Howard and Crosby Sink to New Despicable Depths

So the poor beknighted Gypsies have become public enemy number one in the Tories eyes. Gypsies like asylum seekers area marginal minority attacking them is politically easy and costs the Tories little political capital. Obviously Crosby has been taking tips from the Goebbels school of news management: select a generally distrusted minority pick a few examples of minority behaving badly and smear the rest of them. So via tapping the brainstem of the average Daily Mail reader Crosby has found another means of wrong-footing the increasingly shambolic 'New' Labour election campaign. As I have noted before tactically the Tories are playing the pre-election build-up very smartly, spinning the news cycle in their direction hence dictating the politcal pace to the government.

Interestingly the economy no longer seems to have the hold that it has in previous elections with the budget falling flat, failing to resonate with the wider electorate. The general public takes prosperity as a given and thus can fixate more on percieved niggles and worries. The Tories have exploited this complacency to good effect time after time and 'New' Labour is on the defensive. It will be instructive to see how they respond to being out-triangulated...