US politics is awash with crude and misleading attack ads. Now it’s the UK’s turn | John Elledge

The real revolving door ad, which featured similar imagery, had been used by the George HW Bush campaign to tar his 1988 opponent, Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, as soft on crime.

The real thing that’s protected us from attack ads when we’re trying to watch Corrie is, instead, the Television Act 1954 (“no advertisement shall be permitted which is directed towards any religious or political end”), leavened with just a pinch of our much tougher libel laws.

The 1954 act was also designed for a world of broadcast TV, not one where you’re just as likely to encounter ads on streaming or social media: the latter were not included in the ban, on the not unreasonable grounds that, in 1954, they didn’t exist.

In 2019, the Tories used YouTube to publish a baffling 72-minute animation of Boris Johnson apparently reading some notes on a train, all set to chill out music (“lo fi boriswave beats to relax/get brexit done to”).

More recently, the party has used X to publish ads claiming to highlight the state of Labour-run hellholes such as London and Birmingham, and which, complete with growly American voiceover, owe a direct debt to the 1988 Bush campaign.

And the only thing standing between us and footage of Ed Davey doing something embarrassing in front of a giant, misleading bar chart is the fact the Lib Dems are unlikely to have the budget.