The Conservative party is thrilled that its new media strategy has successfully dominated all news reporting during the party conference.
An insider explained that the strategy is simple: engage journalists on one story, to the exclusion of everything else. This avoids a torrent of different ‘bad’ stories as the media throws things at the wall to see what will stick. The method is also simple: leak a big policy announcement, to tease the press. Then refuse to talk about it for days on end, winding up the journos into a frenzy.
The strategy has worked well with HS2. The government leaked a story about cancellation, and then steadfastly refused to discuss it. The result was hours and hours of media time and effort wasted trying to get Ministers to confirm or deny the story. And as a bonus, no other conference stories got covered in the press – not Boris, not Partygate, not Liz Truss, not cost of living, not strikes, not sewage, not red wall, not that guy from Iceland, not Brexit, not Covid.
A media wonk told us ‘It has worked beyond our wildest dreams. The media fell for it hook, line and sinker. It’s epic. Malcolm Tucker would be proud of us.’
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