What a Bott They Got

Tory activists have been left spitting blood after the defection of the delectably named Anastasia Beaumont-Bott, the former head of the Tories LGBT movement. She claims that since Grayling's comments she has suddenly seen the Labour light, no ifs, no buts, and shared a press conference platform with David Miliband this week. If she was ever a Tory surely it was about more than gay rights? The backside of this story is a little murkier though...

Along with photos, in no way safe for work, tales of party conference hotel shenanigans, unsubstantiated smears and the fact that Bott jumped before she was thrown out on her arse, have all come out in the wash. The detail is here if you want to get to the bottom of why she really left the Tories. Her former party colleagues are clearly glad to see the back of her, some have career reasons to fear stories about her will rear up again. It was always inevitable this attention seeker would return.

If her late night not-quite-WebCameron-antics, now circulating widely, are anything to go by, she is far from camera shy...

Not Everyone Enjoyed the Debate...

As the dust settles the polls continue... ComRes are showing Con 36% LibDems 35% Labour 24% - a long shot, but a fascinating insight into the effect of having Clegg promoted to the big boy table. He will have a lot of weight on his shoulders to win the next one and will be up against the fact the novelty of him will have worn off. For what it's worth TB would love to see the Lib Dems as the official opposisiton after the next election. For Labour to be forced to third would be the final nail in the coffin of socialism in this country and cannot come a day too soon.

TB has a busy afternoon Guy Newsing, but look out for an pre-recorded interview he just did via Skype for ITV news.

What Next?

Sky have to make sure that when the debate is actually brewing, when points are being discussed let the conversation flow and let the public actually see the truth.

All the candidates need to rehearse less, it was all too soundbite-y, too stilted, too cautious. Chill out a bit, stop walking the balancing act and go on what you really believe in. It was all rather passionless. The Cameron we need to see was the angry Dave who was riled up when he got off the campaign bus the other day and slammed the three MPs over their legal aid.

Stop the rehearsals, if you don't know your manifesto now then it's too late.

First Thoughts

So it was gaffe free, Brown fibbed, Clegg begged and apparently Dave won. That may be the case but he missed a lot of things out. It was a real shame the helicopter debate was so stiffled. Cameron needs to show a lot more anger next time and really give Brown the kicking he deserves.

So key moments? Did you know Nick Clegg was from Sheffield? He mentioned it enough. Brown told a fair few porkies, he claimed he has promised to increase police spending every year, but Labour's pledge is actually that police numbers will be maintained, not that police funding will rise. He also said “Police have to spend 80 per cent of their time now on the streets.” The Advertising Standards Agency have ruled this statement incorrect and illegal.Cleggs sums were dodgy too. He grabbed an extra £5 billion of savings out of thin air, £15 billion when his manifesto only promises 10.

Brown still doesn't get that if you take money out of the state it is not taking the money out of the economy. The state is not the economy - taking money from the state is not taking money OUT of the economy it is putting it IN.

As for the rest of the debate? It was ruined by ITVs awful set, lighting, sound and graphics and Alastair Stewart was a dire shouty host. What is the point of interupting everyone just as the debate was getting interesting. TB did have to chuckle when he told off Clegg like a naughty schoolboy.

All the candidates could do without the constant name checking of locations and towns. It sounded like a drinking game. Brown's bunker lines fell pretty flat. He should lay of the jokes. Clegg will probably be the polled winner. What did he have to lose? He will still never be in power... A solid perfomance from Cameron but more anger next time would "secure" the victory to coin a phrase.

Tie Analysis

Of course the most important analysis of the night will be off the choice of ties. TB has the verdict from a top fashionista:

Clegg - Yellow - firstly satin tie, bad move, shade was also murky. Yellow is associated with optimism, and youthfulness however some shades of yellow can be associated with cowardice.

Cameron - Very crisp shirt against a very good blue. Blue can add trust and credibility, also blue causes the body to produce chemicals that are calming.

Brown - Very bad suit/shirt/tie combination. Pink - feminine colour, all image consultants know it is a very bad colour for use on tv presentations. Mainly because it can symbolise naivety or weakness. He would have been better off with red which although can be seen as aggressive and overpowering - it also shows power and energy - especially if the person is shy, giving presentations or in sales. Brown is trying to sell himself. It would have been greatly in his favour.

You read it here first.

Exclusive: Alistair Stewart's Warm Up Routine

From a bug in his dressing room:



Why interrupt again and again just as things are getting good?

Right now...

...this is displaying on poster areas in Manchester:

And this from

Creative Review

made TB chuckle:

Ouch...

A CCHQ insider emails regarding the defection of Beaumont-Bott:

"She was the most ineffective, self-serving, divisive and immature person I ever had to work with. She was only ever interested in whichever spotlight she could get to point in her direction. Today, it seems that's the Labour Party, and they're welcome to her."

Stacy Defects

When Anastasia Beaumont Bott quit the Tories she said:

"LGBTory is going from strength to strength. We have about 45k for next year already - we have personal letters of endorsements from David Cameron, pledges of support from Ed Vaizey, backing from the shadow cabinet as well as numerous other LGBT celebrities such as Paul O'Grady - next year is going to be huge and I want to be there every step of the way as Founder. I want to be the person who stands up and shows this party isn't homophobic."

When she spoke to the Indy last weekend

she said

:

"I don't like doing this to Mr Cameron. I like him"

Today she said in a Labour press release:

“As a now ex-conservative politician, needless to say, I wasn’t convinced. And with your recent manifesto launch, I am still not convinced. Mr Cameron, you have not only lost my vote. You have lost my respect."

Leant on much?

And sorry, since when was she ever a "politician"? She was a volunteer activist at best. She swore revenge on the Tories and this is her best effort. She was never exactly camera shy...

Labour's utterly lame attempt to flare this up shows just how low they are willing to sink to try stop the Tory narrative from taking hold. It's too late though, this botched attempt reeks of desperation.

Anything for 15 mins of fame eh?

Students Population Goes Blue

As the NUS convene for their yearly lash-up, let TB just remind the collective Labour pole greasers and green eco-facists how the lay of land

really is

:

The Conservatives are winning the student vote on the UK's university campuses, a poll suggests.

Three in 10 (30%) are planning to vote Tory in the upcoming election, compared with just over one in five (21%) who are backing Labour.

The Liberal Democrats are just behind, with 19% of students planning to give them their vote.

Ouch, poor old

Wes

...

Guy News: Britain's Election HQ

Labour's Sugar Daddy

This just pinged into TB's inbox:

Conservative MP Douglas Carswell said: “It turns out that Sir Alan is quite a Sugar Daddy. Now we can see why Gordon Brown told him ‘you’re hired’.”

Made him chuckle anyway.

That's Quite an Achiev_ment

Now TB is prone to a typo or two but frankly he isn't asking to form a government and he had to lay off his subs. Of all the manifesto pages they would check for spelling mistakes the most, surely the

education section

is pretty high up the list:

Labour have form in this area. Once again... 3/10 see me.

Quote of the Day

TB is busy editing down footage from the manifesto launch. In the meantime digital guru Rory Cellan Jones hit the nail on the head

this morning

:

"But I think the Conservatives will have learned something from Labour's launch. Don't expect to see Dizzy Thinks, Tory Bear or even Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome climbing onto the platform to big up David Cameron before he unveils his manifesto."

Quote of the Day

"The glamorous activist who introduced Labour's manifesto has previously called for the violent death of Margaret Thatcher and for Gordon Brown to be removed as Prime Minister."

- The Daily Mail

The rest of the article is well worth a

read

. Just remember where you read the Thatcher skateboard story first:

TB has long suspected Bevanie Ellie was a PR disaster waiting to happen. A pretty bad day for Labour and not just because of their comedy manifesto. Did nobody think to do a little research on our Bevanite friend before she was put at the heart of the campaign? Sad truth is most people wanted to get rid of Brown and are now all lying through their teeth that he is the best man for the job.


Oh well, guess there won't be too many tears on May 6th after all...

Ellie's Changed Her Tune

Less than two years ago Ellie Gellard was

calling for Brown to go

. Given her tendency to spin and claim to be reduced to tears at every crap speech he gives, this anger and venom is quite the revelation:

 

"How dare he stand by with personal interest watching our party sink it is not his to lose, it is ours."

Here's my ideal scenario for the coming months. Brown accepts that too much damage has been done and while I feel sorry for someone who has waited so long for a job which he has done averagely and been slaughtered for, I care more for our party and supporters. Alan Johnson takes the reigns.

In short, Brown (although I had high hopes and don't burden you with total responsibility) get your coat, time's up."

So why the sudden change of tune, has someone realised she could carve a little career out as rat staying on the sinking ship? Interesting logic...

Labour's Manifesto Sham

So the audience was bused in, the hacks were heckled and Gordon made the fatal mistake of playing to the room rather than the thousands watching on TV. A dreadful attempt at as showing some unity. The award for most sickening sucking up has to go to Alan Johnson, he was only lacking the apple for teacher. Ellie Gellard's cameo was intriguing. That cut glass accent didn't really fit the image now did it.

Guido has more

on that gem.

And so it has emerged, with all the surprise of a Pope in Catholicism shocker, that Labour's three themes for the election are reforming public services, restoring trust in politics and securing the recovery. All very noble ambitions, but asking Labour to oversee these aims is like asking Dr Shipman to look after... you get the picture.

Reforming public services? Quite apart from the fact that Labour have had thirteen years to do this, what exactly does it mean? Does it mean glossing over the public sector pension time-bomb? Or employing even more NHS managers? Perhaps it means handing out yet more town hall fat-cat salaries that eclipse the earnings of the PM and armed forces chiefs. Who knows?

Restoring trust in politics? Two words: Damian McBride. A few more words: cash for honours, taxi for hire, smears and lies, plots and coups, phantom mortgages, porn films and bath plugs. Next.

Securing the recovery? This they want to achieve by increasing their tax on jobs and corpses. Over one hundred of the UK's biggest employers (dismissed by Labour with a sneer as "Tories") have come out and said that such a move would be disastrous. But, with all the stubbornness of a General on the Somme sending yet more troops in the machine gun fire, Labour are pressing ahead. Higher taxes and fewer jobs will not secure the recovery, any more than a leaking bucket will secure its contents.

Labour: Three pledges, three unbelievable examples of hypocrisy, failure and deceit.

/insert headline here

Spare a moment for Brighton Labour Party who have seen their thousands of leaflets accidentally mailed out across the country. Things aren't going so well for the West Lothian reds either. Labour's attempts to spin that they are the party that "gets" social media are well and truly dead in the water:

Another day another fail.

TB on BBC News Discussing Tweet-gate IV

Across the spectrum today candidates will be deleting old tweets. TB has been saying for months that the internet would scalp a candidate however he didn't expect it to happen so soon, or to a friend.



The computer hard-drive filled up and stopped recording last 30 secs, an unshaven TB added Stuart was one of the more reasonable and rational Labour hacks he knew and it was shame he had to go this way.

Either way will this be the last scalp of the campaign? Doubt it...

The Truth About Stacy Bott

If there was ever three words to send a shiver down the spine of a Conservative Future member, they would be Anastasia Beaumont-Bott. Many an activist thought they had seen the last of Anastasia Stacy, (she changed her name when she moved from Scotland,) when she resigned from the executive in October 2008. She cited at the time that she wished to spend more time with the LGBTory project she was used by CCHQ to front.

However Stacy was quick to leave the Tories all together. In a blazing row in a well know CF watering hole she was overheard vowing to have a revenge on the organisation. And it seems today she has attempted to do that with a

rant to the Indy

. She encourages gay people to vote Labour and said she left the Conservatives because of homophobia. But that's not quite why is it Stacy?

The real reasons she left are ten fold. TB isn't going to name names and jeopodise some serious players in the Party, but lets just say Stacy led a complex private life and fought dirty when she didn't get her own way. As far as TB is aware there still a gagging order on what happened in Scotland, and despite living there for four years, TB encountered almost, almost, 100% sealed lips whenever her name was mentioned. So we'll leave that. The stories of orgies and her relationship with a married CCHQ official that got way out of hand, are more well known though. Especially after ABB turned on those she once trusted. 

She smeared her apparent friends who she thought were in her way up the greasy poll. Perhaps the most disgusting example was her attempts to spread rumours that a fellow CF activist was being abused by a family member. Another had been sectioned, another a swinger, another was sleeping with a certain Peer, despite her own little secrets there, all false. As were the accusations of drug dealing at a CF event, again proven to be completely false despite her fake tipoff to CCHQ. Labour are welcome to her, she will poison any organisation she goes near. Her lies were exposed and very quickly she ran out of friends and decided to jump ship before moves were made to have her expelled from the Party.

So for whatever reason this attention seeking, toxic, ruthless careerist decided to turn on the Tories it certainly wasn't because of homophobia she encountered. Just take a look at her internal resignation email she sent rather than the official version that was published. Amongst attempting to spin her way out of the lies she was exposed for telling was this corker:

"LGBTory is going from strength to strength. We have about 45k for next year already - we have personal letters of endorsements from David Cameron, pledges of support from Ed Vaizey, backing from the shadow cabinet as well as numerous other LGBT celebrities such as Paul O'Grady - next year is going to be huge and I want to be there every step of the way as Founder. I want to be the person who stands up and shows this party isn't homophobic."

May that be the end of it.