Liz Kendall’s campaign to be the next Labour leader may have received a welcome boost from the endorsement of frontbencher Tristram Hunt, but the Leicester West MP has had her first taste of some high-profile trolling.
Following the launch of Kendall’s official campaign website lizforleader.com on Wednesday morning, Twitter users spotted that the similar domain name lizforleader.co.uk linked to her leadership rival Andy Burnham’s campaign page, with the visitor’s browser tab reading “Did you mean?”
For the rest of the afternoon, the site proceeded to display an ever-changing series of internet memes and gags, including the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song Never Gonna Give You Up (a meme known as Rickrolling), shortly followed by a countdown to the next Ed Balls day, the anniversary of the day the former shadow chancellor tweeted his own name by mistake.
http://t.co/zQrQytIN5g at first linked to Burnham's campaign site. Now it links to a countdown to Ed Balls day. Ouch. pic.twitter.com/NpaK8uco89
— Frances Perraudin (@fperraudin) May 20, 2015
Other things the domain name linked to included a blogpost from 2012 about somebody stealing Kendall’s lunch, a video of the cartoon He-Man singing the 1993 hit What’s Up? by 4 Non Blondes and a New York Times article about dating a horse.
The domain name was registered on Wednesday by someone using the name Jesse Matthews, but who declined to include a registered address. A message briefly included in the link text of the domain read “register your fucking domains”.
Kendall, who is the MP for Leicester West and the shadow minister for care and older people, was the first of four to announce they would be standing to replace Ed Miliband as Labour leader after the party’s defeat in the general election. She is currently running against Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Mary Creagh.
The campaign team for the shadow health secretary, Andy Burnham, the current frontrunner, denied that lizforleader.co.uk had anything to do with them.
At the time of publication, the site featured pictures of the former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney covered in cats. Check here for updates.
