How the UK’s Right-Wing Parties Attempted to Utilise Disinformation as a Political Tactic in the 2024 General Election, and How it Impacted Their Electoral Success.
Misinformation and disinformation are on the rise on a global scale. Fuelled by developments in technology, the digital era, and the widespread desire for news immediacy at the expense of factual accuracy (Tversky and Kahneman, 1974), mis/disinformation (or ‘fake news’), is disseminating faster than ever before. For the purpose of clarity throughout this essay, I will be using the differences between misinformation and disinformation as proposed in Wardle and Derakshan (2017); according to whom, misinformation, whilst false, “is not created with the intention of harm”. Whereas, Wardle and Derakshan (2017) defines disinformation as “information that is false and deliberately created to harm a person, social group, organization or country”. When referring to both phenomena, I will use the term ‘fake news’; however, the majority of examples in the instance of the 2024 General Election would be categorised as disinformation, as fake news was created with the intention of political gain.
The 2024 General Election saw groundbreaking results for many parties, with the Labour Party forming their biggest majority since 1997 and forming a government for the first time in 14 years. The Green Party, Liberal Democrats and Reform UK achieved their highest number of seats so far, and the Conservatives and Scottish National Party (SNP) faced some of their biggest losses. Studies from YouGov found that just one in ten people were happy with having a two-party system (Difford, 2024), which undoubtedly played a huge role in the rise of Reform UK, for example; however, another substantial part of their victory in particular was the use of disinformation, often fuelled by AI. On the other end of the scale, the Conservative Party devoted significant time to a disinformed campaign, which was later debunked and likely played a significant role in delivering their worst ever general election outcome.
During the six-week campaign period, Reform UK were ‘fact checked’ numerous times on their claims, usually relating to immigration. In fact, the party branded the 2024 election as ‘The Immigration Election’, knowing it was a key issue for many voters, hence creating a populist movement. This is a common example of political parties using threat perception theory (Huddy et al., 2005) in order to rally support and make political gains. In fact, according to Greenberg, Solomon and Pyszczynski (1986), “when confronted with existential threats, individuals exhibit stronger adherence to their cultural worldviews and are more likely to support leaders or policies that reinforce a sense of stability and security.” And, whilst potentially far-fetched to label immigration an existential issue, data from YouGov found that 20% of Brits believe that immigration and asylum is the biggest issue facing the UK, whilst a further 41% believe it to be one of the biggest issues (Smith, 2023). During their political campaign, Reform UK created and distributed an advert, which read “IMMIGRATION ISN’T WORKING. ONS: 14 million will arrive in the next 12 years”, which is a clear example of threat perception theory in action. Furthermore, this advert was debunked by registered charity, Full Fact, who found that the “ONS figures don’t show 14 million people will arrive”, and claimed that Reform UK had misleadingly presented data which suggested that 13.7 million would arrive between 2021 and 2036, giving a more accurate figure of 10.4 million arrivals in the next 12 years (ONS, 2022). This not only demonstrates a clear attempt at populism by threat-perception, but also the intentional dissemination of disinformation, considering that that the information is both false, and deliberately created to harm oppositional parties, hence meeting both criteria of Wardle and Derakshan (2017).
When considering the motives behind disinformation, it’s first key to look at who is most susceptible to believing and further disseminating fake news. It is clear that Reform UK’s primary motive would have been political gain, in the form of winning individual seats, as would be the case with any party on the road to a general election. In the 2024 General Election, Reform UK gained five constituencies: Clacton, Boston & Skegness, Ashfield[1], Great Yarmouth and Basildon & East Thurrock (Stewart, 2024). There are some commonalities between these constituencies regarding likelihood of threat perception and belief of fake news. According to Guess, Nagler and Tucker (2019), a key indicator for vulnerability of mis/disinformation is age. In fact, their research found that Facebook users over 65 are over seven times as likely to share fake news than those aged between 18 and 29. This would suggest that an ageing population is more susceptible to fake news. Furthermore, data from ONS (2021) suggests that, when ranked by median age, all five of the constituencies won by Reform UK fall into the top 57%, with Clacton, won by party leader Nigel Farage, coming 5th with a median age of 52.9.
Another factor to consider would be the ability to think critically and analytically. Pennycook and Rand (2019) found that “susceptibility to fake news is driven more by lazy thinking than by partisan bias. People who engage in more analytical thinking are less likely to believe false headlines—even when those headlines align with their political views,” hence meaning these people would be more vulnerable to believing and disseminating mis/disinformation. Whilst critical thinking is not a trackable metric, a telling method would be the number of constituents with university degrees, for which the national average is 50.9% (ONS, 2015). In Clacton, only 13.4% of constituents have university degrees, in fact, across all five constituencies won by Reform UK, none exceed 16%, therefore all falling well below the national average, and further implying that disinformation was a campaign tactic consciously employed to encourage gains for Reform UK in certain seats.
Furthermore, Pennycook and Rand (2019) also highlighted another key indicator which is of relevance here, that being levels of social isolation. Their research concluded that those who aren’t engaging in diverse conversations with varying opinions and inputs are more susceptible to mis/disinformation, as they’ve grown used to believing what they hear and not having opinions challenged. Whilst, in a digital age, social isolation is on the decline, there are still some areas of the UK which are significantly more isolated than others, one of those being Great Yarmouth, one of the seats won by Reform UK, which is only accessible via the A47 or A113. This would once again suggest that the fake news spread by Reform UK was disseminated intentionally, likely knowing that those who were concerned about immigration could also be easily misled. This could have been an example of strategic campaigning and targeting, with Reform UK potentially knowing that, whilst spreading disinformation would be ineffective as an overall model, it would encourage political gains in isolated areas with an ageing and less critical population, who are more easily impacted by threat perception theory (Huddy et al., 2005).
Reform UK weren’t the only party to attempt to utilise disinformation as a campaign strategy ahead of the 2024 General Election, the Conservative Party, then led by Rishi Sunak, was faced with criticism in the aftermath of the ITV election debate, when it was suggested that the civil service had found that Labour’s manifesto spending would create a spending shortfall of £38bn, which would result in a £2000 tax increase for every household. Spearheading the criticism was James Bowler, the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, who revealed that this analysis was from the treasury, and that the Conservative Party had misrepresented official information. To understand why potentially aided in damaging the reputation of the Conservative Party, resulting in their worst ever election result, it is key to apply Weber’s (2019) works on political legitimacy, which, in this instance, relate to the open and transparent operations of a party, in line with institutional norms. By misrepresenting an objective institution, such as the Civil Service in this instance, Weber (2019) would suggest that trust in the party, and the political system as a whole, is eroded. This would have acted as a double-edged sword for the Conservatives at the time, considering they were also the governing party of the system, so not only were they discredited as a party, but also as a governing body.
In summary, whilst Reform UK labelled the 2024 General Election the ‘immigration election’, a more fitting name could be the disinformation election, considering the digital and social conditions which allowed the dissemination of fake news on unprecedented levels. Both of the UK’s mainstream right-wing parties utilised disinformation in an attempt at political gain; however, it appears Reform UK’s use was significantly more targeted and strategic, demonstrating the dangers posed when threat perception theory (Huddy et al., 2005) is weaponised in politics, and perhaps forming the basis for their victory in five constituencies. For the Conservatives, the use of disinformation, as a governing body, on a national-level public stage served to further erode their legitimacy and public trust, a sentiment echoed by the majority of the UK public, which ultimately saw them lose over 65% of their seats in the 2024 General Election, and delivered their worst election result in history.
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[1] Whilst technically a gain from the Conservative Party, there was no change in MP as Lee Anderson defected to Reform UK in March 2024 (Francis, 2024)
Matt Daniel 
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