"Shoot to Kill" News Management
Guido said that Labour would take a tougher line with news management now that Mandelson is back and Alistair Campbell is lurking about in the background. Rami Okasha, Labour's head of communications in Scotland, was in charge of handling Sarah Brown's visit. He threatened unruly hacks with heavies from Special Branch, "There will be six or seven guys with guns who will keep you away from her. You may be shot and then it won't be my problem." This boy could go far...Foreign Donors Row, Compare and Contrast
Over at the New Statesman Martin Bright lists three foreign donors who routed £50,000 each via British companies to the Tories. The Daily Mail has hit on Robin Saunders, the foxy City financier, paying for a table at a Tory fundraiser with a personal cheque for £6,600, which the Tories returned (because she is an American) and she replaced it with a company cheque. Compare the total of £156,600 given by four foreign donors via British companies to the Tories with the £4,125,000 given by Lakshmi Mittal, an Indian national, to Labour. Mittal even managed to get Blair to do PR for his company as part of the deal...
Labour's attack is being marshalled by a re-invigorated spin and smear operation and nobody should under-estimate the powers of the returning Dark Lord. The Tories now have a real fight on their hands, the playing fields of Eton and St Paul's clearly have not equipped them to deal with Mandelson. This is going to be a long dirty fight.
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