Rowena Mason, political correspondent 

‘Beer and bingo’ row shows how social media have become key battleground

Growing trend sees parties responding to events with immediate graphics and slogans to be spread over social media
  
  

The poster tweeted by Grant Shapps
The post-budget poster tweeted by Grant Shapps. Photograph: @grantshapps/PA Photograph: @grantshapps/PA

The Conservative chairman, Grant Shapps, will not be apologising for tweeting a much-derided poster claiming beer and bingo tax cuts help "hard-working people do more of the things they enjoy", Tory sources have said.

The senior MP is said to be standing behind the viral advert, widely condemned for being condescending, which was sent out after the budget and retweeted by a number of his colleagues. These included one of George Osborne's political aides, Rob Wilson, who commented "great poster".

As Nick Clegg labelled the poster "silly" and George Osborne stopped short of defending it, Conservative HQ, which produced the poster, suggested it was standing by the content, refusing to acknowledge it may have been ill advised and saying there was nothing to apologise for.

A Conservative party source said: "We are proud to be cutting a penny off a pint for the second year in a row. If this is Labour's only attack on the budget it shows just how weak and confused Ed Miliband's policies have become."

They also pointed towards an article in the Stoke Sentinel as evidence that the policy was popular among bingo-playing votes, which suggests the tax break could lead to bigger prizes and better facilities if passed on by companies.

Despite backing the message, Tory sources said it was not accurate to call it an advertisement as that implied it would be used again. It was actually a one-off "tweetgraphic" designed to be sent out only once, they said.

The Conservative party declined to comment on who designed the poster and whether Shapps personally signed off on its use or allowed an aide to post it from his Twitter account.

Shapps has not commented on the row and was on Wednesday touring businesses in Lancashire, including a soft-play centre in Chorley, a steel plant in Bolton and an engineering firm in Bury.

The poster is likely to have been the responsibility of the Conservative creative and digital department. According to a job advertisement for a copywriter posted in October, this is responsible for "producing copy for all the party's online activity, including web pages, emails to supporters, social media channels, online banners and adword campaigns".

The "beer and bingo" poster does not contain the typical line that it is "promoted by Alan Mabbutt on behalf of the Conservative party at 4 Matthew Parker Street, London, SW1H 9HQ", which is required by the Electoral Commission to be reproduced on printed literature produced by parties in the interests of transparency.


It suggests that in the runup to the election, the parties will be able to distribute viral material online without taking the same official responsibility for it in the same way as old-fashioned printed adverts.

Shapps's tweet of the poster quickly garnered a response of disbelief online and was followed by spoof photos of Tory ministers sitting round a cabinet table playing bingo, as well as satirical parodies of bingo calls led by former Labour deputy prime minister Lord Prescott.

By Thursday morning, it had been criticised as "silly" by Nick Clegg and ridiculed by Labour's Ed Balls for being "incredibly patronising" to voters, while Lib Dem Treasury chief secretary, Danny Alexander, said it "demeans some quite sensible" budget measures.

Some senior Tories are understood to be unimpressed by the advertisement for overshadowing a positive response to the budget in the rightwing popular press from the Sun to the Daily Express.

Although George Osborne, the chancellor, attacked Labour for "whipping up the story", he did not specifically defend the message on BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"I think it's patronising to say that it doesn't matter what the price of beer is or that it doesn't matter that we help our bingo halls because three-quarters of bingo halls have closed in recent decades. These are important budget measures, they're not the only budget measures, and this whole story which I notice the BBC have been covering last night and this morning, was whipped up by a Labour party that didn't have anything else to say about the economy," he said.

Asked about the furore, David Cameron's official spokesman said he would not be commenting on whether he had seen the tweet or if the prime minister believes poor people like bingo and beer, although he said the PM still had confidence in Shapps as Tory chairman. The spokesman also declined to say whether the prime minister had ever played bingo.

Meanwhile, the poster was defended by the London mayor, Boris Johnson, who told the BBC's Daily Politics: "It seems to be celebrating the fact that we're cutting tax on bingo and beer and that is the right thing to do."

Sarah Vine, the Daily Mail columnist and wife of the education secretary, Michael Gove, was not so tactful. She entered the fray by tweeting: "Seriously?!?!" This was followed by a denial that the poster represented the view of Cameron and Osborne, as Vine added: "It's not true that it reflects what DC and GO think of voters…" and: "A mystery as to whose idea it was".

In a counterattack, the official Tory chairman Twitter account also retweeted a video of Ed Miliband slightly grimacing while taking a sip of a pint, trying to imply that the Labour leader "hates British beer".

The account also accused the opposition of being "same old Labour, changing the subject" over its line of attack.

There is a growing trend within all the parties to respond to political events with immediate graphics and slogans to be spread over social media.

Labour has recently produced a poster for distribution on Twitter of a woman standing outside Downing Street with a red shopping bag, rather than a red box, pointing out to "George" that everyone has a budget.


Jon Ashworth, a shadow cabinet office minister, has also experimented on Buzzfeed this week with a humorous look at the budget.

The Tories' "beer and bingo" poster is just one of a number of adverts likely to have been scrambled together after the budget by party "creatives" as Osborne's Treasury team keeps the details of policies extremely close to their chests following leaks in previous years. Other adverts included a picture of Ed Miliband claiming his budget response contained no mention of helping savers, pensions, capping welfare or apprenticeships.

However, the poster is likely to offer all parties a lesson in what happens when attempts to harness the power of social media backfire. Within hours, dozens of ways of mocking it had sprung up across the internet.

Political Scrapbook even offering people a template to create their own mock "Tory Bingo" poster.

 

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