For someone running a political blog it might seem odd that I put my digital pen down for the last couple of days. I don’t know about anyone else but this constant torrent of disaster befalling the Government is becoming exhausting. There’s so much to write about I don’t know where to begin. So the time is coming to move on, but I feel like I want to bookmark this particular chapter.
When the economy inevitably started to sour, and Brown’s blatant incompetence became apparent to all we saw Labour’s polling figures drop behind the Tories for good. It was inevitable that this would start causing conflicts within the Labour Party eventually – only successful leaders command sincere loyalty – and so it has. What I failed to predict was that the battles would be over Brown being Prime Minister itself, not policy. I was convinced that backbench MPs and activists would start making policy demands, but I was wrong. Why is that? How could I have got this so wrong?
It all goes back to Brown’s coronation. MPs sacrificed their right to choose a leader because they knew Brown’s best chance of success was to be seen as the unanimous choice, in the hope that the public, seeing the Labour Party’s confidence and faith in Brown, would feel the same. It must be said that the Parliamentary Labour Party gave Brown every possible chance and advantage, helpfully characterising him as a serious man of substance who was the best person to lead the country thanks to his track record in Number 11.
Yet these efforts were wasted. The reality is inescapable because the truth, eventually, seems to sneak through. Brown’s complete inability to communicate exposes this spin for what it is, putting the Government at the mercy of their real track record rather than their mythological track record. A politician unable to lie convincingly needs to stick to the truth.
Labour, as a party, are blaming Brown for their unpopularity – with good reason. He is the locus around which hostility towards the Government gravitates. Yet the fault lies squarely with the party as a whole, for their willingness to embrace the culture of spin that has dug their graves. When they coronated Brown they signalled their continued faith in the power of media manipulation to save their own skins. They put what ‘looked good’ in the media and their faith in their ability to spin Brown as a good Prime Minister ahead of what they knew to be the right thing to do: Have a leadership election with real debate about the future of the party.
That’s what spin is. It’s about distorting reality, manipulating the public’s perceptions so that they believe you’re doing a good job, even if you’re not. It seems to corrupt the minds of politicians as significantly as dodgy donations, misdirecting their efforts towards presentation and salesmanship rather than true statesmanship.
The constant obsession with how to trick people into supporting policy X, or liking person Y… this is what’s wrong with politics. If the rebels weren’t just obsessed with replacing Brown with a more convincing liar then I’d actually believe there was hope for Labour. That the arguments and fighting within Labour are about personality and marketing means I think it’s safe to say they’re still not learning their lesson, they still don’t understand what they’re doing wrong and they refuse to change.
