Exclusive | Political strategist Lynton Crosby says Hong Kong government must deal with issues head on to resolve crisis

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Lynton Crosby, the election campaign strategist behind the Conservative Party’s 2015 election win, says the Hong Kong government must deal with the causes of the protest and come up with a plan to address the problem

Crosby’s CT Group, which opened its Hong Kong office in June, says the company has been approached by multinational corporations on how to deal with the crisis in the city

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Lynton Crosby, CEO of CT Group, says ‘when you have a crisis is you cannot leave a vacuum’. Photo: Nora Tam

Louise Moon

Published: 12:00pm, 20 Oct 2019Updated: 12:00pm, 20 Oct 2019

Hong Kong’s government, grappling with the city’s worst political crisis, must address the causes that drove residents by the tens of thousands – even up to 2 million on June 17 – to march in street protests for four straight months, said one of the world’s most influential conservative political strategists.

That approach would give all stakeholders the confidence that issues – such as housing affordability, job prospects and income inequality – can be addressed, said Lynton Crosby, who steered the Conservative Party to win the London mayoral office in 2008 and 2012, and successfully ran the UK’s 2015 general election.

Focusing “simply on the act of the protest rather than the cause of them, [makes] it harder to deal with,” Crosby said in an interview with the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, where his firm CT Group had been operating its first Asia office since June. “What you have to do is break it down into the different parts, and deal with those.”

“I’m not going to comment directly on the government, but my experience when you have a crisis is you cannot leave a vacuum. The first thing you have to do is keep people informed and have a strategy to deal with the challenge you face,” he said.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor attends the Chief Executive’s Question and Answer session at the Legislative Council Complex in Admiralty on Thursday, a day after the 2019 policy address was delivered. Photo: Nora Tam

“It’s obviously not an easy thing but if there is a problem, always acknowledge it, and then give people the confidence that you have a plan to deal with it.”