The Telegraph’s “exclusive” small business letter is not all it’s cracked up to be

This morning’s Telegraph front page runs with an “exclusive” letter signed by 5,000 small business owners giving their support to the Tories. It is just the latest in what has become a regular feature of the Conservative campaign: there have already been two ‘letter from business leaders’ front pages (on the Telegraph and Sun) over the past few weeks.

However, while today’s letter bears the greatest number of signatories so far, it is not as impressive as it first seems. Of the UK’s 5.2 million small businesses, only 0.1% are represented by the letter – which is not an organic outpouring of support, but the result of a weeks old petition from the Conservative Party website. And of that 0.1%, it seems some names have been added without permission:

.@Telegraph My Sales Director did not sign “the letter” (at position 413). Please remove his name and our company details immediately.

— Helen Belcher (@Aurum_Boss) April 27, 2015

It has already been noted that if you download the list of signatories from the Telegraph website, you can see that the file’s author is “CCHQ Admin”, proving that it went straight from Tory HQ into the paper:

lol looks like someone forgot to strip their metadata @CCHQPress @Telegraph pic.twitter.com/XduBsICWlV — sonic woof (@weedroid) April 26, 2015

It is not exactly an “exclusive” either: the Guardian’s Nicholas Watt reported that the Tories were actively seeking out signatures from the small business community on April 10th. In his two and half week old piece, you can read whole sections of the letter is today splashed on the Telegraph. You could have read this “exclusive” letter in another paper or on the Conservatives’ own website for weeks while the party tried to get enough people to sign it.