At the height of the political row over the health service last week, Margaret Dixon’s dog was getting amorous with a Tory official. Elka, a German shepherd bitch, was clinging to the leg of Chris Davenport, the Conservatives’ northwest press officer, as he fielded calls in her home from journalists and the Department of Health.

“The dog seemed to take a shine to me,” he admitted as arguments raged over why the NHS had cancelled an operation on Dixon’s shoulder seven times.

Elka seemed as unhappy as Dixon with the government: she seemed to bark loudest whenever John Reid, the health secretary, appeared on the television.

As Dixon’s plight dominated the headlines, the Tories, it seemed, had finally rediscovered how to be attack dogs in the run-up to the general election, fighting hard to take a chunk out of Tony Blair’s rear end.

Through Dixon, a 69-year-old pensioner from Warrington, they provoked the biggest political clash of the year. Her case seemed to go to the heart of a key election issue: after all the extra billions poured into the NHS, has the service got any better? Or is the money, which is set to cost each man, woman and child in the country £1,500 a year, being wasted? Opinion polls show that the health service is second only to immigration in voters’ priorities. They also show that Labour is well ahead of the Tories on the subject and that Michael Howard, the Tory leader, desperately needs to close the gap.

Dixon offered an opportunity and when Howard raised her case at prime minister’s questions in the Commons, Blair was caught on the hop.

The prime minister resorted to accusing his opponent of wrongly using an “exceptional” case to “undermine the NHS”. Howard retorted that if Dixon’s case had been cancelled seven times it showed that “an enormous amount is spent on the NHS and much of it is wasted”.

The state of modern politics is such that emotive case studies simply told count for a lot. But is it right? Is Dixon just an exception used to run down the NHS, or does her plight tell a bigger story?

AFTER a fall in August last year when Dixon broke her arm, doctors decided she needed a new shoulder. The operation was booked at Warrington General hospital for November.

That month the Tories, who were widely seen as heading for electoral disaster, acquired a new election guru. Lynton Crosby, a spin-doctor and pollster, had helped John Howard, the Australian conservative leader, to four successive victories. Michael Howard wanted him to work his magic in Britain.

Crosby rapidly became the key figure in the Tory camp and is now said to be the adviser to whom Howard listens first, before party bigwigs such as Lord Saatchi and Liam Fox. “Lynton is running the show,” said one senior Tory aide last week.

His earthy manner and unstuffy nature — he is not afraid to tell doubting hecklers to “p*** off” — have helped to make him a hit at Tory headquarters. He has brought with him the tough tricks of the trade from Australian politics, including a focus on marginal seats and a willingness to use emotive individual cases to highlight key issues. His business card carries the motto: “When you give advice, seek to help, not to please.”

Under the new ethos Howard started to make progress after talking tough on immigration and council tax cuts for pensioners; it has helped the party to close the gap with Labour to within 2%-3%.

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