Social Media & Politics

The Labour Leadership contest is heading into its final stages. The voting closes next Tuesday. The campaign hasn’t seen as much social media activity as I was expecting. But one thing has come across my radar that is interesting. In the last couple of days I was alerted to a sponsored post about the election. What was interesting about it was that it didn’t come from one of the contenders.

It is not unusual to see MPs sharing each others content, but I do find it interesting that Clare is sponsoring the post. However this does raise two questions. 1) who is paying for this sponsored post? Is it the tax payer? Grants campaign? Or Clare? 2) will this be counted towards Grant’s spending cap? I have tried to find a copy of the code of conduct for the leadership contest, but it doesn’t appear to be online anywhere. All I have been able to find is a single reference to a $30,000 spending cap in a Stuff article. If this isn’t going to be counted towards Grant’s spending, does that mean there is a loophole in the rules? That allows those not contesting the leadership to spend money in support of a candidate without it counting? Thus resulting in a de facto increase in the spending limit?