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Osborne loses (one of) his jobs – this is the man who will replace him

August 23, 2012 11:29 am

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The Daily Mail reports today that George Osborne will no longer be running the Tory 2015 election campaign. It’s unclear whether that’s because Cameron has realised that Osborne isn’t, in fact, a master strategist – or whether those “part-time chancellor” attacks have begun to stick. Either way, George is out on his ear – sadly not from the Treasury, but from the job he seemed to care about most anyway.

What is much more concerning is the man the Tories look likely to replace him with – Lynton Crosby.

Now the Mail refers to him as the man “who masterminded both of Boris Johnson’s London mayoral election victories”. That’s only half of the story. Whilst their was evidently negative campaigning in the mayoral campaign, it never quite reached the dog-whistle tactics of some of Crosby’s previous efforts. Remember the 2005 Tory election campaign “Are you thinking what we’re thinking?” – let this (albeit somewhat modified version – the originals seem to have disappeared) refresh your memory:

I wouldn’t be expecting many positive messages from the Tories in 2015 with Crosby in charge. And we should be prepared for some particularly vicious personal attacks on Ed Miliband too, I’d imagine…

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  • Daniel Speight

    A master of negative campaigning. More Americanization of British politics. Primaries anyone?

  • http://twitter.com/eljmayes Edward Mayes

    Howard won thirty odd seats in 2005- I think the Tories would settle for that in 2015.

    • John Reid

      the tory vote hardly went up in 2005 ,it was the Labour one going down by a Million and no ever gonvement had, had majorities of 169 in the past. And even If the tories dog whistle telling people that labour had policies that we didn’t have was negative campaignig, compared with the Labour isnt working in 1979, A sqauddie with his hand up surredering with the slogan labuors policy on defence, were much more powerfull.

  • http://twitter.com/ElliotBidgood Elliot Bidgood

    I didn’t know that Crosby ran the 2005 Tory campaign. Anyone else loving the irony/hypocrisy of an Australian temporarily moving to Britain to run a vitriolic campaign against immigrants? If Crosby is the Tory campaign manager for 2015 and he plays that card again, please let that be a Labour talking point.

  • AlanGiles

    I don’t want to re-open old wounds, but, in 2012, at least, I think it might be a question of Ken Livingstone losing the election, rather than Crosby winning it – and this was achieved partly through the efforts of  “Labour Uncut” and various rightwingers in Labour with their “opeen letters”. Also, in 2012 BJ only won by 2%. For that reason it is arguable that the Crosby factor had much to do with it.

    To avoid starting another row, I would admit that KL himself didn’t help his own cause, but nevertheless the efforts of Labour Uncut et al in my view had a detrimental effect, especially on floating voters, and amongst a section of Labour supporters.

    • http://twitter.com/ElliotBidgood Elliot Bidgood

      I doubt many floating voters read Labour Uncut, or even Dan Hodges’ column in The Telegraph. I agree it didn’t help and it angered me, but I doubt it had much effect either way really. Boris remained personally popular, Ken not so much. Though Boris’ campaign did seem quite well-run, as far as I remember, so that could be a harbinger of things to come as far as Crosby’s managerial skillls are concerned.

  • billbat

    Lynton Crosby spent a lot of the London Election targeting Ken’s Tax Avoidance  and as a result David Cameron promised to publish his Cabinet’s Tax Returns to show they were innocent of Tax-Dodging. Labour must keep reminding him of this as I gather he has now said that he won’t be coming clean about his Tax Affairs. A lot more digging into Tory Tax Dodging would be well-deserved.

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