Letter from the Whitehall Editor: The spurious Tory endorsement that misfired

In the spin doctors’ lexicon they are known as “third-party endorsements”. The idea is that if you want to sell a policy the best way to do it is to get businessmen/charities/the great and good to back your point of view “independently”.

That, wisdom has it, will give your plan greater credence. It’s even better if no one is any the wiser that you arranged the whole thing in the first place. And that was the plan behind a letter “sent” to The Daily Telegraph yesterday by 5,000 small businesses endorsing Tory policies and attacking Labour’s handling of the economy.

Except, of course, the plan quickly unravelled. As we report today the list of signatories corralled by Conservative Central Office included duplicate names and signatories who were not company owners. One firm denied signing the document at all. One man signed the letter four times while another signatory was named as “Stanley Ward Conservative Club”. Marvellous.

On one level, the fact that a few of the 5,000 signatories turned out to be bogus should not detract from the majority who put their names to the letter willingly. But neither should we read too much into the letter either. It is a statement of self-interest from a group who see the Tories as the party best placed to protect that interest. Labour could almost certainly come up with a list of people saying the exact opposite.

Thankfully, a week on Thursday these signatories will have no more sway in determining the result of this election than any of the rest of us. That is the third-party endorsement the political parties really need.

i@independent.co.uk