Crewed Campaigns

Tamsin Dunwoody, is by her own admission is a just a single, unemployed mother of five.

Gosh!

Oh yes and her house has 6 acres of land and she happens to be the daughter of the recently deseased MP and her grandparents were the General Secretary of the Labour Party and baroness somebody - plus she lives in Wales. In fact she is the least likely person to benefit from a political campaign that has focused on the class, and upbringing of her opponent Edward Timson.

Plus she seems to be the perfect Labour candidate - hasn't got anything to do with the borough she seeks to represent and has used nepotism to be the candidate.

And actually it says a great deal about New labour that they should choose this line of attack because Edward Timson might well be a toff, but the family money did not come from being a whore of some-old-king-or-other or from killing a lot of people and stealing their land on behalf of the crown - it came from starting a business from one shop, building that business into a succesful company and keeping it all running for 140 years.

The message is pretty clear, if you have aspiration and you work hard then the party of the 'hard working family' doesn't want to know you.

The fact is that leave aside the rights and wrongs of the Toff attack strategy, one thing is clear that Tamsin is going to be the one who gets the blame for it. Because on almost a daily basis one reads of cabinet ministers and senior party officials distancing themselves from the campaign - for instance Harriet Harman was supposed to trun up and canvas for Ms Dunwoody, but she was too busy trying to create Labour party candidates from cloned siblings and Labour voters from from a mixture of sheep and Polly Toynbee's pubic hair.

But you do wonder what anyone expected to gain from this camapign.

You have the toffs thing - which I personally think was the brainchild of Kevin MacGuire. MacGuire seems to be one of those in Gordon's bunker, and he is always banging on about toffs in his column, so it doesn't take a genius to work out where this line of attack came from. Unless of course one believes that Tamsin - who will take the blame - is going to claim that she dreamed it up.

Then there is that poster which claims that the 'Tories are soft on yobs' - complete with the clunking fist - which personally I think was Bliar taking the piss out of Gordon, but Gordon being Gordon took it as a compliment. It's rather like Geoffrey Howe thinking Dennis Healy was bigging him up by calling him a dead sheep.

But hold on here a minute.

When you complain about crime, and anti social behaviour in your community - what is it that you want done? Is it the return of birching, the stocks, gangs of govenerment sanctioned vigilanttes beating up errant youths (al la Northern Ireland)? Or is it that you just want the existing law to be enforced and for the existing authorities to take their responsibility seriously?

I would suggest that unless you are a yob yourself, you would want the latter.

So quite who is going to see this poster, with a fist coming at them with the word 'SOFT' written across the knuckles, and think, 'I must vote Labour' - is anyone's guess.

The entire Labour campaign has been negative.

I keep reading Ms Dunwoody saying that she is running a serious campaign on serious local issues - but then I also keep hearing her avoid questions about whether she thinks Gordon Brown is a political asset.

The fact is that this campaign has Gordon Brown's finger marks all over it - despite his staying away for fear that his jinxing presence will condemn Labour to third or even fourth place in a seat they held at the last election with a 7000 majority.

Oh and while I'm on the subject of total losers, I did have a little giggle at this story - Lib Dems 'can still win in Crewe'.

According to the Gdirauan, Labour's poll ratings are at their losest since 1987, and the problem is that the Lib Dems are not the benefiting. Which to me suggests that the declining sales of the Gadiraun has had made serious dent in the tectical voting phenomena that swept the Tories from power in 1997, and kept Bliar in power.

Which is hardly surprising really - because when 'l'iberal Britain got hooked on tactical voting the the ethical foreign policy they were voting for wouldn't have included a war in Iraq, and no doubt many people concerned with the amount of rubbish going into land fills would have preffered the producers and distributors of the waste to be the one's dealt with - rather than bin taxes, and the rats associated with twice weekly rubbish collection.

In fact it doesn't take a genius to notice that the decline in sales of the Gairudan has conincided with the introduction of their agenda in government by New Labour.

What makes me laugh is that this agenda has been so awful, that people are prepared to swallow their hatred of the Tories and vote for them.

So when a nonentity like Nick Clegg claims that the Lib Dems can still win in Crewe, you do have to laugh.

I guess we shall have to wait and see what the result is.

For the sake of the country I hope Labour get a sound beating - which in turn brings them to their senses - which in turn leads them to drop this negative, right wing style of campaining - though with an idiot like Gordon Power as the 'leader' I somehow doubt it.

peace:)