The Tories Crass Elitist Negative Ads - By The Telegraph

The Tories’ 'attack ads' are cruel, flippant and unfunny
These YouTube campaign videos that ridicule Ed Miliband and Ed Balls smack of crass, elitist bullying, writes Janet Daley

These are serious times. Shall I list the dangers? First, we are almost certainly in the opening phase of a new Cold War with Russia. Then the West faces a global enemy whose power is spreading through the Middle East and North Africa. Of even more immediate consequence, the eurozone looks as if it could be entering a slow‑motion political implosion. So what, under these circumstances, would seem to be the appropriate campaigning tone for a governing party seeking re-election?

If you have seen – or, more likely, been vaguely aware of – only the official speeches by David Cameron and George Osborne in which the undoubted successes of their Long-Term Economic Plan have been listed, along with plausible warnings about the risks to those achievements if Labour should replace them in power, you might think that the Conservatives are banging out a worthy, if predictable, message to the country.

You may wonder, then, why there has been so much talk of “negative campaigning” – a murmuring of discontent that is becoming louder and more insistent as it is taken up even by members of the Tory front bench. Because the exigencies of a general election make disloyalty to the party a capital offence, these criticisms from ministers are fairly cryptic and lacking in detail – which may make them even more mystifying to those who are getting as much politics as they need from the evening television news.

So let me explain: there is another campaign – and, indeed, a darker, more brutal Conservative Party – which is advertising itself in a different way entirely. While the Prime Minister and his Chancellor offer their gravely responsible lectures on economic reality, the internet is throbbing with mock grotesque depictions of Ed Miliband in even sillier poses than he actually manages to achieve in real life.

Sometimes he is shown in animated juxtaposition with his shadow chancellor: there is one real side-splitter called “Mystic Ed and His Crystal Balls”, with Ed M peering into Ed B’s head (as the eponymous crystal ball), which is seen repeating one incorrect economic prediction after another. Another opus features a gormless Ed M playing Scrabble: he is shown having all the letters necessary to make the word “deficit” but forgetting to use them, placing only the single letter “t” on the board. Hilarious, right? I should point out that describing the basic narrative of these video adverts does not do them justice. They are photo-shopped “cartoons” of almost unbelievable crudeness, accompanied by music that is either a spoof Hammer horror soundtrack or the kind of riotously comic refrain that used to accompany Benny Hill’s exploits. The word “crass” scarcely covers it.



These little video clips, currently playing to vast numbers on YouTube, are not, as you might have guessed from their wilful amateurishness, the products of an advertising agency. They are being created in-house at Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) by a dedicated team of – what? Would-be adolescents who are attempting to make an impression on young voters? Or admirers of the “attack ads” that have been such a feature of American elections? Well, both of those things, actually – but with remarkably little understanding of either.

Apparently, “young people”, as they are understood by Tory strategists, prefer politics to be silly, sadistic and vaguely surreal. And there was me thinking that, generally speaking, the young are more idealistic and less cynical than their elders; that if they are inclined to take part in the democratic process at all, what they crave is to be addressed as if they were more mature and responsible than they are often depicted as being.

The CCHQ team insist that since their YouTube exploits are being viewed zillions of times, they must be getting through to the core audience. Maybe, but what exactly are they communicating when they do get through? That politics is a nasty (remember that word?) childish game? I will return to this point.

So, what about the American model? Surely even the use of quite blatant ridicule and vilification has been known to pay off in elections over there? Well, yes and no. But even the hit-and-miss evidence of its effectiveness in the US does not necessarily apply to Britain. I am going to make a broad generalisation here: Americans have more tolerance for psychological brutishness than the British, both in public and private life. A simplistic aphorism that resonates with most people I know who have lived in both places is that the British are kind but not necessarily warm, whereas Americans are warm but not necessarily kind. In other words, what seems like just a bit of rough but commonplace abuse in American terms will come across as repugnant – inhumane and undignified – in Britain, particularly in those who might expect to govern.

There is, of course, that other dreaded dimension that inevitably rears its head in this country: class. Mr Cameron and his friends must bear this cross whether they like it or not. When they ridicule Ed Miliband personally, they are in danger of looking like smirking public schoolboys making fun of the geeky scholarship kid. Ed’s very hopelessness works against them. Trying to make an effective politician look idiotic might have some point, but making one who already looks foolish seem even more comically inept is just gross. If your victim is helpless, it is not clever to mock him. This brings us back, I’m afraid, to that terrible Bullingdon Club photograph that everybody is so determined to expunge. What was so disturbing about the image of those young men was not their wealth or even their arrogance: it was the hint of cruelty. I can remember thinking that I would not have wanted to run into that bunch of guys in a restaurant.

Yes, of course, our perception of them now is different: they are decent fellows, family men who are devoted to their children. But why, then, should they encourage a reminder of that fatal earlier idea of themselves? Most people prefer to think that they left this kind of “joke” (and the shameless bullying that it represents) behind at the school gates. Is this a picture of political life – as infantile and unpleasant – that is likely to inspire the young or the politically disengaged?

Much has been made of the fact that it has been mainly women who have criticised the YouTube attack videos (I suppose I am reinforcing that view with this column). The two government ministers who did so, in their cautious way, were Theresa May and Esther McVey. It is suggested that this is because, on the whole, women find this kind of mercilessness particularly unfunny. But it is also because it is a species of male behaviour that is used to exclude and, by implication, belittle women, who are often accused of not being able to “take a joke” when they are subjected to derision. Tories who are worried about their party’s “woman problem” should be aware: to female voters, this kind of campaign is a reminder of the worst treatment they have received in the workplace or even in their private lives.

There is nothing wrong with attacking your opponent: with negative campaigning in the legitimate sense of the word. If the other side is wrong-headed or culpable, then you must say so – and you must say why with as much evidence and persuasive argument as possible. To offset all that negativity, you must offer the positive case not just for what you intend to do with power but also for yourselves as worthy of the task. The Cameron-Osborne team is doing pretty well on the former – but on the latter, not so much. It isn’t being negative that is so wrong: it’s being flippant. Looking as if you’re unserious is the greatest possible insult to the electorate, especially in difficult times.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11426887/The-Tories-attack-ads-are-cruel-flippant-and-unfunny.html

The Bullingdon Club doing what it does best - being stinking bulles - after all, it's the way they were brought up and what they think they are entitled to do. It's the way they treat anyone who gets in their way, including the British public and especially the young, old, poor, sick and disabled.

UKIP and the Tories are the two most hated brands in Britain

UKIP is the most hated brand in the country, followed by the Conservatives, according to new research. The two parties are even more disliked Marmite, who use their divisiveness as part of their brand image, and the low-budget airline Ryanair.

On becoming Tory leader in 2005, David Cameron set about attempting to ‘detoxify’ the party, by bringing focus to environmental issues, coining the idea of the “Big Society” and most famously, that hug a husky moment:



He was not alone: in 2002, now-Home Secretary Theresa May told a shocked Conservative conference that “people call us the nasty party”.

Now, a decade after being elected leader, including almost five years in power presiding over huge cuts to public spending, it seems Cameron’s initial efforts at modernisation have done little to alter the public’s attitudes. In a survey of 1,500 people carried out by advertising agency Isobel, found that only UKIP is disliked more than the Tories.

http://labourlist.org/2015/02/ukip-and-the-tories-are-the-two-most-hated-brands-in-britain/

Given that result, negative advertising might just come back and bite them on the bottom - hard!