An Ill-Repressed Snarl

Andrew Alexander writes:

Lynton Crosby, the new and much-extolled election adviser to No 10, is making his mark. Primarily, it would seem to the advantage of Labour.

The Australian’s connections with the alcohol and tobacco industries, along with his PR firm’s thoughts on the National Health Service, are being played up. David Cameron refuses to say whether these topics have come up in his talks with the new spin-master.

So the first service Crosby has  rendered is to make his master look dodgy. It is irony at its most delicious.

It always was curious that Cameron should send 10,000 miles round the globe for an adviser who has never occupied a public office, has never stood for one nor, so far as we know, even knocked on a voter’s door to plead for support.

But because he was part of the Australian Liberals’ successful campaign, he is assumed to have magic powers. He ‘sort of’ helped in the last election when the Tories ‘sort of’ won and had a major success in Boris Johnson’s team in the  London mayoral elections. Crosby is not his own PR man for nothing.

His latest tack is setting out to discredit UKIP councillors, actual and potential. Thoughts about glass houses and thrown stones spring to mind.

There is no particular reason to think of Tory councillors as discreditable. All the same, if you dig hard enough among thousands of names, you can usually come up with oddities.

Are we to be warned that Eatanswill’s Councillor Jones was once charged with drunk driving or cursing immigrants — or more than a friend to Councillor Glenda Smith? What a contest in muck-raking could be at hand!

But Crosby is not alone in advising Cameron from afar. No 10 has also sent for Jim Messina of the White House, who is credited with turning the tide during President Obama’s election campaign.

Again, you have to wonder why a foreigner is called in as a senior adviser on the whims of the British electorate.

Tory backbenchers do more than wonder — they react with an ill-repressed snarl. It is bad enough that the Prime Minister looks to so many foreign advisers for policy advice. To seek campaigning advice from outsiders is insulting.

Since both men have reputations for being exceptionally tough, stand by for a major battle inside No 10 at election time.