Election special

Shapps altering accused fellow Conservatives’ internet profiles ... and his own

GRANT Shapps was last night at the centre of extraordinary claims that he was doctoring Wikipedia pages to promote himself at the expense of his political rivals.

The Tory party chairman is accused of deleting embarrassing references to his past from his own page in the online encyclopedia while putting unflattering updates on the pages of others.

A furious Mr Shapps denied the claims, published by the Guardian, describing them as an ‘extreme dirty tricks campaign’.

Wikipedia has suspended an anonymous user of the site, known only as ‘Contribsx’, after finding evidence it said suggested the account was run either by Mr Shapps or under his ‘clear direction’. It cited a series of amendments made by the user to pages of the site, around one third of which involved removing embarrassing references on Mr Shapps’s own page.

Other changes included adding critical language to the pages of Tory Cabinet minister including International Development Secretary Justine Greening and campaign chief Lynton Crosby. The timing and content of some of the edits appear to tally with instances when Mr Shapps clashed with the subject of the changes.

The Tories described the story as ‘completely false and defamatory’.

Last night Mr Shapps said: ‘It’s categorically untrue. It’s absolutely nothing to do with me. It’s just ridiculous. It looks like an extreme dirty tricks campaign designed to do anything but talk about policies.’

But it emerged in 2012 that changes to Mr Shapps’s Wikipedia page were made from computers in his constituency office.

At the time, he said he had amended pages claiming he was ‘a Jehovah’s Witness, agnostic or crashed a car into a school wall’.

An investigation by Wikipedia claimed the Contribsx account ‘is a ‘sockpuppet of Grant Shapps’ previous accounts on Wikipedia’.

Sockpuppet refers to a fake online identity used ‘for an improper purpose’ and is banned on the site.

Among the changes revealed include information about Miss Greening, who had disagreed with Mr Shapps over his support for a third runway at Heathrow. In September 2013 the user said she ‘failed to vote in a critical parliamentary division about military action in Syria’ as she failed to notice the division bell had sounded, despite being in the House of Commons. The user also made edits on Mr Crosby in March and August last year, at times when there were reports of splits between the two men. Mr Shapps took the blame after the 2014 Budget over a ‘patronising’ picture he tweeted about cuts in beer tax and bingo which would help ‘hardworking people do more of the things they enjoy’.

Contribsx edited Mr Shapps’ Wikipedia page to suggest he had unfairly taken the blame for the picture, which was the fault of Mr Crosby and Chancellor George Osborne. A recent Contribsx edit, on Easter Sunday this year, changed the page of Karl Turner, the shadow attorney general, adding a reference to the Labour MP having ‘ admitted breaking House of Commons rules by sending out invitations to a £45-a-head Labour party fundraising event from parliamentary email’.

Two weeks earlier Turner had called on Prime Minister David Cameron to investigate Mr Shapps over his denials that he had continued to use the pseudonym Michael Green while he was an MP.

Wikipedia is like a normal encyclopedia but its pages can be created and edited online by anyone. Volunteer administrators moderate the site and monitor changes. Changes to pages create an audit trail which can be linked back to users. Labour frontbencher Jon Ashworth said: ‘This is another embarrassing episode in the saga of Grant Shapps. It’s about time we had some answers, from him and from David Cameron who appointed him to run the Tory campaign.’

Liberal Democrat campaign chairman Paddy Ashdown sent a lighthearted press release that read: ‘Grant is a wonderful guy - he is a credit to the Conservative Party, a fine sportsman and reads a book a day. We could all learn a lot from him. Quite simply, a colossus.’

The press release noted that it had been ‘ edited by Wikipedia user Contribsx’.

‘An extreme dirty tricks campaign’