Another day, another Conservative campaign gaffe. This time it involves Education Secretary Gillian Keegan who has enthusiastically thrown her support behind the Tory candidate for Winchester, Flick Drummond. And so excited was Keegan about Drummond’s prospects she turned up to the launch event, um, several hours early. Talk about getting ahead of yourself…
Drummond’s launch event was actually scheduled for 2.30pm on Tuesday afternoon, leaving a rather confused Secretary of State with some unanticipated free time on her hands this morning. Recovering quickly from her false start, Keegan decided to spend her morning talking up Drummond anyway — who was most recently the Tory MP for Meon Valley, split up by the latest boundary changes. Keegan gushed to local reporters that ‘Flick is an absolutely brilliant campaigner’ before turning her guns on the Tories’ main rivals in the area, the Liberal Democrats. The seat is on a knife-edge, with current projections suggesting Sir Ed Davey’s party may just snatch it from the Conservatives with a slim majority of around 2.9 per cent. But with four and a half weeks still to go, it’s all to fight for…
Slamming Davey’s liberal lot, Keegan continued her one-woman campaigning this morning, telling journalists:
The reality is the Lib Dems say one thing on a poster and tend to do something different… This is an election where people have to look at the quality, look at what people have said, look at actions… We do think we have the experience to well represent places like Winchester, and Flick is very experienced, a brilliant candidate, a great listener and a great doer.
Not a completely wasted journey, then. And after the Education Secretary’s glowing report of Drummond, Mr S has no doubt the Winchester candidate at least will be more than happy to tell Keegan she’s ‘done a f***ing good job’…
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