After the Queen followed Gordon Brown’s request at the 6th of April and dissolved the House of Commons it is certain that the next general election in Britain will happen together with the regional elections at the 6th of May. At the same time also the election campaigns have started in their main phases and, similar to the last German parliament elections, the internet plays a (more) important role. There is not much mercy in the campaigns, on- as well as offline.

Especially the Tories excel at negative campaigning. For example with a poster campaign in which the smiling prime minister is shown next to slogans such as “I doubled the national debt, vote for me”. While the Labour Party presented a poster which shows the conservative top candidate David Cameron sitting on the engine bonnet of a Audi Quattro together with the statement “Don’t let him take Britain back to the 1980s”. However, this poster did not lead to the intended reactions and was instead used by the Tories as a model for an own poster.

MyDavidCameron.com, a self-declared independent website, on the other hand, calls up for a creative reshaping of the Tory’s election posters, analogue the Schäuble poster-remix contest at Netzpolitik (a German blog about net politics) during the last Bundestags elections.

That you can go too far, even despite the general rough style, and that especially the internet holds some traps had to notice the Scottish Labour candidate Stuart MacLennan. According to media reports, he posted on his Twitter account various insults against David Cameron (“t***”), the LibDem top candidate Nick Clegg (“a b******”) as well as against several public figures.

Postings which probably would have remained without consequences if said on a traditional party meeting, because they would have never come to the knowledge of a greater public, led – publicized on a website which invites to informal comments due to its character – to a small scandal which at least cost the Scot his candidature (and perhaps his further political career).

By the way, in the meantime both MacLennan’s Twitter account (Google Cache, the last tweet was posted on the 13th of April) and his website have been deleted.

After the Queen followed Gordon Brown's request at the 6th of April and dissolved the House of Commons it is certain that the next general election in Britain will happen together with the regional elections at the 6th of May. At the same time also the election campaigns have started in their main phases ...