Facebook has stepped up attempts to build its influence as a political tool by giving jobs to former senior Conservative and Labour campaign officials.

The Guardian has learned Facebook’s recruits have inside knowledge of how the major parties’ general election campaigns are likely to work. They include a former Downing Street adviser to David Cameron, a former aide to Ed Balls and a social media expert who worked with the Conservatives’ election strategist Lynton Crosby.

On Monday, the company confirmed it employed staff, “whose role it is to help politicians and governments make good use of Facebook”.

Campaign strategists for both Donald Trump and the Leave.EU campaign have said that reaching voters on Facebook has become pivotal to election success. Both Labour and the Conservatives have teams dedicated to targeted Facebook advertising and are thought to be preparing to hand the San Francisco company well over £1m in the coming weeks.

There has been growing concern about the ability of politicians to track the interests of Facebook users in order to “micro-target” voters. There are 31m registered Facebook accounts in the UK.

The Electoral Commission is investigating whether Leave.EU failed to declare spending or support from Cambridge Analytica, a Washington-based company that claims to be able to target voters based on psychometric profiling gleaned from their social media activity. Leave.EU denies any wrongdoing.

Rishi Saha, pictured in 2008. Photograph: Suki Dhanda/The Observer

Facebook’s policy and politics teams include Rishi Saha, a former head of digital communications at Downing Street; Karim Palant, a former chief policy adviser to Balls, Labour’s shadow chancellor; and Theo Lomas, a former political consultant for Crosby Textor, the PR firm of the man running the Tories’ 2017 general election campaign.

“They have created these links into the campaigns so they can whisper in the parties’ ears, say ‘we know what you need, why don’t you come and spend some money with us’,” claimed a source with knowledge of the strategy. “Their job is to persuade political campaigns to use Facebook.”

During the 2015 general election campaign, the Conservatives spent more than £1m on Facebook advertising; Labour sources have indicated they are prepared to spend a similar amount in the coming weeks.

Lomas works for Facebook’s government and politics team, which helps parties and MPs use Facebook. Saha and Palant are in the policy team. According to a recent job description, the duties of Facebook UK’s head of policy include “responding to queries from politicians … about how to use the Facebook platform” and “actively promot[ing] the uses of Facebook with policymakers and influencers in both electoral and governing bodies”.

Saha helped Cameron “detoxify” the Conservative brand from as early as 2005, and worked on the 2010 election campaign before becoming No 10’s head of digital communications. He joined Facebook in 2014. Craig Elder, the Conservatives’ current social media campaign consultant, used to work for Saha at party HQ.

Facebook declined to comment in detail on the roles of the former party aides. But speaking to BBC1’s Panorama on Monday, Simon Milner, Facebook UK’s head of policy, confirmed the company’s staff worked closely with political parties.



“One of the things we are absolutely there to do is to help people make use of Facebook products,” he said, in a programme that explored how political campaigns capitalise on Facebook users’ personal information.

Referring to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s US presidential election campaigns, Milner said: “I can’t give you the number of exactly how many people worked with these campaigns. But I can tell you that it was completely demand-driven, so it was really up to the campaigns.”

Gerry Gunster, an American strategist who worked for Leave.EU during last year’s Brexit referendum campaign, told Panaroma that Facebook was “a game-changer”.

“You can say to Facebook, I would like to make sure that I can micro-target fishermen in certain parts of the UK so that they are specifically hearing that if you vote to leave that you will be able to change the way that the regulations are set for the fishing industry. Now I can do the exact same thing for people who live in the Midlands, who are struggling because the factory has shut down. So I may send a specific message through Facebook to them that nobody else sees.”

Political parties have huge lists of email addresses, telephone numbers and Facebook IDs that they can use to target Facebook users with bespoke messages. One digital campaigner told the Guardian that the main parties and other pressure groups, such as the Taxpayers Alliance and 38 Degrees, are likely to have the details of around 10 million UK voters.

“This is where you can do the interesting stuff,” said the campaigner, who wished to remain anonymous. “You are not just advertising to them once; if they click, you know a specific person has shown an interest. You can feed that back and know who and where they are, down to the postcode. Then you can change the messaging to suit what you need politically.”

Parties can also target opposition supporters by buying data that indicates party affiliation. In 2015, Jim Messina, the former Barack Obama strategist turned Conservative adviser, masterminded a micro-targeting campaign in the south-west of England that contributed to wiping out the Liberal Democrats in the region.