PROFILE LYNTON CROSBY:WHEN A BRITISH interviewer asked Lynton Crosby if he had ever met Queen Elizabeth, the Australian political strategist's tongue-in-cheek reply neatly summed up the steely campaign style that has made him famous – and not a little feared. No, he shrugged. "She doesn't vote and she doesn't live in one of our target seats so there's no point."
It was typical of the man whose formidable – and sometimes controversial – reputation for devising winning electoral strategies has earned him numerous sobriquets, from the Wizard of Oz to the Australian Karl Rove.
After a career that has seen him go from backroom boy in the Australian Liberal party to guiding John Howard towards four consecutive election victories, and successfully persuading Boris Johnson to drop the buffoonery if he wanted to become mayor of London, Lynton Crosby has now set his sights on what will undoubtedly prove his biggest challenge yet – the European Parliament elections.
Declan Ganley, the Tuam-based founder of Libertas, has recruited Crosby to direct its campaign for the June polls. Libertas intends to run 100 candidates across the 27 EU member states in a bid to transform the ballot into a proxy referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
“It’s quite unlike anything Lynton Crosby has done before,” says Peter Wilson, Europe correspondent for the Australian newspaper. Wilson knows Crosby from his days on the political beat in Australia, and he recently talked to the notoriously media shy strategist about his new job. “It will be quite an exciting challenge for him. His view is that he is a consultant and this is a job, but at the same time he never takes a job he doesn’t believe in. He supports the central thrust of the Libertas message. He wants to see EU reform.”
Wilson says Crosby in person is nothing like the somewhat Mephistophelian figure he is often portrayed to be. “After you read the hype, you expect this macho political ball-breaker but when you meet him, he is polite, softly spoken and self-effacing. He could be your dentist.”
Born in the late 1950s to parents living in the small farming community of Kadina in southern Australia, Crosby went on to study economics at the University of Adelaide. After a number of jobs, including a stint with a petroleum company, he dipped his toe into politics for the first time in 1982 when he stood for the Liberals in Queensland.
After suffering an embarrassing defeat, Crosby decided political office was not for him and he moved instead to the party’s backrooms where he soon built up a reputation for formulating canny electoral strategies.
Married with two grown-up children, Crosby set up his consultancy firm Crosby|Textor in 2002.
According to Libertas sources, Crosby took up the position of campaign director two months ago and he is based out of its Brussels offices. The Wizard of Oz doesn’t come cheap – the British Conservative party spent £441,146 on his services for Michael Howard’s ill-fated 2005 election bid, according to figures released by the UK’s Electoral Commission.
“As political strategists go, Lynton Crosby is a star with a great track record,” says Jonathan Isaby, who broke the story of the Libertas appointment on ConservativeHome, a blog he co-edits. “If Libertas can afford him, it is not the greatest surprise that they would seek to engage Lynton.”
SO WHAT KIND of pan-European campaign might the Australian election guru be cooking up at Libertas HQ?
“If you look at his career so far, one thing is for sure, this won’t be a cookie-cutter campaign,” says Peter Wilson.
In the heat of last year’s London mayoral race, then incumbent Ken Livingstone was scathing in his assessment of the Svengali hired by the Tories to turn Boris Johnson into mayor material. “You clearly don’t employ Lynton Crosby if you want a clean and uplifting campaign, and I have to say for the first time in my life, I see the value of a rigorous deportation policy for undesirable aliens,” Livingstone caustically remarked on Australian TV.
Crosby is renowned for his combative style of campaigning and his tendency to “go negative” often by harnessing populist themes with a strong tabloid appeal, a tactic that has led to accusations that he panders to the lowest common denominator.
In 2005, as Crosby was putting the final touches to the Conservative campaign in Britain, refugee groups in New Zealand called for him to be banned from the country after it was reported that a centre-right party there was planning to hire him for its next election drive.
“His strategy consists of creating the most shameful and grubby tactics – spreading misinformation and uninformed but sensational opinion and debate,” one refugee advocate told reporters, no doubt referring to Crosby’s involvement in election campaigns that have not shied away from exploiting issues such as immigration.
As director of John Howard’s 2001 re-election push, Crosby was part of the team that succeeded in making political capital out of an ugly and inflammatory row concerning the Tampa, a Norwegian ship carrying 438 refugees, which Howard refused to allow dock in Australia. Claims, later proved false, that the refugees had tried to blackmail their way into the country by throwing children overboard inspired dubious campaign ads featuring Howard and the slogan: “We decide who will come into this country.”
Then there is the pollster Mark Textor, a partner in Crosby’s consultancy firm, who has been accused of using “push-polling” – phoning voters on the pretext of conducting an opinion poll and then using the opportunity to disseminate damaging rumours about an electoral opponent. One Labour candidate in Australia won an apology and an out-of-court settlement from Textor and others after householders were asked whether they would be more or less likely to vote for her knowing she supported the right to abortion up to the ninth month of pregnancy.
During the 2005 general election in Britain, Labour accused Crosby of importing “dog-whistle” strategies into British politics. The expression refers to subtle messages on sensitive issues such as immigration that cut through the din of an election campaign to reach only the people at which they are aimed – usually the party base – in the way a dog whistle is inaudible to humans. It is the politics of the nudge and wink. The Tories’ 2005 campaign, with its slogan “Are you thinking what we’re thinking” and rhetoric on issues including immigration, asylum and abortion, was held up as typical of the genre.
CROSBY RESENTS THE suggestion that his tactics sometimes lean towards the underhand. “Of course we didn’t use a bloody dog whistle or send secret signals to particular groups,” he said in 2005. “Everyone could hear what we were saying to voters: it was more like a fog horn.”
He also denies playing the race card. “Most people don’t have a clue about my ideas,” he told the Spectator four years ago. “I am at the moderate end of the spectrum.”
Crosby is big on values. “People don’t generally vote simply on the basis of issues,” he told a conference in Canberra in 2004. “They vote as much on the values and motivation of political parties in taking a particular position on an issue . . . It is the values you communicate, and the motivation you have, that influences the way people vote.”
In a rare interview with the Age two years earlier, Crosby explained his theory of success. “The key to winning election campaigns is building a good team, having clear central lines of authority while implementing your campaign in as decentralised a way as possible, and having a leader who knows what he’s on about.”
He is also known for his relentless targeting of marginal constituencies by meticulously crafting campaigns around local issues and personalities.
During Boris Johnson’s campaign for the London mayoralty, Crosby’s masterminding of the so-called “Blue Doughnut” strategy, which ruthlessly targeted Tory-leaning voters in neglected outer London boroughs, won him plaudits. Crosby massively increased turnout by signing up tens of thousands of suburban commuters for postal votes.
“He is an expert in developing strategies aimed at motivating people who didn’t vote before to go out and vote. Our success will be largely dependent on that,” said one Libertas source.
Crosby’s involvement with the Johnson campaign prompted the Australian media to describe him as Jeeves to Johnson’s Bertie Wooster, and he was credited with bringing rigour to what had been up to then a shambolic team.
“He’s someone who instills discipline in a campaign. His guiding phrase is ‘message matters most’,” says Jonathan Isaby, who co-authored a book on Boris Johnson’s run for City Hall. “He’s very straight talking and he doesn’t mince his words. He gains the respect of those he works with pretty quickly but you’ve got to be disciplined and you’ve got to toe the line. He expects complete loyalty.”
While it remains to be seen what tactics Crosby will employ for the Libertas campaign, those who have encountered his bruising techniques in Australia and Britain warn that his willingness to “go negative” should not be underestimated. Or his drive to win. When the London Times claimed that Crosby had advised Michael Howard shortly before election day in 2005 that the Conservatives could not secure victory, Crosby began legal proceedings. He told the paper that “second place” was not part of his vocabulary. It later published a correction.
Who is he?
Antipodean election supremo, AKA the Australian Karl Rove.
Why is he in the news?
He has been signed up to direct Libertas’s Europe-wide campaign for the European Parliament elections in June.
Most appealing characteristic?
Depends on your political leanings. Conservatives praise his rigour, canny grasp of electoral dynamics and ability to turn around a flailing election campaign.
Least appealing characteristic?
Others despise his willingness to “go negative” and engage in under-the-radar campaigning straight out of Karl Rove’s rule book.
Most likely to say?
“Second place is not part of my vocabulary”
Least likely to say?
“I don’t fancy our chances, Declan”