Australian Prime Minister John Howard is one of the most successful conservative leaders in the world today - perhaps the most successful. Lynton Crosby is the man widely credited for helping Mr Howard achieve some of his biggest victories.
Another Howard, Michael Howard, tried to import 'the Crosby factor' for last year's UK General Election and appointed Mr Crosby as director of the Tory campaign. Mr Crosby became closely associated with the dog-whistle campaign that characterised last year's Tory campaign.
Please use the comments thread below to raise questions for Lynton or email questions to tim@conservativehome.com.
What mistakes were made at the last general election?
Posted by: Henry Edward-Bancroft | June 20, 2006 at 09:26
Can you foresee David Cameron having to resort to a "dog whistle" strategy? If not what has changed?
Posted by: Kevin Davis | June 20, 2006 at 10:28
Are there any lessons that can be taken from John Howard's success in Australia?
Posted by: Jonathan Sheppard | June 20, 2006 at 10:30
The one thing that the Liberals have done up until recently is not to cut taxes, and to keep taxation focused on incomes rather then consumption.
It seems to have worked.
Should we think about the following:
a) Add more bands of income tax for higher income earners?
b) Reducing VAT (and sod the EU) to about 10%
c) Scrap or reduce inheritance tax and CGT
d) Increase taxes on house sales to curb price inflation whilst subsiding first time buyers with exemption from stamp duty and a one off grant to help get on the ladder?
Could you get Pete Costello to have a word with young George please?
Posted by: Old Hack | June 20, 2006 at 11:07
What would you have done different if you had had 3 years to work on a General Election campaign rather than 6 months?
What would you focus on, on a campaign against a Blairless Labour party?
PS. Old Hack is talking nonsense. The Liberals cut both corporate and income taxes in 2000 although revenues increased in consequence. Income tax was also cut in 2004, 2005 and 2006.
Posted by: TaxCutter | June 20, 2006 at 12:37
For a number of years I lived in Sydney, and during that time I did some worked for Tony Abbott. This was around the same time as the rise of Pauline Hanson and "One Nation".
During this period, the Coalition was in no doubt that the rise of a right wing / nationalist party was extremely damaging to them politically. Even in Warringah there was a full time staff member responsible for countering the Hanson message.
Do you think that the Conservative Party is doing enough to meet the BNP / UKIP challenge from the Right ? Or do you think the strategy of broadening the base to the centre and (almost) writing off the Nationalist vote is the correct approach?
Posted by: Andrew Kennedy | June 20, 2006 at 12:39
If cameron were to win the next election, considering the way he is developing, do you think that he would have a mandate to do anything?
Posted by: Alex | June 20, 2006 at 13:54
Has cameron missed a trick in refusing to endorse tax cuts, considering that he has now been outflanked by the lib-dems?
Posted by: Alex | June 20, 2006 at 13:56
It was alleged that coming from Down Under you were used to fighting tug of war politics i.e. a fight between two camps, while UK politics is a battle between 3 camps. You tended to focus on Labour too much, and on Lib Dem not enough.
Also do you think your attempts to appeal to the right-wing e.g. with immigration would have been counterproductive with left-wing voters?
How big a part in the election result do you think postal voting fraud played?
Posted by: William | June 20, 2006 at 16:22
If you were running Cameron's campaign in 2009, what would you be considering basing your strategy on?
Posted by: wasp | June 20, 2006 at 17:57
Were you really worth the extremely large sum of money that the Tories paid you for your advice on the last General Election campaign especially in the light of the very poor outcome?
Posted by: Matt Davis | June 20, 2006 at 21:04
2005 was very much about the 'Target Seats', should the next strategy also include the 'Development Seats' which we need to win, if not at the next election, then the one after?
Posted by: Ian Lewis | June 20, 2006 at 22:37
Did you believe that our focus on immigration was overstated by the media? And did our focus on issues like that, rather than health and education, (have roots in Australia's political scene where the former are big national election issues but the latter are largely dealt with at a federal level)?
Posted by: C Dundee | June 21, 2006 at 01:53
In the event of a hung parliment should Dave Cameron invite Blair and Menzies -Campbell to serve in his cabinet in return for the votes of some Blairite Labour MP's and right wing Liberals, thus neutralising the Left in both other parties and creating a broadly Conservative government?
Posted by: David Banks | June 22, 2006 at 00:27
Enough questions. Thank you everyone.
Posted by: Editor | June 22, 2006 at 12:59