On April 11, 1992, two days after the front page of the Sun famously instructed the last UK voter leaving Britain to “turn the lights out” if Neil Kinnock was victorious in that day’s general election, the jubilant Murdoch-owned tabloid couldn’t resist following it up with another notorious front page: “It’s The Sun Wot Won It”.
The claim’s veracity was doubted almost instantly – many Sun readers voted Labour regardless, while support for John Major’s Tories among readers of right wing tabloids actually fell rather than rose in that election. Yet here was the start of a now-familiar trend in right wing media for claiming to have had more than a hand in the downfall of left wing politicians.
The latest boasts come from one of the newest right wing content creators on the block, the Crewkerne Gazette. It is certainly not shy about making bold claims for its AI-generated videos, which have featured Robert Jenrick and Nigel Farage rapping in fur coats, Kemi Badenoch doing PMQs while dressed as Princess Leia and a topless Keir Starmer singing I’m Still Clinging On To Power to a rewritten version of Elton John’s I’m Still Standing.
They claim to have attracted 150 million views across various platforms and that, as one of its creators told Sky News, this makes them “the new and improved Spitting Image, the much better Have I Got News For You?”
“Crewkerne Man”, half of the team behind the Gazette, is a Banksy-like character, hidden behind big dark glasses, a big bushy beard and a Bubba Gump baseball cap. He says that their most popular video so far – How Many Homes Can Rayner Buy?, which features Angela Rayner rapping while wearing an Adidas tracksuit and gold chain – has not only pulled in 12 million views and counting, but it was wot forced Rayner out as deputy prime minister and housing secretary.
“I have it on very good authority that it was this video that made her resign,” he says. “We have people in Westminster that speak to us, and while not 100% verified, apparently people in cabinet meetings were playing it.” The Guardian called the video “low-effort, inflammatory AI slopaganda”, but if what Crewkerne Man says can be taken seriously, this is parody with real power.
His audience – 40% of which are under 21, while 48% are aged 30-42 – are among the most politically swayable, and the videos (Starmer bopping as a Spice Girl to reworked tune Zig-a-Zig-Lie, or using the Magna Carta as toilet roll, or appearing as a Dalek) are pretty much dedicated to bashing the left while bigging up the right.
Yet Crewkerne Man says, defiantly: “We don’t tell people how to vote; we’re an entertainment project, we parody the mishaps of the ruling political class.” However, the man who describes himself as sometimes “waking up a Tory, and another a Reform voter” adds, “If people watch our output and think it’s cool and that encourages them to vote, then all well and good.”
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Last year Ofcom found 75% of 16-to-24-year-olds look specifically to social media to consume news, and if there’s one thing Crewkerne Man says he wants to master, it’s algorithms. “Old media often gets algorithms very wrong indeed,” he says. “The biggest thing will be platform algorithms, even above the content at times.”
He continues: “It’s algorithms that will dominate what people consume. We want to be seen by as many as we can. If we had a team of 10, we could literally dominate the whole TV agenda. We can guarantee that all our content will be in people’s feeds.”
Again, that’s quite some claim, but Crewkerne Man says it’s a message outside investors are listening to. But who will these investors – and will they also be anonymous? – actually be doing business with?
Careful not to reveal too much about himself, Crewkerne Man’s only background reveal is that he’s “been into politics for the last 15 years, done a bit of speechwriting and went to America during 2020-21 at the height of the AI revolution.” He says what any investors are potentially buying into is his project’s current technological superiority – technology which enables content to be created at speed.
“If we really want to get something out fast, our AI can get a new video out in 40 minutes,” he claims. And so it was that within hours of Jenrick defecting to Reform, there he was with Farage in white fur.
Whether or not he can keep his technological and audience lead however, is a moot point. At the moment, he has first-mover advantage. But – potentially – it could only take a left-leaning content creator to do much the same thing.
Crewkerne Man says he’s simply attacking whoever is the “ruling party at the moment” and “what the nation feels” – and so the focus just happens to be the Labour Party and its policies. “We’re not a Reform mouth organ,” he insists. “And we don’t do this for recognition from the political parties. Even if Reform did get in [at the next general election], we’d be covering all their scandals just as much.”
Before that, he has other plans. Donald Trump will soon be getting the usual Crewkerne treatment – mainly because he admits he wants to break into America. Remember, it’s all about the algorithms.
Plus “I’ve done a bit of TV now and we’ve got plans to launch a podcast this year. I think that if we can grow to about 10 people we’d have the capacity to create content 24/7,” he says. All of which points to the Crewkerne Gazette preparing to transition itself into much more overt and mainstream political commentary – even if Crewkerne Man is keen on maintaining his anonymity for the time being.
For those who think that’s bad for politics, he is simply adamant that this is the way content will increasingly be. “I can’t wait to see what happens next,” Crewkerne Man says. He appears to be just getting started.
Peter Crush is an award-winning business journalist who writes about the world of work, politics and where they intertwine
