Lynton Crosby

Sir Lynton Crosby
AO
Born Lynton Keith Crosby
(1956-08-23) 23 August 1956
Kadina, South Australia
Residence United Kingdom
Nationality Australian
Alma mater University of Adelaide
Occupation Political strategist
Political party Liberal Party of Australia

Sir Lynton Keith Crosby AO (born 23 August 1956)[1][2] is an Australian political strategist who has managed election campaigns for right-of-centre parties in several countries.[3] Crosby has been described as a "master of the dark political arts", "the Wizard of Oz", and "the Australian Karl Rove". In 2002, he was called "one of the most powerful and influential figures in the nation" by The Age.[2][4]

After graduating from the University of Adelaide, Crosby first became involved in politics with the Liberal Party of Australia, eventually being appointed federal director of the party in 1997. He oversaw the party's successful campaigns at the 1996, 1998, 2001, and 2004 federal elections, which made the Howard Government Australia's second-longest serving federal government. In 2002, Crosby left his formal position in the party to establish a consulting firm, the Crosby Textor Group.

Crosby first ventured into overseas politics at the 2005 UK general election, where he managed the Conservative Party's unsuccessful UK campaign. He has since also run Conservative campaigns for the 2008 and 2012 London mayoral elections, as well as the 2015 general election, all of which resulted in victories for the party. His campaign was less successful for the 2016 London mayoral election which was won by the Labour candidate.[5] Outside of Australia and the UK, Crosby has also served as an advisor for parties in Canada, New Zealand, and Sri Lanka. At the 2009 European Parliament elections, Crosby acted as a consultant for Libertas, a pan-European party.

Early life and career

Crosby was born in Kadina, South Australia, and grew up in a rural area of the state, where his father Dudley Crosby worked as a cereal farmer and an arts and crafts shop-owner.[6] He read economics at the University of Adelaide.[7]

Political career

Australia

Crosby started his career in 1976 as a market analyst with Golden Fleece Petroleum. He then moved into politics as a research assistant in 1978 for Senator Baden Teague. In 1980 Crosby became executive assistant to the Harold Allison, then Minister of Education and Aboriginal Affairs. Crosby became executive assistant to Martin Cameron in 1992, then Leader of the Opposition in the South Australian Legislative Council. Between 1986 and 1991 Crosby held a number of corporate affairs positions in the Australian private sector.

At the 1982 South Australian election Crosby unsuccessfully ran for the Liberals in the House of Assembly seat of Norwood. Suffering a 9.2 percent two-party swing compared to the statewide swing of 5.9 percent, he later joked that he "turned a marginal Labor seat into a safe Labor seat after campaigning there."[7]

In 1991, Crosby became state director for the Queensland division of the Liberal Party of Australia, and in 1994 the party's deputy federal director. He served under federal director Andrew Robb, until replacing him as federal director of the Liberal Party in May 1997. Crosby served as campaign director for the party at the 1996, 1998, 2001, and 2004 federal elections. In 1998, the government won with marginal seats (swing seats) targeted by Crosby. The election saw the smallest two-party-preferred margin win since 1949 estimates, on 49.02 percent.

In 2002, Crosby established an election consulting firm, the Crosby Textor Group, with an associate, Mark Textor. As a result, he left his position with the Liberal Party. Crosby was also involved in setting up CT Financial, an investor relations and financial communications specialist consultancy, in 2006.

In November 2012 Crosby sued Mike Kelly, the parliamentary secretary for defence, for libel for alleging on Twitter that Crosby had used push polling.[8]

United Kingdom

Crosby managed the Conservative Party's 2005 United Kingdom general election campaign but was unable to help Michael Howard defeat Tony Blair.[7] During Crosby's time as campaign manager, the Conservative used attention grabbing slogans such as "It’s Not Racist to Impose Limits on Immigration" and "How Would You Feel if a Bloke on Early Release Attacked Your Daughter?"[7]

Crosby was also appointed to run (the successful) Conservative Boris Johnson's London 2008 mayoral election campaign, at a cost to the party of £140,000 for four months of work.[9]

The Daily Mail alleged that Crosby had urged Johnson to focus his campaign on traditional Tory voters instead of "fucking Muslims", but Crosby later said through a spokesperson that he had no memory of using that phrasing.[7]

In March 2009 it was announced that Crosby would direct the Europe-wide Libertas campaign for the June 2009 European Parliament elections.[10] Despite running 600 candidates, the movement only managed to get one MEP elected, and folded shortly after.[11]

In July 2013, following the government's rejection of a plan to remove branding from cigarette packets, British Prime Minister David Cameron was urged by Liberal Democrat members of the governing coalition to sack Crosby as his chief election strategist because of Crosby's connection to the tobacco industry.[12]

Liberal Democrat MP Paul Burstow was quoted as saying: "Lynton Crosby cannot remain at the heart of government while he is also serving the interests of the tobacco industry. If he does not go the Prime Minister should sack him."[12] In July 2013 it was reported in The Guardian and elsewhere that Crosby Textor, the company which he co-founded (which is known as CTF Partners in the UK) had advised private healthcare providers on 'how to exploit perceived "failings" in the NHS' in 2010. Crosby issued The Guardian with a legal challenge over their reporting.[13][14] The issue resurfaced in mainstream news sources a few days before the 2015 UK General Election.[15][16]

In 2014, it was revealed that having been hired in 2012 by Philip Morris International, maker of Marlboro cigarettes, Crosby lobbied Lord Marland, then parliamentary undersecretary for intellectual property and a former Conservative party treasurer, to oppose the introduction of plain packaging on cigarettes.[17] This revelation came in papers released under the Freedom of Information Act by the Intellectual Property Office.[17]

In the 2016 London mayoral election, it was reported that Lynton Crosby was involved in linking the Labour candidate Sadiq Khan to terrorist organisations. This campaign tactic is understood to have backfired – it was poorly received by the public and resulted in Sadiq Khan winning the election over Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith.[5][18]

New Zealand

According to investigative journalist Nicky Hager, Crosby is an adviser to the Prime Minister of New Zealand, John Key.[19]

Sri Lanka

During the 2015 Sri Lankan parliamentary election, Crosby was an advisor to incumbent Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, whose United National Front captured a plurality of seats and formed a governing coalition along with President Maithripala Sirisena's Sri Lanka Freedom Party.[20] The campaign featured widespread adverts that contrasted "good governance" offered by the incumbent Prime Minister with the "jungle law" of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, whose ten year rule was marked by family corruption and strident nationalism after the 2009 defeat of the Tamil Tigers.[20]

Canada

In early September, at the height of the 2015 Canadian federal election campaign, Lynton Crosby was brought on as a Conservative Party strategist. At this point, the Conservative campaign had hit a low point as the Tories fell to third place behind the Liberals (who had started the campaign in third place) and the New Democratic Party, which had led at the beginning of the campaign.[21]

Crosby's decision to use identity politics, publicizing the issue of a small group of Muslim woman refusing to remove their niqab when swearing the Canadian oath of citizenship, became one of the key issues of the campaign.

This had the effect of improving Conservative fortunes, largely in Quebec, and also had the possibly unintended knock-on effect of breathing life into the moribund campaign of the Bloc Quebecois, both at the expense of the early frontrunner NDP. Although the NDP was polling strong numbers across the Rest of Canada when the campaign started, Quebec had acted as the Party’s heartland since 2011, a seat rich province in which the NDP had held a seemingly insurmountable lead amongst francophones.[22]

The Liberals had entered the campaign suffering from a confused policy narrative, Conservative efforts to frame Justin Trudeau as incompetent, a series of gaffes, and walking an awkward tightrope over Bill C51, all of which had contributed to their fall from previously strong polling numbers in 2013 and 2014.[23][24][25] At the start of the campaign, the NDP was outpolling the Liberals in many provinces, including Ontario and British Columbia, and NDP leader, Thomas Mulcair, who had earned a fierce reputation in Question Period, was now outpolling Trudeau as Canadians’ preferred prime minister.[26]

The surprise victory of the Alberta NDP in May 2015 also helped erode the perception that the NDP was unelectable.[27]

However, a cautious frontrunner strategy on the part of the NDP opened the door for Trudeau’s Liberals to take risks, portray themselves as having a more ambitious agenda for change and thus began to rekindle Liberal fortunes in English speaking Canada. In addition, the proposed niqab ban, which Mulcair refused to support, put the NDP on the opposite side of overwhelming public opinion in francophone Quebec and acted as a final knock-out blow to the Party’s fortunes. During the last stretch of the campaign in October, the NDP's already softening polling numbers declined by a further 10 points within less than two weeks, putting the Party out of contention altogether.

In the final weeks of the campaign the Liberals benefited in a round about way from the collapse of the NDP, which had provided only a minor boost to the Conservatives and Bloc, as the Liberals were able to portray themselves as the only party capable of defeating the Conservatives.

The Liberals went on to win a majority government in what was described as a "stunning rout",[28][29] reminiscent of the Parti Quebecois' loss to the unaffiliated Quebec Liberal Party the year before, in which identity politics had also been used to unintended disadvantage.[30] The party's increase of 148 seats from the previous election was the largest-ever numerical increase by a party in a Canadian election.[31]

Crosby says he has never been involved with political campaigns in Canada. The Crosby Textor consulting firm has stated that neither Lynton Crosby nor anyone else in the firm was involved in the Canadian general election campaign, nor traveled to Canada during the campaign.[32] Regardless, the spokesperson for the Conservative Party of Canada during the 2015 campaign, Kory Tenecke, stated on camera that Crosby was assisting the campaign and that Crosby had had lengthy relationship with the Party[33] Maclean's extensively discussed Crosby being retained by the Conservatives, his use of polarizing anti-Muslim rhetoric, and his hasty departure.[34] Many prominent Conservatives, after being thoroughly routed by the populace and the Liberal Party of Canada, claimed that "they got the tone wrong".

Tactics

Crosby is described as favouring what is called a wedge strategy, whereby the party he advises introduces a divisive or controversial social issue into a campaign, aligning its own stance with the dissenting faction of its opponent party, with the goal of causing vitriolic debate inside the opposing party, defection of its supporters, and the legitimising of sentiment which had previously been considered inappropriate. This is also described as "below the radar" or dog-whistle campaigning, with the targeting of marginal constituencies with highly localised campaigning, latching on to local issues and personalities.[2] To find such divisive and potentially deflecting issues, Crosby's business partner Mark Textor runs focus groups to find which groups to target with what questions.[35] Crosby is said to run a tight ship, focus on simple messages, target marginal constituencies and use lots of polls.[4]

In a 2013 article for The Daily Telegraph, Boris Johnson noted that one of Crosby's tactics when losing an argument and having the facts against you was to do the equivalent of "throwing a dead cat on the table": bring up an issue you want to talk about that draws widespread attention from the populace, forcing opponents to also talk about your new issue instead of the previous issue.[28]

Personal life

Crosby is married to his wife Dawn née Hands, an Australian, with whom he has two adult daughters: Tara and Emma. Crosby and his wife are UK residents.[7]

Honours

In 2005, Crosby was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (postnominals AO), for "service to politics".[36] He had previously received the Australian government's Centenary Medal, for "service to Australian society through politics".[37]

Crosby was knighted in the UK's 2016 New Year Honours "for political service".[38][39][40] The honour sparked criticism from figures in the Labour Party and Liberal Democrats, who accused Cameron's government of engaging in political cronyism.[41]

Crosby's supporters note that Spencer Livermore, a strategist for the Labour Party, had been awarded a life peerage earlier in the year.[42][43]

References

  1. ↑ Who's Who in Australia 2015, ConnectWeb.
  2. 1 2 3 Brian Wheeler (16 November 2004). "Howard's wizard of Oz". BBC News. Retrieved 2 May 2008.
  3. ↑ Watt, Nicholas (28 January 2005). "The Guardian profile: Lynton Crosby". The Guardian. London: Guardian Media Group. Retrieved 21 April 2013.
  4. 1 2 "Pass notes No 3,171: Lynton Crosby". The Guardian. 7 May 2012. Retrieved 9 September 2012.
  5. 1 2 "It's Lynton Crosby who made Zac Goldsmith's campaign so nasty - and now he's being knighted". Independent. 6 May 2016. Retrieved 3 June 2016.
  6. ↑ www.adelaidenow.com.au
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Tu Thanh Ha (11 September 2015). "Who is Lynton Crosby, the 'master of dark arts' now behind Harper's campaign?". Globe and Mail. Retrieved 5 October 2015.
  8. ↑ Boffey, Daniel (12 May 2013). "David Cameron's head of strategy sues Australian minister for libel". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 May 2013.
  9. ↑ Oliver, Jonathan; Oakeshott, Isabel (4 May 2008). "Onward Tory soldiers". The Times. London, UK. Retrieved 12 May 2010.
  10. ↑ Mary Fitzgerald, "Australian strategist to lead Libertas campaign", Irish Times, 24 March 2009. Retrieved 24 March 2009.
  11. ↑ Crosbie, Judith. "Libertas's Ganley concedes defeat in Irish contest". Europeanvoice.com. Retrieved 20 June 2013.
  12. 1 2 Toby Helm; Jamie Doward (13 July 2013). "David Cameron told to sack strategy chief over link to tobacco giants". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 July 2013.
  13. ↑ "Tory strategist Lynton Crosby in new lobbying row".
  14. ↑ "Tory election strategist Lynton Crosby 'told private healthcare firms how to exploit NHS failings'". The Daily Mail.
  15. ↑ "Firm run by Lynton Crosby calls for 'more private healthcare'". Politics Home.
  16. ↑ "Labour calls on Tories to 'come clean' over Lynton Crosby". ITV.
  17. 1 2 Doward, Jamie (6 September 2014). "Conservative election guru Lynton Crosby lobbied minister over tobacco". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 September 2014.
  18. ↑ "Sadiq Khan says Tory smear campaign was 'straight out of the Donald Trump playbook'". Independent. 7 May 2016. Retrieved 3 June 2016.
  19. ↑ Hager, Nicky (3 June 2009). ""Crosby v Hager": defamation proceedings used as a political weapon". Retrieved 16 March 2015.
  20. 1 2 Crabtree, James (18 August 2015). "New era for Sri Lanka as Rajapaksa loses". Financial Times. Retrieved 5 October 2015.
  21. ↑ https://www.thestar.com/news/federal-election/2015/08/27/ndp-in-reach-of-majority-new-poll-suggests.html
  22. ↑ http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-tom-mulcair-ndp-quebec-orange-wave-michelle-gagnon-1.3210553
  23. ↑ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/are-we-witnessing-the-strange-death-of-liberal-canada/article25141317//
  24. ↑ http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/bill-c-51-how-trudeau-s-support-of-the-anti-terror-bill-could-help-the-ndp-1.3066316
  25. ↑ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/eve-adamss-failed-nomination-bid-casts-doubts-on-trudeaus-judgment/article25725975/
  26. ↑ http://globalnews.ca/news/1935605/justin-trudeau-tumbles-from-top-pick-for-prime-minister-poll/
  27. ↑ http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/alberta-loses-its-goddamn-mind-for-the-fourth-time-a-guide-for-the-perplexed-190
  28. 1 2 Solomon, Evan. "The dead cat on the 2015 campaign trail". Maclean's. Retrieved 5 October 2015.
  29. ↑ Austen, Ian (19 October 2015). "Justin Trudeau and Liberal Party Prevail With Stunning Rout in Canada". New York Times. Retrieved 20 October 2015.
  30. ↑ http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-votes-2014/pauline-marois-loses-seat-parti-qu%C3%A9b%C3%A9cois-loses-power-1.2600334
  31. ↑ "2015 Election Results by Elections Canada: the independent, non-partisan agency responsible for conducting federal elections and referendums". Retrieved 27 December 2015.
  32. ↑ Danny Bradbury (October 22, 2015). "Lynton Crosby 'bemused' at reports of involvement in Canadian elections". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 30 January 2016.
  33. ↑ |url=http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/news-video/video-spokesman-on-tories-relationship-with-aussie-campaign-fixer/article26333095/|accessdate=26 June 2016}
  34. ↑ {Cite news|title=The dead cat on the 2015 campaign trail: Stephen Harper’s campaign was floundering, until he threw something on the table that changed everything |author=Evan Solomon|date=October 2, 2015|work=Macleans|accessdate=26 June 2016}|url=http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/for-campaign-magic-harper-turns-to-a-wizard-from-oz/\url=http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/dead-cats-and-the-niqab/
  35. ↑ Julian Glover (2 May 2008). "The Jeeves to Johnson's Bertie Wooster: the man who may have got him elected". The Guardian. UK. Retrieved 2 May 2008.
  36. ↑ CROSBY, Lynton Keith (Officer of the Order of Australia) – It's An Honour. Retrieved 29 December 2015.
  37. ↑ CROSBY, Lynton Keith (Centenary Medal) – It's An Honour. Retrieved 29 December 2015.
  38. ↑ (28 December 2015). Lynton Crosby: Australian political strategist tipped to receive knighthood – ABC News. Retrieved 29 December 2015.
  39. ↑ The London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 61450. p. N2. 30 December 2015.
  40. ↑ "New Year's Honours 2016 list" (pdf). GOV.UK. 30 December 2015. Retrieved 30 December 2015.
  41. ↑ (27 December 2015). "'Knighthood' for Lynton Crosby, Australian political strategist, under fire in United Kingdom" – The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 29 December 2015.
  42. ↑ "Of course Lynton Crosby deserves a knighthood" – The Spectator. Retrieved 29 December 2015.
  43. ↑ "New Year's Honours: A knighthood for Lynton Crosby marks new low for the honours system". The Independent.
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