Owen Jones says we’re set for one of the dirtiest election campaigns this country has seen

Tory smearing of Labour is vilest form of politics - and all because they are in a mess 

Gameplan: Lynton Crosby

If you want yet another column salivating over the lurid details of the Paul Flowers car crash, look away now. The reverend needs professional help, not commentators scrabbling around for more sleaze.

What we should be obsessing over is: how did this scandal-on-legs make it to the top of a major British bank?

Let me declare an interest. I’m a customer of the Co-operative Bank. I signed up because they were supposed to be different.

Unlike the bankers who plunged the world into economic nightmare, they were supposed to be ethical. Putting the needs of their customers first, not going after a quick buck for grubby shareholders.

But they’ve abandoned those ­principles, and it’s ended in disaster.

Now, David Cameron’s Australian tobacco lobbyist spinmeister Lynton Crosby knows an opportunity to smear when he sees one. The Tories have long been panned as the party of the bankers who crippled our economy. Over half the party’s ­donations come from the City.

“Aha!” Crosby thought. “Now we can trash Labour for being in the pocket of a dodgy banker instead.”

The link between Labour and the Co-operative goes back decades, it’s hardly a secret. Claiming the Flowers shenanigans are Labour’s fault is just a fantasy dreamed up by Crosby.

If we’re going to slam Labour over ­financial scandal, let’s blame Blair and Brown for buying into the Tory mantra of not regulating the banks.

But the Crosby bandwagon has hit a weighty obstacle in the shape of Tory David Davis. As he says, it’s time for George Osborne and bank regulators to answer ­questions.

Why were they pushing for the Co-op to take over 632 Lloyds branches when its problems should have been obvious? The Tories would blame Labour if Mount Vesuvius erupted tomorrow. But they’ve been running the show for three years now, it’s time they took responsibility.

But there’s a wider point about Crosby’s gameplan. The Tories are in a mess. They haven’t won a General Election for more than two decades.

The Lib Dems who fled New Labour are now back in Miliband’s fold, UKIP is chomping away at the Tory vote, and Cameron failed to redraw the electoral boundaries in his favour.

That means we’re set for one of the dirtiest election campaigns this country has seen.

That’s why the Tories are trying to paint Ed as some sort of Communist revolutionary who’s going to nationalise your mother. It’s why they’re frothing over Labour’s links with the unions, a movement that stands up for everyone from shelf stackers to dinnerladies.

They know it’ll stop us talking about the banks, hedge funds, legal loan sharks and private healthcare ­companies that bankroll them. It’s also why they’re tapping into people’s fear and prejudice.

As low-paid workers have their pay packets cut by their bosses and tax credits slashed by the Tories, Crosby is trying to turn them against the unemployed.

He’s trying to make private sector workers resent public sector workers, like the nurses and teachers we all depend on.

And he’s trying to make all of us blame the immigrants for the mess the bankers and politicians have caused. It’s the Crosbyisation of politics. You don’t even have to like Labour to object to it.

It’s mean, dirty, in-the-gutter stuff.

We all deserve an honest and passionate debate on politics. But smearing and trying to turn voters against each other for ­political gain is vile, and all decent people need to stand against it.

The phoney at number 10

Cameron: From blue to green and back again

From “vote blue go green” to “get rid of all the green crap”, it’s fair to say David Cameron has been on a journey.

Remember him prancing around the Arctic with huskies, and changing the Tory logo to a tree? Ah well, what are political opinions for if not dropping them and hoping no one will notice.

Oh, and guess which bloke stuck it to Labour back in 2006 for “using public servants as ­scapegoats”. Yep, your red-faced PM.

Wait for it, there’s more.

"Anyone working in the public services could easily have heard a pretty negative message from my party: ‘there’s too many of you, you’re lazy and you’re inefficient’,” he confessed. “This is far from the way I see things.”

And it was his right-hand slasher-in-chief George Osborne who promised to match Labour’s spending pound for pound until the end of 2008.

Gloves off. Time to roast Cameron as the political fraud he is.

Mirror