Tuesday 5 January 2010

So how airbrushed was Dave?

That's what The Times Red Box blog wants to know about the 'Trust Dave' poster with which the Conservatives launched their election campaign. The Conservatives seem to be fessing up to minor airbrushing to the Daily Mail but denying any more substantial work on the Cameron cheekbones.

But Sam Coates is suggesting that transparency demands the release of the original image.

***

Coincidentally, the politics of appearance are also the subject of a brief tangent in Labour attack dog Denis MacShane's commentary in the new Fabian Review:


Cameron, as Steve Richards has pointed out, is not heir to Blair but a William Hague with hair, which gets blacker and more bouffant at each Prime Minister's Questions.


As you would expect from this high-minded think-tank, that is just a brief aside in a piece which is mostly a rather more ideas-focused challenge to the left (PDF here).

But perhaps the Daily Mail website could help out by offering some exhaustive photo-analysis of whether the Cameron hair has been getting any artificial help too.

3 comments:

13eastie said...

In the interest of balance, there seems to be rather a lot of focus on Dave here.

Why is there no call from Coates for an explanation from No. 10 as to how Gordon managed to rid himself of that disfiguring orange blob?

Sunder Katwala said...

13eastie,

Agree, quite a lot of focus on Dave, though we understand that is very much what the Conservatives want. (So they started it!!)

However the New Statesman has now cast the net a little wider with some more examples of the political airbrush albeit in their 'David Cameron: Supermodel' post.

Letters From A Tory said...

Airbrushing this photo when the Conservatives are desperate to portray Cameron as 'authentic' seems entirely counter-productive.