WHILE the Conservative Party has been ordered by advertising watchdogs not to repeat its controversial "demon eyes" image of the Labour leader, Mr Tony Blair, senior Tories were defiant about the issue last night. They were taking comfort from the fact that the Advertising Standards Authority ruling only partially upheld complaints about the advertisement, which appeared in three Sunday newspapers.
Mr Blair on Channel 4 last night condemned what he termed the Tories' "nasty, vicious, negative" campaigning and he called for electioneering to be cleaned up.
Tories immediately challenged the Labour leader to make good his words and withdraw Labour's own "same old Tories, same old lies" campaign.
The ASA said Mr Blair was depicted in a "dishonest and sinister" way without his permission. This was in breach of the industry's code of practice, the ASA said, adding that the advertisement should not be repeated. However it rejected a complaint that the advertisement was widely offensive.
A senior Tory source said the ruling was a round rebuttal of the "spin" put on the issue by the Labour election guru, Mr Peter Mandelson, and that the Tories had not planned to use the poster again anyway.
However, that analysis was rejected last night by the director general of the ASA, Ms Matti Alderson, who agreed the ruling was a rap across the knuckles for both the Tories and their advertising agency, M & C Saatchi.
"They should both have known better than to do this," she told a news conference in London. "I think Conservative Central Office should not have run this advertisement and I think M & C Saatchi should have known that and would have known if they had come and taken our advice in advance.
"We are talking about an offensive portrayal of a politician. They could have found out in advance what kind of reaction there was likely to be to that."
He added: "It is rather inconsistent I may say with John Major's assertion after the death of John Smith that he wanted to clean up party politics."