Yahoo News Theresa May to send out fleet of ‘ad vans’ amid claims her most senior aides are split over party's strategy
Theresa May is to send out a fleet of ‘ad vans’ to reinforce her Brexit messageamid claims of a split among her most senior aides.
The Tory leader is considering dispatching the advertising vans around the country as the part of a final push to convince voters she is best placed to negotiate Britain’s exit from the European Union.
Tory strategists are hoping that switching the focus to the fact that Brexit talks start just 11 days after next Thursday's general election will concentrate minds among the electorate.
Mrs May will attempt to stress the importance of Brexit talks when she appears in her first live election debate on Channel Four and Sky News tonight. [mon]
Mrs May will answer questions posed by former BBC Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman and a live studio audience after her Labour rival Jeremy Corbyn, giving her the chance to have the final word.
The ad vans, which have messages down the side, will revive memories of Mrs May’s “go home” vans which she sent out with message to illegal immigrants when she was Home secretary.
One Tory source said: “The key choice is who do you want at the negotiating table. We can’t have people thinking that there are free votes [for Labour].”
There was a boost for the Conservatives on Sunday when the party's lead over Labour started to widen. YouGov, which on Friday said the Tories were just five per cent ahead of Labour, said the party was now 7 points ahead.
The party has already pulled in between £13million and £14million and wants to raise another £2million over the remaining 10 days to order to hit its spending limit.
One Tory source said the cash would not be hard to raise from wealthy donors because “the prospect of Corbyn is so horrific they will help us out. There will be a final push”.
As well as the ad vans, the party is planning to spend heavily on social media messages which appear on voters’ mobile phones, rather than traditional billboard advertising.
Some donors were initiallly unhappy that the party's social care plan to force wealthy pensioners to pay more for care in their homes had been poorly explained, and were dubbed the “dementia tax”, sources said.
Mrs May’s key aides – Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy – have also been reportedly “at loggerheads” over the strategy with Ms Hill blaming Mr Timothy for including it in the manifesto.
The Daily Telegraph has been told that Mr Timothy is now rarely seen at party headquarters, from where Ms Hill is running the party’s communications campaign with Sir Lynton Crosby, the election strategist who mastermined the party’s 2015 victory.
One source said: “Fi comes to central office but he [Nick Timothy] doesn’t.”
After weeks of stressing the value of Mrs May's leaderships, the Tories are expected to make more use of their frontbench team over coming days with Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, Amber Rudd, the homes secretary, and David Davis, the Brexit secretary pushed to the fore.
Sir Michael Fallon, a Cabinet minister, said the talk of division among Mrs May's top advisers was “rubbish” and blamed “Westminster tittle-tattle about various Westminster figures”.
Friends of Mr Timothy and Ms Hill denied a rift. One said: "The two of them are as thick as thieves. The idea that there is any split - it is just not true."
Meanwhile a poster campaign is being launched today by the country's biggest trade union bearing the message that the Conservative party is "no friend of the North".
Unite is targeting cities in the north of England with billboards, where the Tories have to make large inroads to deliver the landslide promised by polls at the start of the campaign.
The Unite campaign describes the Tories as the party of the "leafy shires and the lucky few".
Unite general secretary Len McCluskey said: "The Tories are not and never will be the friends of the North.”
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