Believing your own hype is a dangerous thing in politics (and elsewhere). So is falling for your own spin. Spin is a message you craft that bears a tenuous link to the truth but is the line you want others to believe. You say it because something else is true, but it doesn’t suit you. You hope that the people you’re directing your spin at pick up at least some of its thrust and start seeing things the way you want them to be seen.
If the Tories fail to make it back into government after this general election, one of the things they will have to come to terms with is that they fell for their own spin about Ed Miliband, without realising that the public might not. The Labour leader is not so desperately awful that he cannot string a sentence together.
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