An image shows Rishi Sunak serving a badly-poured pint while a person stands behind him looking bemused.
The picture has been edited. The original shows the Prime Minister holding a pint with significantly less foam, while the person behind him looks ahead.
A photo apparently showing the Prime Minister having pulled a pint topped with a large amount of foam, while a person behind him looks bemused, has been shared widely online.
However, the photo has been edited. In the original version, taken on 1 August at a beer festival, the pint looks different and the person behind him is looking forward, not to the side.
The image was also shared by Karl Turner, Labour MP for Kingston upon Hull East, with the caption: “That’s nowt like the pints the pull in our local boozer. #EastHull [sic]”.
He later tweeted: “My apologies for sharing what turns out to be a fake image of the PM. But can I just say that @RishiSunak need [sic] to stop telling deliberate lies to the nation. We desperately need a general election. Also my apologies for not attributing the image. I had no idea it was fake.”
The edited version appears to be the work of a Twitter user who shared it on 1 August with the caption “Cheers!”
In a later video, the same Twitter user described having seen the original picture tweeted by Rishi Sunak and then editing it as a joke before leaving work—only discovering later that it had gone viral and was apparently being shared as genuine.
He said: “I never believed in a million years that people would think that that image was real because it was flawed and also I assumed people would have seen Rishi’s earlier image.”
He later added: “It was never my intention to deceive anyone or dupe anyone. It was just meant to be a joke. So I’m sorry I caused a bit of trouble. It wasn’t my intention to deceive, it all got away from me a bit and sorry.”
At a first glance the image may look real, but there are ways to check if images like this are genuine. Our blog on how to spot misleading images describes how to use Google and other reverse image searches to find the origin of a possibly doctored image. In this case, searching the edited image using Google reverse image search surfaces the original picture tweeted by Mr Sunak.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen edited images involving politicians or public figures. We’ve previously checked a fake image of Boris Johnson being interviewed in front of an expletive message, a picture of Greta Thunberg and Al Gore edited to replace him with George Soros, and a fake picture of Sadiq Khan holding leaflets promoting “sharia zones”.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as satire because the image has been edited and was initially made as a joke.
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