Labour accuse Lynton Crosby of ‘going nuclear’ to distract from non-dom row

Despite their leader playing the pious ‘not angry, but disappointed’ shtick at his press conference this morning, it’s not all po-faces over in Labour land after the Tories’ latest attack on Ed Miliband. ‘Lynton Crosby has literally had to go nuclear to distract from non-doms,’ chuckles a chirpy Labour source.

Tory sources back this up, saying it was Crosby’s personal idea to re-open the ‘stab in the back’ narrative. Strikingly, Philip Hammond refused to repeat this language on the television today.

‘But it’s a perfectly reasonable attack line,’ says a disgruntled Labour source. ‘In the Labour leadership campaign, Ed was attacked for stabbing his brother in the back. Then, Ed’s people reacted as they reacted now – saying it was an outrageous personal attack, how dare anyone raise this. But this is what an ordinary voter wants to know.’

But Crosby’s bomb seems to have worked. No one is talking about non-doms or tax any more.