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Ian Austin's not so Mainstream after all
SOLOMON HUGHES finds yet more links between Public First, a Tory-led consultancy and the former-Labour MP's anti-Corbyn 'spoiler' campaign
Ian Austin

IN AUGUST 2019 Ian Austin set up Mainstream, a campaign to “encourage a return to respectable and responsible politics and to banish extremism from British politics once and for all.” Austin recommended voting for Johnson’s Conservatives and against Corbyn’s Labour Party.

Mainstream was a relatively low-budget affair, spending just £134,000 in the 2019 election. But it got incredible bang for its buck.

Loughborough University’s Centre for Research in Communication and Culture tallied which political figures attracted the most coverage in national TV news and national newspapers during the election: Ian Austin came in at number 11, just pipping Michael Gove. There was a media enthusiasm, it seems, for an ex-Labour MP denouncing Labour — and Mainstream gave Austin a platform.

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