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When a Labor attack ad dropped for the first time last week claiming that Rishi Sunak was personally responsible for a jail-evading child sex offender, Conservative agencies called for the move. It was quickly denounced as “gutter politics”.
But behind the scenes, party insiders said they were personally happy with Labor’s decision to move the political debate off the stage and turn it into a first fight in the stalls ahead of the next election. ing.
The Conservatives are already gearing up for a fire-on-fire showdown, fearing it could usher in a new era of dirty politics as both parties take the lead over the next 18 months. I’m here.
Labor stunned much of Fleet Street and Whitehall last week with its first attack advertisement. Rishi snacks are not.
The ad was soon followed by another highly personal attack on Mr Sunak’s wife Akshata Murthy. Until recently, Akshata Murthy enjoyed the tax status of having no residence. From tax loopholes? Rishi Snack does.
But while many Conservative MPs and even a few Labor MPs condemned the new approach, privately the Conservatives warmly welcomed Sir Kiel Sturmer’s new tactics.
‘It’s great,’ said one Conservative official I“This is exactly what the two of us should be doing.”
Others are trying to maintain a moral high ground, also citing internal problems Labor has experienced.Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has distanced himself from advertising.Immigration.
The Tories are [Labour’s] Nonsense, especially when it leads to media interviews about car crashes and briefings against Yvette Cooper,” a senior Conservative source said. But they ominously added:
The Conservative Party has already focused on the Labor leader’s ‘flip-flops’ on specific issues, and the party is expected to start pumping out videos of Lord Keele conveying conflicting messages on various policies.
Sunak-led Tories are not expected to resume the highly controversial message used by Boris Johnson, claiming the Labor leader failed to prosecute serial sex offender Jimmy Saville. However, he does not shy away from making the discussion personal.
However, the party’s top strategists recognize that the right balance must be struck when it comes to campaign tactics.
A recent statement by Home Secretary Suera Braverman shows the danger of misinterpreting the political message in an attempt to tear down the lines between the Conservative and Labor parties.
She recently claimed that the grooming gang is made up almost entirely of British Pakistani men, adding that they “hold cultural attitudes that are completely incompatible with British values.” A member of the Cabinet, who was a barrister, accused police of an Essex pub landlord who had several stupid dolls hanging from his neck above his bar.
Former Tory Party chairman Baroness Warsi said this week that Mr Braverman was free to “make racist remarks” and warned that he was “not fit for a high-ranking official”.
It follows the Home Secretary’s claim earlier this year that crossing the Channel by small ships amounted to an “invasion”, calling her colleague on the Tory bench into a comment resembling words from the “BNP”. Instigated, the former minister named her the ‘fifth columnist in the Cabinet’.
MP added: “There’s a very large white working-class area in my seat and a more ethnically diverse community, and no one I speak to on my doorstep speaks the words she uses about people on small boats.” I don’t want to hear it. It’s not clear who she’s attracted to.”
In an interview with Tory grassroots site Conservative Home on Thursday, the prime minister refused to rule out directing political fire at Lord Kiel, but instead expressed his own concerns since coming to power. Focused on records.
Many believe that Sunak chose to avoid being directly involved in the Labor Party’s attacks and prevent further publicity of the ad. But the prime minister didn’t hesitate to fire personal barbs at opposing numbers during the PMQ. His approach is one of the reasons why Labor decided to become more aggressive.
One of the key figures behind Labor’s new strategy said I: “At PMQ the other day, when Sunak called Keir a ‘friend of traffickers’, no one batted an eyelid because they’re used to it. We just lay on the floor and allow kicks in the face, but that’s not going to win. ”
Labor argued that the new aggressive campaigning style would not lead to an “arms race” of political turmoil as it believed it “couldn’t get any worse”.
“they [the Conservatives] Lie about how we vote on things, they lie about Kiel’s record,” shadow minister said I“They’ll do whatever it takes. It’s true that they need to stop taking them lying down. No, I don’t think it can get any worse. The campaign they fight is really tough. It will be, but we have to be prepared for it.”
This means that the party is willing to receive considerable backlash from its own side in order to appeal to those who may have voted Conservative in the previous election.
“It’s about being disruptive,” added the senior worker figure. “Everybody is used to a certain Labor Party. When the world went digital, we were stuck in the analog world of campaigning. We’ve been knocked out one election after another, partly because we don’t understand how we did it. So this was an attempt to try something different.”
Polls also think the decision to take the front line is likely to pay off, indicating that Labor is looking to sway its own voters to win.
Chris Hopkins, director of pollster Savanta, said the new message was likely to anger those who would vote for Labor “no matter what”.
“So is it that bad? I don’t think so,” Hopkins said. “At the end of the day, Labor has to be a broad church to get votes. I don’t think a holiness attitude will necessarily benefit them in an election.
He likened the ad to one deployed by Vote Leave during its Brexit campaign, which featured a claim on the side of a bus that the NHS would receive £350m a week after leaving the EU. It was observed.
“I don’t think many people have seen £350m on the side of a bus, but I have certainly heard it being talked about endlessly,” he said. . “There’s a famous saying that there’s no such thing as notoriety unless it really backfires. What they did was everybody was talking about it.”
Labor plans to release more “brutal” attacks in the coming days. It won’t be long before the Conservatives start working out their own strategy. I’m taking off my gloves.