Daley doofus

Helpfully Illustrating my earlier point about there being lots of journalists who aren’t insightful enough to bother to read is Janet Daley, who falls in love with a Abraham Lincoln quote that happens to chime with her political beliefs. It goes a little bit like this.

“You cannot help the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot get a mickle by muckling a mackle.”

OK, I made that last bit up.

Janet Luurrrrves the quote:

“this wonderful piece of oratory was not required reading when I was at school in the United States - perhaps because its political message is so much more contentious…  …Lincoln was speaking before the Marxist revolutions and the rise of the socialist economic doctrines which have become European political orthodoxy.. ..It is clear that what he describes is a much older paternalistic tendency which simply found a new guise in the left wing policies of the twentieth century. “

Sadly for Janet, the reason it wasn’t on her reading list at school was because Lincoln never said it.

As the first page of a Google search would have informed her, the quote is fake.  In fact it took me all of ten minutes to discover that the quote is originally from a pamphlet by a conservative priest called William Boeckter, who wrote it in 1916, well after the emergence of Marxism, which kind of makes Janet’s whole point well, utterly wrong.

Janet Daley is firmly on the wrong side of the Bell Curve of Journalism.

What a wonderful weekend..

No, seriously. Forest were promoted - how could it not be a good weekend?

I also managed to stick to my resolution of refusing to read sunday newspapers. Oh, I scanned the headlines, but since my working assumption was that every paper would be full of Labour gloom, Labour Doom and other words ending in -oom, (excluding boom, I suppose) I doubt I missed much. 

I’m becoming increasingly cynical about media coverage of politics (Increasingly? sweet jesus, I was pretty cynical to start with).  I think the problem is neatly illustrated by the following normal distribution curve.

 

It shows, as if you couldn’t tell, where journalists sit on a normal distribution curve of talent. After all, if the bell curve is good enough for IQ tests, it’s good enough for hacks.

As you can see Charlie Brooker and Nick Davies are enthroned at the “good” end by virtue of being edifying and amusing in equal measure, (and they would be joined by Ben Goldacre too, if I had space) while Henry Porter and Simon Jenkins sit smugly at the other, unaware that their pomposity and self importance is of less interest to us than it is to them. Natasha Kaplinsky would be alongside them, but I can’t shake myself of the worry that I dislike her so intensely because I’m jealous, so I left her out.

Yet focus on not on worrying of whether reading Comment is free comments will actually make you stupider, or whether your brain can handle Danny Finkelstein’s insights. These are outliers, extremes. The key to media consumption lies in the middle ground of writers, the great bulky mass, nestled together in the centre ground. This is 80% of what you read each day, churned out by worker bees with the same brilliance as you or me (i.e. none).

These journo’s don’t write anything particularly bad, or irritating, or outright stupid, but neither do you feel yourself exposed to any great insight. The end result is the great tide of words that washes over you over at politics home, or the sense you get one reading all the newspapers that you’ve read the same sentiments ten different times.

I placed Rachel Sylvester atop the pile for the moment, as she seems to be the current high queen of conventional wisdom, but really that’s just symbolic. Almost all of what you read in newspapers falls into the boggy middle ground, all trying to make sure they’re not the outliers, desperate to conform.  Read one, you’ve read ‘em all. So why bother reading any?

The challenge is to find the writers at the right end edge while avoiding the rest. All techniques for doing so are gratefully accepted…

About last night

“Life ain’t nothing but a blending up of all the ups and downs”

Drive by Truckers, Carl Perkins’ Cadillac

I didn’t stay up to watch the results programme last night. It’s pretty much a pointless show when half the councils are declaring the next day and the Mayoral vote isn’t announced until the following afternoon.  It felt very strange going to bed on an election night at a normal hour, not poring over results as they trickle in.

The benefit of waiting until the next morning to look at the results is that you’ve already got some perspective on it. Reading Nick Robinson’s comments you can’t help but feel that this is the work of a man who has spent the last 24 hours being frantically briefed, and is running on adrenalin and espresso. Poor chap should get some sleep.

So what do I, fully rested and on my lunch break, make of the election results?

The first thing that jumps out is Wales. As I write, a quarter of our total national loss of Councillors* comes from Torfaen, Flintshire, Merthyr and Blanaeu Gwent alone, almost entirely to independents in each case. Results elsewhere in Wales were also pretty poor, (with the exception of Neath and Anglesey) I suspect this alone is responsible for the disproportionate decline in Labour’s vote in it’s heartlands that the BBC has commented on.

I don’t know enough about Welsh politics to reach an informed opinion, but my suspicion is that the party is paying the price for a combination of Wales assembly unpopularity, the Plaid/Labour alliance and local complacency (Labour were similarly humiliated in Rhondda Cynon taff four years ago, and the growth of independents in the valleys seems to indicate that residents are using them to attack local party complacency, as Rhondda stayed safe labour in the General Election)

The next point to make is that Wales aside, the changes over 2004 are not enormous. This isn’t saying much because the 2004 elections were pretty awful. That said the changes seem to be incremental rather than enormous. This is counter-intuitive, because we tend to focus on headline results and particular bad results like Southampton, but as you go through the council by council list, you see that we tend to be talking about changes of a councillor here, and a councillor there, not landslide changes. Stevenage we lose two, Basildon one, Lincoln one, for example. These are all key seats. (There are exceptions, of which more later)

Third. Don’t get too wild about Southern discomfort theories. While Southampton was disappointing and it looks like Reading will be too, there are some interesting exceptions that need to be looked at. Oxford, Ipswich, Hastings and Colchester (!) all showed Labour gains, while places like Swindon, Norwich and Worcester didn’t change at all.  

Fourth, there are places where the Tories are making strong progress. You see this especially in places that were 2005 gains (or they came very close) around London.  Reading, Peterbrough, Welwyn Hatfield and Harlow all see either strong growth or retention of total dominance. This isn’t a total rule though - see Stevenage, Basildon, Thurrock for examples of Labour doing OK in slightly stronger areas.  Seems that when Labour loses MPs and Tories gain them, the following council results are pretty bad. Which makes sense really.

There are also individual councils where the Tories have done particularly well- Southampton, Redditch, Sunderland. (The reporting on this last tilts me- there’s always been a decent Tory vote in the Sunderland suburbs, just as there used to be in Jesmond, Westerhope and Gosforth in Newcastle before the Lib Dems took it all. Not everyone in the North-east was a miner.)

There are exceptions everywhere. Liverpool, Bolton and Pendle all showed Labour growth in the Northwest, while Burnley looks like a bad result. Losing Wolverhampton and Redditch was disappointing in the West Midlands, but the Tories lost Coventry and Walsall stayed static.

Overall, a pretty bad set of results, no doubt. We’ve got a lot to do.  Yet there’s a lot more here than the headlines will scream. Organisation clearly matters, so does the reputation of the local council. I’d be focused on reconnecting the party in Wales and thinking carefully about the M25 band of marginals and how we can support them. (There’s a similar band of marginals around Birmingham too, and the same trends seem to be evident).

Other than that, the Government shouldn’t panic. The key thing is to reconnect with peoples values and aspirations, and make sure people stay in jobs and decent homes and have good schools and hospitals to go to. The rest is pretty much froth.

* 8 in BG, 9 in Merthyr, 13 in Flintshire, 16 in Torfaen for a total of 46/166. This proportion will decline as the day goes on and more results are announced, obviously.

 

All the best…

Apologies for the lack of posts over the last two days. Minor domestic crisis (small flood in tooting, no-one killed) that had to be dealt with, then catching up with work today meant little joy in blogging terms.

All the best to all the Labour candidates fighting elections today. As a special non-partisan bonus, best of luck to candidates of all democratic parties who are up against the BNP.

I read the newspapers today. Shouldn’t have bothered. Pages of speculation that will be worth less than nothing by the time the results come out. Nobody knows anything. The same will be true on Friday because the papers can’t possibly cover the results well, they can only cover their guesses of how the results will go.

My advice is protect your brain from meaningless drivel and don’t read a newspaper until Saturday at the earliest.*

 

*make an exception for evening papers, bar the Standard. You shoudn’t bother with the Standard, not due to bias issues but because the Mayor result won’t be out in time for at least the early editions.

A poverty of debate..

I suppose I should be outraged by David Cameron’s laughable new found commitment to ending poverty.  I’m not. Any time a politician feels the need to say they’ll tackle poverty, I’m pleased, because it matters.

Of course when that commitment is matched by a series of policies that will actually make matters worse, then  some scepticism is in order.

Let me put it this way: If Labour in 1994 had said they were committed to a strong anti-crime policy, and that their policy for delivering this would be to reduce the number of police in the toughest areas and spend the money on laser triggered alarm systems for millionaires to protect their art collections, would this have been taken seriously?

This is what the tory “anti-poverty” proposals are; Cut Sure Start (which helps the poorest families) to fund health visitors (who go to the middle classes as much as the poor). Cut support for the poorest  families to fund  married couple allowances that help the wealthiest.  Push Inheritance tax up to the two million mark while introducing welfare schemes that are shown to increase poverty rates .  These are the Tory policies we know about. Others surely lurk undeclared inside CCHQ.

The Tory “poverty” campaign is a piece of short term political positioning. it’s the same as Geroge Bush in 2000 talking about compassionate conservatism (remember that?). What Cameron and his team seem to forget is that when you raise these issues, there will be a reckoning of whether you mean it.

At least there will if we get to have that debate.

Unfortunately the media* appears to have suspended all rational judgement about policy (from any party) and turned politics into “Heathers“, leaving us in the odd position that if you are popular you can say the most flagrant nonsense and have it reported uncritically, but if you’re unpopular saying that the sun would rise the next day would be parsed as a desperate push to reassure worried voters of celestial stability.

So great, let’s spend the next few months talking about poverty, about education, about the economy.  Let us compare programmes, investigate spending commitments, work out tax implications. I promise you, people are interested in such things, if they’re allowed to be.

Now, a cynical soul might believe that the tories don’t want that kind of debate. I’m not so sure.

One of the interesting things about the new modern Conservatives is their peculiar brand of political self confidence. I suspect it comes from a belief that they have finally convinced people of their rightness by using a form of political linguistic judo, rather than changing core policies.

Tories have spent the last decade trying to explain why Conservatism is better for Britain that social democracy and failed. Now they have discovered that by talking like social democrats they can convince people of their good intentions.

As a result, Conservatives have not had to abandon cherished beliefs, they’ve merely been asked to talk about them in a new way (Family tax allowances becomes an anti poverty measure, for example). Some of these policies are good, some bad**, but they are all essentially Conservative policies. at the same time the true believers are re-assured - Tax cuts will come (but in time). Employment laws will change (but we won’t talk about it) and so on.

This means that Tory campaigners  and strategists as confident as ever of the rightness of their solutions and now they have a new language to describe their beliefs, many Tories hunger for the debate that will finally destroy social democrat policy dominance.

I want that debate too,  because I believe that when it is joined Conservatives will be faced with a very uncomfortable choice. Join the social democratic consensus unambiguously and for good or stay true to their  values and lose.

The only way we all lose is if the linguistic jujistu goes undebated. Labour loses because the debate matters to us, the country loses because they won’t get what they thought they were voting for, and the Tories will lose because, well just look at what happened to George Bush and “compassionate conservatism”.

(and as a reward for getting all the way down here, make sure you read  Charlie Brooker on Obama and 24 hour news and Aaronvitch on Brown.)

* aided and abetted by hacks, politicians and assorted hangers on like me who far prefer talking about who’s up and down than about boring policy stuff. Even I notice that i get more interest and attention when I gossip than when I write worthy articles on welfare reform.

** for example, I’m one of the more relaxed Labour people when it comes to allowing private companies to supply services to the NHS.

Lord Levy - An apology.

Readers of this newspaper may have recieved the impression from stories such as “Levy nabbed by Cash Cops”, “Sleazy Levy” “Lord Cashpoint nicked again” and “Who is this sleazy charlatan- Levy exposed” that Lord Levy was not to be trusted and a man of little integrity whose closeness to the levers of power was a disgrace best bought to a swift conclusion by his arrest, trial and conviction on charges of deception and public corruption.

It has recently become clear that Lord Levy is a man of moral rectitude, vision and willingness to brief against the Prime Minister and that therefore his word should be respected as utterly reliable and incontrovertable. We apologise for any confusion this may have caused our readers.

Cameron’s Warm front con gives you chills!

I was surprised when David Cameron claimed credit for a Labour idea, so I looked closer. It turns out the scheme he praises is a Labour scheme from top to bottom and Cameron’s been caught out in a Warm front con…

Warmfront is one of my favourite new Labour programmes.  It gives a grant to families, the disabled and pensioners to allow them to install central heating, draught proofing and insulation for free.

Warm front was set up by Labour with a huge increase in investment in combating fuel poverty, so if you’re on Tax credits, pension credits, a pensioner or claiming jobseekers allowance,  you can claim up to £2,700 to improve energy efficiency and keep you warm.  Hooray for New Labour, eh?

Unsurprisingly, since it’s proved popular, the Conservatives now support it. Good for them. Fatted calves and all that.

Still, there’s a difference between supporting, and claiming credit for. 

I was a little surprised to see the leader of the Conservative party claim that Warm Front was set up by a Conservative council, not a Labour government.

Here’s what he said on Webcameron during a visit to West Yorkshire:

“The local council here controlled by the Conservatives has got a WarmFront scheme where they’re actually insulating people’s homes for free and that is helping them to cut their energy bill, it’s also good for the environment”

Now that’s just a big fat lie. Warm Front’s a government scheme.

Naturally I wanted to know more.   After all, Cameron’s not an idiot, and I’d be surprised if he lied as blatantly as that.  So I did some digging and to be completely fair, poor old David may be confused. When he says “Warm Front” he might not actually mean “Warm Front”.  I like to do careful research (unlike the Webcameron team) and it’s possible Cameron might mean Warm Zone, a different programme that’s being run in Kirklees, West Yorkshire. 

I don’t like to hold a grudge and if David and the Conservative party don’t know the difference, I won’t hold it against them.

Good old Conservative controlled Kirklees council, eh? Taking a good Labour idea and making it even better! Hooray!

But hold on, what’s this?

“Warm Zones was set up in 2000 with Government support, to develop new approaches to fuel poverty”

“Warm Zones is a major Government-sponsored initiative to systematically address fuel poverty on a local, area basis.”

Yes, it’s a Labour government idea (again).

Why do I know all this? Because I’m a nerd with a good memory. 

I remember Warm Zones because I was a humble press officer when Tony Blair praised the pilot scheme in a visit to Stockton and announced its expansion to other areas. Six long years ago. I liked it then, too. Good new Labour idea.

So it’s a Labour launched scheme,  but maybe Cameron’s defence is about whose idea it was locally.  National schemes are all very well, but who makes it happen on the ground? Probably innovative local Tories taking national bureaucracy and turning it into real action on the ground. Hooray for them!

but, wait, what’s this?

“Labour councillors in one area of west Yorkshirehave pledged £6 million for a scheme which would see every home in the area become more energy efficient…. “Our plan is to help every household to reduce energy consumption and play their part in saving the environment,” said councillor Mehboob Khan, leader of Kirklees Labour Group.”

Yes, back in early 2007, Labour councillors launched Kirklees Warm Zones.

“Councillor Mehboob Khan, Leader Kirklees Labour Group said; “Our £6 million investment will provide an enhanced scheme so that everyone  can benefit from the latest energy efficiency measures. I believe that Warm Zones, working together with local communities, can provide ‘something for  everyone’.”

To recap: Whether we’re talking about Warm Front or Warm Zones, we’re talking about schemes launched thanks to Labour investment, expanded by Labour and started by Labour locally. These are the schemes David Cameron is claiming credit for. What a con! 

Still, Cameron’s right when he says:

“I think it’s a really good example of where local councils by taking action, having imaginative deals with energy suppliers can keep your bills down and help us go green at the same time”

It’s just he means Labour councils.

So, vote Labour next Thursday. David Cameron wants you to.

Another memo finds its way to me

To: Cieran Smarter, Head of Strategic Strategy, No 10.

From: REDACTED

Cieran,

You asked for some thoughts on next steps forward after the 10p tax decision.

I want to start with where we are. To state the obvious, the last six months have been unrelentingly rough for the PM. I would seperate out the causes of this into two different areas. First the “real” issues- the credit crunch, crime, immigration, taxation and people’s sense of economic security. These are issues that actually impact peoples lives.

The second group of difficulties are westminster issues. They include the strange obsession the lobby seems to have with the PM, the election issue, coverage of party discipline, briefings from left and right and so on.

There is always a huge temptation to manage these issues. They seem to be important because they matter to people here in Westminster, because people talk about them to each other, and because as people, we all like to gossip. However, they’re irrelevant.

You change the political weather by dealing with the fundamental underlying issues, and then stand back and watch as the busy hive of westminster tries to incorporate these new realities into it’s existing belief system.

We need to change the weather, not mange the current situation, so the first thing to do is to keep our focus in the right place. It’s the issues that matter.  Changing the issues takes time in government, and results don’t come overnight.  What we musn’t do is think that because we’ll still get overwhelmed by process stories, that issue  stories aren’t worth investing time and energy in.

That said, there are two important things we can do to make the issues work for us.

1. Develop effective narratives for what the government is trying to do. This isn’t vision or strategy stuff, just a way of framing our existing policies and the PMs political personality in ways that chime with voters understanding of the challenges they face. 

The PM is percieved to be a serious man, a man of depth. Not graceful perhaps, but hardworking, driven and committed. Our fundamental narrative should reflect that and contrast it with the alternative.

I’d suggest the undlying narrative for us at the moment should be “Security for all”.  Below is a first cut- hopefully it’s obvious who it can be applied across policy areas.

This Government believes in making sure that everyone should have the chance to succeed. The world can be a tough and a dangerous place, and the first step to improving peoples lives is to offer families the security of knowing their home, their job and their community are safe. 

From that foundation of security we can then do more-  we can take people in work out of poverty. We can help children get a better education and a better job. We can help more familes enjoy the chance to own their own home.

None of this can happen without firm foundations.

Security in a changing world isn’t easy. It often requires tough decisions that are unpopular in the short term. It would be easy to chase temporary popularity. But the aspirations of families are too important to be put at risk by policies that are popular but unsafe.

So this government puts your families security first. We’ll focus on security for your home and your the ability to work, by ensuring the economy grows steadily, We’ll make sure you know that schools and hospitals are improving, and taking tough action against ones that aren’t so you know your family gets the help it needs. We’ll increase police numbers and punish crime, anti-social behavior so our communities feel safe. 

When you know that the things most important to you are safe, you can keep your focus on doing your best for your family.  Our job is to be there to help you do that.

2. Impose our narrative on the realities of the political timetable.

The next few months will look like this politically. First May 1st and aftermath. Then Crewe by-election, then Terror vote, then Recess, then NPF, then silly season then conference season. By Conference season election speculation will once again be at height unless managed.

Obviously we can’t control the reaction to May 1st. However, whatever happens, I’d argue that the three weeks after the May elections is the time to define our narrative with a few striking actions, while making clear we don’t expect political reward to come in short term.

Before then, we should simply clear the ground politically by using the time to work with departments to develop ways in which they can support the PMs agenda and by working with MPs and journalists so that they see where this thinking is coming from and don’t see it merely as a snap post election response.

The actual meat of a spate of post May activity might include announcements,  speeches,  Themed “in the round” appearances all designed to push the overall narrative.

Finally there’s the question of a reshuffle. Of course, none of us know whether we’ll have one, but if we do, I beleive it should be a reshuffle with and agenda. It should be about more than moving names about or even bringing up new names. It should serve as a statement of intent for our agenda for the future. That way it would be an active decision, not a reaction. 

Exciting new developments…

In a breakthrough sure to be embraced throughout the world, the relentless stream of innovation that characterises this blog has led  to an exciting new interactive feature where you, the reader, can, well say how rubbish this blog is.  (or preferably, where really important and famous people can say how great it is, thus boosting my ego)

Yes, it’s a reviews page.

Anyone who suggests that this exciting new interactive feature is merely a tired device to create a new post while the author suffers from “10p tax revolt” coverage overload, a terrifying disease that causes sufferers to spasm neurotically every time someone with the surnames Gibson, Clarke, Marshall-Andrews, Field or McDonnell is quoted in the newspapers, is entirely wrong and way off the mark.

It’s a tired device to create a new post because I’ve got real work to do, see?

That said, go and tell me what you think. Speke yore branes and all that.  Your contributions are greatly valued, unless they’re a load of old tat.

Thoughts on PMQs.

If David Cameron were chocolate, he’d eat himself.  He’s the most self satisfied politician I’ve ever seen.

The 10p Tax debate is over. The government has easily done enough to get anyone who fundamentally wants to be helpful back on side. Now we’ll see if the Tories really care about keeping the 10p tax rate, as they so loudly proclaimed last week. (on a personal note, I’m pretty impressed that my made up strategy memo seemed to be pretty much what the government actually did this week. Hooray for me)

Attacking someone for inconsistency and u-turns doesn’t work when everyone in the room knows you’ve been even more inconsistent and made more u-turns yourself. However, soundbites do get on telly, so perhaps it’s worth the flagrant hypocrisy.

When Cameron attacks the PM for weakness, Brown should attack Cameron for shallowness, not opportunism. Cameron is an empty vessel waiting for this weeks headlines to tell him what his core principles are. It’s no sin  to admit you can do more to help those you care about, or to repair a mistake. It’s unforgivable to not care two hoots one week and cry crocodile tears the next.