‘Cameron cutie’ Joanne Cash back after tantrum

Why are the Tories making it so easy for Labour to make fun of their election campaign? It's a question the Mole has been asked once or twice in recent days. He doesn't really have an answer except to say this: never underestimate the experience of Brown, Mandelson and Campbell in electioneering tactics, and never overestimate the experience of Cameron, Osborne and their supposed Campbell equivalent, Andy Coulson.

Neither David Cameron nor George Osborne has done this before and as for Coulson, he was still the editor of the News of the World at the time of the last general election, deciding which tits and bums to put on which page of his Sunday scandal sheet.

One Westminster watcher who visited Tory Party HQ in recent days told the Mole: "It looked like a children's crusade. There was no one there who looked old enough to have voted before. Certainly no old sweats to steady the ship."

In the meantime, the Mole is enjoying the resulting chaos - airbrushed posters, distorted crime stats and the like - as much as anyone. He is especially relishing this week's gaffes - namely, the "rent-a-crowd photo op scandal" and the "Cameron cutie walks out in a huff" story.

First, the photo op. The Guardian reports today that a bunch of students filmed listening intently to a speech by David Cameron at the University of East London on Monday were not UEL students at all, but young party activists bussed in for the occasion.

Joseph Bitrus, president of the university's student union, was suspicious not because they weren't yawning, but because no one recognised them and they didn't seem to represent UEL's multicultural mix.
 
"They are not our students," Bitrus told the Guardian. "Afterwards I spoke with one of them, and he said he had just joined the campaign a week ago and was learning how it worked."

Needless to say, one of Cameron's press team denied last night that they had bussed anyone in. "There were more than 100 people in the audience," the spokesman said. "The vast majority were University of East London students and lecturers. A small number, less than a dozen, were student party members who expressed an interest in attending."

Okay, we'll take your word for it.

As for the disappearing 'cutie' candidate, The First Post reported yesterday how Joanne Cash, one of Cameron's favourite female candidates in the upcoming election, had apparently stormed out of a local party meeting in Westminster North and was resigning the candidacy.

In a lengthy blog posted last night, the Evening Standard's political editor Paul Waugh attempted to get to the bottom of this bizarre story. It seems there are those in Westminster North who have been less than impressed with Ms Cash being parachuted in to one of the most sought-after Tory candidacies in London. And there have been mutterings among the faithful not only that she came from nowhere - never a councillor, never before shortlisted for a seat - but that she was not spending enough time on the doorstep.

As we reported yesterday, Cash walked out after Amanda Sayers, a local party activist with whom Cash did not rub along well, was elected president of the Westminster North Conservative Association.

According to Waugh's report, audience members said that her walkout proved why she was unsuited to be the candidate. "This is what happens when you get someone who's inexperienced and over-promoted," one said later.

All manner of senior Tories hit the telephones - including a "livid" David Cameron, apparently - as the party tried to correct what looked like being a PR disaster in a key, winnable marginal.

By this morning, Cash was back, announcing on Twitter that Westminster North Conservatives had refused her resignation and all was well in Cameronworld.

As for Sayers's position, a spokesman at Tory Party headquarters told the Daily Mail: "I think you'll find she's no longer president, but you'll have to confirm that with the local association."

Who said general elections weren't fun? ·