CUNNING COULSON SUBMITS SAMANTHA TO A DOUBLE SPIN

Peter — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:30:32 +0000

The Conservatives’ Master of Ironic Spin and Double-bluff, Andy Coulson has pulled off a useful image-enhancing coup at a key moment in the Tories’ election campaign.
     He has contrived to have it leaked, by means of a TV “gaffe” by Tory Shadow Arts Minster, Ed Vaizey that Samantha Cameron, sexy wife of Vaizey’s leader and close friend, has voted Labour in the past. To compound the effectiveness of the spin, of course, the Conservatives are denying it hotly, and Sam announced that she never voted for Tony Blair, adding the unverifiable statement that she has never voted labour.
     She may have done; she may not, but in 1992, she and Dave had barely met and weren’t an item (they weren’t married until 1996). During the general election that year (Kinnock’s Greatest Hour and the year of his pre-triumphal rallies in football stadia across the nation), Sam was studying Fine Art at UWE, Bristol. At that time (after 11 years of Mrs T, and a year of dithering by Major) and in that place, she could only have considered voting labour.
     On close inspection, and despite the Conservatives’ faux indignation, this revelation that an intelligent art student in her early 20s had – at least temporarily – eschewed her tribal leanings and abandoned the prescribed path of the burgeoning Sloane Ranger or Hooray Henrietta, is entirely positive. It can have done nothing but good for Cameron’s appeal to the middle-ground, as yet uncommitted voters that Cameron needs to swing him into power. It is precisely these non-tribal, thinking voters that he needs to impress – and they will be impressed by Sam’s evident (and quite possibly genuine) independence of thought and social sensitivity.

On the same theme, since my blog last week on the electoral liability of George Osborne (despite Coulson’s best efforts to make him more elector-friendly by dirtying him up a bit through tales of student friendships with less than straight, drug-using, non-white folk), rumours abound that Osborne is to be sidelined in the Conservatives principle electoral push, with the likable, reliable and unsnobby Ken Clarke returning to the fore.
If he moves into No 10, Andy Coulson’s former involvement with illegal activities at the News of the World will make him a serious, long term liability for Cameron, despite his best efforts now.
Since he’s shown them how to do it, DC should bung him out before his presence does serious damage.

Peter Burden » gaffe

CUNNING COULSON SUBMITS SAMANTHA TO A DOUBLE SPIN