Cameron’s disastrous PR campaign

If I were David Cameron, the first thing I would do is sack my advertising agency,” writes Mary Portas in The Daily Telegraph. The Tories should be riding high after another failed coup against Gordon Brown. Instead, they’re reeling from the reaction to the air-brushed, tieless image of their leader adorning posters up and down the country. People don’t believe politicians anyway. So “presenting us with this fake, high-glass image of perfection suggests that the Conservatives have little understanding of what’s going on in the real world”.

It is indeed a “spectacular own goal”, notes Amanda Platell in the Daily Mail. More than 700 have been plastered across Britain at a cost of £500,000, with the negatively charged slogan: “We can’t go on like this. I’ll cut the deficit, not the NHS”. And as the Daily Mirror notes, the poster has even set off an internet spoof campaign, with Mydavidcameron.com featuring doctored posters of Cameron, along with taglines such as “Trust me. I’m a PR professional.” Another shows him syringe in hand, with the words “This is going to hurt. Don’t worry, you won’t feel a thing”. If there is one abiding criticism of Cameron “it is that he’s a fake; a slick PR man who’s all image, no substance”. This latest gaffe just adds fuel to the fire.

The problems go deeper, says Simon Heffer in The Daily Telegraph. Most Tory MPs are well disposed to Cameron, but “they are hard put to define what ‘Cameron Conservatism’ is. Of course they are: for there is no such thing.” And the shadow cabinet “does not teem with assured performers or charismatic figures”. The failed coup has shown a trait in Labour that the Tories are hard-pushed to match: “a sense of strength in depth”. How will they cope with “an election campaign against people who are experienced fighters – not quitters – and who will fight ever more dirtily the closer they come to extinction”? One thing’s for sure ­– no one is taking victory for granted now.