STRONG, stable leadership? I know you are already sick of the Tory mantra for this General Election. This vacuous phrase bears the fingerprints of Lynton Crosby (aka the “Wizard of Oz”), the Australian election strategist appointed to run the Tory campaign.

Crosby got a knighthood from David Cameron for winning the 2015 General Election (except in Scotland). Normally, Theresa May wouldn’t touch a Cameron appointment with a bargepole. However, Sir Lynton is just the Machiavellian election guru she needs to see off Jeremy Corbyn and secure (she hopes) the 150-seat majority needed to keep in check her critics waiting in the hard Brexit wing of the Parliamentary Conservative Party.

Crosby has become rich thinking he can engineer election outcomes. His approach is hardly novel. He takes detailed polls in marginal seats and runs focus groups with key voters, to ensure that every election message has been rigorously road-tested. In 2015 he was credited with shaping the Tories' successful strategy to target Liberal Democrat seats in the English south west – though you’d have been pretty dumb not to have noticed traditional LibDem voters were pissed off with arrogant Nick Clegg. Crosby also stoked up the fears of English voters regarding a possible Labour coalition with the SNP. But that only worked because dithering Ed Miliband ran away from embracing a powerful, anti-Tory progressive alliance and was seen as weak.

Crosby acquired his dubious reputation for political omniscience because he correctly predicted the outcome of the last General Election while most of the pollsters said it would be a dead-heat between Labour and Tories. We know now that that wonky polls were the result of fiddling the data to suit preconceptions plus a tendency for embarrassed voters to under-report their willingness to support the Tories. Even then, I suspect Crosby got lucky. If you are running the Conservative election project, you can’t tell the boss they are losing or you get fired.

The real hallmark of the Crosby school of campaigning is that it gets very dirty. Witness Tory Zac Goldsmith’s campaign to be mayor of London, which attempted to smear Labour’s Sadiq Khan as a supporter of Islamist extremists. Though Crosby stayed in the background, Goldsmith used CFT Partners, Sir Lynton’s company, to advise on his campaign. The racist jibes against Khan eventually led Mohammed Amin, chair of the Conservative Muslim Forum, to condemn Goldsmith’s campaign. Of course, Goldsmith rejected criticism that he had openly attacked Khan as a supporter of terrorism. But remember that Lynton Crosby is the guy who invented the infamous “dog-whistle” form of campaigning, which uses below-the-radar innuendo to discredit a political opponent.

Here’s the good news: Lynton Crosby doesn’t always win. In the London mayoral, Zac Goldsmith was gubbed. So no-one should be overawed by the Wizard of Oz or what he might accomplish for Theresa May. Indeed, this weekend’s polls have Labour up several points in England. This despite – indeed, because of – all that obvious guff about May’s alleged “strong and stable leadership”. For Mrs May on the election stump comes across as wooden and charmless. No wonder Crosby does not want her doing televised debates with other party leaders such as Nicola Sturgeon or Leanne Wood of Plaid Cymru.

In fact, expect Theresa May’s supposed leadership skills to melt under the television spotlights. On past experience, she finds it hard to make decisions or be a team leader. Even calling this snap election only occurred after weeks of dithering and telling the world (including her own MPs) that there would be no poll before 2020. The decision was taken in secret by a tiny group of close advisers.

Her only real experience in government was, of course, at the Home Office. Normally this is the graveyard for aspiring politicians as so much can go wrong on your watch, but May survived by mastering her brief with microscopic attention to detail. Fair enough, but micro-managing is a bad mind-set for any Prime Minister. Look where it got Gordon Brown. When PMs try to run the whole show themselves it makes for slow decision-making plus ministers who get frustrated if Number 10 keeps interfering on their patch. Mrs May has already crossed swords with Chancellor Hammond: Downing Street insiders instantly briefed against him after the fiasco with the Budget proposal to raise National Insurance contributions for the self-employed.

On a wider front, the Tory record in office since 2010 is hardly one of stable leadership. Chancellor George Osborne rabbited on about his “economic plan” but in fact he kept changing it. For the first two years taxes rocketed and public spending fell. Result: the economy tipped back towards recession. In a panic, Osborne did a handbrake turn and printed money to pump up the housing market. Come 2015, Osborne had another go at austerity, imposing a welfare cap with the support of Labour MPs.

But with the English NHS now falling apart and a new arms race, Tory spending plans have fallen apart. Last November, Chancellor Hammond was forced to ratchet up government borrowing. We will hear a dose of fibs in this General Election that only the Tories can be trusted with the economy. The truth is that between 2010 and 2020, the national debt will have doubled. We will hear that more folk are in work than ever. Yes, courtesy of zero-hours contracts. And last year the ratio of savings to national income fell to a record low, as people borrowed hand-over-fist to protect their standard of living. Mrs May has opted for an early election to shore up her majority before the economy gets any worse.

However, the Crosby-May mantra about “strong, stable” government does ring a bell with some voters. We live in extraordinarily anxious and dangerous times. The Brexit vote itself and the inability of the May government to articulate any sensible plan to avoid a hard exit from Europe has created unprecedented dangers for the economy. The amateur in the White House is perfectly capable of taking the world to the brink of nuclear war. Our young folk are the first generation since World War Two to face a decline in living standards. It is little wonder voters are seeking reassurance. But how facile is it to concoct a political campaign telling voters that if they give Theresa May and her clique of hard Brexiteers a 150-seat majority everything will be magically better?

In Scotland we need to give voters a better, more genuine version of reassurance. The last time we had a Tory government with a super-majority was under Thatcher and the result was the devastation of our economy and local communities. On June 8, Scotland needs to vote SNP to protect its vulnerable, its economy, its natural environment and its towns from a hard Brexit. It needs a large SNP contingent in parliament to avoid Lynton Crosby handing Theresa May a blank cheque to do just what she likes in Number 10.

There are other, better versions of leadership than Tory leaders driving tanks. In Scotland, we share a politics that is communitarian, social democratic, caring and based on reason. We don’t want Lynton Crosby’s politics of the dog-whistle, innuendo, division and fear.