Twitter quickly suspends Tommy Robinson’s MEP campaign account

I’m sure there used to be laws giving election candidates rights to campaign and spread their message without let or hindrance. From The Daily Mail and Indy 100 the Independent’s digest for those with a short attention span. 

Tommy Robinson’s campaign to become a Member of European Parliament hasn’t got off to the best start. Robinson – whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – has been hit with a fresh setback after Twitter blocked an account representing his MEP campaign within days of his bungled campaign launch.

It is not clear whether Robinson or his team were responsible for running the account, or why the account was blocked. But Robinson has been banned from Twitter since March 2018 for violating its hate speech policy. He was banned from Facebook and Instagram earlier this year.

If you search and then click on the hashtag #tommy robinson mep the first thing I saw was Hope not Hate gloating 

‘Tommy Robinson’ wants to be an MEP. We want to stop him. If you want to join the campaign to keep Tommy out, commit to campaign here:

Closely followed by failed teacher and professonal anti-fascist MikeStuchbery plugging his article as to why Tommy won’t become an MEP. And then the usual suspects, Nick Lowles, the BBC, SUTR and Momentum. 

Britain doesn’t need a far-right thug representing it.

There are tweeters in support of Tommy as well. But the bias is evident less than 48 hours after he declared he is standing. I can’t even find what was tweeted under the campaign hashtag up to that point but I’ll bet a £ to a penny it was unobjectionable of itself. 

Tommy’s campaign twitter account wasn’t the only one suspended. Carl Benjamin, known as Sargon of Akkad when commenting on political matters is standing as a UKIP candidate. His campaign twitter account @Carl UKIP has also gone. His humour isn’t everyone’s taste, but this was a serious account. 

UKIP tweeted: “Official UKIP MEP campaign account @CarlUKIP of which Carl Benjamin has no access to has been suspended from Twitter. This is election interference and UKIP will get to the bottom of this.”

Later the party tweeted to Twitter’s co-founder and chief executive Jack Dorsey, saying: “This is a gross display of electoral interference. @Jack why is your company interfering in UK elections?”