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Tactical Briefing

Jesse Armstrong

Published 07 August 2008

From: The Unit
To: GB
Subject: Take Off Your Jacket

So, pretty good week. Obviously the calls for your immediate removal are growing stronger each day. But we all feel this is a normal part of the political cycle we are in.

As we see it, this is a cycle that began with you as a popular chancellor. The government became more and more unpopular under TB until he left. At that point you rightly enjoyed a profoundly illuminating moment when the true feelings of the British public regarding yourself and centre-left politics were revealed (27 June to 30 June 2007).

At a certain point after this "moment of truth", the unnatural state of things began to reassert itself and you and the government once again became unpopular. This was largely due to the attacks of a critical media. These naysayers encouraged public confusion to the point where now the electorate themselves seem barely to comprehend why they feel as they pretend to pollsters they do.

As we see it, the next part of the political cycle will be that something will happen. And after this thing, everything will change and you will start to become increasingly popular again. The lack of substance of the opposition will become clear and will be publicly declared by the IMF and the New York Times. Particularly Osborne, who will probably suffer international ridicule. Commodity prices will then start to fall due to the alteration of circumstances that will happen in the future. And people will probably suggest the building of statues to commemorate how you steered Britain through the global economic downturn, but you will demur and suggest there are more serious issues at hand.

The key thing for us is to identify what the thing is that is going to happen that is going to change everything. And we think we have it. It's your suit jacket. We feel that if we can get you to "Take Off Your Jacket" decisively, things will start to look up.

Obviously, we don't mean for you to simply "take off your jacket" in a physical sense. There is a whole range of tactical and strategic political considerations that fall under the rubric of "Taking Off Your Jacket".

We need to reconnect with the electorate. We need to enthuse the public about our radical programme. We need you to recover poise and authority in the eyes of ordinary voters. We can achieve all of these by allowing you to "Take Off Your Jacket".

So what does asking you to "Take Off Your Jacket" actually involve? Well, chief among the things we need to do is to get you to physically take off your jacket. There will be further steps, but getting the jacket off is the essential prerequisite for all the rest, which we can outline at length later, once you have taken off your jacket.

Let us know your thoughts.

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