Many of our British readers will not have heard of Willie Horton. This is not surprising. In Massachusetts in 1974, Horton robbed Joseph Fournier (a petrol-pump attendant), fatally stabbed him nineteen times, and left him to bleed out in a bin. In 1986, as part of a weekend furlough program from prison, he went AWOL.
In 1987, Horton twice raped a woman. Before that, he pistol-whipped, stabbed, bound, and gagged her fiancé. Once he was eventually recaptured in Maryland, he was sentenced to two consecutive life terms, plus 85 years. The presiding judge said Horton “should never draw a breath of free air again”.
His name, however, will be familiar to many of our American readers, and not only for the hideousness of his crimes. Horton was crucial to George H. W. Bush’s victory in the 1988 presidential election. Thanks to Lee Atwater, Bush’s campaign manager, Horton played the starring role in one of the most effective political advertisements of all time. Please go and watch it now.
Effective, isn’t? In May 1988, Michael Dukakis – the Governor of Massachusetts and the Democratic candidate – led Bush in the polls by 17 points. That ad aired from late September. Bush won the election by 53 per cent of the vote to 46 per cent, and by 426 electoral votes to 111. That is largest recent margin of victory, and the last time a party won more than two consecutive elections.
In 1976, Dukakis had vetoed a bill to stop first-degree murderers from being let out on his state’s prison furlough programme (a form of ‘rehabilitation’ that he supported). Bush seized on the issue from June 1988. Atwater saw focus group after focus group turn against the Governor when the Horton case was explained. The advertising campaign was devastating to Dukakis, and helped Bush to the White House.
Why do I mention this? Atwater had pledged that by the time he was finished, voters were “going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis’s running mate”. It is an archetypal example of effective “negative campaigning”. The Democrats had no idea how to counter it. Readers, I think Rishi Sunak and Greg Hands should be making notes – and taking aim at Keir Starmer.
The current Tory campaign strategy for the next general election is decidedly cautious. Sunak has laid out his five pledges. He hopes to hit them and be proven as a man of his word and a capable deliverer. He then wants to set out some more, spend all of 2024 campaigning, and hope that the organisational efforts of Isaac Levido and CCHQ get the party across the line in October.
(Or whenever. But it’ll be October.)
The problem with this approach is that it relies, pretty basically, on those pledges being met. Unfortunately for the Prime Minister the stickiness of inflation means that that is rapidly becoming a distant prospect. This raises the obvious and depressing question of what the Tory campaign is going to be if Sunak fails to meet his self-imposed targets.
On Monday, I suggested he could resign himself to defeat and spend the next year doing the difficult stuff the Conservatives have punted into the long grass for the last thirteen years. This received about as warm a welcome as an Australian cricketer in the Long Room at Lord’s. I raise Horton today to therefore suggest what CCHQ can do if they’re not content to simply bat out time for the next year.
If one tracks Labour’s opinion poll lead across the last eighteen or so months, it is clear that Starmer’s army moved into first following the various scandals Boris Johnson’s government encountered from late 2021 onwards, and then massively expanded their advantage following the arrival (and departure) of Liz Truss in Downing Street. Sunak has closed the gap, but not by much.
This is all while the personal ratings of Starmer remain pretty underwhelming. People are not opting for Labour out of any great enthusiasm for its leader or programme but because, amidst the wreckage, pain, and psychodrama, your average voter now loathes the Tories.
All election campaigns boil down to either “safety first” or “time for a change”. So if inflation is not plummeting, flights aren’t taking off to Rwanda, or NHS waiting lists looking any less grotesque, CCHQ needs to give voters a reason to fear taking a chance on Labour. The public may not think this government is up to much, but one might hope they’ll cling to nurse for fear of something worse.
One imagines various bright sparks from the Conservative Research Department are currently beavering away, putting together various dodgy dossiers on the opposition. Then again, I am typing this in the evening, so prior experience suggests a substantial number are in The Westminster Arms. But I have it on good authority that such vital research is nonetheless well in hand.
The obvious target for “going negative” on Keir Starmer lies in his record as Director of Public Prosecutions. Labour HQ’s own efforts to suggest Sunak was soft on sex offenders. This backfired as soon as it emerged that Starmer himself had overseen more permissive sentencing guidelines. What other skeletons lie in his Camden cupboard?
Johnson tried to make something of the Crown Prosecution Service’s failure to prosecute Jimmy Saville. Whilst the accusation generated the intended furore, it was poo-pooed by Sunak, and widely considered distasteful. The question of where legitimate “negative campaigning” crosses into genuine poor form is one that must be considered. But it’s always good to make your opponents squeal.
Another avenue could be in the decision of Starmer to join a 2020 campaign to prevent foreign criminals from being deported. He signed an open letter with other Labour MPs to demand a flight to Jamaica to deport 50 people be grounded. The Sun has revealed that at least seven of those 50 have since gone on to commit more violent or drug-related crimes.
A second letter – signed by many Labour MPs but not Starmer – campaigned a flight in December of 2020, which enabled a man to stay in the UK who went on to stab a man to death in south London. Both instances play into an obvious narrative: that Labour’s racial neuroticism, softness on crime, and disregard for our borders are allowing dangerous foreign offenders to remain in our country.
Similarly, Starmer’s recent willingness to pay lip service to the grooming gangs scandal rings hollow when it was Labour who were in power in many of the areas where the horrors took place. It was only last year that their candidate in Rother Valley – who had resigned from Rotherham Council’s cabinet after a report into the authority failure of local children – had to stand down due to public outcry.
These examples are just a taste of where an effective campaigning machine could go after the damning criminal consequences of the left’s wokery, virtue-signalling, and obvious muddle-headedness. Sunak is a reasonable – and honourable – man. But so was Bush. If the Prime Minister is serious about winning the next election, CCHQ needs to soon find him Starmer’s Willie Horton.