Isaac Levido brings Aussie style to Johnson campaign

Described by Tory insiders as a ‘typical Aussie’, 35-year-old Issac Levido brings a ‘down and dirty’ style to the Boris Johnson election campaign.

Australian Isaac Levido Levido is the 35-year-old Conservative party campaign director.

When Isaac Levido directs staff sequestered inside the ground floors of the Conservative Party’s headquarters in Matthew Parker Street, Westminster, he brings a “down and dirty’’ Australian style to the Boris Johnson election campaign.

Levido is the 35-year-old Conservative party campaign director: a protege of both Johnson’s close friend and former campaign director, Lynton Crosby, and the Australian Liberal party’s Andrew Hirst.

Described by Tory insiders as a “typical Aussie” — which to British sensibilities means direct, open, without ego and efficient — Levido is the main man running hundreds of staffers, thousands of volunteers, and directing the messaging of the Prime Minister and Tory candidates over the next six weeks until the December 12 election.

Not putting too fine a point on it, the very future of Brexit hangs on the instincts of this man from the NSW mid-north coast town of Port Macquarie to be disciplined about the campaign’s strategy and steer Johnson to power.

“When Lynton stepped back (from being involved in the election), there was no way Boris wasn’t going to stick with someone that used the same polling methods,’’ one Tory told The Weekend Australian.

“Isaac knows how to interpret the numbers, how to put in place the strategy from that information. It didn’t hurt that he was associated with the big win by Scott Morrison either, because over here that was seen as a big success, and we like winners.’’

Isaac Levido, left, is an Australian political strategist who is working on the Tory campaign. Picture: Liberal Party

The pod of power inside the Conservative campaign, apart from Levido in the central position, has polling expert Michael Brooks, another long time staffer from Crosby’s company CTF Partners, as well as two New Zealand digital consultants, Sean Topham and Ben Guerin.

Brooks monitors the intensive and targeted polling that is undertaken inside marginal seats that helps guide Levido’s daily messages to the 650 party candidates about what key lines they should focus upon. Different constituencies draw on different issues pertinent to voters. Crosby was famed for implementing the dog whistle and dead cat diversionary tactics when needed: but this campaign, so riddled with entrenched Brexit opinions, will be like no other and friends say Levido is not underestimating the tough battle ahead.

Topham and Guerin produce the videos and digital memes and messages targeted on social media, and are lightning fast at capitalising on an opposition mistake.

All four worked together on the Morrison election, with Levido as Hirst’s offsider.

Even while Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was still delivering his election launch at Battersea on Thursday, the Conservative team was primed and punching out rebuttals on Twitter and Facebook. One example: “Corbyn asks whose side are you on. But whose side is Corbyn on?’’ linking to video of Corbyn refusing to blame Russia for the Salisbury Novichok poisoning.

Hirst told The Weekend Australian that Levido was “a consummate political professional’’ who will be resolutely focused on doing everything possible to maximise the Conservative’s success.

Earlier this week, Levido was before the Tory party board, convincing Tory chairman James Cleverly that the sharp campaign has to focus on Johnson being the preferred prime minister.

Lessons have also been learned from the disastrous Theresa May effort in 2017 which was derailed by concerns about elderly care costs. Johnson has demanded a compact manifesto and has great faith that Levido won’t take anything for granted.

Levido is well known to Johnson, having been Crosby’s lieutenant on the 2015 and 2017 British elections and a failed attempt to win the London mayoralty for one of Johnson’s close Tory friends, Zac Goldsmith.

At the moment Levido is pushing a central campaign theme that Boris Johnson Will Get Brexit Done, drawing upon the nation’s weariness and frustration with the zombie parliament of the past two years; as well as highlighting the Conservatives as the party for law and order, the National Health Service and education.

Extensive questioning of voters showed that less than a third want Corbyn to be in government, whether it is as a majority or in coalition. Voters fear Corbyn, and his Marxist policies to take back schools, housing, railways and utilities more than they do Brexit, and the Conservatives will be targeting specific Labour leaver seats in North Wales and the Midlands that a dithering Corbyn can’t be trusted.

The former Liberal foreign minister and ex-High Commissioner to the UK, Alexander Downer, said ten years ago he was told by a political expert that the average British politician only met a punter when he took in his dry-cleaning. He said “very bright Australians’’ now inside British politics had brought across their egalitarian attitudes and transformed British election campaigning over the past decade.

“The British were too grand and aloof from the electorate and they need to get down and dirty with the voters,’’ Downer told the BBC. “Isaac, he is one of those high level professionals.’’

Another Tory member told The Weekend Australian that Levido was sensible, reliable and “not a peacock’’. “He knows what to do, he’s disciplined and can make difficult decisions under pressure, and importantly he brings the Tory team together.’’