Peter HUTCHISON
Fri, 6 October 2023
Britain's energy minister Claire Coutinho was accused of making false claims about a Labour meat tax during the Conservative Party conference (JUSTIN TALLIS)
False claims about meat taxes, references to a debunked conspiracy theory and myths about bendy bananas -- are members of Britain's ruling Conservatives following Donald Trump's electoral playbook?
Several Tory MPs were accused of making untrue or exaggerated statements at their annual conference this week, likely the last such gathering before a general election expected next year.
With the Tories lagging behind Labour in opinion polls, some observers saw the comments as a deliberate -- and desperate -- ploy that ex-US Republican president Trump's former election strategist would be proud of.
"There's a degree to which this is following the Steve Bannon playbook of flooding the zone," said political scientist Tim Bale of Queen Mary University of London, describing the comments as "pretty Trumpian".
"So that you actually create a question in people's minds as to what is and isn't real. And in the end, people just decide to go on their gut, rather than actually on any kind of objective truth or facts," he told AFP.
Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho suggested in her speech that Labour wanted to tax meat when the centre-left opposition has no such policy. Coutinho later defended it as a "light moment" in her address.
Therese Coffey, the environment minister, mentioned meat as well, claiming that "some green zealots" want people to only eat fake meat. She did not say who those people were.
Coffey also regurgitated a favourite trope among Eurosceptics in the run-up to the 2016 Brexit referendum.
"Frankly, bent or straight, it is not for government to decide the shape of bananas you want to eat," she told delegates.
Coffey said she would drop "absurd" European Union regulations that say bananas should be "free from malformation or abnormal curvature."
The guidelines do not ban curved bananas, though.
Transport minister Mark Harper was accused of offering up the most egregious falsehood when he vowed to crack down on so-called 15-minute cities.
The urban planning concept proposes designing cities where people are able to walk or bike to all essential services, such as supermarkets and pharmacies, within quarter of an hour.
- 'Facts and evidence' -
"What is sinister, and what we shouldn't tolerate, is the idea that local councils can decide how often you go to the shops," said Harper.
His comments echo online conspiracy theories that claim the proposal is a government plot to stop people from leaving their homes. The claim has been widely debunked, including by the government itself.
"That's the one that really surprised me because once you start spouting stuff that really only makes sense to people who frequent the outer fringes of the internet, I think you really are in desperate straits," said Bale.
Political scientist Anand Menon reckons the comments are a deliberate tactic to force Labour leader Keir Starmer into engaging with the Conservatives on "culture war" issues like identity and personal freedoms.
At the conference, science minister Michelle Donelan vowed to push back what she called a "slow creep of wokeism" in the scientific community, while hardline interior minister Suella Braverman referenced "the privileged woke minority with their luxury beliefs".
"There's a frustration, in a way I suppose it's a compliment to Starmer, that there's nothing that Labour has said that they (the Tories) can get their teeth into," Menon, of King's College London, told AFP.
In some respects, the falsehoods and exaggerations are a continuation of the path that began in 2016 by pro-Brexit campaigners led by Tory former prime minister Boris Johnson.
Earlier this year, a parliamentary committee ruled that he had deliberately lied to MPs about lockdown-breaking parties during the Covid pandemic.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was himself accused of being liberal with the truth last month when he announced a rollback of net-zero green policies.
He was accused of scrapping policies that were not government policy, including compulsory car-sharing, and households would be forced to use seven recycling bins.
"The Tories, more than Labour now, I think, stand to gain from the public thinking they're all the same, you can't trust any of them," Menon went on.
"Which is obviously profoundly dangerous for democracy and the state of the system. But of course, that takes second place to winning the election."
Donelan, pressed during a BBC radio interview on the various conference comments, insisted: "I genuinely believe we are the party of facts and evidence."
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