Fact check: Video of the Prime Minister has been edited
A video has circulated on social media which appears to show Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer calling his predecessor Rishi Sunak an “absolute sausage”.
The video showed Sir Keir saying: “Rishi said he shopped in the Asda, this was a lie! He also said he often drank pint cans of Stella whilst watching Buffy The Vampire Slayer on Sky Television, this was also a lie.”
He added: “He was not your Prime Minister, he was an absolute sausage!”
Evaluation
This video has what would appear to be AI-generated audio and lip-sync technology layered on top of a real video. It is clearly intended as satire.
The video was posted by an account which says it posts “memes, edits, short lipsync parody videos”.
The facts
Sir Keir’s tie, the rest of his outfit and the background that he was speaking in front of in the video all match a press conference that the Prime Minister held on July 6.
The body language in the video, especially Sir Keir’s hand gestures, matches a particular part of that press conference.
During this press conference, Sir Keir never uttered the words in the online video.
During the section of the press conference where the body language matches the edited video, Sir Keir was speaking about how the mindset of Government had changed.
“It’s a mindset of service, of country first, party second,” Sir Keir said during that section.
Links
Post on X (archived post and video)
Press conference on YouTube (archived post and video – downloads as mp4 file)
