UK politicians are currently doing a more than effective job of destroying trust Fake websites and cash claims are rife in this election campaign

If there really is a unit inside Russia’s FSB intelligence agency dedicated to sowing disinformation and confusion during this UK general election campaign then it really doesn’t have much to do.

Because British political parties and media outlets are currently doing a more than effective job of reducing trust in our democratic processes to levels previously unimagined.

The Conservatives have been brazen. They tried to hijack Labour’s manifesto launch by creating a ‘fake’ website, using the domain name labourmanifesto.co.uk and paying Google for it to be promoted to the top of search results. They doctored an online video to make it look like Labour Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer had been left stumped by a question from Piers Morgan, which he had answered promptly.

i's opinion newsletter: talking points from today Email address is invalid Email address is invalid Thank you for subscribing! Sorry, there was a problem with your subscription.

The Tories enraged Twitter by changing the name of the party’s official account to “factcheckUK” and using it to attack comments made by Jeremy Corbyn in an ITV debate with Boris Johnson.

Other parties are not blameless. Labour relentlessly repeats the misleading claim that the UK will pay £500m more per week for drugs following a post-Brexit deal with the US. Never mind the truth, it fits the party slogan that the NHS is being sold off by the Tories. The Liberal Democrats have used misleading bar charts to over-represent the party’s support.

It is the media’s job to challenge this kind of skullduggery. Indeed, all these instances of political dark arts have been reported on.

But even within journalism there are concerns that the news industry is failing in its duty. Peter Oborne, a veteran political writer and former Daily Mail columnist, has been vitriolic in his criticism of colleagues in the Westminster lobby. In a piece for Open Democracy, he said senior political editors had reduced themselves to uncritical “stenographers” for Johnson’s “media machine”.

In The Guardian last week, he claimed that in 30 years of political reporting he had “never encountered a senior British politician who lies and fabricates so regularly, so shamelessly and so systematically as Boris Johnson”. But the media lets Johnson “get away” with it, Oborne said, claiming that BBC executives were fearful of undermining faith in the office of prime minister.

That accusation was promptly rejected by BBC figureheads Huw Edwards and Andrew Marr.

Oborne’s polemic is included by the professor of journalism Brian Cathcart in a dossier of criticisms which, he suggests, amounts to a “crisis in journalism”. Other exhibits include The Spectator’s Rod Liddle suggesting Muslims should be banned from voting, and the Telegraph having to publish corrections to three articles by Johnson this year before he gave up his job as a columnist to enter Downing Street.

Cathcart is a long-standing campaigner for press reform. In defence of the lobby, the work of a political correspondent in 2019 isn’t easy.

In a new low point in our polarised politics, the Tories last week barred the traditionally Labour-supporting Mirror from its campaign coach taking Johnson on a tour of constituencies in the north-east. The Tory leader is also refusing to take part in a leaders’ debate on Channel 4.

At the Labour manifesto launch, the BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg was booed by the party faithful. Corbyn, to his credit, shut the hecklers down. But he then cited media owners as his sworn enemy. “I welcome their hatred”, he said. Labour scalded the media by promising an inquiry into “Fake News”, months after a year-long probe into the subject by MPs.

The Lib Dems are in conflict with broadcasters, suing ITV over being left out of its leaders’ debate. The party if elected, promises to stage a second part of the Leveson inquiry into press standards, seven years on. Can parties be trusted to convene such hearings when they often show such disregard for truth?

“We have seen, particularly from the national campaigns, some remarkable new election tactics, new levels of misinformation which we are surprised to see,” says Will Moy, director of the charity Full Fact, which has been scrutinising political claims for ten years.

Thankfully, Moy sees reasons for optimism as the election hots up. When Full Fact wrote to candidates, asking them to check their facts, back them with evidence and correct their mistakes, 50 prospective MPs wrote back enthusiastically. Moy identifies great public appetite for reliable information and says the news industry is doing more fact-checking than in previous elections. “There has been a collective commitment across a lot of the media to inform audiences and hold the election to the facts as best we know them.”

Foreign actors may yet intrude. In another snub to media, Johnson has suppressed a report by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security committee into Russian interference in British democracy.

But we have big enough threats to the truth closer to home.