Tories fuel Blair-Brown in-fighting with poster campaign

by Jennifer Whitehead,, Brand Republic 13-Jan-05, 08:30

LONDON - The Tories are launching a poster campaign to capitalise on quotes attributed to the Chancellor Gordon Brown, saying that he could never believe anything Prime Minister Tony Blair told him.

The campaign is being unveiled by Conservative Party co-chairman Liam Fox and Michael Howard in London today, and follows the launch of Labour's election advertising by Brown yesterday.

The Tories are to use a quote from a new book written by Robert Peston, where he claims that Brown told Blair: "There is nothing that you could ever say to me now that I could ever believe."

Brown has not formally denied that he ever said such a thing, telling journalists at yesterday's advertising launch that he would not comment on books or comments in Sunday papers, instead saying "Of course I trust the Prime Minister".

However, Blair rubbished talk of disunity, which Tory leader Howard has been playing up, and said that Labour would focus on its economic success story.

"He can stick up whatever he likes on billboards about something in a book but what the public will concentrate on are the low mortgages, low inflation, low unemployment that we delivered and that he failed to," Blair said.

Labour's poster campaign is focusing on Britain's strong economy, with a series of ads using 1960s imagery. Various posters will tell voters "Lowest unemployment for 29 years", "Lowest inflation since the 60s" and "Lowest mortgage rates for 40 years".

The campaign is to be rolled out nationally, with media through OMD, and Labour retains TBWA\London as its creative agency.

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