Has ‘Red Ed’ become ‘Red-Hot Ed’ now?
Things have come to a pretty pass when this qualifies as news.
It seems the Conservative Party’s campaign strategy has come grinding to a halt, based as it was on claiming that Ed Miliband cannot run the UK.
First we were told he’s weird-looking, especially when eating a bacon sandwich – but it turns out the people of this country aren’t all that bothered, as long as he can do the job.
Then we were told that he couldn’t do the job – but by then the Labour Party was already publishing one policy proposal after another which showed that he emphatically could.
Finally we were told that he’s not a nice man; he stabbed his brother in the back to get the Labour leadership (we’ve been hearing that since 2010 and it hasn’t become any truer in all that time) and he has had (gasp) a love life!
Hang on! Wasn’t he so weird that nobody could like him, only two paragraphs ago?
That’s right. The Tory narrative has become that confused.
Add to that the fact that the Mail splashed a photo of Juliet Soskice – whose husband, entrepreneur and Labour supporter Andrew Rosenfeld, passed away only two months ago – on their front page in this tatty attack Mr Miliband and the whole affair is revealed to be in very poor taste indeed.
Fortunately the public is having nothing to do with it and Mr Miliband’s approval rating has now eclipsed that of David Cameron.
Expect desperation to set into the Conservative camp by the beginning of next week.
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As I type, various bods on ‘Daily Politics’ are having a similar conversation, in that there are some very mixed messages coming out of Tory Central with regards to Mr Miliband. The consensus seems to be that it’s possibly Mr Crosby’s fault.
Wouldn’t normally post a msm link here but this is a very funny article and the comments section is worth a read in its own right. Feel free to refuse Mike, but it is a real boost for Ed’s esteem as well as hilarious.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/10/ed-miliband-politician-genitals-shocker-daily-mail-labour-love-life?CMP=fb_gu
brilliant link.. so funny…
Many of the comments are saying much the same thing Mike xx
The majority of the comments are either joky (man has sex shocker) or out right (pun intended) disgusted by a really low blow. The “lets wheel out our dead son to win votes” got much the same reaction, as did Camoron with a cute lamb.. namely WTAF!
By taking Austerity so wretchedly far in such a short time, the Tories have effectively ‘kicked the ball out of the stadium’. The only strategy that leaves them and their bottom-lickers in the media is to play the man and not the ball, and no audience or electorate will tolerate that for long. Furthermore, let’s give Miliband every credit on this; he has shown in recent months that he’s as tough as they come. It’s all just bouncing off him like ping pong balls, and a lot of the time he’s even smiling about it.
I still don’t think I will vote for Labour, but I have to pay tribute to that; if Cameron or Farage had had to take one tenth of the abuse Miliband has endured, they’d go bright red in the faces and squeal about how everyone’s ‘out to get’ them.
My US friend has a great idea
“The argument to just hand over everything to private industry still goes on but I think we have missed the whole boat on this issue. We should privatize the greatest money spenders, Congress.
I mean we all ready know ever @!$%#ing one of them had been bought and paid for already, why not know who exactly owns them for a year.
Here is my proposal, each state’s national political seat can be bought for one year by any American private person or American private or public business. They must prove they are an American person or company with most of their money here in the country and then they can pay a fee and then bid on the seat. Each state then can set the fee price and pick the winning bid.
Then we can hear some really interesting and pertinent debates in Congress, “The Senator from the great state of Weight Watchers will now pontificate on health diets and exercise and the need to end taxes on all diet programs and supplements”.
And then the Senator from Burger King could step up and demand tax cuts for burgers, fries, shakes and buns to create more jobs in the food service industry.
if we are going to be screwed anyway they might as well do it in the open and they should pay us all out right for the @!$%#ing seat every year”
This way we can cut the cost of MP’s
Sadly your friend’s suggestion comes at a time when Ed Miliband is planning to ban such other interests from Parliament altogether. He has already done so within the Labour Party.
It’s not quite what the conservatives need at the moment, especially after their other personal attacks in the last week or so.
Perhaps they need a reminder that many still see them as the ‘Nasty Party’?
The ARE the nasty party.
True. But then I don’t think they quite realised the tolerance for that is sinking at a faster rate than it used to.
I posted this on the webpage of a local newspaper and it was not censored, which surprised me:-
Tony Dean says…
They would not let me ask the Conservative candidate this question.
Are you happy with Iain Duncan Smith putting more disabled people into coffins than into work?
(Before you censor this it can be backed up with evidence.)
As far as I can tell, Crosby and Shapps have chosen to abandon all pretence of not being the Nasty Party, and are trying to come across as being as ruthless, bloodthirsty and macho as possible. But it’s not working, partly because every publicity stunt is too obviously orchestrated, but also because they keep choosing the wrong targets to attack. It’s all very well looking ‘tough’, but they don’t want to look clumsy at the same time. That combination gives the impression of a blundering bully instead.
I’m fairly sure the Tory campaign is already beyond repair, as far too many people now view them as lying bullies. The only way they can win now is if Labour commit an unimaginably huge foul-up in the next three weeks. It’s all in Miliband’s hands now.
Trouble is, it is yet to really show across the polls.
At most Labour have a 4 point lead, and still look to be struggling to form a majority government.
That means over 300 constituencies will still return a Conservative MP.
With all the blogs and social media passing comment on Tory welfare policy, it will be interesting to see if more than 65% of the electorate bother to vote this time round.
If not, then something is very wrong.
Is the article from The Daily Mail part of the reason for his popularity ‘surge’? Tories missing the mark, yet again. To be fair, negative campaigns work. Expect this one to get worse, much worse…
I think negative campaigns work better when voting is mandatory, such as in Lintons backyard Australia, because it becomes a “I’ll vote for anyone but…” situation.
In the UK we tend not to like bullying or negative campaigning, to0 much of it and we might just side with the one who gets kicked all the time… and in Ed’s case it has allowed him to show a more statesman like reposte to Fallon, something the tories really didn’t want as their whole idea up to now was to show him as a weak nerd who couldn’t eat a sarny but are now arguing he was a bit of a lady’s man (before he got married, the cad)… stabbed his brother in the back, but won a fair vote, and so on.. the whole tory message is so mixed its collapsing in on itself and all the s*** slinging is now rebounding on Cameron especially after the sickening publicity stunt by his wife playing the dead disabled child card really failed spectacularly.
Spectacularly indeed – my own article about Cameron’s cynical use of his late son has had more than 50,000 hits this week.
Another excellent blog article about Mrs Cameron’s ‘interview’ can be found here: http://www.mamalewis.com/2015/04/06/the-shocking-truth-about-samantha-camerons-interview/#comment-5753
Definitely worth a read.
Hubris, can often lead to pushing a once successful strategy too far. By this I mean the line where Cameron states something along the line of, you can’t lecture me on looking after those with a disability. A point Cameron got away with stating during parliamentary questions (about month or so ago). Once, you’re caught abusing public sympathy, as eventually the general populace catch up with the reality of how the disabled are actually being treated, the public will turn very quickly and they will be very difficult to win back. That noted, there are a lot of undecided voters, but there are signs that a significant percentage are beyond the reach of the Tory media. My guess, is that another group of business leaders and/or celebrities will come out in favour of the Tories, probably very close to election day; making it difficult to refute their comments and its impact. If that happens we all need to have our responses ready and the ability to get them out as quickly and widely as possible.