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Corbyn told to learn lessons in spin from Tories’ Crosby
JEREMY CORBYN has been urged to learn from the “ruthless” tactics of Tory spin doctor Lynton Crosby in his bid to confound pundits and become Prime Minister.
Left-wing former Labour MP Chris Williamson, who supported Mr Corbyn’s leadership bid, made the call in new book Corbyn’s Campaign — Making Labour Awesome Again, out next month from Spokesman Books.
“The Labour Party should look at the success of the Conservative Party’s 2015 election campaign and how it confounded the opinion pollsters, who all predicted a hung parliament,” he wrote.
Mr Williamson lost his Derby North seat to the Tories in May by just 43 votes and is highly critical of Labour’s election campaign.
He said that Labour’s “tortuous triangulation” on policy and failure of the famous “four million conversations” campaign did nothing to counteract the Tory smears against Ed Miliband.
But Mr Williamson said: “Nevertheless, the 2020 election is there for the taking.
“The unparalleled growth in the Labour Party’s membership has made it a mass movement again and that will be a powerful counterbalance to a hostile media and a well-financed Tory Party campaign machine.
“But it will require the party matching the evidence-driven, disciplined, hard-working and team-spirited approach that Lynton Crosby’s campaign team possessed.”
He added: “What Crosby did so successfully was to focus on direct mail, Facebook and email rather than on Twitter and YouTube.”
Mr Williamson also stressed that Labour needed to start its voter registration drive now to compensate for changes knocking millions of natural Labour voters off the electoral register.
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