Viral videos, not leaders’ debates, could decide this election

You might well expect the final election debate, Johnson vs Corbyn head-to-head on primetime BBC, to provide the most watched moment of the election campaign. In fact, the clip on course to win that accolade has never even been aired on television, and if it were, some of its claims might fall well short of Ofcom broadcasting rules.

This video shows an actor called Rob Delaney, American star of the Channel 4 sitcom Catastrophe, promising to offer some home truths on the future of the NHS. He says that if the UK leaves the EU under Boris Johnson’s ‘disastrous’ Brexit deal, the NHS will be on the table: ‘Donald Trump is going to give it to Donald Trump Junior and Eric and Ivanka and they’re going to divvy it up and sell it to private pharmaceutical companies and the NHS as we know it will be gone.’ The way to stop this, he goes on to explain, is to vote Labour.

Although there is no evidence as of yet to suggest the US President’s daughter is champing at the bit to get her hands on the UK’s health service, that hasn’t stopped the video from going viral. In the new media landscape, this clip is as important as any debate moment.

If you doubt that, know that it has already reached ten million views on social media, whereas a mere 6.7 million tuned in when ITV showed the first head-to-head debate between Corbyn and Johnson, and the Question Time leaders’ special had a peak audience of just 4.6 million. What’s more, a large chunk of those who shared Delaney’s Labour video on Facebook had never previously shared a Jeremy Corbyn post.

Digital platforms offer political parties a way to reach new voters.