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"More recently, the Coalition for Reform in Political Advertising said the UK's December general election was marked by online and offline campaigns that were "indecent, dishonest and untruthful"."

When has the law ever stopped Cummings doing whatever he pleases?

That's standard fare for politicians, isn't it?

Who elected Cummings then?

That doesn't matter you prole.

Cummings definitely did not break lockdown having been instrumental in the message telling proles, like you and I, that we must comply or else. He was also definitely not instrumental in all the hatred of unelected EU officials... despite them being elected and him not being. He also very definitely did not ensure that as much money as possible, both from the Tory party and government, was sent to his and his friends "research" companies and these companies very definitely did not break and laws and the funding was absolutely never in breach of the political and campaign funding rules.

Or if you want an indirect "who elected Cummings then?" response, it was the Tory party voters.

Ah, so now Cummings is a RUSSIAN as well! Please make up your minds, was it Cummings and his friends in 'research', the Russians, Facebook, Facebook and Twitter, the Russians on Facebook and Twitter, or some other line of crap you haven't thought up yet?

Notably, even the recent much-lauded independent report into Russian interference (hold on, shouldn't there be an "alleged" in there somewhere?) completely failed to find any evidence and can be neatly summed up as "We couldn't find any proof of anything, we would like the Government to give us a lot more money so we can try again" even though so many people seem to think it DID find something (because the media told them it did. Shame nobody in the media actually bothered to read it properly first, hmm?)

As for Cummings stirring up hatred of unelected EU officials, he didn't need to. They have done that all by themselves, repeatedly. The most obvious example to choose at the moment is the situation of the refugees fleeing the war in France to cross the Channel to England. The EU promulgated the international laws about claiming asylum in the FIRST safe country you arrive in, yet France is still assisting these people to "escape" mainland Europe to seek the land of milk and honey in the UK. The French navy has been filmed floating serenely in the background while small boats flounder, the only assistance they have rendered being to alert the British Coastguard the moment the boats leave France's area of responsibility and enter international waters. And now they "only "want another 30million GBP to "help" stem the flood. On top of us rebuilding the camp at Sangat and the sea walls, the fences, improving security at the French end of the Channel Tunnel, funding additional French guards, supplying UK Border Force personnel to "assist" those same French Guards...

Yeah, Cummings had to work so hard to make people dislike the EU.

To paraphrase,

Bollocks

Bollocks

Lies

Half Truths

Oh, and the last sentence should read "Yeah, Cummings and the rest of the lying Leaver Knobs had to work so little to make Gammons dislike the EU as they had already swallowed the UKIP bullshit."

"Ah, so now Cummings is a RUSSIAN as well! ...”

TB;DR

Too Bullshitty; Didn't Read

>That doesn't matter you prole.

How dare you. I'll have you know I'm a peon.

A radio play, an advert about butter, football commentary, ... all ostensibly non political can contain subtle comments that form opinions about what a political party is saying. It will be cheaper as well: no buying of air-time or bill boards; all that you need is a friendly author, copywriter, ...

All very hard for the Electoral Commission to prove wrong doing.

You think that isn't being done already? Even many of the comments in these columns could come into that class of political steering, it depends on the reader and their own leanings as to how effective or not such things are.

Re this; "In addition to imprints, the ERS said the UK's "broken" party funding system, and too little transparency over Lords' financial and lobbying interests were other issues that need to be addressed."

Funding in general and favourable financial consideration at all levels needs to be more transparent, how to actually achieve it though will be complex and difficult.

Not only the Lords financial and lobbying interests but those of many political appointment such as those who become heads of for instance the NHS or other parts of the government should be under similar scrutiny, considering they are targeted by business and lobbyists and seem quite often to go on to work for those they have concluded deals with.

" People want to engage with politics online "

People wanted to engage with politics online, but given the last big event was a complete clusterfuck, corrupt as hell, and suddenly the result was interpreted as the word of God...

...I can rather imagine an increasing number of people wondering why they bother. Especially, as has been pointed out above, it does nothing to stop charlatans like Farage and now Cummings who were never actually elected "by the people" but seem to hold more sway than most of the people who were...

To be fair Farage was elected by the people to the EU parliament so he has some democratic credibility, even if what he's saying doesn't.

They need to have a word with the so called impartial BBC too, despite being completely outside their normal demographic i used to really enjoy listening to the BBC today programme on my commute to work & question time and newsnight. That all stopped around the time Corbyn became leader of Labour and the BBC programming became very one sided.

I'm all for holding people & politicians to account, like the excellent Andrew Neil, but the recent/current obvious BBC bias has been too much to bear.

As a license payer i always regarded the BBC impartiality as a sacred thing worth paying for. Not any more.

They used to report the news. They now try to make the news.

They now like to report on scandal, bully interviewees and call on people to "do the right thing and resign" - this is not reporting what is going on in an impartial way, it is trying to get viewers.

They also spend far too much time on "the personal view". For example, an aircraft crashes and they spend more time asking relatives things like "So, how do you feel that uncle X has died like this? Do you think Y should be punished"? than they do reporting the facts (which can include the devastating effect it has on relatives without dragging them in to the story).

However, in the world of the "snowflake", this is seen as cold and uncaring and does not "spoon feed" the story to people with the attention spans of Donald Trump.

Andrew Neil, the chair of the holding group for the media interests of the well-known tax exile Barclay Brothers?

Sure this isn't a case of Confirmation Bias?

"That all stopped around the time Corbyn became leader of Labour and the BBC programming became very one sided."

The BBC simultaneously gets criticised for being biased in favour of Labour by some and the Conservatives by others.

The BBC simultaneously gets criticised for being biased in favour of Brexit by some and Remain by others.

Seems they are ... stuck ..?

Have you ever watched the BBC? How many times did Emily Maitlis engage in Tory-bashing before being called in front of the Boss and told "we think your 5-minute rant against the Tories might have been a bit excessive.."?

Ah, the ususal complaints about the BBC.

Right Win Leaning - BBC is Left Wing

Left Wing Leaning - BBC is Right Wing

According to the article this is a proposal.

To stop or severely limit activities which gave the Tory party an 80 seat majority.

I'm sure this will get fast tracked as essential new legislation.

Closing the stable door after the horse has bolted conveniently into a field of one's own choosing.

How about this for a rule : every politician's every tweet/post/declaration has to include a link to the full list of his/her contributors sorted descending by amount.

That way it'll be a bit easier understanding why he/she says what he/she says.

Vote or take what you get

To which I would add "but don't vote for someone just because our favourite celebrity tells you to. Get off your ass and find out what they stand for yourself, don't rely on other people giving you their version of what is on offer."