Dozens of dim Guardian readers commented on the paper’s April Fool’s Day story about Labour’s new poster campaign showing a granite-faced Gordon Brown. ”Step outside posh boy” didn’t appear to them to be at all unreasonable as an electoral slogan, so it’s probably of no surprise that a supporter of the same party thought it a good idea to put Cameron’s head on Gene Hunt’s body sitting on the bonnet of the Ashes-to-Ashes Quattro. Only this time not as an April Fool’s joke.
In which parallel universe does the Labour Party think associating Cameron with Gene Hunt is likely to make the Tory leader anything other than more popular?
Smart-arsed cynics always maintain that cock up is more powerful than conspiracy as an explanation for anything slightly sinister. Being a paranoid, constantly-looking-over-my-shoulder, permanently-apprehensive-about-what-Labour’s-regime-will-do-next type of person, I’ve always tended to disagree, but this poster has made me see the light.
They don’t sit around thinking “bloody hell, our subjects want x so we’d better find a bloody good way of forcing y down their throats”. In reality, they obviously have not got a clue what we want and absolutely no bloody idea what we think. That (cock up) explanation can be the only reason why they think the Quattro poster will work. They simply haven’t got a clue.
Which blinding realisation now also explains why in the run up to an election, at a time in which I had assumed they realised they were damned left right and centre for their stasiist tendencies, they thought it fit to announce that HMRC will have the power to open our mail whenever they feel like it. Not subtle political thinking, not nudging or normalisation, just plain, old-fashioned, don’t-know-arse-from-elbow stupidity.
Tags: election campaign, Gene Hunt, gordon brown, labour, poster advertising, snooping
