The Conservative Party has already been branded “desperate” over some of its messaging and campaign tactics during the general election period - and its latest attack ads on Labour won’t help with that perception, as the political party has now turned to using pictures of sad puppies and kittens to deter voters from backing Sir Keir Starmer’s party.
In the ads - which started appearing on Facebook and Instagram on July 2 - the pets all appear alongside dark red text which reads: “Don’t surrender your family’s finances to Keir Starmer”.
One features a sad corgi, another shows a springer spaniel and a third contains a kitten looking up glumly at the camera.
The caption alongside the image is the same across all three versions too, with the party stating: “The Lib Dems are on board with everything Keir Starmer wants to do. Don’t lose your vote. Vote Conservative.”
According to Meta’s Ad Library, the Conservatives are paying less than £100 to run the ads in various forms and to different audiences, with the maximum estimated audience size ranging from 100,000 to 500,000 users.
And they’ve racked up thousands of impressions each since they were launched this week.
The adverts feed into a broader message being pushed by the Tories that a Labour government will result in “higher taxes” for working households, with the Conservatives continuing to make the claim that Starmer would oversee a “£2,000 tax hike” despite it being rubbished by Treasury officials and the Office for Statistics Regulation warning about its presentation.
Labour has since issued a rebuttal to the attack line, insisting in a statement on June 10 that it “will not raise taxes on working people” if it forms the next government, adding this means it “will not increase income tax, national insurance or VAT” but instead make the tax system “fairer”.
With Tory MPs such as Suella Braverman already conceding that it’s “over” for their party, and as the Conservatives move towards urging voters to prevent a Labour “supermajority” (given polls have consistently placed Labour ahead of them), the Tories using animals to pressure people to vote for them has seen them being labelled “desperate”.
And it’s not the only ad the Conservatives are running on social media in the run-up to polling day, as another sees the classic war poster of Lord Kitchener adapted to show Starmer, complete with the caption: “Starmer needs you to stay at home, or vote Reform, Lib Dems, or anyone else, so he can get a supermajority.”
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