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.
Stu said...
7 Jun 09 at 8:28 am
I’ve always been of the opinion that the problem with politics is that politics is the problem. Politics being just about ‘everything that gets in the way of just getting on with your life’.
It’s no coincidence that all the crap that happens in workplaces and comes between people and the work their supposed to be doing is generally known as ‘office politics’…
patently said...
7 Jun 09 at 8:54 am
New Labour have always been inclined to put more effort into showing us how well they are running the country than into the actual business of running the country well.
If they stopped showing off and just got on with the job, we might be a lot more impressed. Then, they might not need to show off.
Niklas Smith said...
7 Jun 09 at 11:00 am
A very profound post. Labour’s problem is that their core ideology (socialism) is attractive, but only to a minority – and it actively puts off others who might vote for them. Rather than try to create an ideological hybrid, as the Swedish Social Democrats have done, they chose to base their appeal on managerial competence (and thus the spin needed to convince people they are competent). Now that their incompetence has been so gapingly exposed no spin can save them. If they are to recover they need to have a serious internal ideological and policy debate.
Part of the problem is that being the second largest party always feels like failure for them. As Lib Dems we’re used to being relatively unpopular so we are willing to base our policies on liberalism rather than abandon our principles to chase votes. That said, I think Nick Clegg has a point when he says that a lot of British people are instinctively liberal deep down – we need to bring that instinct to the surface and get them to vote with it!
Macha Maguire said...
7 Jun 09 at 11:13 am
Labour’s problem is that New Labour is a Thatcherite creation, taking Friedman’s free market philosophy to places even the Iron Lady dared not go. I have a rather distant hope that James Purnell might be able to turn them into a force for genuinely progressive politics, but only if he can ditch the old class-based socialism of the last century and expunge all the Tories in red ties (aka Blairites). So given these won’t happen, then the next best hope is the Lib Dems… all we need is a fair voting system. When is someone going to point out that we don’t need a referendum on PR – a vote for the Lib-Dems *is* a vote for PR…?
Frank Davis said...
7 Jun 09 at 2:26 pm
“Coronated”? Wouldn’t “crowned” have done better or just as well?
The constant obsession with how to trick people into supporting policy X, or liking person Y… this is what’s wrong with politics.
It’s more than just political spindoctory. Global warming is about distorting reality. So is passive smoking. Such fraud is now endemic. It’s not just the politicians who engage in it. Everyone does it.
Niklas Smith said...
7 Jun 09 at 2:34 pm
@Frank Davis: This may be off topic, but the human contribution to global warming is proven beyond reasonable doubt.
I would however agree that there is a disturbing amount of non-political spin, for example with alternative therapies pretending that they have a scientific basis (which they almost always don’t).
Macha Maguire said...
7 Jun 09 at 3:25 pm
@Niklas – the thing about Alternative therapies is that they work in a surprising number of cases – when used by people who know what they’re doing. I’ve had migraines for years, the only things that get on top of them are homoeopathy and, recently, chinese herbs. I don’t care if this is placebo, the pain is less, I can work, and if it *is* placebo, it’s very specific – it’s taken 4 months to get the homoeopathy right and 8 weeks of chinese herbs (and yes, it might be one or the other, but frankly, I’m not inclined to do the necessary double blind trials on myself, given that ‘double blind’ is the likely result.)
my partner had antibiotic-resistant cystitis for 3 months until she resorted to homoeopathy – sorted with one tablet.
it’s all anecdotal, but that truly doesn’t matter if the clinical signs resolve.
Darrell said...
7 Jun 09 at 3:54 pm
The rebels are right and if you read the Mandleson/Draper emails you can see why Brown was a widely liked in number 11 but plainly and simply was never equipped to do the job in Number 10. His lack of self-confidence which could be hidden in his previous role because he was dealing with a subject he was confident handling has become cruelly exposed and I have to say I have a new regard for PM whatever his flaws he has, he is very well observed.
Your right in that Brown being in the post in the first place is emblamatic of wider problems because had they had a proper election I doubt he would have won. In many ways in their rush to replace Blair they replaced him with his antheisis, somebody who placed too much emphasis on spin to somebody who couldn’t ‘spin’ or communicate to save their lives. It is also slightly mythological to say Blair was controlled by spin; he was just good at it but had a vision far superior in scope to the manergerialism of Brown (though that was often a cock-eyed and wrong one).
If Brown is got rid of I think you will see a proper leadership election and the debate you rightly say is desireable
Frank Davis said...
7 Jun 09 at 5:32 pm
@Niklas Smith This may be off topic, but the human contribution to global warming is proven beyond reasonable doubt.
It’s not off topic. And it’s not proven. And there are more and more scientists who dispute global warming. For example, one of 700 sceptics:
“There is no observational evidence that the addition of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have caused any temperature perturbations in the atmosphere.” – Award-winning atmospheric scientist Dr. George T. Wolff,
It’s simply that you’ll never hear about sceptics like Wolff, Claude Allegre, or even Vaclav Klaus in the media, except in dismissive terms of derision. In our highly managed (i.e. spun) news, these people simply don’t exist. So we’re not having a proper debate about global warming, but instead the maintenance of a manufactured consensus.
The spin in the Labour party, and in the entire political class with its false consensus, reflects a wider degradation in more and more areas of public life.
I think Nick Clegg has a point when he says that a lot of British people are instinctively liberal deep down – we need to bring that instinct to the surface and get them to vote with it!
I think you’re quite right about the British people being instinctively liberal. It’s just a shame that the Lib Dems aren’t liberal as well. I voted for them for 35 years, imagining that they were. But after 95% of Lib Dems MPs (including Nick Clegg) voted for a complete smoking ban, I realised that they weren’t in the least bit liberal after all. And I’ll never vote for them again.