In the run up to the UK General Election in 2015, with the Labour party gaining head steam, the chips looked like falling for its leader Ed Milliband — a doppler-type figure aiming to be somewhere between Bernie Sanders and Roger Ramjet — edging into Downing Street.
Labour’s advisors,
following a series of political Harry Houdinis — 100 business leaders were
rubbishing Milliband in the conservative-partisan Telegraph — were to play an
ace card.
Anyone living
abroad, the wealthy and tax evaders, were about to be carpeted. Milliband
announced he was scrapping a loophole in the law that enabled “non-domiciled”
UK residents to avoid paying any tax on foreign income.
Canny political
calculations, his advisors noted, would give Labour at least three days of
headlines, effectively controlling the news agenda and picking up more steam
amongst the electorate.
The Conservative
party knew it too and played one of their most dastardly campaign strategies.
One of the conservative’s more respected politicians, Defence Secretary Michael
Fallon, presented in the media as a mild mannered person, did a Trump. Sorry
mate the Brits got their first.
In PR terms it’s
called a ‘Dead Cat’, a strategy coined by Australian strategist Lynton Crosby,
who was hired to be the Conservative’s campaign director. Simply put, imagine
you’re at a dinner with your family. You’re winning the argument about why
Bobby, your brother should not be going out with friends in Mum’s car when he’s
five times over the drinking limit. Then Bobby puts his hand under the table
and the next thing places a dead cat on the table. What happens next?
Everybody stops
talking about Bobby’s traits and screams, ‘There’s a dead cat on the table’.
For the forseaable future it’s all about the dead moggy.
For Labour, Fallon
crowed to the media that Milliband was unfit to be Prime Minister because he
had stabbed his brother in the back in winning the party leadership. He
couldn’t be trusted.
It was an
outrageous comment axiomatic with Trumpisms. Labour knew it. Some advisors, it’s
said, even quietly admired the chutzpah. The Conservative’s knew it. And the
media knew it too. But the collegiate village-environment of mainstream media
couldn’t resist the bait.
Milliband’s
initiative had been pole-axed and the media led for a series of days with the
Labour leader’s lack of integrity and Fallon’s bromide comments. For as long as
Trump’s campaign has been running, the reality TV star who knows how the media
function has been placing one dead cat on the table after another. And the media
has proved inept to see through them.
Being out of the
limelight has its draw backs, so Trump’s dead cats serve to re-orientate the
media’s gaze on him, providing him with the oxygen to be nicey-nicey with his
audience, play the media victim, shape-shift to his audience’s preferences,
before teeing up the next cat.
