December 5th 2015

Evolve‘s first viral article – read by over 150,000 people – was a report on how the Tory MP for Telford, Lucy Allan, shamelessly faked receiving a death threat from one of her own constituents.

Following our article, a protest was organised and a petition calling on Allan to resign gained thousands of signatures.

However, with most of the mainstream simply ignoring the story, Allan was allowed to get away with lying – and remains the MP for Telford to this day.

February 22nd 2016

Three months before the EU Referendum – at a time when virtually everybody expected an easy victory for Remain – Evolve’s Senior Editor Tom D. Rogers published an article arguing that Brexit was “inevitable” – in large part because of the devastating impact of austerity policies implemented by David Cameron’s Conservative Party.

March 2nd 2016

In March 2016, Evolve published an article documenting how an Eton student who was convicted of horrific child porn offences was allowed to hide his true identity in court in order to protect his wealthy family’s reputation

This story – which was largely ignored by the mainstream media – rightly disgusted and horrified people, becoming our second viral article, having been read by more than 370,000 people.

March 13th 2016

A few days later, Evolve reported how the Andover MS Society was demanding the resignaton of Tory MP Kit Malthouse as one of their patrons after he voted for cuts to Employment and Support Allowance that meant MS sufferers – and hundreds of thousands of other disabled people – would lose £30 a week.

The article was read by more than 60,000 people, and Malthouse was eventually forced to step down as a patron of the charity as a result.

May 3rd 2016

On May 3rd, Evolve published its first article documenting an incident of the BBC’s pro-Establishment bias – a subject that would go on to become one of Evolve’s most popular and widely reported.

This article was about how the BBC completely ignored a hugely popular Channel Four investigation which uncovered numerous allegations of electoral fraud committed by Conservative Party candidates.

August 28th 2016

This fantastic quote by the then Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell – describing an amusing encounter he had with a “journalist” from the disgusting Murdoch rag The S*n – became one of Evolve’s first original memes to gain popularity.

JMac absolutely nailing The S*n. pic.twitter.com/0vbD9vKKdj
— Evolve Politics (@evolvepolitics) August 28, 2016

September 11th 2016

And shortly after, our meme detailing Iain Banks’ vivid Tory analogy – from his final book, The Quarry – has now essentially spawned a life of its own, with countless different versions popping up all over social media over the past five years.

December 10th 2016

Shortly before Christmas 2016, our Editor Matt Turner was invited onto BBC Radio 4’s The Week in Westminster to debate the increasingly prevalent subject of fake news alongside The Sun on Sunday’s Political Editor David Wooding and Jim Waterson from Buzzfeed.

February 9th 2017

Evolve’s 2017 article documenting the truly awful actions of Tory Cambridge Uni student Ronald Coyne, who cruelly burned money in front of a homeless person, gained more than 250,000 views and led to a successful fundraiser for a homeless shelter in Cambridge.

February 10th 2017

After the story went viral, Evolve’s crowdfunder helped to raise almost £5,000 for Jimmy’s Homeless Shelter in Cambridge, in the hope that at least some good could come out of the actions of such a heartless indivdual.

February 13th 2017

A few days after the crowdfunder began, our Editor Matt Turner was invited on to BBC Radio Cambridgeshire to discuss our fundraising campaign for Jimmy’s Shelter and to give Evolve’s view about the Cambridge Uni student’s despicable actions.

May 6th 2017

A few weeks after Theresa May called the snap 2017 General Election, BuzzFeed journalist Jim Waterson interviewed our Editor Matt Turner – and wrote about how a “small group of hyperpartisan British media outlets” – including Evolve – had “built enormous audiences” and were actively impacting the General Election campaign.

May 20th 2017

In the run up to the 2017 General Election, Evolve posted an article documenting how Theresa May’s election manifesto had quietly scrapped the Tories’ previous pledge to ban sales of elephant ivory.

The story ended up going mega viral, racking up more than 42,000 shares on Facebook alone – with The Guardian reporting that it was the ninth most viral article shared during the entire General Election campaign.

May 21st 2017

Just a day later, Evolve published a response to the mainstream media’s relentless campaign accusing Jeremy Corbyn of having links to the IRA.

Our article documented the fact that a current serving Conservative politician, Maria Gatland, was literally a member of the IRA who once said that she “agreed with the shooting of British soldiers and believed the more who were killed the better”.

The mainstream media – in their rampant campaign to smear Corbyn and protect the Tories – unsurprisingly didn’t seem to think this fact was particularly relevant. But the 260,000 who read our article certainly did.

(And yes, believe it or not, Maria Gatland is STILL a serving Tory politician)

June 1st 2017

Just a week before the 2017 General Election, The Guardian conducted an interview with our Editor Matt Turner to discuss the impact the work of Evolve, and other New Left Media outlets, was having during the campaign.

The article – which also featured interviews with Kerry-Anne Mendoza from The Canary and Thomas G. Clark from Another Angry Voice – was published both online and in print.

June 17th 2017

And, following the surprise General Election result – in which Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour managed to defy the odds (and the mainstream media’s relentless smear campaign against him) by overturning the Tories’ majority – BuzzFeed published an article documenting how the work of New Left Media, including Evolve, had directly impacted both the campaign and the eventual result.

July 17th 2017

Additionally, Matt Turner was then asked to conduct an interview with BBC Newsnight, where he spent hours discussing Evolve Politics, the rise of New Left Media, and the many failings of the Mainstream Media – including how exactly they managed to call the General Election so disastrously wrong, and how they routinely fail to represent the interests of ordinary people.

The BBC shared just 67 seconds of the interview (09:38).

September 8th 2017

Autumn 2017 brought an unprecedented moment of hilarity – with the momentary rise, and subseqeunt obliteration, of the ridiculously incompetent Tory youth group Activate.

Essentially, Activate were trying to copy the success of the Jeremy Corbyn-supporting organisation Momentum by appealing to young people. However, they only managed to fail spectacularly, with Evolve playing a leading role in their downfall through our incredible undercover infiltration of the organisation.

September 10th 2017

Two days later, Evolve published Part Two of our Activate sting, detailing how our undercover reporter, who we dubbed “Tory Thomas”, was invited to join their social media team, and how the utter incompetence they witnessed at the heart of the organisation eventually led to its downfall.

Bonus Activate Content

Due to their astonishing incompetence (including the posting of extraordinarily cringing memes and notoriously public meltdowns) many have speculated that Activate may have actually been an elaborate piece of satire, rather than a genuine Tory organisation.

However, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Activate were indeed formed as a genuine organisation – with Tory Councillor Gary Markwell handed the task of organising things, accompanied by a number of ambitious pro-Tory students. However, after Evolve infiltrated them, numerous increasingly hilarious things began happening – entirely mysteriously, of course.

So, for reference, the following incidents happened before Evolve’s Editors infiltrated the organisation – and were completely genuine debacles created entirely of their own incompetence:

October 6th 2017

In the Autumn, Jim Waterson wrote about how one of Evolve’s hugely viral articles published during the 2017 General Election had helped to influence government policy for the better.

Our piece documenting how Theresa May had decided to scrap the proposed ban on ivory sales from her 2017 manifesto – an article which was shared more than 70,000 times on social media – managed to “force an issue on to the national political agenda with little help from established media“, Waterson wrote.

And, with post-election polling showing a large percentage of the population were now aware of the issue, the Tories were forced to act – with Michael Gove announcing a consultation into the ivory ban shortly after.

November 14th 2017

In November, the BBC also woke up to the story – reporting on the effect that Evolve’s piece on the ivory ban had had in forcing the Tories to reverse on their decision.

In an interview, our Editor Matt Turner told the BBC that “there was a huge sense of outrage and injustice” about the Tories’ decision to scrap the ban, and that “people were surprised” that the mainstream media had failed to cover it.

November 14th 2017

In Novermber, Matt Turner was invited back on to BBC’s Newsnight (and given more than 67 seconds of air time this time) to discuss Russia and their alleged meddling in the 2016 European Union Referendum.

November 24th 2017

With concerns rising about Russian influence in UK politics, research by the Evolve team looked at all of the wealthy Putin-linked donors who had given money to the Tories since 2010.

November 30th 2017

A week later, the Press Gazette reported on Evolve joining Impress – the UK’s only truly independent, Leveson-compliant press regulator.

In an interview, our Senior Editor Jess Miller said that Evolve had made the decision to join Impress in response to “numerous unsubstantiated shrieks of ‘fake news’ from various members of the political and media establishment” during the course of the 2017 General Election.

February 28th 2018

in February 2018, we reported on Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg lying about Jeremy Corbyn live on TV by falsely claiming he had voted against the Good Friday Agreement.

Rees-Mogg’s false statement came just days after his Tory colleague Ben Bradley had been forced to pay damages to the then Labour leader for wrongly alleging that Corbyn had “sold British secrets to communist spies“.

April 9th 2018

In April, Evolve published its first article written by a Labour MP.

In the piece, the newly elected Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, wrote about his visit to Syria, where he saw first hand how Turkey was destroying a British ally with UK-supplied weapons.

May 2nd 2018

An exclusive investigation by Evolve found that a Conservative Councillor had shared articles from a neo-Nazi organisation and labelled UK immigrants as the ‘dregs of every nation’.

May 23rd 2018

In his second article for Evolve, Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle wrote about how the Tories were aiding and abetting Donald Trump as he implemented illegal sanctions on Iran. 

June 3rd 2018

In June, Evolve allowed Filmaker Paul Sng to write a piece documenting his photography book Invisible Britain: Portraits of Hope and Resilience.

Sng’s work highlights the devastating effects of decades of government policy through interviews with 40 people who had effectively been left behind and either ignored or unfairly stereotyped by the media.

Evolve are proud patrons and supporters of the book.

October 10th 2018

In October, Evolve revealed that the BBC’s flagship fact checking service – Reality Check – had used out of date figures to accuse Jeremy Corbyn of lying during Prime Minister’s Questions.

November 1st 2018

In November, our Senior Editor (whilst dying inside) paid to sign up as a Conservative Party member in order to find out whether or not their rank and file members were actually bound by the Party’s rules on antisemitism, racism and discrimination.

They were not.

November 7th 2018

In November, after a sickening video had been shared to social media showing people burning an effigy of Grenfell Tower, research conducted by Evolve discovered that many of those involved in the horrific video had links to the Tories.

December 7th 2018

In December, Evolve‘s hugely viral work was covered in the book, Political Communication in Britain: Campaigning, Media and Polling in the 2017 General Election.

January 4th 2019

In January, Evolve reported on how The Daily Express had been accused of “whitening” a picture of the then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid for one of their notorious anti-immigrant stories…

January 7th 2019

…and, just three days later, the Editor of The Daily Express had the gall to make a formal complaint about the fact Evolve had correctly described them as an “anti immigrant newspaper”.

Unsurprisingly, no further action was taken – but our tweet documenting the truly ridiculous complaint went viral and was covered by the Press Gazette.

March 1st 2019

In March, an exclusive investigation carried out by the Evolve team found that serving Conservative politicians were running a Facebook group chock full of vile racism – including despicable comments about ‘bombing mosques’ and ‘shooting immigrants’.

The revelations uncovered by Evolve‘s work were included in a report by the Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND) charity.

However, as has become commonplace with examples of Tory Islamophobia, the UK’s mainstream media largely ignored it.

March 25th 2019

A few weeks later, Evolve exclusively revealed that John Murphy – the man who assaulted Jeremy Corbyn by smashing an egg on his head during a visit to a mosque – had previously made threats to kill Muslims on social media.

November 12th 2019

November brought unquestionably one of the most savage self-owns in Twitter history.

Our brief exchange with Isaac Doel regarding his particularly hypocritical stance on tuition fees went mega viral, gaining more than 62k upvotes on Reddit and racking up tens of thousands of retweets in various iterations on Twitter.

November 13th 2019

Unsurpringly, given how viral the exchange went, several media outlets decided to pick up on it, including Indy100 – but our favourite was from The Poke, who ran it as their “Takedown of the week”.

November 19th 2019

In November, Evolve reported on how BBC Chiefs had allegedly told respected journalist Peter Oborne that it was ‘wrong to expose Boris Johnson’s lies because it undermines trust in democracy’.

Evolve‘s article went so viral that even the BBC’s Andrew Marr got involved, replying to our tweet with a particularly feeble attempt to rebut Oborne’s claim.

In addition, Alastair Campbell shared the piece on Twitter – a decision which Evolve decided to use our knowledge of Twitter debugging to have a little fun with!

(Yes, that was genuinely live for about half an hour on his Twitter feed! Not many people know it, but if someone shares your article directly in a tweet, you can edit the picture and headline on your CMS but keep the URL the same, then debug the URL using Twitter debugger, and it will show the amended headline and picture on any direct share on Twitter!).

BBC Chiefs say it’s ‘wrong to expose Boris Johnson’s lies because it undermines trust in democracy’ https://t.co/pu2AIg2wrm
— Evolve Politics (@evolvepolitics) November 19, 2019

January 9th 2020

In January, following the announcement of candidates for the Labour leadership election, Evolve penned a 3,200 word profile of the frontrunner Keir Starmer.

In the article, I correctly predicted that Starmer could not be trusted to keep his promises, and argued that his political judgement was highly questionable.

However, unfortunately – and regretably – I also asserted that Starmer was “clearly not a Blairite”.

With the benefit of hindsight, I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely apologise for this now blatantly obvious error of judgement, and I have made it my mission to do much better in future.

January 10th 2020

…and the next day, Evolve published our second leadership profile – a 4,100 word profile of Starmer’s closest challenger, Rebecca Long-Bailey.

In the piece, I argued that whilst Long-Bailey was clearly not as inspiring as Corbyn, she would be definitely be a much more trustworthy candidate than Starmer when it came to sticking to the then genuinely left-wing policy agenda.

However Starmer won, and then he sacked Long-Bailey from his Shadow Cabinet, before ditching most of Corbyn’s policies and backtracking on the vast majority of his leadership pledges.

When Starmer finally gets the boot and a new leadership election is called, Evolve will be ready and waiting – and we won’t take any prisoners this time around.

January 21st 2020

A few weeks later, our coverage of the Labour Leadership election was covered in an article by The Conservsation.

April 23rd 2020

In April, as the first lockdown came into force, our co-founder and Senior Editor Tom D. Rogers wrote an in-depth article detailing his personal and political journey, and explaining exactly why Evolve Politics was founded.

May 28th 2020

As the UK’s pandemic death toll hit 60,000 – the worst in the entire world at that point – Evolve reported on the Health Secretary Matt Hancock laughing and giggling during an interview on breakfast TV.

Unsurprisingly, given the devastating effects his decisions were having on families across the country, people weren’t exactly amused by his antics – and the tweet racked up more than 4.5k retweets.

This is the UK Health Secretary laughing and giggling on national TV just minutes after it was revealed that the UK had the worst Coronavirus death rate in the entire world.

More than 60,000 Brits are dead because of his incompetence. pic.twitter.com/JOgZ2xl59U
— Evolve Politics (@evolvepolitics) May 28, 2020

April 23rd 2020

As the UK’s pandemic death toll worsened, Evolve published an article written by an anonymous Care Home Worker detailing just how horrific things were becoming in the care sector – and how residents were dying in their droves as a direct result of the decisions made by the Conservative government.

July 20th 2020

In July – just as NHS staff were being clapped across the country for their heroic work during the pandemic – Evolve reported on how the Tories shamefully voted down an amendment to protect the NHS from being sold off in a future Brexit trade deal.

This article was widely shared on social media, gaining over 6.5k retweets.

July 21st 2020

And, the very next day, Evolve’s article calling out every single Tory MP who shamelessly voted against the NHS protection amendment also went viral.

Here’s a list of all 338 Tory MPs who voted AGAINST protecting our NHS from Brexit trade deals last night https://t.co/POoiFPoNCp
— Evolve Politics (@evolvepolitics) July 21, 2020

August 11th 2020

And who could forget Dominic Cummings and his infamous trip to Barnard Castle?

Our meme calling out the absolute hypocrisy of the right-wing media for supporting his ridiculous story – whilst actively ridiculing refugees searching for a better life – became quite popular on social media.

October 17th 2020

In October, we reported on the case of Diana Danescu – a Conservative Party Election Agent who was spared jail after being convicted of 16 counts of electoral fraud yesterday at Southwark Crown Court in London.

November 2nd 2020

In November, just seven months after Keir Starmer was elected Labour Leader, we researched every single one of his leadership pledges and – surprise surprise – found that Labour had already either scrapped or rowed back on the vast majority of them.

January 18th 2021

In January, Evolve posted an exclusive article in partnership with the campaign group Hacked Off reporting the absurd lack of action by the press “regulator” IPSO regarding numerous examples of dangerous Coronavirus misinformation published by the mainstream media.

February 2nd 2021

In February, Labour MP Jon Trickett wrote exclusively for Evolve about Gideon Osborne’s new job in the banking sector – a job he was handed after years of propping it up with tax breaks and money from the taxpayer whilst Chancellor.

February 21th 2021

A few weeks later, our tweet calling out the ridiculous double standards of the UK media – who routinely devote reams of pages to absurd anti-progressive bullshit whilst simultaneously ignoring blatant Tory corruption – got slightly popular.

March 1st 2021

In March, Labour MP Jon Trickett wrote his second exclusive article for Evolve – this time to send a warning to his party leader Keir Starmer.

April 15th 2021

In April, Evolve began collaborating with Bywire News on a hugely exciting project aimed at uniting independent media so we can take on the mainstream as a single powerful entity.

In our first viral story working with Bywire, we revealed that the then-Health Secretary Matt Hancock held a stake in his sister’s company which had also – entirely coincidentally – been handed NHS contracts worth hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money.

Following our research, a report by the Independent Advisor on Ministers’ Interests found that Hancock had breached the Ministerial Code.

The Health Secretary Matt Hancock has been handed a 15% stake in a firm called Topwood Limited.

In March this year, Topwood Limited were awarded two NHS contracts worth a total of £300k.

Topwood Limited also just happen to be owned by Mr Hancock's sister.

Truly astonishing. pic.twitter.com/glHThY7bam
— Bywire News (@bywirenews) April 15, 2021

April 26th 2021

A few weeks later, we published our second viral article working alongside Bywire – a piece revealing that the BBC had reworded Boris Johnson’s now-infamous ‘let the bodies pile high’ quote in an attempt to make it sound less damaging.

September 11th 2021

In September, Evolve were handed documents showing that a Labour member had been accused or racism and sent a notice of investigation by the party for sharing one of our tweets.

However, the “offending” tweet simply promoted the idea of a 4-day week and free broadband – with not a hint of racism in sight.

It was almost as if Keir Starmer’s Labour Party were trying to purge left-wingers from the party.

Who’da thunk it.