The Guardian's April 1 lead story is up: 'Advisers consider tactic of staged confrontation'

[Newsjock]

Source: The Guardian
By Olaf Priol (think about it)

In an audacious new election strategy, Labour is set to embrace Gordon Brown's reputation for anger and physical aggression, presenting the prime minister as a hard man, unafraid of confrontation, who is willing to take on David Cameron in "a bare-knuckle fistfight for the future of Britain", the Guardian has learned.

Following months of allegations about Brown's explosive outbursts and bullying, Downing Street will seize the initiative this week with a national billboard campaign portraying him as "a sort of Dirty Harry figure", in the words of a senior aide. One poster shows a glowering Brown alongside the caption "Step outside, posh boy," while another asks "Do you want some of this?"

Brown aides had worried that his reputation for volatility might torpedo Labour's hopes of re-election, but recent internal polls suggest that, on the contrary, stories of Brown's testosterone-fuelled eruptions have been almost entirely responsible for a recent recovery in the party's popularity. As a result, the aide said, Labour was "going all in", staking the election on the hope that voters will be drawn to an alpha-male personality who "is prepared to pummel, punch or even headbutt the British economy into a new era of jobs and prosperity".

Strategists are even understood to be considering engineering a high-profile incident of violence on the campaign trail, and are in urgent consultations on the matter with John Prescott, whose public image improved in 2001 after he punched an egg-throwing protester.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/01/labour-gordon-brown-hard-man

[Skinner]

1. And it even has a mention of Omar from "The Wire."

Love it.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. Hey, the Tories were likening bits of Britain to The Wire last year

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8219482.stm

It didn't stand up well:

First let's look at a couple of numbers. Last year in Baltimore, there were 234 murders, down from 282 in 2007. That's from a population of around 634,549.

Greater Manchester Police said there were 35 murders in the area, none of which involved firearms, in 2008. So far this year there have been 13, of which three involved firearms. Although the population of Manchester is lower than that of Baltimore, at around 450,000, the police force area covers a population of more than two million.

Either way you look at it, that's a pretty stark contrast.

Dr Robert Ralphs of Manchester University, who researches gang culture, says the picture Grayling paints of Moss Side would be laughable if it didn't perpetuate such a potentially damaging negative stereotype of the area.

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/domestic_politics/factcheck+britain+and+the+wire/3321697