Conservatives delete archived party YouTube videos in ongoing web purge
The Conservative party has moved to delete a series of archived WebCameron videos and speeches following its decision to remove similar content from its own videos.
All material dating from before 2010 is now no longer publicly available, allegedly at the behest of campaign director Lynton Crosby, who called on the Conservatives to remove ‘barnacles off the boat’.
Speaking to the guardian Ian Birrell, a friend of former campaign director Lynton Crosby (who first championed the idea) wrote: ” Now they appear to have removed a very big barnacle: a decade of speeches, videos and press releases from their own party website. Insiders claim there is nothing sinister in this, saying it is just an attempt to turn the site into a campaigning tool, filling it with current campaign messages rather than clusters of old speeches.
“But the use of sophisticated software to ensure search engines do not stumble upon these archives slightly undermines this claim.”
A Conservative spokesman said that the content had been expunged in order to make their website a more effective campaigning tool.