Tory Photoshop lies cause a storm, yawn

thisislondon: Labour called on Michael Howard today to sack a Tory candidate who doctored a photograph of himself at a protest against the deportation of an asylum seeker for his campaign literature

The original picture showed Ed Matts, the Conservative candidate for Dorset South, holding a placard with a picture of Verah Kachepa and her four children who were facing being returned to Malawi.

Alongside him, Tory former home office minister Ann Widdecombe is shown with a placard with the slogan "Let them stay".

But in the version which appeared on Mr Matts's campaign literature, the picture of Ms Kachepa is missing and has been replaced with the slogan "Controlled immigration", while Ms Widdecombe's slogan has been changed to read "Not chaos and inhumanity".

The crowd of protesters in the background in the original picture is also missing from the version in the leaflet.

The row comes as the head of the Commission for Racial Equality entered the general election debate with a warning to main parties not to inflame racial tensions in the heat of the campaign. Link

[DB:] Those Tories will stop at nothing in their pursuit of power - much like Labour. However the Tory game of stoking up ill-informed paranoia concerning immigration is a desperate tactic from a party without a real hope of returning to government in the near future, short of a spectacular own-goal by Labour. Ed Matts cannot be blamed for adopting a creative approach - we love photoshops at DB too - what is rotten though is the Tory party and its policies under Howard.