Oh dear. It seems that there’s something of a briefing war in the Sunday papers over who is to blame for Labour’s misfiring attack advert. On Thursday evening the party released a hard-hitting graphic which read: ‘Do you think adults convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison? Rishi Sunak doesn’t’ alongside a smiling photo of the Prime Minister. A series of figures on the Labour left queued up to condemn it, joining a chorus of protest from centrist commentators.
So it’s no surprise that the shadow cabinet are now all pointing the finger of blame at each other, as the party debates whether to double down on the strategy. ‘Labour row deepens over Sunak attack ad’ roars the front page of today’s Observer, which claims that the shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, was not informed or consulted about the graphic’s release. The paper quotes ‘Labour sources’ saying that Cooper ‘had nothing to do with it’ – despite, er, being in overall charge of crime policy for Labour.
Instead, ‘one well-placed party insider’ credits the digital poster as being part of a ‘policy push by the shadow justice secretary, Steve Reed, whose team was keen to highlight the way in which too many criminals were receiving community sentences rather than custodial ones.’ The insider is quoted as saying ‘Steve must be furious because this was a good policy which has been totally overshadowed by what has now become ‘graphicgate’. The Mail on Sunday meanwhile followed up on the story, saying that ‘Ms Cooper’s intervention triggered fury within Labour.’ It also quoted an unnamed ‘Labour insider’ as saying:
This is sheer cowardice from a serial failure who should have left frontline politics long ago. If Yvette disagrees so strongly with pointing out the Tories’ dismal record on crime, she knows where the door is. She still has delusions of being leader, but leaders don’t stab people in the back.
Punchy. It’s worth noting perhaps that Reed has been all over the series of ‘Rishi Sunak doesn’t’ care adverts, sharing them no fewer than five times. Yvette Cooper on the other hand hasn’t tweeted them once. And three months ago the MoS also reported that ‘senior party figures’ were suggesting ‘that Ms Cooper should be switched to another brief and replaced by Steve Reed, the party’s justice spokesman’ who won ‘praise from Labour modernisers’ with ‘a Blair-style pledge that Labour was now the party of law and order.’
Talk about joined up opposition…
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