'Rent-a-crowds' ensure nothing is left to chance

I’ll spell it out because obviously some people (read party strategists) don’t understand; the whole point of elections and campaigning is that your candidates/party is meant to go out onto the street and engage directly with the voters. They are meant to be confronted with all manner of uncomfortable situations because for the majority of us that is what life can be like. They have to do this to show that they aren’t alien from us, are prepared to see what our lives are like and what they can then do if we choose to elect them to serve us. Clear? Apparently not...no they think that you run an election with nothing but pretence, marketing and bullshit.

“When Tony Blair and Gordon Brown launched an election campaign poster this week in front of an enthusiastic crowd, some members of their audience may have felt they had heard it all before. The politicians' words may have been familiar, and so were some of the faces of the background crowd. The Virgo family - Rachel and Benjamin, and their young children, Gilbert, five, Theo, three, and Albany one - were stationed behind the Chancellor at Thursday's poster launch.

But Mrs Virgo and Albany were also in the background crowd at the unveiling a month ago of another campaign poster by Messrs Blair and Brown, prompting accusations that Mr Blair was using a rent-a-crowd to falsely give the impression he was meeting ordinary people.” Link