and benefits, which are rising. Official estimates suggest that the average household will be roughly £700 worse off in 2022/23.” Despite FullFact contacting Sir Keir’s office about the claim at the time, they received no response, and the party has refused to share full details of how its estimates were calculated.

On Thursday the website’s had to redouble its fact-checking efforts as it emerges not only is the party unable – or refusing – to justify the sums, Labour HQ is actively selling the leaflet to local election campaigns with the figure featuring prominently. The leaflets have also been slammed by some on the left of the party for having “final demand” stamped on the envelope…

https://twitter.com/JoeCoxEastLDN/status/1516047839738085381?s=20&t=orBu6h-qEY98b_xFK1b5Og

Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson was censured for having repeated the claim on Facebook since FullFact previously called the party out, and they note the party has pushed out at least four active Facebook adverts since they were contacted about the inaccuracy. 

At this time Guido turns to the words of the Right Honourable leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition spoken in the Commons just yesterday [21 April]: “honesty, integrity and telling the truth matter in our politics. That is not a principle that I or the Labour party have a special claim to. It is a British principle.”

FullFact Has Crossed the Line

“One of the Facebook adverts says: ‘Under the Conservatives families are £2,620 worse off’. This is not correct, as Full Fact has explained in detail before … We have asked Labour to correct the record on these claims, but at the time of writing it has not done so,” FullFact wrote.

FullFact can write whatever “fact-checking” blogs they choose including highlighting another lie by another politician. In a liberal democracy, underpinned by freedom of speech, we all can.  But who are they to instruct a political party to “correct” their campaign materials?  Who appointed them as election watchdog?

The name “FullFact” is Newspeak as is the so-called “fact-check” service it purports to provide.  As we wrote in a previous article, FullFact is essentially a blog site headed by Conservative Party donor Michael Samuel, heavily funded by tech giants with vested interests, and staffed mainly by ex-civil servants and other government agencies such as the Behavioural Insights Team.

It’s important to note FullFact has ambitions to globalise its “fact-checking” as it is developing “world-leading technology and new research to spot repeated claims, and find out how bad information can be tackled at a global scale.”

There are already worrying signs FullFact has become the official propaganda arm of the UK government and globalist censorship organisations. Now, it seems, FullFact are trying to take it a step further, and not for the first time, by attempting to have authority over political parties, to direct their behaviour. Why? Under whose authority?

It’s time to shut FullFact down before they turn in George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth both within the UK and beyond.