THE Conservatives are studying how to adapt the aggressive internet campaign tactics used by US Republicans with such devastating effect against John Kerry in the last presidential election.

Tim Montgomerie, a former aide to successive Conservative leaders, has been dispatched to Washington by Francis Maude, the party chairman, on a five-week mission to learn about the powerful impact technology is having on American politics — and how it can be applied against domestic enemies such as Labour or the BBC.

He cited the success of groups such as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004 which successfully dented Democratic hopes by attacking Kerry’s Vietnam War record.

“One of the lessons of 2004 is that the best stuff was done by proxy, not by the central party machine,” he said. “The mainstream media would not go against Kerry. But out there — in the conservative web structure — was the ability to show videos and raise money for the Swift Boat Veterans. In some ways they did the dirty work for the Republican Party.”

Another 2004 victory for the right-wing bloggers — who produce online diaries and opinion columns — was against the CBS network. Its executives were fired and Dan Rather, the veteran news anchorman, was forced to retire after blogs showed that a CBS report questioning President Bush’s National Guard service had been based on forged documents.

Mr Montgomerie set up the conservativehome.com website in Britain last year, and it played a significant part in galvanising party members to fight to keep their vote in leadership contests. The site receives up to 10,000 hits a day.

He would not reveal who he had met from the Republicans but he confirmed that he had spoken with Joe Trippi, the brains behind the extraordinary internet-based campaign of Howard Dean which signed up 500,000 supporters and, at one stage, looked as if it would win Dean the Democratic presidential nomination.

Mr Montgomerie also praised conservative bloggers such as Glenn Reynolds of instapundit.com, whose book An Army of Davids suggests that technology can be used to “beat big media, big government and other Goliaths”.

In Britain this could be applied by the Tory blogs to tackle perceived left-wing media bias. “The BBC is the obvious place to start,” he said. “It is our No 1 target.”

This week a Shadow Cabinet team of George Osborne, William Hague and Liam Fox will arrive in Washington for talks with their US counterparts.

A senior aide to David Cameron confirmed yesterday that Mr Montgomerie had been in the US on behalf of the party. But he emphasised: “We will decide what to do with his research and we will control our message.”

The Conservatives are interested in building up internet political communities such as those in the US formed by gun-owners or Christians campaigning against gay marriage. But, despite his own previous attempts to introduce an element of faith and a strong anti-abortion message into British politics, Mr Montgomerie acknowledged that there were limits to how far these groupings could be imported. In Britain, he said, internet groups were likely to have more prosaic themes such as saving Scottish regiments.

Mr Montgomerie was speaking to The Times at the Conservative Political Action Committee conference in Washington at the weekend before flying back to Britain.

Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, was the star name, but on the wilder fringes of the US Right Ann Coulter, described by opponents as the “Bitch Goddess” of US conservatives, received a standing ovation for highlighting threats from President Ahmadinejad of Iran, saying: “Raghead talk tough, raghead face consequences.”

When a Muslim Republican, Akir Khan, politely asked if she would refrain from using such terms, Ms Coulter replied: “I make a few jokes about Muslims. Well, they killed 3,000 Americans. I don’t think we’re even.” Mr Montgomerie pronounced himself shocked and disappeared to write a blog entitled The Unacceptable Face of American Conservatism.

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