Dominic Raab is right, Tory voters ‘don’t give a toss’ about the party’s lies – and that’s how they’ll win the election

People are too bogged down with problems the Conservatives have failed to fix to notice they’re being manipulated

For all its failings, the one thing the Conservative Party has always had going for it come election time is its ability to tap into apathy. It’s a peculiar talent, given parliamentary candidates’ ongoing struggle to engage with, let alone understand, the average Brit without malfunctioning. But it’s a skill that, to borrow an exceedingly irritating phrase from the PM, is “oven-ready” for the likes of trickery.

We saw proof of that on Tuesday night when the Conservative press office transformed itself into a faux fact-checking service on Twitter during the leaders’ debate on ITV. Branded as dystopian by some, and intentionally misleading by anyone with sense, it didn’t take long for the Tory defence brigade to respond to the charges levelled against “factcheckUK”, aka, the “Official Conservative Party Press Office”.

Barely having had time to rest since his last stop on the Conservative Party’s perpetual damage control tour of Britain, it was James Cleverly’s turn to defend the indefensible on last night’s head to head. Once again, it didn’t quite wash.

By Wednesday morning, foreign secretary Dominic Raab decided to take a different approach. Leaning into the brashness of his party leader, he did away with the less than convincing idea that “the nature of the site” was clear to the average Twitter user, regardless of the fact that it did not vaguely resemble a press office account.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast, he said: “I knock on doors every day ... no one gives a toss about the social media cut and thrust. What they care about is the substance of the issues.”

Interesting choice of words given the lengths his party’s digital team went to in order to deliver the, er, “public service” in the first place, but that’s by the by. What I’m interested in is the fact that Raab has, albeit unknowingly, hit the nail on the head. As shameful as it is, this probably isn’t going to be enough to turn off Tory supporters. And that is what’s so unfortunate.

Don’t mistake Raab’s rare candidness as a sign of the party’s respect for the average person, though. The reason these underhand tactics haven’t stopped has nothing to do with sticking to the issues that matter. In reality, as I pointed out just two weeks ago, they will likely ramp up to levels so blatantly misleading that calling them dystopian will no longer suffice.

They know people are often too bogged down with the everyday problems the Tories have failed to fix to notice they’re even being manipulated in the first place.

They know that targeting groups like the over-55s, who are both less likely to be regular internet users, let alone digitally savvy enough to sort well-disguised myths from the truth, is a foolproof approach. They wouldn’t have dedicated their online advertising resources to them otherwise. Particularly given the likelihood of voters veering further to the right as they get older.

In fact, as The Guardian revealed last week, their most successful advert to date was created with precisely this group in mind. No wonder they’ve spent more than any other party on Facebook and Instagram.

As we saw in yesterday evening’s debate, Boris Johnson’s insistence on repeating the phrase “get Brexit done” in response to pretty much every question – Brexit-related or not – is an extension of that strategy.

It doesn’t matter if they gloss over issues like dwindling social care, or fail to provide real, lasting solutions for the transformation of the UK. The Tories’ narrative of being the “responsible party” is set in stone among the people who really matter to them, and they know it.

Their fact-checking front carries weight because of it – the notion that after years of draining the economy, they are traditionally considered more trustworthy with the country’s finances regardless, works because of that myth.

Playing dirty has, and will continue to, work for them as long as they keep harping on about the same issues that have always won them elections. An exaggerated appearance of fiscal responsibility, blind dedication to anti-immigration, and generally promising to uphold the structures that are currently destroying us all. How depressing.