In December 2018, the
Sunday Mail reported that The Integrity Initiative's
Twitter account had been used to attack
Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn, the
Labour Party and
Seumas Milne, the director of communications for Corbyn. The Foreign Office minister,
Alan Duncan ordered an investigation into the reports and stated “Not only must [anti-Labour attacks by Statecraft] stop, I want to know why on earth it happened in the first place.”
[9][10] Chris Williamson argued that it promoted the “denigration of the Labour party and Jeremy Corbyn” and called for an inquiry.
[11] In response to Labour Party complaints about this use of government funds in a parliamentary question on the 12 December 2018 The Minister stated that government funding "does [not] fund the management of the Integrity Initiative’s social media account", to which Shadow Foreign Secretary
Emily Thornberry responded that the Integrity Initiative project proposal included "social media activity".
[4][5] On 13 December 2018, the Scottish charity regulator
OSCR confirmed it had opened an inquiry into the Institute for Statecraft.
[12] International Policy Digest has accused it of
partisan politics.
[13]