HEALTHY DEMOCRACY

Spinwatch has exposed a key Tory advisor is a tobacco hack:

“One of the Tories key election advisors has acted as a consultant and communications specialist to the tobacco giant Philip Morris, a SpinWatch investigation can reveal.

Mark Textor is a PR specialist, who along with fellow Australian Lynton Crosby,has been advising Michael Howard on the Tories election strategy. Their hardball approach on issues such as immigration and gypsies coupled with strategic polling advice is credited with narrowing the gap between the Tories and Labour to just three points.

The Tories refuse to discuss Textor's role in the election, although both the British and Australian
press have widely reported how he is helping Crosby in his role as Conservative Campaign Director. Texor's tobacco past is at odds with the Tories' election
campaign where they have made health a key issue.

Crosby is an election-winning guru, and one of Australia's most successful political strategists. He is the mastermind behind four general election wins for the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard. Crosby has been called the Australian equivalent of Bush's key strategist "Karl Rove".

His business partner, Mark Textor is a market research expert, and both men run a consultancy down under called Crosby / Textor, the Australian affiliate of the PR company company Wirthlin Worldwide.

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In other developments Spinwatch has also uncovered the fact that two Parliamentary candidates (one Labour and one Tory) are being less than open about their role as paid spin doctors to their electors. On April 6 we reported that a British Nuclear Fuels spin doctor was standing as a Labour candidate in Cumbria. Now it emerges that two more spinners are candidates. In Michael Howard's Folkestone seat the former Tory defector Maureen Tomison is standing for Labour.

Meanwhile former Tory spin doctor and PR consultant Sheila Gunn is standing for the Tories in Slough. As well as being a PR consultant, in recent years Gunn has simultaneously been able to find time to be a Camden councillor and to turn
her hand to academia. Strangely Gunn's profile on the Conservative Party website
fails to mention that she works for a PR agency in central London.”

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