Tory MPs bombard social media with pro-environmental messages after Blue Planet II

After a number of viral headlines last month incorrectly claimed that Tory MPs had voted that animals weren’t sentient and don’t feel pain, Conservative MPs wanted social media users to be left in no doubt where they stood on marine conservation issues.

As the final episode of the BBC’s Blue Planet II finished on Sunday evening, MP after MP went on Twitter to push the government’s environmental policies, with a string of preprepared, Conservative-branded graphics.

The Chelmsford MP, Vicky Ford, even weighed in with a series of exotic marine emojis.

Other Conservative MPs to post or retweet Blue Planet II-themed social media posts included Anne-Marie Trevelyan, Steve Baker and Zac Goldsmith.

The Tory social media onslaught is part of a strategy devised by Downing Street and CCHQ, on which Conservative MPs have been briefed by Theresa May’s chief of staff, Gavin Barwell.

No 10’s new digital special adviser is Mario Creatura, Barwell’s former parliamentary assistant when he was the MP for Croydon Central. CCHQ’s director of communications, Carrie Symonds, is known to feel particularly strongly about the environment and animal welfare, tweeting about plastic microbeads and the ivory trade long before the majority of MPs were on board with the strategy.

One MP said they had been told in a presentation from special advisers that the stategy was “a house where the roof is Brexit and the economy, but the three key pillars underneath are schools, housing and the environment”.

Environmental legislation has been a theme that the Conservative party’s main Twitter account has returned to again and again.

The approach also showed in official government communication channels – the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) also produced social media material branded with the #BluePlanet2 hashtag, and retweeted the Defra minister Thérèse Coffey endorsing the programme.

Perhaps less surprisingly, on the morning after the transmission, the Green party MP and co-leader, Caroline Lucas, sent a series of tweets addressing the issues raised in the programme.