Senior local party official unmasked as the person behind an anonymous social media account which trolls and abuses political opponents in the key election battleground of Wimbledon.
Wimbledon is number three on the LibDem list of target seats in the forthcoming general election. In 2019, benefiting from a huge tactical voting swing away from Labour and its Corbynite candidate, the party came within 650 votes of taking the seat from the Tories. Ed Davey, the LibDem leader, was here campaigning just two days ago.
The party’s candidate is Paul Kohler, who nearly won in 2019 and is a member of Merton Council. On his very active social media account, he has often talked up the importance of respectful, positive politics, going so far as to quote approvingly Michelle Obama’s famous phrase, “When they go low, we go high.”
And now to the villain of the piece. This is HammondWatch, a Twitter account originally set up to attack Stephen Hammond, the Conservative MP for Wimbledon since 2005.
Initally, the account largely concerned itself with trolling Hammond and attacking his voting record. It could get pretty aggressive. It does not say who operates it.
With Hammond having announced he was standing down, the account has switched to pushing the LibDems hard and attacking the Tory and Labour candidates. It produces a relentless drumbeat of abuse, negativity and accusations of dishonesty.
In the case of Danielle Dunfield-Prayero, the Tory candidate to replace Stephen Hammond, some scrutiny is certainly merited, as, quite extraordinarily, she’s been falsely claiming that she lives in the constituency, when she lives 40 miles away. I’ve covered this bizarre story here.
HammondWatch, meanwhile, can be a high-volume account; it once accused Hammond of being a hypocrite seven times in a single week. It has also implied he’s corrupt, a tax dodger and it has called him a “supporter of genocide,” a “spineless sycophant” and much else besides. It can be pretty unpleasant.
Against the Labour party and its candidate, as well as plenty of snarky tweets, the primary allegation is lying. It’s made endlessly and boorishly.
HammondWatch also amplifies Paul Kohler a lot, leaving its foot in for a moment longer than a candidate would dare, and making it quite clear that this is a partisan account, not merely a disgruntled local.
And in one sense, so what? Every political party has supporters who turn to trolling.
But what if it’s not just a LibDem voter venting their rage? What if someone is using it as part of the LibDem campaign? If nothing else, whoever operates the account clearly believes there’s some political advantage in saying things not attributable to a named individual.
Paul Kohler is certainly aware of the account. Its first post was at 17.39 on 17th December 2019, just a few days after the last general election. Its third post, at 18.02 the same day, quote-tweeted Kohler. Sixteen minutes later, he quote-tweeted the account saying, “I don’t know who is behind @HammondWatch but worth checking out…”
Kohler is also seemingly aware of how damaging it would be for a LibDem candidate to be operating an account like this, repeatedly challenging someone to accuse him of it when they implied it on Twitter. The account itself, meanwhile, has a very specific form of words about who is behind it, saying, “I can assure you I’m not Paul, or indeed any Merton councillor” and acknowledging that it “would be a breach of the rules for any sitting councillor” to use social media to attack political opponents. It sounds rather calculated.
I decided to test my hunch. We’re looking for a Wimbledon LibDem who is active politically but is not currently a councillor.
The thing is, if you post long enough, then even if you are careful, you leave fingerprints. HammondWatch tends to write in a noticeably precise but aggressive way. Very direct and simple. The punctuation is as exacting as the choice of words.
That was the first clue. The account likes to give “hints”. Note the brackets and colon. It also always spells “no one” in a non-standard but consistent way – with a hyphen.
After that, it’s a question of looking for unusual phrases common to both accounts. HammondWatch posted repeatedly about a perceived the lack of action over what Baroness Warsi called the Tory party’s “toxic, mad fascists.” It described Labour’s candidate for the forthcoming general election, Eleanor Stringer – the current deputy leader of Merton Council – as a “paper candidate.” It also claimed that Labour “abandons Wimbledon,” the only use of those exact words on Twitter since July 2023.
Most usefully of all, of the estimated 76bn tweets posted from 1st Jan to 31st May this year, just eight featured the collocation “performative brutality.” Those eight tweets came from just six accounts. One was HammondWatch.
So, who’s account, completely uniquely, shares these tell-tale writing ticks?
Meet Barry Smith, a local LibDem ward organiser, twice defeated council candidate and spouse of a sitting LibDem councillor.
Barry contested the 2018 and 2022 council elections for the LibDems, losing to Eleanor Stringer in 2018, who he quote-tweets meanspiritedly from his own Twitter account. In 2022, he missed being elected by just nine votes, getting edged out by his wife.
Barry is always out canvassing and delivering, locally and nationally. He features in numerous LibDem social media posts. And he operates a number of Twitter accounts in addition to his own.
He is also regularly pictured with the LibDem candidate, Paul Kohler, who sits on Merton Council with Barry’s wife.
And Barry has a certain writing style. He gives hints with a bracket and a colon. He writes “no-one”.
He, like Baroness Warsi, worries about toxic rhetoric in the Tory party.
Barry too, remarkably, believes that the Labour candidate is a “paper” one. And that Labour has “abandoned Wimbledon.” (The only use of that exact phrase on Twitter not in relation to AFC Wimbledon since July 2023.)
Most remarkably, though, Barry Smith’s account was one of the other five accounts on the whole of Twitter which used “performative brutality.” A phrase used just eight times this year on a platform where half-a-billion tweets are posted every day.
In other words, Barry Smith – ward organiser, repeated election candidate, spouse of a LibDem council, tireless campaigner and friend of the general election candidate in a key LibDem seat – is running an anonymous Twitter account trolling and abusing his candidate’s political opponents and amplifying the messages of his party. An account other local senior LibDems were aware of, followed and engaged with.
When I put all of this to HammondWatch, along with some questions about whether anyone else in the party knew who operated the account and if they felt they had overstepped the mark with the content of some of the posts, I received two brief statements, below:
“The only thing I will say is that the LibDems have absolutely no control over this account. No-one in the LibDems gets to choose what does or doesn’t go on this account.”
“Should probably clarify the first statement to say that while I am a LibDem, I mean this is a private account and there is absolutely no control by the LibDem organisation or anyone else in the party over it.”
In the hours that followed, both HammondWatch and Barry Smith’s personal account blocked me on Twitter.
I also contacted Paul Kohler, who has been very critical of anonymous Twitter accounts, calling them “cowardly,” and has previously called on a political opponent to disown supporters who engage in online abuse. Kohler follows and is followed by HammondWatch and has frequently interacted with it.
At the time of publication, Kohler hadn’t got back to me. As it’s a Sunday, that’s perfectly understandable. If he does respond, I’ll update this story with his statement.
What will happen now – about HammondWatch and Barry Smith, about the general election campaign and the disturbing undercurrent of unpleasantness that seems to be poisoning politics in Wimbledon – I don’t know. But I hope there will be some apologies and a promise to end to this kind of dishonourable campaigning and the slanging matches and pile-ons it creates.
************************************************
Update (02/06/24): Outgoing Wimbledon MP Stephen Hammond tweeted this story out the evening it was published, speaking about the distress HammondWatch had caused him over the years and demanding both an apology and the expulsion from the LibDems of Barry Smith.
After not hearing from Kohler for 24 hours, I emailed him again, again requesting he answer questions about Smith’s activities or provide a statement on the situation. At the time of writing, he has not responded and so it looks increasingly likely that he will not, as is his right.
As for Barry… he spent the day campaigning for the LibDems, along with his friend, Paul Kohler.
************************************************
Update (05/06/24): The story has now been picked up by Byline Times, which published a piece on it here, to which I contributed. As part of editorial process, Barry Smith and Paul Kohler were again offered the opportunity to comment or respond to questions. Neither did so. The LibDems did, however, provide a statement from the national party. It reads:
“We refute any claim that this Twitter account is an official account of either the Party centrally or locally.”
This is a classic non-denial denial, in that it denies something that was not alleged. By definition, an anonymous attack account smearing political opponents could not be “an official account.” The statement does not address any of the facts unearthed in the investigation or promise any action.
The result, then, is that a close friend of Paul Kohler – a senior party official – is caught red-handed in a dirty tricks operation and Kohler, who has spoken about the need for honesty and decency in politics and who has previously decried anonymous social media accounts as cowardly, cannot bring himself to apologise for, condemn or even acknowledge the disreputable behaviour of his aide. The voters of Wimbledon will receive no explanation of what a leading candidate to represent the constituency in parliament, or any of his fellow councillors and senior party officials, knew about the operation of an account that they followed and interacted with. Barry Smith, meanwhile, gets a free pass from the party and is doubtless out campaigning even now.
************************************************
Update (11/06/24): Following several public requests for an explanation and an apology from Paul Kohler – requests that had been met with silence – Stephen Hammond tweeted that, having consulted Parliamentary security, he had reported the matter to the police.
************************************************
Martin Calladine
If you enjoyed this piece, please buy my latest book: No Questions Asked: How football joined the crypto con. That way, I’ll have the money to write more things you might like. (You can get a copy here, or you can read the first chapter here for free.) Oh, and please spread the word, too. Thanks a lot.
The Ugly Game 
Excellent piece. Keep it up.