THE PHONEY ELECTION
Bogus rallies, photo stunts, vacuous sound bites — and the Press banned. Never before have politicians of ALL parties so cynically tried to dupe voters
BY COMMON consent this is the most momentous General Election for more than three decades. Such a great deal hangs on it. Britain will be an immeasurably different place in five years’ time if Labour forms the next government, propped up by an even more Leftwardly-inclined SNP.
There is a stark alternative — not between two shades of grey, as has often been the case in recent elections, but between two radically different and mutually incompatible visions for the future of our country.
With so much at stake, you might expect passionate argument and rousing debate. It’s true there has been something of that sort in Scotland, where the SNP threatens to wipe out Labour, but south of the border the campaign has so far been characterised by torpor and ennui. Despite the magnitude of the issues, the public are barely engaged.
I submit that the chief reason is that, more than ever before, the main political parties are electioneering on their own terms, which means keeping the media — and in particular newspapers — at arms’ length. Never before was there such a sterile and stage-managed contest.
This is a campaign dominated by carefully contrived photo- opportunities and sound bite-filled speeches delivered to audiences largely (and sometimes totally) made up of activists. At all costs, normal voters are to be avoided, and wherever possible print journalists — who after all are supposed to be the ‘tribunes of the people’ — must be sidelined.
Tuesday’s provocative speech on the European Union by Tony Blair in his old seat of Sedgefield was the most egregious example so far in this campaign of media manipulation. As is increasingly the general rule with important Labour election events, most newspapers were not even warned in advance.
Apart from one or two handpicked reporters from sympathetic publications, the only media folk present were television journalists. They usually ask pretty straightforward questions on the topic of the day, avoiding difficult issues that might embarrass politicians, and so it proved this time.
NONETHELESS, this did not prevent the BBC’s punctiliously neutral James Landale being vilified as ‘ Tory scum’ by a Labour stalwart according to his Twitter account for asking a mildly critical question. The intimidating presence of highly partisan activists is now a feature of most of these occasions.
At Labour’s recent campaign launch in London’s Olympic Park (from which, by the way, the Conservative-supporting Sun newspaper was banned), activists turned on a blameless Channel Five reporter who had the temerity to ask a slightly awkward question about whether Labour was scaremongering when accusing the Tories of privatising the NHS.
And when Ed Miliband returned to his old school in North London a couple of months ago, local party hacks shouted down a journalist from Sky News who had put what they deemed an inexcusable question about the Labour leader’s ‘ tax avoidance’ row with Tory peer Lord Fink, and his use of the word ‘dodgy’.
How on earth did this happen? How is it that the political process has been at least partly removed from the public sphere, so that it is increasingly controlled by the parties themselves, and as far removed as possible from ordinary voters?
The days when politicians made barnstorming speeches to all-comers during election campaigns are, of course, long gone. I remember as a young student before the February 1974 election hearing the then Labour leader Harold Wilson raise the roof of Oxford Town Hall in front of probably a thousand people.
To ecstatic applause, the old rogue promised he would nationalise the banks when re- elected Prime Minister, which he didn’t do. There was intermittent heckling, yet no one thought of removing the offenders — as happened to the long- standing Labour party member Walter Wolfgang, who was yanked out of the 2005 Labour conference after he had barracked the then Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, over Iraq.
For many years no politician was too grand or too detached from the hurly-burly to submit himself to possibly hostile audiences. Half a century ago, in 1964, the Tory leader Sir Alec Douglas-Home, a rather diffident aristocrat, braved a furious 7,000-strong audience at the Birmingham Rag Market without demur.
With the rise of television, such public events became increasingly rare. Even so, the walkabout — when politicians risked having to meet members of the public — remained an accepted part of electioneering. Margaret Thatcher, in certain quarters the most unpopular Prime Minister of modern times, certainly did not shrink from them.
In the 1992 General Election, John Major happily climbed on his perhaps rather absurd soap box, where he was sometimes pelted with eggs. Isn’t it likely that his courage in taking his message to the people may have contributed to the Tories’ unexpected election win?
DURING the 2001 campaign, I followed the then Tory leader William Hague in his ‘battle bus’. From time to time we would stop in some market square, or wherever it might be, and he would deliver his famous warning about having ‘ ten days to save the pound’ to an often bemused audience that was at most only partly pre-selected.
All this is unimaginable now, as leading politicians have retreated into their comfort zone, where they are shielded as far as possible from unexpected questions, and protected by legions of spin doctors, whose preferred method of communication is risk-free Twitter or Facebook.
The frequent justification for this withdrawal is ‘ security’. It is, of course, entirely bogus. Margaret Thatcher was at least as much a potential target for terrorists as any modern politician — indeed, the IRA came close to blowing her up in Brighton in 1984 — but this did not stop her making public appearances. John Major and his soap box might have easily have attracted the attentions of the still murderous IRA, but he wasn’t cowed.
No, it is impossible to resist the conclusion that politicians have deliberately erected a wall between themselves and the electorate so as to escape unwelcome interrogation and potentially embarrassing contact with voters.
The seismic event which drove them even further in their bunker was Gordon Brown’s unscripted set- to with irate Rochdale pensioner Gillian Duffy during the 2010 campaign. She harangued Mr Brown in front of the TV cameras, principally over her concerns about levels of immigration. What was supposed to be a harmless encounter with a lifelong Labour supporter turned into a public nightmare when Mr Brown was inadvertently caught afterwards by a microphone calling Mrs Duffy a ‘bigoted woman’.
And so this campaign is the most synthetic we have ever experienced. Even the morning press conference held by party big- wigs, traditionally a staple of elections, has now been almost wholly shelved so that disconcerting questions coming out of the blue can be avoided. The main political parties prefer to stage contrived stunts away from London, the city in which most media people happen to live and work.
If Labour is the worst offender, that is almost
certainly because of the legacy of Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson, both of whom were obsessed with control. Labour’s current top spin doctor is Tom Baldwin, a former protege of Campbell’s and schooled by him in the dark arts. Indeed, Alastair Campbell is himself playing a leading role in Labour’s media strategy during this election campaign.
A frequent ploy employed by Labour this time around — though it is not unknown for other parties to do the same — is to give news organisations notice of an event when it is already too late for them to cover it. On occasion, a newspaper considered unfriendly is simply banned.
Yesterday, Mr Miliband was up to his old tricks again. Newspaper journalists were not even told about his visit to the Sikh Gurdwara in Leamington. The Labour Party insisted that it alone would be responsible for all filming, though Sky News has been able to obtain private footage of the event.
I’m afraid the Tories are at fault, too. Like Ed Miliband, David Cameron has offered voters gratuitous glimpses of his kitchens, and been happy to parade his children in an attempt to establish his credentials as a good family man.
It’s true that, in common with the Labour leader, he has submitted himself to an interview at the hands of an insanely ferocious Jeremy Paxman which generated much sound and fury but yielded no enlightenment whatsoever.
But for the most part, the Prime Minister has jetted around the country, performing in front of the party faithful and avoiding uncomfortable confrontations. On Tuesday, he was photographed in Cornwall making an apparently impassioned speech against a backdrop of placardcarrying activists.
Those watching this event on television would have reasonably assumed that he was talking to a sizeable audience. In fact, it took place in an otherwise deserted barn, though the news bulletins did not advise us of this fact. This was a largely phoney occasion.
Journalists on the campaign trail tell me that the Lib Dems are often the least averse to contact with the general public, possibly because they have less to lose. Nick Clegg even found himself being heckled in Surbiton last week.
As for Ukip, they are less open and accommodating than one might expect, considering their position as outsiders. Heavies intended to protect Nigel Farage (who has been attacked more than once) extend their suspicions to innocent journalists. The Mail’s sketch-writer Quentin Letts was recently refused entry to a pub in Folkestone where Mr Farage was performing. This newspaper’s readers were not allowed to know what the Ukip leader said at a public meeting.
HASN’T something gone terribly wrong with our democracy when our political leaders surround themselves with carefully chosen loyalists, who sometimes intimidate or drown out journalists, and attempt to rig their media coverage on their own terms?
And isn’t it pretty disgraceful that politicians should so often be allowed to collude with broadcasting organisations — whose main priority is an appealing photograph and a simple sound bite — to evade the difficult issues inevitably raised by print journalists?
Much as I respect my colleagues in broadcasting, the truth is that the rudest red-top tabloid will usually dig far, far deeper, and ask many more searching questions, than a superficial two- minute slot on television news.
I don’t complain on behalf of newspapers. Even if we are deliberately excluded, resourceful journalists will do their best to find a way of reporting an event, and to reveal how staged it is.
No, the main casualty is democracy — and the voter, who is constantly finagled and deceived. I suspect most people instinctively sense that politicians are being evasive, even if they are unaware just how artificial the election process has become. Is it any wonder that the political class is held in such low esteem?
The tragedy, of course, is that, with the future of our country at stake, and with such monumental issues to debate, so many millions of voters are simply uninterested or just plain bored as a result of our politicians’ refusal to engage.