Leaked Attack Document Reveals Tory Candidates Told To Say Lib Dems "Are Not Proud To Be British"

[Denzil_DC]

...
Boris Johnson has been accused of stoking "the politics of division and nationalism" after Conservative election strategists urged their candidates to tell voters the Liberal Democrats “are not proud to be British” and would “make our country more vulnerable to terrorist attacks”.
...
The Conservative party is under pressure from Liberal Democrat challengers in a host of Remain-voting seats across the country. Five former Tory MPs have defected to the Lib Dems in recent weeks, and internal Tory polling has shown that several incumbent Leave-supporting Conservative MPs are likely to lose their seats to the anti-Brexit party.

In a sign that the Tories will be employing an increasingly aggressive strategy to try to hold onto these seats, their private briefing note laying out the “lines to take” for Tory candidates in Lib Dem marginals is headed: “The Liberal Democrats don’t share people’s values."



Another page of the document urges Tory candidates to make a series of dubious and controversial allegations about Liberal Democrat policies.



https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexwickham/conservatives-attack-lib-dems-jo-swinson-election

This is just what's been leaked today: I doubt any party or politician posing a credible threat to the Tories will escape this sort of rabble-rousing rhetoric, and this strategy will no doubt endanger further any candidates who don't sound or look or act "British".

Dominic Cummings has supposedly handed over the reins of the party to Lynton Crosby's right-hand man Isaac Levido, who, like Crosby, is an Australian political strategist - just to add to the irony of accusations of "non-Britishness".

Crosby has a long track record of running horribly divisive election campaigns full of dogwhistles and not so veiled attacks on selected outgroups, and it appears that Levido's a chip off the old block. Such campaigns haven't always led to electoral success, but they always turn up the heat on already inflamed situations.

[Soph0571]

1. We have six weeks of this left!

[Mike 03]

2. Toxic, dangerou stuff. I hope it fails.

So Dominic Cummings' approach was too tame for what's coming, so they handed the duties over to even worse extremists. Sad times. I see that wherever this battle is waged, the playbook is always the same.

[T_i_B]

3. Not surprising at all

It would help though, if the opposition parties would spend less time attacking each other and more time attacking Johnson and the Tories over their atrocious record in office.

[LeftishBrit]

4. Uggghhhh

This is a revival of Cold War rhetoric but even more over-the-top.


Legalizing most drugs, whatever you think of it from a health point of view, is actually likely to reduce crime, as a lot of crime is committed and escalated by drug gangs, whose leaders get rich on drug prohibition as American gangsters of the 1920s got rich on alcohol prohibition.

Some of the rest seems to be just not wanting all of us to be subjected to Orwellian surveillance in order to possibly catch a few crooks.

And a lot of the rest is just dog-whistling as you say.