The Sunday Star Times carry an interesting article on the methods of the PR guides to Boris’s electoral campaign, Crosby/Textor:
“In the 2008 London mayoralty race, Crosby was campaign manager while Textor managed the research. The Conservative candidate, Boris Johnson, was energetic, prone to eccentric outbursts and relatively inexperienced. Crosby/Textor decided that the 2005 Conservative campaign’s appeals to racism wouldn’t work for Johnson. Instead there were three strands to their campaign…
First, Crosby and Textor realised there was a high risk of Johnson tripping up and making mistakes compared with his experienced opponent. Their answer was to tightly control and script all Johnson’s public appearances. Two experienced public relations specialists oversaw him continually, declining interviews that didn’t suit their strategies and strictly keeping Johnson “on message”. Crosby/Textor call this “message discipline”, meaning a politician sticking to prepared lines no matter what the question or occasion lines that are mostly written by others.
As a result, journalists saw only “the constrained, on-message Johnson”, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. An insider concluded that by scripting all his lines, controlling all his appearances and avoiding challenging interviews, Crosby/Textor “stopped Boris being Boris … and it worked.”
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What the hell does this mean?
…”the 2005 Conservative campaign’s appeals to racism”…
“What the hell does this mean?”
That’s a very good question..and I’ve no idea.
Presumably something to do with this (from the linked article)…
Working for the Conservative Party in the 2005 British elections, Crosby/Textor used attacks on gypsies and immigrants under the sly campaign slogan “Are you thinking what we’re thinking?”
Which, since they “decided” not to use it, seems like an admission that it was a deliberate tactic, despite Crosby’s fervent denials.
The ‘Are You Thinking What We’re Thinking’ slogan was taken as a fairly transparent attempt to get the anti-immigrant vote out by suggesting that the Tories secretly shared their views and would stop all these foreigners coming over here, taking our jobs and women, etc. Dog-whistle technique. I wouldn’t necessarily say it was an appeal to racism, petty-minded xenophobia, perhaps, but the racist vote isn’t enough to win FPTP elections with.