May to send out ‘ad vans’ telling voters she must lead Brexit talks

Strategists hope focus on departure from EU will concentrate voters’ minds in final days of campaign

THERESA MAY is to send out a fleet of “ad vans” to reinforce her Brexit message amid claims of a split among her most senior aides.

The Tory leader is considering dispatching the advertising vans around the country in a final bid to convince voters she is best placed to negotiate Britain’s exit from the European Union.

Tory strategists hope switching the focus to the fact that Brexit talks start just 11 days after next Thursday’s general election will concentrate minds among the electorate.

Mrs May will seek to stress the importance of Brexit talks when she appears in her first live election debate on Channel Four and Sky News tonight.

She will answer questions from Jeremy Paxman, the former BBC Newsnight presenter, and the studio audience after Jeremy Corbyn, her Labour rival, giving her the final word.

The ad vans will revive memories of Mrs May’s vans when Home Secretary, which bore the message “go home” for illegal immigrants. One Tory source said: “The key choice is who do you want at the negotiating table. We can’t have people thinking that there are free votes [for Labour].”

There was a boost for the Conservatives yesterday when the party’s lead over Labour started to widen. Yougov, which on Friday said the Tories were just five per cent ahead of Labour, said the party was now 7 points ahead.

The Conservative have already raised between £13 million and £14 million for their campaign and wants to raise another £2 million over the remaining 10 days in order to hit its spending limit. A Tory source said the cash would not be hard to raise from wealthy donors because “the prospect of Corbyn is so horrific they will help us out. There will be a final push”.

In addition to the ad vans, the party is planning to spend heavily on social media messages on mobile phones, rather than traditional billboards.

Some donors were initially unhappy that the party’s social care plan to force wealthy pensioners to pay more for care in their homes had been poorly explained, and was dubbed the “dementia tax”, sources said.

Mrs May’s key aides – Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy – have also been reportedly “at loggerheads” over the strategy, with Ms Hill blaming Mr Timothy for

‘The key choice is who do you want at the negotiating table. People must realise the significance of their vote’

including it in the manifesto.

The Daily Telegraph has been told that Mr Timothy is now rarely seen at party headquarters, from where Ms Hill is running the communications campaign with Sir Lynton Crosby, the strategist who masterminded the party’s 2015 victory.

However, Sir Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, said the talk of division among the advisers was “rubbish” and blamed “Westminster tittle-tattle”.

After weeks of stressing the value of Mrs May’s leadership, the Tories are expected to push Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary and David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, to the fore.

A poster campaign is being launched today by the country’s biggest trade union, with billboards in the north of England bearing the message that the Conservative party is “no friend of the North”. Unite is targeting cities where the Tories have to make large inroads to deliver a landslide.