There is an old saying of “there are lies, damned lies, and statistics”, which is associated with the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments.  I often see statistics cherry-picked to back up existing viewpoints, as opposed to views being formed based on evidence.  This is especially evident on social media and in election leaflets. I’ve observed all parties doing it to some degree, but some do it far more than others.

In politics, there’s nothing wrong with promoting one’s achievements and highlighting what you perceive to be deficiencies in the policies of others, but there are ways and means to go about it.

Something disingenuous locally that I’ve seen, is election leaflets pretending to be informative about which local authority provides which services.  Presented in a tick-box format, it’s designed to come across as West Sussex County Council and Crawley Borough Council providing a similar amount of services, due to having a similar number of ticks in each column.  As well as several services being missed out in the County Council column, the scale (e.g. Adult Social Care) of such services is not emphasised.  The County Council provide almost 80% of local government services hence why they take more of the council tax.  It’s done to (falsely) make the reader believe that the Labour-run Borough Council is providing better value for money than the Conservative-run County Council.  However, while misleading, it’s not unpleasant.           

But this is.  Along with many Conservatives and politicians from other parties, I was appalled at the demonisation of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak by the national Labour Party in their graphic on Twitter last week.  To wrongly and maliciously say that Rishi Sunak doesn’t want to see those committing sexual offences against children imprisoned, complete with a photo of him smiling and his signature, is simply disgusting.

As well as (obviously) being factually wrong, it looked designed to stir up hatred towards him, by feeding into the revulsion that we all have for such heinous crimes. Such gutter politics needs calling out and it’s only by a groundswell of public opinion criticising it, will it stop.      

Councillor Duncan Crow, Leader of Crawley Borough Council Conservative Group

12th April 2023