Daniel Carey-Dawes is a 35-year-old Labour activist who has devoted much of his adult life to the cause, spending four years as the party’s constituency secretary in his native Hackney and five years as its research and support officer at London’s City Hall.
He stood, unsuccessfully, as a Labour council candidate in 2010, spent a couple of years as PA to the Corbynist London Assembly member Jennette Arnold and, according to his profile on the social network site LinkedIn, also ‘developed policy’ which ‘formed part of Sadiq Khan’s manifesto’.
This week, Carey-Dawes, who describes himself as a ‘lifelong Labour voter’, was found to be helping advance the party’s agenda via his current day job.
On Wednesday he used X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, to help his employer circulate a highly controversial series of social media posts calling Rishi Sunak and two senior Tory ministers ‘LIARS!’
The messages looked, and read, like party-political attack adverts. They featured a sinister black and white image of the Prime Minister alongside his housing secretary Michael Gove and DEFRA supremo Therese Coffey. ‘LIARS!’ was rubber-stamped across it in blood-red text.
‘You lie, and you lie, and you lie again. And we’ve had enough,’ they proclaimed, before listing, in a further 11 similarly designed tweets, occasions when the trio supposedly told untruths about environmental policy.
Daniel Carey-Dawes is a 35-year-old Labour activist who has devoted much of his adult life to the cause
Carey-Dawes gleefully re-tweeted this series of posts to his thousand-odd followers at lunchtime on Wednesday, moments after they had been uploaded to his employer’s account. He then added his own commentary, writing: ‘Sometimes in campaigning, you just have to call a spade a spade.’
The messages, attacking a government proposal to axe EU rules on housebuilding, were also gleefully circulated by, among others, Tony Blair’s former spin-doctor Alastair Campbell, the Green MP Caroline Lucas, and shadow environment secretary Jim McMahon, who reckoned they provided evidence we are in ‘the dying days of a government devoid of ideas to make the county better’.
At this point, you may be wondering what division of the Labour Party was paying this young propagandist’s wages. But Carey-Dawes doesn’t work for His Majesty’s Opposition any more. Not officially, at least.
Since May he’s earned his crust as Government Affairs Manager for one of Britain’s largest charities: the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. It was this organisation, rather than his beloved Labour Party, that used Twitter to publish the ad hominem attack on Sunak, Gove and Coffey.
The trouble is that charities, which enjoy tax-free status, are prohibited by law from running political campaigns. While perfectly entitled to comment on matters of public policy – provided they affect a particular charitable remit – these wealthy organisations must remain resolutely non-partisan in the process. What they are not supposed to do is behave like a provisional wing of the Labour Party, abusing ministers to help score points.
On Wednesday he used X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, to help his employer circulate a highly controversial series of social media posts calling Rishi Sunak and two senior Tory ministers ‘LIARS!’
It’s little wonder that, within minutes, the RSPB’s tweets attracted significant controversy.
The Tory MP Mark Jenkinson angrily called for the organisation, which boasts tax-free income of £157 million a year, to be stripped of its charitable status. Fellow Tory Brendan Clarke-Smith said the personal nature of attack meant it had ‘massively over-stepped the mark on this one’, while the Charities Commission announced: ‘We are aware of social media activity by the RSPB and will assess this matter to determine if there is a regulatory role for the Commission.’
A few hours later, the RSPB issued a mealy-mouthed apology: ‘Frustration led us to attack the people not the policy. This falls below the standard we set ourselves and for that we apologise.’
But do they mean it? For, in what seems an act of staggering duplicity, the charity refused to delete the offending tweets, which by then were going viral and had already been viewed around two million times, with many Left-leaning individuals pledging to donate cash to the charity in turn.
The result was that at least five million more people would see the original ‘LIAR!’ message by last night. By contrast, only a million saw the RSPB’s apology tweet.
The attack on Sunak remains on the charity’s social media feed, where algorithms ensure it will continue to be more widely viewed than the apology, not only fomenting hatred against the Government but helping to fill RSPB coffers.
Perhaps that was always the intention. For the cash-soaked charity sector increasingly resembles a tax-efficient arm of His Majesty’s Opposition, stuffed with activists more concerned with scoring cheap political points than carrying out the good deeds for which their organisations were originally created.
Dr Amir Khan is also a vehement critic of the Conservative Party. Two months ago he tweeted: ‘Boris Johnson’s list of honours approved by Sunak smacks of the usual mixture of cronyism and corruption expected from this Government. Makes me sick.’
Only last month, Greenpeace was invading Sunak’s home in Yorkshire, unfurling black banners over his daughter’s bedroom window in protest against plans for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea. Meanwhile migrant charities were jamming the airwaves with criticism of Government efforts to ‘Stop the Boats’, prompting Home Secretary Suella Braverman to dub them ‘politically motivated activists masquerading as humanitarians’.
Stonewall, the LGBTQ+ rights charity, is locked in an ongoing dispute with the Government over transgender issues. And Oxfam has spent much of the past decade parroting Labour on austerity, despite being rapped over the knuckles by the Charities Commission for ‘failing to avoid any misperception of political bias’.
The RSPB, which boasts 1.2 million members (of various political persuasions) and benefits from £15 million a year in taxpayer grants, has increasingly ploughed a similar furrow.
While many supporters donate to prop up its conservation work, the charity’s senior figures increasingly serve the so-called ‘Blob’ of quangocrats, civil servants and campaigners that seeks to frustrate government and – to quote the Charity Commission’s former chairman Orlando Fraser – ‘trash the motivations of those who think differently’.
Perhaps most high-profile, in this respect, is the RSPB’s vice president, Chris Packham. The BBC presenter is a vociferous supporter of eco-protest groups Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion and in 2019 founded Wild Justice, which attempts to influence wildlife policy via the courts, often via hugely divisive campaigns. The RSPB’s president, meanwhile, is TV doctor Amir Khan, who also ploughs a political furrow. Like Packham, he’s a vigorous opponent of fieldsports who often picks fights with the tweedy classes on social media.
Perhaps most high-profile, in this respect, is the RSPB’s vice president, Chris Packham. The BBC presenter is a vociferous supporter of eco-protest groups Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion
He once described people engaged in trail hunting (the legal version of the sport, in which hounds chase an artificial scent) as ‘elitists gathering in the name of tradition who get pleasure from cruel bloodsports’.
Dr Khan is also a vehement critic of the Conservative Party. Two months ago he tweeted: ‘Boris Johnson’s list of honours approved by Sunak smacks of the usual mixture of cronyism and corruption expected from this Government. Makes me sick.’
To the delight of both Packham and Khan, late last year the RSPB launched its own hostilities against the Government when frustrated by delays in publishing post-Brexit environmental targets.
It urged supporters to post critical messages on social media under the hashtag #attackonnature, claiming that then-prime minster Liz Truss was somehow ‘pushing forward with the attack on nature’. At one point, the charity posted video footage of the Green MP Ms Lucas accusing Truss of ‘taking a wrecking ball’ to the natural world.
Similarly aggressive posts continued after Sunak entered Downing Street, sparking criticism from, among others, the Tory peer and environmentalist Lord Lucas (no relation to Caroline), who argued the RSPB had been cynically attempting to stir up outrage.
He tweeted: ‘You lying t****. There is no attack on nature, there never was an attack on nature… You used to be, and could be again, a source of valued and truthful advice. But not while you are hooked on this outrageous lie.’
The social media posts called Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and two senior Tory ministers ‘LIARS!’
This week’s still-more-explosive hoo-hah kicked off after Michael Gove announced plans to scrap EU laws that have, for the past decade, required housebuilders to mitigate the effects of extra sewage that their developments produce
Perhaps the tweet inspired the ‘LIARS!’ attack on Sunak. Whatever the case, this week’s still-more-explosive hoo-hah kicked off after Michael Gove announced plans to scrap EU laws that have, for the past decade, required housebuilders to mitigate the effects of extra sewage that their developments produce.
The Levelling Up Secretary believes the existing arrangement prevents up to 100,000 homes being built each year. Supporters of Gove argue his plan represents a sensible way to address the UK’s housing crisis without significantly worsening the environment, saying it includes a proposal to devote an extra £140 million a year to offsetting river pollution.
They also point out that agriculture, rather than housing, accounts for the vast majority of nitrates and other nutrients that adversely affect British watercourses.
Nature groups disagree, however. Many make huge sums from existing EU rules because developers are often required to make grants to local nature reserves.
These groups insist we are already ‘in a nature and climate emergency demanding urgent action’ and argue that, to quote the relatively well-regarded Office for Environmental Protection quango, the proposed deregulation would be a ‘regression’.
As with many political debates, both sides are entitled to their view. But what made the RSPB’s contribution to the debate so unusual — and controversial — was the fact it didn’t focus on alleged shortcomings in the Government’s policy, but consisted of a provocative and (some might argue) tawdry attack on the personal integrity of individual politicians.
Among those who found this particularly demeaning are at least two members of the charity’s governing board of trustees.
The messages looked, and read, like party-political attack adverts. They featured a sinister black and white image of the Prime Minister alongside his housing secretary Michael Gove and DEFRA supremo Therese Coffey (pictured)
One, an environmentalist and academic, Dr Ben Caldecott, publicly criticised the social media posts on Twitter, saying they were ‘simply not an appropriate contribution to our public discourse from such an important and highly respected organisation’.
‘We can strongly disagree and make our case without calling people ‘LIARS!’.’ He said he’d raised the issue ‘urgently’ with the charity’s chief executive and chairman.
Another Trustee, the Tory peer Lord Randall of Uxbridge, tweeted a quote from Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late associate justice of the US Supreme Court: ‘Fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.’
Adding to their concern is the fact many RSPB social media posts made questionable claims. For example, its hostile Twitter thread about Sunak cited what the charity called ‘just some of your lies on the environment’.
‘In the 2019 Tory party manifesto you all pledged to deliver ‘the most ambitious environmental programme of any country on earth’. Lie.’ The RSPB did not explain what evidence it has to suggest the manifesto pledge in question was indeed a ‘lie’. To do that, they would need to prove Sunak knew it was an untrue statement when he made it. Since the Prime Minister wasn’t even party leader at the time the manifesto was written, that seems unlikely. Amid growing controversy, the RSPB’s chief executive Beccy Speight made an appearance this week on Radio 4’s Today programme. During what many regarded as a car-crash interview, the £190,000-a-year boss appeared to have little grip on her organisation, claiming she hadn’t approved the contentious Twitter thread, saying it ‘didn’t go through our normal protocols’.
She added: ‘We do believe the nature of public discourse does matter. We campaign on policy not on people, so the framing of that tweet where we called out individual people we felt was incorrect and inappropriate and we apologise for that.
Carey-Dawes deleted his ‘call a spade a spade’ tweet but Speight is refusing to take down the RSPB’s original offending posts. She argues — laughably, given that it continues to be viewed by tens of thousands of people every hour — that ‘removing it could have drawn more attention to it’.
While the chief executive seems to have little clue how the RSPB came to call senior ministers ‘LIARS!’ there can be little doubt the posts were the work of a team of senior designers and writers within the charity.
After all, five minutes after the Twitter thread had been posted, the RSPB’s director of policy and advocacy Jeff Knott, a Left-leaning conservationist who had lobbied against Brexit, could be found angrily re-posting his employer’s contentious tweets.
Knott alleged that Sunak, Gove and Coffey were caught up in a tale of ‘Lies, damn lies and nutrient neutrality’ (referring to the issue of whether housing developments ought to be blocked if they add to nitrate levels in local rivers).
Also amplifying the tweets was Ghazala Koosar, a hard-Left lawyer on the charity’s board of Trustees, who reposted within minutes of publication and has yet to delete them from her Twitter feed.
Koosar is a prolific user of the social network, with typical posts including support for Jeremy Corbyn, attacks on the Government’s stewardship of the NHS and conspiracy theories suggesting think-tanks based in Tufton Street, Westminster, have a ‘malign grip on Sunak’s government’.
What fellow trustee Ben Caldecott makes of her output is anyone’s guess, since he is a senior fellow at Policy Exchange, one of the Tufton Street think-tanks.
But the next board meeting will doubtless involve a heated discussion about the sort of content this hugely influential bird charity chooses to tweet.