Lib Dem Official Used Anonymous X Account to Discredit Rivals in Key Battleground Seat

The Liberal Democrats have been accused of using an anonymous social media account run by a party official in an attempt to discredit their rivals in a key battleground seat, Byline Times can reveal.

Wimbledon is number three on the Lib Dem list of target seats in the forthcoming general election, having come within 650 votes in 2019 due to tactical voting, and the party’s leader Ed Davey last week visited to campaign hoping to help its candidate Paul Kohler into parliament.

But behind the scenes, an investigation by this newspaper has uncovered evidence that an account on X, formerly Twitter, which makes regular attacks on the Conservative and Labour candidates in Wimbledon, is run by former Lib Dem council candidate and prominent activist Barry Smith.

Smith, a close associate of Mr Kohler and whose partner is also a serving party councillor alongside Kohler on Merton Council, is a ward coordinator in the Abbey Wood district of Merton, and is listed as a contact on the party’s pages.

Outgoing Tory MP Stephen Hammond, who has regularly faced personal attacks from the account @HammondWatch, said: “Set up days after the 2019 [General Election], I’ve often pondered who’s behind @HammondWatch, a page immediately followed by Paul Kohler [which] has consistently hounded and trolled me [and] been dedicated to making false accusations and slurs on my integrity. 

“It is run by Barry Smith, a friend of Paul Kohler, partner of a Lib Dem Councillor, and [a] committed Lib Dem activist [and] former candidate.

“This is the ugly face of Wimbledon’s Liberal Democrats. I await an apology from Mr Smith, and confirmation he has been thrown out of the Lib Dem party.”

Last night a spokesman for the Lib Dems said: “We refute any claim that this Twitter account is an official account of either the Party centrally or locally.”

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When they go low, we go high

Kohler, who nearly won in 2019 and is a member of Merton Council, has often talked on social media of the importance of respectful, positive politics, and once quoted Michelle Obama’s famous phrase, “When they go low, we go high.”

He has in the past been critical of anonymous X accounts, calling them “cowardly”, and has previously called on a political opponent to disown supporters who engage in online abuse. 

Yet our investigation has found numerous examples where the HammondWatch account, originally set up to attack Mr Hammond, the Conservative MP for Wimbledon since 2005, has been anything but, and is prolific in doing so.

The account once accused Hammond of being a hypocrite seven times in one week. 

It has also described him as a “supporter of genocide”, and a “spineless sycophant”.  

Since the former junior transport minister announced he was standing down last September, the account has switched to promoting the Lib Dems – including amplifying Kohler’s posts – while attacking the candidates for the Conservatives, Danielle Dunfield-Prayero, and Labour, Eleanor Stringer.

While there is no suggestion Kohler has personally used the account himself, he has been aware of its presence since it was first set up on 17 December 2019, five days after the previous general election.

Its first post was at 17.39, with its third post, at 18.02 the same day, quote-tweeting Kohler. Sixteen minutes later, Kohler promoted the account saying: “I don’t know who is behind @HammondWatch but [it is] worth checking out…”

Suggesting Kohler was aware of how damaging it would be for a Lib Dem candidate to be operating an account like this, in June 2020 he repeatedly challenged former Merton Council Conservative leader Richard Hilton, who had hinted he might have been operating the account.

On the same day, also in reply to Mr Hilton’s suggestion, the HammondWatch account wrote, “I can assure you I’m not Paul, or indeed any Merton councillor”, while acknowledging that it “would be a breach of the rules for any sitting councillor” to use social media to attack political opponents.