You can get all that data, and much, much more, here: trends.whotargets.me/reports/7e7c...

But... overall Labour spent nearly twice as much as anyone else. By party/active accounts/spend, the numbers were:

1. Labour / 653 / £1.4m
2. Conservatives / 660 / £863k
3. Reform / 148 / £623k
4. Lib Dems / 195 / £79k
5. SNP / 67 / £54k
6. PC / 14 / £15k
7. Greens / 45 / £12k

They switched them all off. Archived ones here: www.facebook.com/ads/library/...

In short, it doesn't matter what side of the political divide you're on. Just be transparent about who you are (particularly so if you're outspending every other political advertiser in the country over the last week)!

Ultimately, if you check Companies House records, you can work out who the company director is (journalist, ex-IPPR, New Economics Foundation, Fabian Society), but it really shouldn't be needed to understand who's behind a pretty well-funded campaign designed to influence an election.

In short, it doesn't matter what side of the political divide you're on. Just be transparent about who you are (particularly so if you're outspending every other political advertiser in the country over the last week)!

Ultimately, if you check Companies House records, you can work out who the company director is (journalist, ex-IPPR, New Economics Foundation, Fabian Society), but it really shouldn't be needed to understand who's behind a pretty well-funded campaign designed to influence an election.

Weirdly, if you click the website logo in the footer, it takes you to an entirely different campaign (guess they used the same website agency, who reused some code?): www.longlivethelocal.pub

They're a long way from as transparent as they could/should be. Their Facebook page and website (www.commonsensecymru.com) say very little about who's behind it. Their website privacy page is a Squarespace placeholder: www.commonsensecymru.com/privacy-policy

Our piece on what could be done is here: whotargets.me/en/restoring...

And (what timing!), here's the government announcing an inquiry into foreign influence that will inform the Bill next year: www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

Those (and many other) facts taken from the forthcoming "The British General Election of 2024", the regular authoritative study of what actually happened (we co-wrote the chapter on the digital campaign): link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

It's all very cynical. From here, why wouldn't you just create an ad and petition for every cabinet minister? After all, there's always something to go after a politician for. And just think of all those useful, angry email addresses...

Does it flagrantly cross the line of political acceptability? No. But does it push that line a little further out? Yes. It tries to mislead people into believing that signing a political petition is a way of getting accountability (it's really not, and that's not what this is for anyway).

There's also something about it being on Facebook, using The Sun's graphic styles, the very specific picture choice and how it taps into the online misogyny that follows senior Labour women around (see also Angela Rayner) that's very knowing about the signatures it's trying to attract.

Of course, we've seen lots of ads attacking politicians on the opposing side of the aisle, as well as many "petitions" that try to (vaguely) highlight policy positions (while collecting useful supporter email addresses for the party), but this combination does something new.