Saturday, August 3, 2013

Tories Dirty Tricks Campaign - Have You Spotted it Yet?

It's obvious to anyone who follows politics what has been happening to Labour and Ed Miliband over the past couple of weeks since the commencement of the media and broadcast media's "silly season". We have seen a wave of personal attacks which have intensified over the past few days and which started with the media's blatant lying over the leak of the Keogh Review into avoidable hospital deaths.

What every Labour supporter who wants to see the back of this hideous Tory - led coalition government needs to do is stay calm, focused, and refuse to allow themselves to be manipulated by Lynton Crosby, the Tories, and their mates in the right wing press and Tory supporting broadcast media. Labour supporters should see these attacks for what they are; part of the Tory dirty tricks and smear campaign to divide the Labour party. If we refuse to be cowed and manipulated and divided, the Tories and their dirty tricks campaign will fail.

We all know the road to Downing Street is paved with Tory lies and sprung with trip wires and traps laid by the Conservatives and their mates in the right wing press eg; Rupert Murdoch; Paul Dacre; Rothermere and now David Dinsmore the new editor of the Sun has joined the list of "usual suspects". We have to try and avoid falling into the traps and help expose the Tory lies and smear campaigns wherever we see them, we can do this by keeping to our message and refusing to attack Ed Miliband. We may not agree with everything he does and says (I certainly don't), however, what we have to bear in mind is that much of what we think he is saying, he isn't actually saying it, it is all lies, innuendos and negative spinning by the Tories and right wing press. The bigger picture we have to keep in mind is that Ed Miliband is playing the long game. It would be pointless everytime the Tories attack Labour for them to come retaliating with their policies, if they did this then the right wing press would tear them to pieces. Labour are no doubt working on their election manifesto which they will release at the appropriate time and Labour supporters may find it beneficial to just wait and see what starts to transpire over the next 20 months in the run-up to 2015 and what is actually in the the Labour manifesto, they may be pleasantly surprised!

I have also not ruled out a snap election, if the Tories can get advantage over Labour in the polls now before the economy returns to its inevitable downward trend, (this time when the Osborne engineered over inflated house prices and credit bubbles burst) then Cameron may call a general election, hoping to catch both the Liberal Democrats and Labour on the back foot. I am aware that Cameron has introduced fixed term parliaments, but he still has the power to call an early election and let's be brutally honest, this would not be the first time that David Cameron has lied to the British public, so I do not trust him and would not put this passed him!

The Labour opposition and Ed Miliband is seriously disadvantaged in terms of press and other media outlet coverage making it hard for them to get a decent say and be reported accurately without being negatively spun against, let alone be given space and a prominent position on which to rebut these blatant mischief making reports!

The headlines of these attacks often mislead the reader as they bear no real relation to the content of report, newspaper editors know that most people read the headlines and nothing else, so job done - reader misled! The Sun, Daily Mail, Telegraph, Express etc and lately even the Guardian  are guilty of this misleading and misrepresentation and the way these attacks have all come together and following each other on seems to suggest that there is a concerted effort to coordinate them going on behind the scenes. The last person to fall foul of this vicious, personal, nasty deceitful kind of smear campaign and politicking was former Labour PM, Gordon Brown. We all saw this and stood by helplessly as war was waged on him in the right wing press for over two years, are we going to stand back and allow ourselves to be lied to and manipulated again about Ed Miliband?

One way of helping to stop this campaign in its tracks is to refuse to tweet it or share it in any way on any of the social media outlets, this will greatly reduce the number of people who get to read the article and its misleading headline. If it doesn't get tweeted or shared, the papers will pretty soon drop it as their advertisers won't pay for poorly viewed articles, as these articles depend on streamlined advertising and payment is partly by the amount of "clicks" attracted from these articles, so if they are not drawing the revenue they will be very unlikely to run many more of these stories in the future. Money always talks (ask any Tory).

The Tory party is not a proper political party, it is merely the political wing of the banks, corporations, big business and private healthcare companies etc. The Tory party is part of the seedy financial establishment that helped get this country and the world into the trouble it is in today. In fact over 25% of the Conservative party political funding comes from Hedge Funds (who make money out of peoples misery in recessions), financiers and private equity firms. They are lobbied on policy by companies such as CTF Partners, which is owned by the Tory election strategist Lynton Crosby. A trawl of 450 separate donations given to the Conservative Central Office by individuals, companies and limited liability partnerships reveals that £3.3m of the £12.18m donated to the Tory party in 2011 alone came from hedge funds, financiers and private equity firms; read more HERE.

It appears that the Tories have started their election campaign early and in earnest, the question that every Labour supporter should ask is not about what Ed Miliband is doing over some trumped up pointless bit of frippery over his leadership from the "usual suspects" appearing in the usual Tory right wing press, but asking why it is the Tories are firing salvos at Labour at every given opportunity so early? I believe it is because they know several things two important ones are; 1) the 7 to 10 point Labour lead in the polls is proving extremely stubborn to move. 2) The Tories have received a lot of negative publicity over lobbying and Lynton Crosby. It's plain and obvious that money corrupts and buys influence and policy in the Tory party and they did not want to break for the summer recess and have this the last thing in the electorate's minds, so they have decided to go on the attack, which is also why we are seeing the highly publicised anti immigrants drive timed specifically for the summer recess silly season in the press. I also think that one of the reasons why the Tories are doing this is because they may be planning a Spring 2014 snap election!

So dear Labour supporters, don't panic, we are in the midst of a Tory dirty tricks election campaign, it will not get better, in fact it will get worse from here on in as the Tories try to dislodge the Labour lead in the polls. If we want Ed Miliband and Labour to buck the trend and turn a massive labour defeat in the 2010 general election into success at the next general election campaign (whenever that may be) and make history and turn this Tory coalition government into a one term wonder, it won't be easy and we have to be strong, don't fall for the lies, innuendo backbiting etc, remember that it is all coming from the Tories, arguing and division in our ranks is exactly what the Tories are aiming for so don't let them succeed!" It's "steady as she goes" and come on, do you honestly believe that Ed Miliband is not well aware of this and has nothing planned? I believe the Tories have bolted and gone too quickly, let them carry on, gradually if we ignore them they will burn themselves out and the public will become sick of their constant negativity.

Ed Miliband is in this to win it and he is smarter than Cameron and  his Aussie attack dingo put together! Ed Miliband is a brilliant Labour asset and he is constantly underestimated in the press, but the Tories they know how potent Ed Miliband can be and they are right to be fearful of him. The very last thing the Tories want is for the public to get wind of the real Ed Miliband, the man of intellect, strength, compassion, integrity and above all else *honesty* and this is what they along with their right wing press barons are trying to suppress. It is why David Cameron does not want live TV leadership debates, like the coward he is, he's trying to wriggle out of them, he knows it is a colossal risk that through the highly viewed debates the public will get to see, like and respect Ed Miliband and he is right to be scared, remember Ed's speech to conference last year? Wouldn't you be scared if you were a tired worn out liar like Cameron suddenly faced with that rare breed an "honest politician"?

Cameron has nothing to fall back on but lies, lies and more lies and NHS privatisation, the unnecessary dangerous shambles of NHS 111 and Universal Credit flagship policy in tatters. This is what Lynton Crosby is trying to hide, he's also trying to hide his own possible conflict of interests at the heart of British government and the slowly emerging Tory lobbying scandal and possible corruption! Well we will not let them conceal it, if they are Tories they may be able to run but they cannot hide from the tsunami of truth that will hit them during their campaign



Have faith, keep the message and press on, we have a lot to do, many people are depending upon us, we are Labour people, we will not let them down!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent, spot on article. This has been going on for so long, too. I wrote a lengthy piece about propaganda techniques, this blog sums up the aims so well.

A little while back the media -The Guardian in particular- lied about labour's stance on the sanction legislation passed by IDS. That created widespread kneejerks, as people swallowed it.I contacted Liam Byrne and found out what the score was - http://kittysjones.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/2366/

and a long and long series of examples of propaganda -
http://kittysjones.wordpress.com/2013/07/25/propaganda/

Anonymous said...

The Coalition, with their control of the media, and their recent hysteria about moderate comment from the BBC, (not known to be the bedrock of communism, lol) and their sneaky dismantling of equality legislation, suppression of evidence and stifling of debate and criticism, bear all of the characteristic hallmarks of authoritarianism.