ANOTHER day, another tedious ­Twitterstorm to detract from the ­serious matters of the day.

In case you missed it (lucky you!), I refer to the outrage after Conservative Campaign HQ replaced its usual Twitter page with a “fact-checking” stream of tweets while the election debate raged on ITV.

No, it was not the Tories’ greatest idea ever — but hardly worth the splenetic fury it induced from social media’s tiresome verbal diarrhoea-ists.

The faux neutrality of the so-called ­FactCheckUK tweets was an “affront to democracy”, they fumed, as though the entire concept of governance was under threat.

But this digital daftness — witnessed, of course, only by Twitter’s perpetually offended — was nothing compared to another story that got far less coverage but has far worse repercussions for voting rights.

As The Sun reported last night, a shocking probe in Plymouth found that 850 students and under-17s had been put on the electoral register, despite knowing nothing about it.

Universities and Labour councils have been blamed for this occurrence, with the Plymouth local authority admitting a “procedural error” meant student information had been added to its electoral system.

Oopsies! Don’t you just hate it when that happens? One day you trip over and accidentally upload a load of names on to a computer.

It is illegal to register anyone else to vote, so this scandal should be causing widespread concern.

Local Conservative MP Johnny Mercer even suggested that it could be happening elsewhere, and has requested an urgent investigation by the Electoral Commission.

WORDS MASK A REAL CYNICISM

But parliamentarians have been curiously tight-lipped over the event, even the militant Remainers who like lecturing us on democracy so often.

Could there be a reason for this?

Let’s face it, what we’ve seen in this election, and have seen before, is that Labour and other “progressive” parties are desperate to get youngsters out to the polling booths, as it’s their only real chance of winning.

So don’t expect them to cry over an “accidental slip-up”.

They are doing everything they can to ensure the number of young voters increases, telling them “your vote matters” every nanosecond, and pleading that they register before next Tuesday’s cut-off.

Labour and other 'progressive' parties are desperate to get youngsters out to the polling booths, as it’s their only real chance of winning.

All of this makes them look incredibly altruistic and enthralled by what young people have to say.

However, these words mask a real cynicism, especially when you look at a recent poll which showed that 28 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds have never heard of Stalin, almost half don’t know who Lenin was, and 70 per cent were unfamiliar with Mao Zedong.

In short, they are hardly the most clued-up age group, which you could forget with all the gravitas left-wing politicians give to them, despite mainly seeing them as bums on seats.

Come election time the most obvious reason some young people don’t vote is simply because they are not particularly bothered, and may not even know who Jeremy Corbyn is.

CHEAP GIMMICKS

There is an argument that this cohort should be left to their own devices, not pushed to vote. The good thing to do might be to hand out some information. But to Labour, ignorance creates an opportunity.

Thus they do everything possible to mobilise the least-interested youth, telling them that their knowledge is superior and even pitting them against older generations, who they are told “stole their futures”.

Labour is especially good at using cheap gimmicks to get its message across.

In 2016, for instance, Corbyn went on Snapchat, where more than half of users are aged 16 to 24, clearly believing it would make him look “down with the kids” (although anyone who’s lived through socialism knows it’s more like “down with the Seventies”.)

There was also his video collaboration with grime star JME, in which they urged young people to vote.

The piece was uploaded onto the website grime4corbyn.com — which offered visitors the chance to win tickets to a secret event if they registered to vote.

Which sounds kind of like, dunno, bribery?

It gets worse than that, though, as Labour are going for broke — literally — in their quest to attract youngsters, hence the amount of ridiculous policies they have brought out, such as free broadband and university education.

YOUNG PEOPLE USED AS POLITICAL PROPS

Both — but particularly the latter — would be catastrophic for our economy, in addition to Labour’s plans to nationalise everything.

All of this sounds brilliant if you’re idealistic and fancy a change, but not as convincing to older voters who have experienced the perils of socialism.

None of this is to say that there aren’t young people who are politically engaged, some of whom are Corbynistas, or that we shouldn’t make efforts to engage whippersnappers, or that they have no reason to be upset with an economy that has given them a rough ride.

But they should be aware that they are being used by the Left, who haven’t always been that good to them — otherwise they would prioritise the housing crisis, for one.

Plans to tackle the housing issue were conspicuously missing from the debate on Tuesday night. There’s a fact check for you.

The truth is that many campaigners see young people as political props, whose dynamism and energy they can exploit to expunge their enemies.

This is not only the case with Labour, but especially Extinction Rebellion and Remainers.

Continually they beg young people to vote, but ask yourself how they would react if a 16-year-old turned around and said: “Sure, for Boris Johnson — yes please!”

Then the insincerity of them telling youngsters “your vote matters” would be exposed for all to see.

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