The Lynton Crosby effect: dog whistles and jewellery jokes

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/sep/29/lynton-crosby

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Conservative MPs who packed into the main conference hall at Heythrop Park in Oxfordshire at their awayday this month learned an important lesson about their Australian campaign director: Lynton Crosby is not one for deference.

With most of the cabinet dotted randomly in seats around the hall, Crosby decided to liven up a slide presentation on election tactics by recounting a story about the prime minister's affluent Witney seat nearby.

He told his audience of about 200 MPs that he had been startled by the expensive jewellery on display when the prime minister invited him to be the main speaker at a fundraising dinner. "If just one of the ladies had managed to sell one earring we could have funded the Tory party for three months," Crosby said to howls of laughter, according to a member of the audience.

The mildly subversive vignette, which plays to the cliche that the prime minister is part of a gilded circle far removed from the lives even of his own MPs, was a telling illustration of the greatest asset that Crosby brings to the party. "Lynton is extremely good at talking truth unto power," says a veteran.

The central role afforded to Crosby at the Tory awayday – and his ability to tell a joke at the prime minister's expense in his presence – shows that he retains the complete confidence of Downing Street, despite months of critical publicity. The Tory leadership knew that Crosby, a hate figure on the left in Australia after he helped the centre-right Liberal leader John Howard to four successive election victories with highly divisive tactics, would attract adverse attention.

But they were slightly taken aback by months of relentless campaigning by Labour over allegations that Crosby, whose company advises the giant tobacco firm Philip Morris, had persuaded Cameron to abandon plans for plain cigarette packaging. Crosby insists he has never lobbied the prime minister. Crosby went even further and said he had not discussed tobacco policy with Cameron or lobbied the prime minister on the issue.

Cameron still believes that he made the right decision when, encouraged by Crosby's great fan George Osborne, he finally persuaded the Australian to run the Tory campaign for the 2015 general election when the party was at one of its lows last year. The prime minister had one key thought: the notoriously undisciplined Tory tribe needed a disciplinarian who would command respect in a way that appears to be beyond the leadership. One senior MP says: "As far as most of the parliamentary party is concerned, Lynton Crosby really is the Wizard of Oz. Old lags see him as a real professional. In a first world war analogy we have had the bright young staff officers but we now have a battle-hardened commander as our chief of staff."

Osborne had another thought, which even Cameron's closest friends voice with care in his presence: how to avoid a repeat of the ramshackle 2010 general election campaign, when the Tories had a string of competing messages.

One Tory who knows Crosby well from the 2005 Tory general election campaign, which he ran after a late summons from Michael Howard, says he will bring three strong qualities. These are: clarity; an ability to stand up to Osborne and Cameron; and an ability to run a good team. The Tory said: "The ability to tell David and George when they are wrong was probably the most important quality recommending Lynton. He will be able to stand up to them. Nobody can do that apart from the two of them and Steve [Hilton]."

Crosby famously ran a tight – but happy – ship in the old Tory HQ on Victoria Street during the 2005 general election. He made singled out Colin on the front desk for praise, made department heads play computer games against each other and ran a national anthem singing contest when the Tories were criticised for tilting to the right on immigration. Wales won.

The party gained only 33 seats and saw its overall vote increased by just 0.7 points to 32.4%. But Tories believe Crosby helped save them from an even worse result because Howard had only been in place for 18 months after the disastrous tenure of Iain Duncan Smith.

Senior figures from then remember his disciplined message, which saw the Tories campaign on five policy areas explained in 10 words: more police, cleaner hospitals, lower taxes, school discipline, controlled immigration. Crosby says the party should remember a key lesson from 2005: choose an issue if it meets two conditions. These are that is "salient" and resonates with the electorate, and the party naturally identifies with the issue.

In the runup to 2015 Crosby believes the Tories should focus on four issues: the economy, welfare, the strength of the prime minister (and weakness of Ed Miliband), and immigration. He calls this scraping "the barnacles off the boat" and is said to believe that health should not be a signature issue for the the party – it is salient but not one where Tories can expect to have a large impact.

Tory MPs were also given a blunt message by Crosby at their awayday on the challenge of Nigel Farage's UK Independence party. "Stop worrying about Ukip – play the policies, not the people," one MP quoted him as saying. "A lot of Ukip supporters will come back."

Extensive – and highly expensive – polling is used to identify the "salient" issues, how voters feel about them and which messages resonate. One Crosby fan, who says he has an instinctive feel for ordinary voters, says: "Lynton's forensic polling makes the UK polling industry look like a Skoda – no, not even Skoda. It makes it look like a Trabant."

Cameron, who first got to know Crosby during the 2005 campaign, when he was asked by Howard to take charge of the manifesto, believes this discipline has already started paying dividends, with a much sharper Tory operation in the early summer. The prime minister was also struck by Crosby's success in helping Boris Johnson secure two successive election victories in 2008 and 2012.

One ally says: "It is like the film The Dresser where you have the prima donna and you have the guy who's got to get him on stage. Lynton took charge of Boris on a couple of occasions in no uncertain terms and Boris listened to him. You can see Lynton has done that in the last few months for us nationally."But Crosby's successful role in the second London mayoral campaign in 2012 highlighted weaknesses that have given some Tories pause for thought. Guto Harri, a former senior aide to the mayor, said Crosby's effective but dull campaign, which focused on Tory voters in outer London, took the "bubbles out of the champagne".

Critics say Crosby's tactics exemplify "dog-whistle" politics – in which messages, crafted in inoffensive language, are targeted at the right. One Tory said: "There is only one type of politics Lynton Crosby understands, which is the core vote thing … He gets the vote out by really going for the lowest common denominator."

There were concerns that Crosby appeared to show little interest in reaching out to black and minority ethnic voters. There were criticisms that Munira Mirza, now deputy mayor for education and culture, and Kulveer Ranger, now the mayor's director of environment, did not have more prominent roles in the campaign. "It was moronic," one Tory said.

The Mail on Sunday reported last year that Crosby said the Johnson campaign should not focus much attention on "fucking Muslims". But even his Tory critics say Crosby is not in the slightest bit racist. Crosby's spokesman repeated his response to the allegations at the time: "It is entirely mischievous to suggest Lynton is racist in any way. He campaigned vigorously for the Muslim vote during the mayoral race. He has absolutely no recollection whatsoever of making these comments."

The six-figure costs of Crosby's work – his consultancy fee is supplemented by fees for polling carried out by his CTF consultancy – raised eyebrows at Tory HQ, where there are concerns that one person acts as pollster and strategist.

One veteran, who is dismissive of claims that the pollster Andrew Cooper of Populus will still have a role, says: "Polling and strategy are two separate disciplines. Polling is objective. It is telling you where the battlefield is. If the leader says to the pollster give me the first move you recommend, you have now moved him from objectivity to subjectivity. The two disciplines should be very separate because you need a check and a balance."

Some Tory critics say Crosby is little more than a hired gun who has actually worked against the Conservatives. In the 2009 European elections he worked as campaign manager for the small but well-funded party Libertas, which secured 0.5%. "You are relying on one man who is a commercial hired gun," one Tory said.

The return of Crosby means that Cameron's former policy guru Steve Hilton, who had moved to California, is likely to play an even smaller role than the already diminished one he was planning. Hilton believes Crosby is a brilliant campaign organiser but the wrong man to take charge of messaging. But there will therefore be no repeat of the clashes during the last election between "Steve the husky" and Andy Coulson, the harder Tory. One senior figure says: "That Coulson role has been filled by Lynton who is a much bigger beast than Coulson was. There is always a tension at the top and now the balance of power has shifted quite dramatically against Steve. Steve used to be counterbalanced by Coulson. He is now outweighed by Lynton."

Crosby may be a weighty figure but even his Tory critics admit that he has never taken on airs and graces. At the party's away day he made a point of going up to the outspoken Tory MP Sarah Wollaston after she was booed by her colleagues when she confronted Crosby in a question and answer session.

"Lynton is a pretention-free guy," one friend said, recalling that Crosby modestly hung at the back of the room at the Australian high commission during a reception for the Queen. "We don't do that sort of stuff," he said, much to the irritation of his monarchist wife, Dawn, when asked why he had not elbowed to the front.

So when Tories gather for brainstorming sessions at manor houses in the runup to the election, they know that a blunt Australian will help keep them grounded.

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