We overlooked success of Momentum’s online battle, admit Tory campaigners
SENIOR Conservatives have admitted they had a “blind spot” for Labour’s online campaign group Momentum as Jeremy Corbyn warned he was gearing up for a second election later this year.
Momentum, the grass-roots group that helped Mr Corbyn become leader of the party and confound expectations in the election, played an integral role in encouraging young people to vote Labour. It is also credited with waging an effective online political war via Facebook and Twitter.
But senior sources in the Tory campaign have admitted the party did not consider Momentum a real threat and claimed it was “a gap we just didn’t think about”.
MPS and campaigners are now urging the party to rethink its online strategy or risk losing the next general election to a reinvigorated Labour.
Momentum organised rallies and events, and also produced videos and other viral content that was widely shared online.
Almost 13 million people watched Momentum’s videos produced at low cost compared with the Tories, who spent £1million on targeted adverts on Facebook.
One of its videos, a controversial short film showing a father explaining to his daughter why she will not get free school meals, achieved 5.4million views in just two days.
Giles Kenningham, a former director of communications for the Tories, told the Financial Times: “Labour have used Momentum to devastating effect.
“The Tories do not have an equivalent campaigning group pushing out their message.”
Mark Wallace, executive editor of the blog Conservative Home, warned he had been highlighting failings in the campaign strategy for years.
He wrote: “After the 2015 victory I highlighted failings with campaign technology and the urgent need for a long-term solution to the grassroots gap which Team 2015 had temporarily filled… it seems that those concerns were ignored on the basis that we won, so it couldn’t be that much of an issue.”
A senior Conservative campaign source who worked on the 2017 election said: “They never thought about Momentum or the online campaign they were waging – it just didn’t occur to them at all.
“It was a gap we didn’t think about, a blind spot”.
Momentum is expected to play a key role in shoring up support for Mr Corbyn in the next parliament via rallies, online campaigns and protests.
The group focused its resources on calling for young people to turn out to vote, using emails as well as social media.
The Conservatives aimed to do the same but it emerged on election night that a batch of emails to “get out the vote” were delayed and arrived after the polls closed.