Liberal Conspiracy has the story from the Daily Mail about North East Somerset Conservatie, Jacob Rees-Mogg:
A Tory parliamentary candidate has been caught using a member of staff to pose as a constituent – in an election leaflet calling for honesty…
The woman would have had to make a 260-mile round trip from London to participate in the photo opportunity…
In March he was forced to apologise after plagiarising an editorial from a national newspaper for an election leaflet. And in May he was caught using staff to write an attack on Gordon Brown which he claimed to be his own words.
You can read more here.
One Comment
Does this really matter? That’s a rhetorical question because I’m not sure what the answer is, but in these days of Photoshop skills, viral marketing, astro-turfing, focus groups, push-polling and so on, does anyone really believe that what politicians present to them bears much relation to the truth anyway? Authenticity in politics was pretty much an invention of the community politics wing of the Liberal Party: a way of presenting fairly ordinary people from your local community like Graham Tope (no offence intended) or (God help us) Bill Pitt as being the answer to all the community’s problems. I would think it more likely that you won’t vote for Jacob Rees-Mogg because you think he’d be more suited to run for Upper Class Twit of the Year than Parliament, or you will vote for him because his family owns your tied cottage, than because he couldn’t find a fit woman locally who wanted to be photographed with him.