Labour launches online “Labour Response Team” to take on the Tories over social media

Labour HQ have launched “Labour Response Team” today – an attempt to work with grassroots Labour activists and supporters to fight back against the Tories online. The campaign was launched in an email from Jon Ashworth (one of Labour’s campaign deputies who is spearheading the response team) and sends would-be team members to a Labour Response Team website where they can sign up.

It’s believed that the party is seeking to engage those who have interacted with the party multiple times on social media, to build up a group that Ashworth describes in his email as “a few thousand” but which the party hopes will grow to be tens of thousands of active online supporters. That group of supporters, the party believes, could play a role in the final weeks of the campaign.

The email sent out to activists from Jon Ashworth can be read in full below:

The Tories have a plan to win this election: they will refuse to tell the truth about their own record of failure in government, and they will try to smear our party, our leader, and our vision for the country too.

It’s as simple as it is ugly — and they’re going to be spending huge sums of money on everything from glossy leaflets to targeted online ads to do it. We can’t outspend the Tories to rebut their smears, and we can’t rely on the media to do it for us (spoiler: they won’t). So we’re taking matters into our own hands — and that’s where you come in. 

We’re calling it the Labour Response Team — a team of grassroots activists fighting back by exposing the Tories’ dirty tactics and highlighting their real record.

I’m looking to recruit a few thousand of Labour’s most committed  members and supporters to join this new team — and I want you to be a part of it.

Here’s how it works: when the Tories attack us or try to run from their record, we’ll email you with the facts you need to know and a  graphic, article or blog post to share however you like (on Facebook,  Twitter or over email, for example).

It may not sound like much, but people often trust people they know more than the politicians they see on TV. Your voice will carry weight– and working together, we can make sure the facts drown out the Tory spin.

So, will you join our Response Team?

Today is a good example of the Tories’ real agenda. They are refusing to come clean about their plans to raise VAT after the election, but  they’ve tried this before – three times in the last few elections, Tory chancellors have raised VAT after promising they had no plans to do so.

This is *exactly* the kind of thing we need to be highlighting.

Will you join the Labour Response Team to help do it?

As well as emailing you at key moments, we’ll also post stuff regularly to our new Response Team blog — so make sure you stay up to date by bookmarking this page.

We’re really excited about this and I’m looking forward to having you on board.

Thanks. 

Jon Ashworth

General Election Campaign Deputy