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3 Dec, 2018 17:44

‘Sadists’: Grinning Tories torn apart for food bank photos, accused of PR stunt

‘Sadists’: Grinning Tories torn apart for food bank photos, accused of PR stunt

The Tories have been accused of using food banks for a coordinated PR stunt, after a string of government MPs posted smiling photos of themselves with the volunteers who feed Britain’s hungry.

It was a picture of a joyful looking Dominic Raab, the former Brexit secretary, with Tory activists promoting their work for a local food bank which seemingly triggered over a dozen more pictures of grinning Tories at similar sites, enraging many on social media.

Many Scottish Tory MPs suspiciously appeared to post replica tweets which led to accusations that they lacked sincerity.

Stephen Paton, online content editor at Scottish newspaper, The National, tweeted: “If you want to give the impression you’ve spontaneously donated to a food bank, probably best not to mostly copy and paste whatever the Scottish Tory PR office sent."

Others such as Steve Peers, Professor of EU, Human Rights & World Trade Law argued that the only positive picture an MP could post would be that of a closed-down food bank because of the lack of need for one. Others accused the Tories of trying to “normalise food bank use.”

The apparent coordinated PR campaign prompted the resurfacing of a picture of Claire Perry, the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Secretary and MP for Devizes with Tory activists from April 2017. The image shows an ecstatic looking Perry at the opening of a food bank in her constituency.

An estimated half a million Britons rely on food banks, which Philip Alston, UN rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights recently characterised as “the sort of activity you might expect for a natural disaster or health epidemic.”

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