On Monday, the Conservative Party pointed to a letter, signed by 5,000 small business owners, in the Daily Telegraph which supported the Tory approach to the economy.
However the letter become subject to ridicule after it was pointed out Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) had forgotten to take its fingerprints off the document. People examining the letter on the Daily Telegraph's website discovered "CCHQ admin" was listed as its author in the metadata.
Treasury minister David Gauke was mocked by the BBC's Andrew Neil for the approach during today's Daily Politics. "This is a Tory stunt," Neil said.
Neil laughed, adding: "This is a Conservative Central Office produced letter. It's got CCHQ admin on it. It's your work. It's not like 5,000 businessman have spontaneously decided to back the Tory party, you've rounded them up."
"CCHQ in passing it over to the Telegraph, you forgot to take out the metadata tag which showed it was produced by CCHQ. It is a piece of Tory propaganda."
Guake defended the letter, pointing out it was "no secret" there was a page on the Conservative Party website that allowed people to sign up to it.