Buttering the currant bun

Reproduced by kindest permission of the Murdoch clan. I'm a Sky+HD subscriber so they won't mind.

I did my Master’s dissertation on the effect of The Sun‘s election coverage comparing 1992 with 1997 and having done so I regard the political endorsement, whichever way it falls, of Britain’s biggest-selling daily as a key moment in any election campaign.

As a conclusion of my research, I don’t feel The Sun wields that much power politically, although it would be wrong to say that it holds no sway over its readers at all. Perhaps they don’t blindly listen to its editorials, they aren’t bound by its opinions; but what The Sun chooses to report – and how it chooses to report it – is a big deal.

In 1992, The Sun hammered Neil Kinnock in such a way that rendered it difficult for its readers to vote for him. But he wasn’t PM, and couldn’t do much to harm Rupert Murdoch’s media interests on the way out. Brown can – it will be interesting to see whether James Murdoch tells the paper to go hell-for-leather or whether it will all be quite gentlemanly after all. One suspects that Gordon Brown won’t allow such a slight to go unpunished.

The switching of The Sun yesterday is the clearest possible signal that the paper believes DC is on the way to Downing Street. Given Murdoch Jnr’s closeness with George Osborne, it is also likely that the paper already knows what DC will tell the country next week. Despite what @KerryMP – who believes Twitter will counteract The Sun’s influence (seriously) – and others in Labour may say, it is a devastating blow to them. Since 1974, when Rupert Murdoch took ownership, The Sun has never backed the losing side in a general election.

Whether it is symptom or cause – or even, as I suspect, a bit of both – I can’t imagine that they would want to start now. There is still work for the Conservatives to do – in particular, they are vulnerable economically with George Osborne and in traditional areas such as the NHS. They need to spell out some home truths in a credible and caring way – it would be nice to hear some firmer manifesto content too.

The support of The Sun, always derided by its opponents, makes victory in May that bit more likely.

It’s also important to remember that we are not even in an election campaign – I cannot recall any previous election (even 1987) where The Sun has called its endorsement so early. Clearly they have their own reasons but for Labour the only place to go now is The Telegraph - although it’s difficult to see that paper, even in its more modern guise, switching and alienating the majority of its traditional readers.

PM must be furious – he and the PM have pretty much nowhere to go except YouTube.

Talking to themselves

On his feet

I’ve listened to the speech, heard the reactions – from the breathless enthusiasm of the younger activists to the not-even-faint praise of Barry Sheerman on 5Live earlier, having trashed Gordon yesterday too.

The most telling reaction was that of @BBCLauraK, who tweeted that she wasn’t sure what the big message of the speech would be. The main message is this - I am Gordon, your leader and I have shown in the past what will happen to people within the party who stand up to my authority. I will take your ideas and pass them off as mine, I’ll demote you and brief against you as necessary. I am here to lead you into the next election whatever you may think and the political career of anyone who dares challenge me will be over.

It’s not a message to the country, it’s a message to his party. What the country will see, I think, is a leader whose party has been in power 12 years and who should have done many of the things he is now talking about – addressing anti-social behaviour, finishing Lords reform, looking after the poor and ensuring proper childcare provision – although what low-income households will do with ten free hours a week is a puzzler. The public will give little credit for catching up with them on ID cards and the recalling of MPs is a silly Conservative idea that will lead to abuses. Everything in his speech was tired, rehashed, borrowed – it came from anywhere but him as he lamely looks around for something resembling a “vision”.

The BBC seems to have been keener on the speech than most but that’s not surprising. There were good things in it – a National Care Service isn’t a bad idea on the surface. But where is the money coming from? Brown has already spent and lent the country to breaking point and we cannot even service the debt on borrowing at the moment. Spending cuts and tax rises are inevitable – so how on earth does he expect people to take him seriously with these uncosted ideas?

More likely, they are things that an incoming Conservative government will have to “cancel” – even though they are not started – and opportunities for the Labour opposition to capitalise on. It’s politics, but it’s hardly statesmanship from the Statesman of the Year. Once again, Gordon has delivered a speech for his party rather than his country and as the Labour Party becomes ever more inward-looking, those looking outward – such as Peter Meddlesome – will seem ever more lone voices.

I would prefer a PM who can look beyond themselves and foster real reform. But the only way to do that is to take on the Civil Service (which is letting Brown “cancel” ID cards because they know he won’t be around much longer). The New Labour project looked at one point like it had the better of the Whitehall blockers. But the battle has now been lost and Gordon showed today that he simply doesn’t have the substance to fight on, even if the heart is willing.

I want to hear DC tell everyone what the plan is. Let’s hope he’s got one.

Where’s the plan?

Hmmmmm...

Yes, Minister is full of allusions to the concept of “the less you intend to do about something, the more you have to talk about it” – no doubt I could find an episode and exact quote, but you get the picture.

During the Lib Dem conference, there was a clear picture – a narrative of where the Liberal Democrats wanted to go and what they wanted to do. They have a clear ambition and are aligning themselves nationally to the left with the intention of also being able to soften this to tempt away core Conservative voters. I don’t agree with it policy-by-policy but at least it’s there, it’s clear and frankly, it’s sensible.

But I’m searching the Labour conference in vain for a cohesive, collective and strategic vision. Gordon Brown has been banging on for ages about his strategic vision. Longer, even, than since he became Prime Minister. And the reason that the country has been allowed to drift is because Brown has never come up with this encompassing vision. After 12 years in power, Labour has been drained of the strength to reform government properly ie from the Civil Service upwards and instead now tinkers around with headline-grabbers.

On the one hand, Lord Meddlesome wants to extend the car scrappage scheme for cheap new motors - on the other hand, Ed Miliband wants us all to believe Labour will be serious about climate change at Copenhagen. Andy Burham can’t guarantee health spending while maintaining Labour is the party of the NHS, Jack Straw promises more support for victims but Alan Johnson wants to be tougher on crime – we’ve heard it all before.

Gordon Brown wants to end the bonus system – but he presided over it. And Meddlesome thinks that Labour are both the “underdogs” for the election but also that it’s “up for grabs”.

This is government by headline and they are desperate headlines at that. Ministers’ ideas are stolen by the Prime Minister to shore up his own teatering authority and the country is being run by a series of politicians positioning themselves for leadership after the fall of a man whose methods of internal control are by all accounts tyrannical.

It strikes me that this conference is more about the Labour Party than the Labour government. Perhaps searching it for a national vision is to mistake its true purpose.

Luvvies, Labour’s Lost

Flawed but not floored - can he turn it around

It’s a bit early to define a narrative from the Labour Conference in Brighton just yet but so far the most interesting thing coming out of the proceedings there is the attitude of the BBC.

First, we have a surprisingly combative interview from the normally obliging Andrew Marr, who went so far as to raise with the PM the issue of his alleged medication. Predictably, Brown dodged the question and instead went for the sympathy vote over his eyesight, something that David Blunkett – a far more robust and substantial man – would never have done. Whatever the answer, it caught me (and quite a few of the Tory Twitterati that I follow) out – one wonders whether this is the last Marr/Brown interview.

It obviously irked Marr to ask the question as much as it did Brown to have to answer it. The BBC man’s pleading that it was a “fair” question was followed up by some serious feigned interest in Brown’s sob story. Obviously I’m sorry he has a sight impairment – but it was noticeable how much detail he was prepared to give up on this in contrast with the actual question about prescription drugs.

Then we had this from Laura Kuenssberg (@BBCLauraK) – she really is a gem on top of a compost heap. Not only was she prepared to tell viewers the actual mood of the conference on Brown’s arrival (ie pretty dreadful) but also to lob some real questions at him about his law-breaking ministers and then reflect that the party activists (the BBC usual calls them crowds as if to ignore their handpicked pedigree) were making so much noise that he couldn’t hear her. And she hinted, quite correctly, that this was probably deliberate.

But look at the story headline – “Labour ‘should expose the Tories’”. Clearly the online staff have gone seriously off message – or on message with PM. It doesn’t reflect the downbeat message from LauraK and about Labour – or indeed much about Labour at all. It’s just a pop at the Conservatives.

Previous to this, of course, was this beauty – again courtesy of online staff – suggesting that Brown and Barack Obama are, after all, the closest of chums and that Obama doesn’t see Brown as a washed-up political liability or “depressing to be around“, as one of his staff leaked to the press. According to the BBC, this official line “quelled rumours” of an Obama snub. No it didn’t – and who are they to report that as fact? Any moderately sensible person watching the polls will realise that the last thing Obama needs with his problems at home is to become embroiled in some tawdry scheme by a foreign political party to prop up their ailing government with lent popularity.

Obama isn’t my cup of tea but he’s certainly not a fool. And only a fool would consider anything other than refusing any more public airtime with Gordon than was absolutely necessary. Any suggestion to the contrary is completely counter-inituitive and total propaganda, which the Beeb is only too happy to repeat.

Going back to the polls, not even Obama could have found a way to spin a poll that suggests you are heading out of office positively. I can’t now find the link on the BBC website – maybe they’ve seen sense and pulled it – but this poll, which states 41% of people think Brown is almost certainly going to lose is bad, bad news. Instead, the BBC concentrated on the 48% of people who though Labour still had a “slim chance” of winning in 2010, along with the 11% who think he will win.

It’s a silly question – you can’t ever rule out that a party has a “slim chance” of winning. I’m not surprised so many people ticked that box rather than commit themselves but it doesn’t reflect reality. The BBC is supposed to be here to present facts not spin to us that 59% of people think Gordon is still in with a chance next year – of course he is, he’s taking part in the election. They are more aware than ever that politics is self-fulfilling and by buying into this silly poll (I though they didn’t report routine polls anyway) they are just playing PM and the PM’s game for them. At our expense.

I don’t expect the BBC to give DC a free ride. I don’t expect them to push through government PR work. But there is a bipolarity within the corporation at the moment between the political pragmatists that realise the New Labour years are 95% drawing to a close and the politically-motivated staff who desperately want to play a hand in upsetting the odds with sly journalism. It’s got no place in the BBC and they have no place on the public payroll.

The BBC is a service, not a political tool. I’m afraid quite a number of its staff work there for the wrong reasons – they should stand for election instead.

Hannan offence

Yes, Minister had an apt quotation for Alan Duncan’s little mishap earlier in the week and it seems only right to furnish Daniel Hannan with one too.

“You know what it’s like with politicians – after a while they start to believe their own speeches”

says Sir Humphrey to a similarly contemptuous colleague.

And the problem with Daniel Hannan is that he seems to believe that one YouTube hit makes a political heavyweight. But for the second time this week, we’ve got a high-profile Tory going strongly off-message on a subject of considerable importance.

In case he hadn’t noticed from the confines of Brussels, the British people are rather fond of the NHS. Or at least, they are rather fond of the idea of it. I don’t disagree that its concept is a noble one and a good deal better than the system currently found in America. Firstly, what the hell is Daniel Hannan doing on American TV? And why is he wading into the debate about President Obama’s healthcare reforms? If the US wants to copy the NHS model, let them. Personally, I think it would be very interesting to see how an NHS startup would look 50 years on. It’s got nothing to do with us.

Secondly, if you’ve got a problem with the NHS, that’s fine and there’s no reason for Central Office to prevent debate on this. No reason, that is, unless anyone is actually stupid enough to start one. This is exactly what Labour wants – a battle in their territory and Hannan has handed a key tactical advantage to Peter Mandelson, who has done what he does best and capitalised in the media.

Thirdly, the time to talk about NHS reform is one year into a Conservative first term, when there are four years of the term left and the reforms can be put down to economic necessity rather than political ideology. The NHS desperately needs reform – Tony Blair himself attempted it with Foundation Trusts - but there is no way of discussing this as Conservatives without ceding the political advantage. So forget it.

The truth about the NHS is that it is not free because we all pay through the nose for it. It is hugely wasteful and over-administered, it is downright unfair in its provision of expensive life-extending drugs and many of the staff – be they angels or not – are not sufficiently well trained or qualified for the responsibility they hold. For many, the NHS is the employer of last resort.

But like democracy, it’s the worst system apart from all the others that have been tried and we must make it work. Conservative politicians ought to understand that there is no value in engaging in the #welovetheNHS hysteria. It is a trap into which they can only fall and not escape.

Cameron’s four-letter rant

Well, here’s the thing. DC went on Absolute Radio this morning and – presumably completely on purpose – used the words “twat” and “piss” (the latter as a verb) to get his point across.

Swearing doesn’t really bother me much; having worked in a newsroom for the former part of my career I got pretty used to it and even, I dare say, may have uttered a few choice phrases myself.

But there’s no need for DC to stoop to this kind of “Hague’s baseball cap” lowest common denominator. He’s a great interviewee and superb speaker with effective messages. He has a talent, like Tony Blair had, of capturing the issues that the public care about.

So I agree with David Hughes’s analysis in the Telegraph – it’s all a bit desperate and contrived. I thought Peter Mandelson had cornered the market there with his “underdog” confession on behalf of Labour. Sadly I was wrong.

More worryingly, this whole episode wasn’t spontaneous despite the immediate apology. The apology itself calls into question the tactic – did he mean to use those words? If not, why did he? If he meant to, why apologise? Is this a double bluff? Or a triple? It’s all a bit confused and DC, who’s normally spot on with this PR stuff, seems to have made a bad call.

The Telegraph Tories won’t like it and although they’ll probably vote for him anyway, it will leave a strange, unfamiliar taste in the mouth. That’s sometimes necessary – but surely not here?