Labour prime their anti-Coulson strategy
Peter Hoskin 1:34pm
Some useful insights from PR Week's David Singleton, who reveals that Labour are planning a concerted effort to paint Andy Coulson as a "sleazeball" ahead of - and perhaps during - the next election campaign. Here's a snippet:
You wonder why Labour have only thought of this strategy now, given how the Guardian story contains no new revelations about Coulson himself. Whatever - if nothing further emerges to implicate the former News of the World editor more closely in the scandal, then the Labour spin doctors will have a tough time making this stick."One senior Labour source in regular contact with Gordon Brown's inner circle told PRWeek: ‘Cameron wants to present himself as the man who's going to clean up politics. That's going to be difficult if the public think his right-hand man is a complete sleazeball.'
Another Labour insider said that senior party figures had been thrashing out a strategy to target Coulson since the news emerged yesterday. The source said the aim was have Coulson ‘wounded, but still there'.
The source added that if Coulson was to hang on by Cameron's side, then Labour would be able to target him heavily him during last four weeks of a general election campaign."
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Red Rag
July 9th, 2009 1:45pm Report this commentI see you have taken your part in the Tory strategy.
Good on you!
James Strachan
July 9th, 2009 1:50pm Report this commentAnd why should the Government spin doctors be serving party political ends ?
M.Parker
July 9th, 2009 1:54pm Report this commentWhat a vile desperate bunch.If labour win the next general election.I will have to emigrate.
Maggie
July 9th, 2009 1:59pm Report this commentEverything Labour does manages to insult the intelligence of the electorate. Do they really think we are too stupid to recognise a smear campaign (featuring Peter Mandelson!) when we see one?
Alex
July 9th, 2009 2:07pm Report this commentSame old Labour. Same old lies.
Peter Mandelson, John Prescott and Charles Clarke who've been speaking out on this are part of the team that wrecked the economy, took us to war on a lie, undermined the constitution and increased people's taxes by stealth.
Who cares what they and their cheerleaders in the BBC and at The Guardian think?
All they have left are their smears and dividing lines, and their sociopathic leader.
Euan
July 9th, 2009 2:08pm Report this commentLabour don't need to 'paint' him as a sleazeball. He manifestly is.
Wily Trout
July 9th, 2009 2:12pm Report this commentIf only they spent as much time and effort trying to run the country.
Ali
July 9th, 2009 2:12pm Report this commentIt sounds to me very convenient that just as it starts to twig for Brown and his cronies that no amount of lies on policy will get them elected, a (so far as I can tell) completely uncorroborated, 3 year old story slightly connected to the former life of a man now working for the Tories just happens to appear in a Labour friendly newspaper.
James
July 9th, 2009 2:16pm Report this commentWhy don't Labour focus firstly on Government and secondly getting their own house in order.
If ministers and spads are really wasting their time with smear campaigns to run during an uncalled election - then it is a very sad indictment on their party.
Politics is a dirty game and both sides are aware of that. But this is desperate stuff.
Richard
July 9th, 2009 2:16pm Report this commentI have always been sceptical about all that "beeboid" paranoia but I think the BBC is actively campaigning against the opposition. Its coverage, 30 minutes on Today this morning, huge swathes on Robinsons dismal blog (cf Macbride), is an absolute disgrace and someone needs to take them on.
Hawkeye
July 9th, 2009 2:27pm Report this commentSilly sods. It just gives Cameron the ammo to compare Coulson with McBride and by every comparison you can make Coulson does better. He even fell on his sword and resigned when caught and don't think that Cameron will fail to point that out!
Even if PC Plod arrests him it will not help Labour as they have used the line "We cannot comment on an ongoing police investigation" too manys times already, so they will have to shut up. Since Plod have already looked at Coulson in the past it seems unlikely that they will charge him this time round.
To be honest, it strikes me that this is just another example of the Left's obsession with smearing people, of believing that character destruction is the first step in removing those you do not like.
Proud Dundonian
July 9th, 2009 2:38pm Report this commentCoulson sounds like a pretty street-fighting sort of guy. I like him; Cameron should keep him in his job.
logdon
July 9th, 2009 2:50pm Report this commentFrom Plato just now......
"Hilarious - Anne Clwyd MP has just said this...
“Given Mr Coulson’s dubious reputation none of us on this side of the House can feel comfortable that he is allowed to walk the corridors.”
What a pillock."
They are insane, they really are! Or is it wishful thinking from the Blonde Bombshell of the valleys?
The question should be, are we comfortable that all these bent, spineless spongers can walk (sorry, travel by chauffered limousine) the highways and byways of Britan?
rmh
July 9th, 2009 2:50pm Report this commentThey are working on the principle that people would want more of Gordon Brown.
If the British public vote for that, then they are stupid, reckless and get everything they deserve, from no pensions when they retire, to a bankrupt state, even greater unemployment and to be considered the basket case of Europe.
Sometime I wonder if the spin doctors, or those they are trying to get to vote for their cause are the more feckless and ridiculous.
Also it is not like he was working for anyone who robbed old people of their pensions is it.
John Page
July 9th, 2009 3:00pm Report this commentYou hope, Peter. You have Andrew Neill saying this is a huge scandal, and an apparently re-opening police investigation.
Osborne and Cameron have been flat-footed again. Coulson should have been stood aside.
Labour don't have to 'make it stick' they just have to cast smears. And this is your leader's idea of the new politics?
Maggie
July 9th, 2009 3:03pm Report this commentI really hope that Cameron ignores all this manufactured hoo-ha. Everyone involved in throwing mud at him and Coulson is discredited, dishonest and beneath contempt.
Carly
July 9th, 2009 3:07pm Report this commentIn an effort to smear the Tories Labour have picked the mother of all fights with Mr Murdoch, surely they're not that stupid???
Pete Hoskin
July 9th, 2009 3:08pm Report this commentJohn Page: just to clarify, I'm not making excuses for the phone hacking - a disgraceful practice in my eyes. And as I said earlier, this is certainly a difficult - and potentially damaging - story for the Tories. But the fact remains that Coulson remains as implicated in this story as he was three years ago - so why all the belated disgust from certain quarters?
Joanne, London
July 9th, 2009 3:08pm Report this commentThe big question is, who leaked this to the Guradian and why now? What would they have to gain?
TomTom
July 9th, 2009 3:12pm Report this commentIf all the people who have had their phones bugged sue the NOTW Murdoch is going to take a big financial hit. And if there is one thing Murdoch cares about in this world it's his business interests (see Alistair Campbell diaries). So if Labour have started this ball rolling in the hope of just damaging Coulson they are extremely short sighted.
Florence Nightingale
July 9th, 2009 3:29pm Report this commentMaggie @1.59pm.
Yes, they really do believe we are that stupid, for the simple reason that some of us are!!
Vulture
July 9th, 2009 3:39pm Report this commentThis is quite clearly a Liebour dirty trix campaign: what the hell has any of this got to do with Business Secy Lord Mandelslime? Yet, there he was on the World at One denouncing Coulson for all he's worth. The Guardian and BBC are colluding in this. But I don't think the voters will notice: 90 % of them have never heard of
Coulson, and I don't think they are going to be outraged by the News of the Screws bugging Max Clifford's fone. Its a fringe issue at best. See how it plays in the Norwich by-election, frinstance ( Answer: it won't).
Vulture
July 9th, 2009 3:40pm Report this commentThis is quite clearly a Liebour dirty trix campaign: what the hell has any of this got to do with Business Secy Lord Mandelslime? Yet, there he was on the World at One denouncing Coulson for all he's worth. The Guardian and BBC are colluding in this. But I don't think the voters will notice: 90 % of them have never heard of
Coulson, and I don't think they are going to be outraged by the News of the Screws bugging Max Clifford's fone. Its a fringe issue at best. See how it plays in the Norwich by-election, frinstance ( Answer: it won't).
tilly williams
July 9th, 2009 4:16pm Report this commentIt strikes me Labour MPs have been told what to say. Labour are mounting a smear and dirty tricks campaign how arrogant of them to think that we want them in power again. If Cameron sacks Coulson who will be next they are already targeting Osborne it also seems that an aweful lot of people such as BBC Guardian and other papers are targeting the Tories it strikes me we have more than a fight with Labour on our hands we have one with the left and the communists well, Mandelson is a communist What about the Damien Green afair MG Rover affair Labour tells the most enormous lies anyone watch questiontime last week with Harman and Duncan Smith he corrected her and she just carried on speaking lies about the Tory cuts. God help us if they get in again I think I will go abroad to live and not in Europe
John Law
July 9th, 2009 4:17pm Report this commentlogdon
July 9th, 2009 2:50pm
Naughty; you should never speak ill of the brain dead.
colin
July 9th, 2009 4:33pm Report this commentThe Labour Lies just keep on coming...
John Page
July 9th, 2009 4:51pm Report this commentPeter: the 'disgust' now is because the story has changed. It's no longer about one rogue journalist. The allegation now is that hacking was widespread in the NI tabloids.
How could the editor of the NoW not have known? And if you dissect his 'denial', it is intriguingly carefully crafted.
We'll see over the next few days if the Guardian's story does indeed have legs. If it has, Cameron has made a very poor call.
Tankus
July 9th, 2009 5:20pm Report this commentWhere's Fraser's take on this ,seeing that he's on the inside.
RW
July 9th, 2009 5:49pm Report this commentWell, well, well. No further evidence, says DC Yates. Collapse of stout party. Egg on faces of Guardian, BBC, John Prescott, Alistair Campbell and many others including a certain Mr Neil.
As I commented earlier in the day, this has potential to be very damaging - for Labour.
They can't even do a proper smear operation now. Can't they get anything right?
Michael Bridgwater
July 9th, 2009 5:50pm Report this commentA series of Labour virtual political broadcasts, courtesy of BBC, on the subject, including one from Campbell from the wilds of Pendle [of which country!]. Now plod say Prescott not 'hacked' and numbers not as given by Gruniad. Pure snide politics and we are going to be saturated by the same from Labour until the election is over
Sir Graphus
July 9th, 2009 6:45pm Report this commentDoes politics really have to be such a disgustingly filthy business?
strapworld
July 9th, 2009 10:34pm Report this commentI believe Coulson will leave the Tory party in a few weeks and take up the job of Editor of THE SUN.
The Lib Dems and Labour will rue the day- as they have now sealed their fate. All the Murdoch stable will definately be pro tory now!!
commentator
July 9th, 2009 11:20pm Report this commentIf people are stupid enough not to password protect their mobile voice mail, then sleazeball newspaper types may try to ring the number to get the messages. This is not hacking. It's low, but it's not hacking.
AB
July 10th, 2009 12:43pm Report this commentAt least Coulson doesn't have the blood of an innocent man on his hands. He also hasn't sexed up any dossiers to justify a war that has killed thousands of innocent men, women and children. Alistair Campbell and the New labour spin machine are in no position to lecture anyone on ethics.
R. Murdoch
July 10th, 2009 2:07pm Report this comment"What a vile desperate bunch.If labour win the next general election.I will have to emigrate." M.Parker
Excellent and good riddance ! One less boring miserable Tory old fart to deal with.
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