It’s possibly just as well Labour supporters didn’t know about this when it happened, given they were already feeling nauseous anyway. The news has emerged that the morning after the general election, George Osborne gave the Conservatives’ election strategist Lynton Crosby a kiss for guiding the party to a majority.
The genesis of one of the less alluring-sounding clinches in recent history came on election day, the Sunday Times reported, when Osborne was so convinced the vote would bring deadlock that he offered Crosby a french kiss if the Tories prevailed.
When the results confounded the polls by giving the Conservatives an absolute majority, the chancellor kept his promise – in part. In front of David Cameron and the party’s other top strategist, Jim Messina, he did kiss Crosby, but only on the cheek.
“It’s true,” Crosby told the paper. “His aftershave still haunts me. Fortunately tongues remained withdrawn. The pledge was on election day. The consummation was the day after, at No 10.”
An unnamed aide to Osborne confirmed the basic facts, but quibbled over one detail: “That is proof that George follows the ‘whatever it takes’ approach to winning elections. But it must be someone else’s aftershave that haunts Lynton – George doesn’t wear any.”
Such was the surprise about the eventual result that Osborne was among a series of people to make mistaken pledges on the assumption the polls were correct.
The former Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown promised the BBC presenter Andrew Neil he would “publicly eat my hat” if the exit poll findings of a Lib Dem near-wipeout were true.
Presented hours later by Neil with a hat, Ashdown somewhat grumpily demurred, while promising he would do so alongside Alastair Campbell. The former Labour spin doctor had said he would “eat my kilt” if the SNP won 58 Scottish seats. Both were, like Osborne, partly true to their rash words, in this case eating hat- and kilt-shaped cakes the next day on the BBC’s Question Time.
The Daily Telegraph columnist Dan Hodges, meanwhile, made perhaps the most reckless pledge, albeit all the way back in 2012:
If UKIP break 6% at the next election I'll streak naked down Whitehall in a Nigel Farage mask whilst singing Land of Hope and Glory...
— Dan Hodges (@DPJHodges) December 15, 2012
Ukip did, of course, win more than twice this share of the vote. Hodges’ plan remains unconfirmed, though it seems he too, much like Osborne, is trying to wriggle out of the worst of it.
Given this streak is being inspired by Nigel Farage I also reserve the right to get half-way, then turn round and run back up Whitehall...
— Dan Hodges (@DPJHodges) May 13, 2015
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