Lynton crosby

For the Conservative party, 2013 has been the year of Lynton Crosby. Just over a year ago, the Wizard of Oz was appointed David Cameron’s chief election strategist. Now he’s full-time. His brief is to make sure the Tories in government have a clear message – something that eluded them in the 2010 campaign. And to see that the message is articulated in deeds, not words. In April, the Prime Minister described his own strategy by using a quote from the late Keith Joseph: ‘the right thing to do is to address the things people care about; to fix yourself firmly in what Keith Joseph called the “common ground” of

Today’s announcement that migrants cannot claim benefits if their English is so bad that they are unemployable looks suspiciously like another attempt by ministers to reassure fears about the end of those transitional controls on Bulgarian and Romanian migrants. And that is, in turn, an attempt to reassure Tory MPs that the government has done everything it can to keep Ukip at bay. But what is the Tory plan for Ukip? It needs to work out how to fight Nigel Farage’s party in the European elections, how to pre-brief the European elections (presumably by talking up Ukip’s chances so much that any result looks like a disappointment), and how to

At the beginning of the autumn, strategists from all three parties assumed that the theme of the season would be Labour’s poll lead narrowing as the economic recovery picked up pace. But that hasn’t happened. Instead, Labour’s lead has remained and its own poll numbers have actually ticked up. This is, largely, thanks to Ed Miliband’s reframing of the political debate about the economy, making it about living standards But the autumn statement showed that when the political conversation is focused on the broader economy, the Tories have the better of it. Thursday has weakened Ed Balls, strengthened George Osborne and begun to move the political debate off Labour’s turf

Last night David Cameron, George Osborne and Lynton Crosby held a meeting with the Conservative parliamentary party. Coffee House has exclusive details of what took place. There was a presentation on how well the party was doing from the Prime Minister (without any new information), and one from Lynton Crosby in which the strategist asked Tory MP James Morris to stand up and take a round of applause for passing on the ‘nightmare’ email from the Ed Miliband’s office to the Mail on Sunday. Sir George Young brought less exciting news that MPs will have to pull their weight a great deal more by serving on more statutory instrument committees.

The next time you see a Tory minister on television, count how long it is until they say that David Cameron is a leader with a long term plan for this country. This is the Tories’ new message. In a presentation to Cameron’s political Cabinet on Tuesday morning, Lynton Crosby told the ministers present that the Tories would probably lose the election if it was held today or tomorrow. But, as I report in the Mail on Sunday, he stressed that the election was still 16 months away so the Tories had time to turn things round. He emphasised that they should play up that Cameron is a man with a

Remember Cameron’s hug a husky speech? Or his lecture on ‘the need recast politics for the digital age?’ Well, good job you do because the Tory party has been trying to purge their online history, according to Computer Weekly. As Mark Ballard explains, someone at CCHQ has used a robots.txt file to block Google (and other search engines) from indexing the files: ‘…the Conservative Party has removed the archive from its public facing website, erasing records of speeches and press releases going back to the year 2000 and up until it was elected in May 2010. ‘It also struck the record of their past speeches off internet engines including Google,

Tory MPs are currently heading off to Oxfordshire for an away day. But the Tory leadership is keen to emphasise that this isn’t just another BBQ-style event. There will, they say, be a substantial policy element to it as well which could make things interesting as regular rebels Sarah Wollaston, Adam Afriyie and Peter Bone will all be in attendance. George Osborne, Theresa May and Jeremy Hunt will all hold policy surgeries. Backbenchers will be invited to offer their views on what the government should be thinking about doing in all these areas. They’ll also be presentations on the media environment by Craig Oliver and the new Number 10 press

After weeks of the Prime Minister and his team dancing on a semantic pinhead over whether they discussed plain cigarette packaging with, or were lobbied by, Lynton Crosby, the man himself has made a rare public intervention. The Press Association reports him denying that he had ‘any conversation or discussion with or lobbied the Prime Minister’ on plain packaging. Crosby added: ‘What the Prime Minister said should be enough for any ordinary person.’ But it wasn’t really, because David Cameron did rather lose his cool on the Marr Show at the weekend, telling Andrew Marr that his insistence that Crosby had ‘not intervened’ was ‘the only answer you’re getting’. While

Last month, David Cameron convened a meeting of his most important advisers at Chequers. The Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Conservative party chairman were all present, but there was little doubt who was in charge. The Australian strategist Lynton Crosby was dominant, doling out orders and drawing up ‘action points’. One of those in the room recalls: ‘Lynton was fantastic. He made sure there was an agenda, that everyone stuck to it.’ It might seem odd for an Aussie to be telling the British PM what to do, especially in this most English of settings, but it’s mainly because of his nationality that the ‘Wizard of Oz’ gets to

It’s difficult to find a Tory MP who doesn’t think Lynton Crosby is making their party more aggressive and impressive. The Wizard of Oz has been a good thing. Most MPs think his tough-talking vision for how the party can fight Ukip and Labour rather than fighting one another has made a huge difference. Crosby was hired to advise the party on strategy (as well as swear at people), but the one thing that makes a few MPs want to swear back is the possibility he has had some undue influence over the government’s public health policy, which has zig-zagged one way and then another. As James said earlier, this

Last week Lynton Crosby and David Cameron briefed Conservative MPs on the threat posed by Ukip. Their timing was impeccable: today’s YouGov poll showing 19 per cent of Conservative members would seriously consider voting for Nigel Farage’s party could have sent Tory MPs into orbit, but instead they have been reassured that the party has a proper plan to deal with the enemies to the right, rather than the messy ‘fruitcake’ strategy of the past few years. I am told by a number of MPs who were present that Crosby talked generally about what attracts people to Ukip, rather than the specific problem of next year’s European elections. This was

Ed Miliband’s approach at PMQs today was rather odd. He led, aggressively, on whether the government would implement the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards’ recommendation of a new criminal offence for negligent bankers. He asked the question in a manner that expected the answer no, but Cameron—predictably—said he would. At which point, the wind rather went out of Miliband’s sails. Cameron’s answer was eminently predictable because the idea of a new criminal offence for negligent bankers was first floated by George Osborne’s former chief of staff Matt Hancock at the start of last year. Given Hancock’s proximity to the Tory leadership, as one of those who prepares Cameron for these

The Tories are chuffed with yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Questions (the knockabout, that is, not the serious bit), and with Labour’s continuing struggle to make any impact in the polls. Earlier this week, Lynton Crosby spoke to the parliamentary party about how they should aim to beat Miliband. He told them that while Miliband is a weak leader, the way to beat him is to highlight his areas of weakness, rather than his personal flaws. This means that the party will be focusing on how Labour is faring on welfare and the economy, rather than mocking Miliband for making his colleagues coffee (which is a line David Cameron really should drop).

Lynton Crosby is holding his election strategy meeting (first revealed on Coffee House) with Tory MPs at 5.30 this afternoon. One of the things he’ll bring up, as reported by Benedict Brogan this morning, is that MPs need to be a little less unruly on Twitter. Obviously that’s not their biggest worry, as there’s also the problem of MPs coalescing around different future leadership contenders, who are all thinking ahead to what will happen after the 2015 leadership election. I understand from friends of Adam Afriyie that their campaign has managed to stop seven or eight letters asking for a leadership contest to oust David Cameron going to 1922 Committee