Tories on their Blue Tree - they're making it up as they go along

When they originally revealed their new "tree" logo, the Tories unveiled a Scottish and Welsh version, as well as an English version. There seemed to be strict rules on how the logo could be interpreted.

I was rather surprised, therefore, to read on the BBC that the Conservatives had played down their latest "Blue sky" version of the tree by saying that it was intended all along that the tree would change colour whenever anyone felt like it (paraphrasing). Here's the BBC report of what the Conservative spokeswoman told them:

She told the BBC: "We are not changing it at all. When we launched the tree last year there were various colours on it.

"You can change the backdrop on it. You can change the colour of the tree to make it look like a winter tree and things like that."

It is up to organisers of press conferences and other events to decide the backdrop to use, the spokeswoman added.

That old terrier Mark Pack has tracked down the Conservative style guide for the logo which appears to completely contradict the statement made to the BBC by that Conservative party "spokeswoman".

The style guide does show this light blue version of the logo:

But that is a world apart from the following new dark blue logo with sky and sunshine winning the day:



Indeed, the style guide is extremely specific - it is 22 pages long - and says, for example, "Never use tints" and "Don't create new colour logo versions!" (their exclamation mark!)