We love the Chameleon

Ten years ago Conservative Central Office ran the "Demon Eyes" campaign with the slogan "New Labour New Danger" and various posters and merchandise, including a poster of a laughing Tony Blair with someone else's eyes superimposed.

It made a lot of people laugh - especially the badges with flashing eyes - but not the way we wanted. With 20:20 hindsight, this campaign demonstrated that we had no idea how to deal with Tony Blair.

This year New Labour, with their usual amazing ability to come up with an even worse version of the mistakes the Conservatives made when we were in government, unveiled their own version of Demon Eyes - a negative campaign against David Cameron called "Dave the Chameleon." It's intended to be subtly damning but just comes over as funny, not least because every significant criticism it makes of David Cameron is far more applicable to Tony Blair.

Dave isn't rattled - apparently he asked for a copy of the cartoon for his kitchen wall - and why should he be. It proves that the vaunted Labour spin machine has no more idea how to deal with him than we had of how to deal with Tony Blair ten years ago.

Labour's Dave the Chameleon PPB is funny enough in its original version, but an even better one has been put together by Tim Ireland and published at

www.backingblair.co.uk (the title is ironic.)

To give you an idea of what has been added, there is bar at he bottom with incremental production cost (One peerage - Two peerages - etc) and a note comes up every time the cartoon accuses Dave of one of Tony's favourite tricks with captions like "Fact - Tony Blair has never done this."

David Cameron was elected, not because the Conservative Party decided to junk everything it has ever stood for, but because some of our ideas needed to be updated to remain relevant to Britain today. David Cameron is doing this. To anyone who suggests that this makes him a hypocrite, I would remind them of the words of John Maynard Keynes, who was criticised for changing his position and replied

"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do ?"

Comments

Ellee Seymour said…
Hi Chris, are you hoping to stand for the next general election? I have just been on the campaign trail in Huntingdonshire, it went quite well, though Richard has to win his seat from a long standing and well respected Lib Dem candidate who is not standing this time. I have just blogged about it.

When Labour goes on the attack, we can tell how worried they are. Richard is worried that some of his right wing older voters won't support him, says they would vote UKIP perhaps. I hope they will recognise he is a hard working and genuinely caring candidate.
7:13 am
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

Image
I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more