The political communications company behind the Conservative party’s controversial 2019 digital campaign strategy received a £3m government contract to work on Covid-19 messaging without a competitive tender and is negotiating with the Cabinet Office for more work, the Guardian and openDemocracy can reveal.
Topham Guerin, founded in 2016 by two young New Zealanders, Sean Topham and Ben Guerin, specialises in producing images and videos for social media and has worked for a number of rightwing political parties.
It was behind two Tory election campaign stunts that attracted widespread criticism: renaming the official Conservative party Twitter account “factcheckUK” during the leaders’ debate, and setting up a website presented as Labour’s manifesto.
Topham Guerin is the latest Conservative party-linked company known to have received contracts from the government under the emergency procurement rules.
Others include Faculty – an AI company that worked for the prime minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, on the Vote Leave campaign in 2016 – and Public First, a policy and research firm owned by two long-term associates of both Cummings and the Cabinet Office minister, Michael Gove.
Read the full article here:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/aug/03/topham-guerin-pr-firm-covid-19-contract-conservative-party