Fraser Nelson:

Tories must adapt quickly if they are to compete with Jeremy Corbyn’s loyal army of online campaigners

There weren’t many decent adverts in the last general election campaign, but one video does stick in my mind. It’s set in “Tory Britain 2030” where a father is showing old photos to his young daughter. Why are there so few pupils in his class, she asks. “Things are different now,” he replies. “Schools can’t afford to pay teachers.” Or provide free meals. The discussion moves on to universities, similarly afflicted. She asks why. “Because I voted for Theresa May,” he explains, with a malicious smile.

Then the punchline. “Dad, do you hate me?” “Obviously,” he replies. Herewith the message: Tories hate kids. Even their own.

It was a bit much, even by Labour’s standards, but this wasn’t a Labour film. It was from Momentum, an independent socialist campaign group. The video was quite the hit, viewed seven million times. Given that Momentum claims to have raised £100,000 this week alone, we can expect more such ads. The Labour Party could never get away with such below-the-belt attacks but it would have no need to make any. There are no end of campaigners now, ready to strike the low blows on Jeremy Corbyn’s behalf.

The idea of a general election as a battle between standing armies died with the arrival of the digital age. The Tories will now find themselves up against a range of nimble, online enemies – some of whom can be seen, many of whom cannot. In the 2017 snap election, Theresa May lazily assumed she’d crush Corbyn’s demoralised Labour Party. Instead, she found herself up against a network of energetic and effective anti-tory campaign groups whose tactics ranged from the conventional to the deplorable. By election night, Labour’s vote had surged. Mrs May did not know what had hit her.

In her defence, it took her party the best part of a year to work it out. Some clues came when campaigning was halted after the Manchester bombing, but Tory strategists noticed they were being attacked by all kinds of other groups. It later turned out that 30 so-called satellite groups had been fighting on Labour’s side – and, like Vote Leave, they found it pretty easy to embarrass the government. Anyone can play this game, but Right-wingers tend not to be very good at it. There was just one digital campaign group, other than the Tories, who wanted Mrs May to win. It seems to be a field of combat where Conservatives are hopelessly outnumbered.

It’s fashionable to say that none of this matters, that the power of social media is talked up by sore losers hoping to blame Russian bots for their defeat. But the ability of technology to mobilise and convene voters is now undeniable.

The advance of the smartphone is nothing less than a cultural revolution with nine in 10 British adults now using one every day. They do so, on average, for over three hours a day. A third of us even take it to bed. All this presents plenty of opportunity to be targeted with a message. For two hours yesterday, the top Twitter story on my iphone was an invitation to watch Corbyn’s campaign launch. I succumbed.

The digitisation of the great British public means it has never been easier to reach like-minded people, ask them to sign up to a cause, attend a rally or join a political debate. We even use this black magic at The Spectator: on Monday, we welcomed 2,000 readers to hear two of our writers in discussion. In the past, a magazine of our (tiny) size could never have filled large halls. But thanks to an app, which sells and makes digital tickets, anyone can do it.

When Dominic Cummings ran Vote Leave, he was able to deploy all kinds of imaginative tactics that the Conservatives would not dare attempt now. Governing parties face far more scrutiny. Every advert made, every statistic quoted, every penny sent to other campaigners is traced and pored over for years afterwards. For antigovernment activists, it is all much easier: they can pop up, raise cash by crowdfunding, fire off attacks and then vanish. All this has made election campaigns feel more like insurgencies. For politics, it’s the new normal.

Corbyn’s main attack line in his speech yesterday – that the Tories will somehow sell the NHS to Donald Trump – is already being reinforced on social media by a group called European Movement UK. Other campaigners, often fronts for trade unions, are targeting individual constituencies with blood-curdling messages about school cuts. Momentum’s latest piece of handiwork returns to the Tories-hate-the-young theme (“We at the Conservative Party do not want your vote,” says a plummy-voiced woman: you can imagine the rest.) The advert had been removed and investigated for violating Facebook’s guidelines but was, eventually, approved. Impersonating Tories, it seems, is quite okay.

The tech giants still don’t quite know how to handle all of this. Twitter announced this week that it will no longer take any money for political adverts. But the great joke in Westminster is that no self-respecting spin doctor would ever pay for Twitter. Its outrage algorithms are too easy to manipulate. Facebook takes the big political ad cash, but even if it were to be subject to a crackdown, political spin doctors would find other ways. “These digital political ads are a virus,” one minister says. “There’s no way to stop the spread.”

But the same was, once, said about television – and, before that, the printing press. The Tories cannot really complain if their opponents are quicker to adapt to new technology or better able to inspire campaigners. Conservatism, if properly sold, should be just as inspirational. Brexit campaigners might help out this time and a pair of 20-something New Zealanders have been enlisted to direct the Tory digital war. Early results are not exactly encouraging. Both parties have released videos for the campaign launch this week: Labour’s has 2.6 million views against just 150,000 for the Conservatives.

The great Tory hope is that they have, in Boris Johnson, a leader made for social media, a subject of endless media fascination who can make the digital universe bend towards him. Perhaps he can. But with less than six weeks until the election, now would be a good time to start.