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The tonnes of bad news the Tories tried to bury yesterday

17/11/2010, 07:22:33 AM

by Tom Watson

David Cameron’s press team didn’t just bury bad news yesterday, they built a mass grave and emptied a juggernaut of trash into it.

Back in January, Cameron proclaimed he would “end the culture of spin”. Even at the time, people sniggered. If he said it now, they’d fall about laughing.

Yesterday, the government released masses of information that in normal circumstances would have led the news today. Royal marriages are once in a generation after all.

The manner in which the announcements poured out yesterday was cynical, determined and ruthless. Will the government get away with it? Probably.

Our only response must be to deconstruct each announcement in detail and deal with it in slow time.

Take a look at what the government said:

Civil servant vanity photographer, Andy Parsons, was sacked and immediately rehired by Tory central office. He was joined by civil servant film maker Nicky Woodhouse. This is a humiliation for the prime minister. A degrading admission that he got it wrong – despite the advice of civil servants responsible for propriety and ethics in government.

In what appears to be a hurried statement, Ken Clarke announced to the House of Commons that he had reached an out of court settlement to pay the Guantamano Bay prisoners a secret amount of compensation running into millions of pounds. On a normal news cycle, journalists would be demanding to know how much and whether the prisoners received more than the 7/7 survivors were given in compensation.

The governor of the bank of England formally wrote to the government that it is a “concern that inflation is above target”. Which will be exacerbated next month when VAT is increased and petrol prices rise as a result. Ordinarily, white van men would be interviewed on petrol station forecourts up and down the land. Not yesterday.

And then Greater Manchester police announced that comprehensive spending review cuts would result in 1,387 uniformed police posts being axed, sending shockwaves around other police services in the country. Actually, this figure is so shocking that I suspect reaction to it will be reported for days and weeks to come in the north west. But it won’t be leading the front pages nationally. That would have been today.

Then there was the Redfern report – the one that tells the full scale of the nuclear industry’s old habit of secretly harvesting the body parts of nuclear workers without informing their loved ones. Imagine how on a normal news day this announcement would play out. Nuclear workers’ body parts systematically and secretly harvested for forty years? Even the Daily Mail might raise its eyebrows at that. On any other day.

When it comes to spin, Andy Coulson makes Alastair Campbell look like the eccentric old dame who volunteers to photocopy the parish magazine, such is his attention to the detail of news management. “We talk about our stories in great detail prior to publication”, Andy Coulson told the UK Press Gazette back in 2005. I can imagine his media grid meetings, stuffed with press officers and light on policy makers. They get great stories from the compliant Murdoch press but serious lobby journalists are picking up on the shallowness of their plans. It is for the opposition front bench rigorously to analyse each announcement.

We – her Imperial Majesty’s loyal opposition – must grin a bear days like yesterday and today. Our duty is to find loose strands of argument and pull at them. We already know from the child benefit debacle that this is a government that doesn’t want to be distracted by the detail. And that’s exactly how things begin to unravel for governments.

We know why detailed analysis of spun stories ultimately works for an opposition, because we suffered the consequences of it. There are countless examples where a tactical press announcement boiled over and left us in the stew.

When Tony Blair announced that all the people interned by the Japanese in the second world war would receive compensation, he was hailed as hero by the press the next day. There followed years of misery as lawyers, pressure groups and the public administration select committee argued with the MoD over the detail. What constituted citizenship? What level of proof was required to qualify for a payment, and so on. Lack of detail at the outset cost hundreds if not thousands of hours of misery for the poor civil servants who dealt with it.

Pulling at the strands of over-spun coalition announcement will tangle this administration up, leaving ministers over-burdened by the detritus of Number 10’s cynical spinners.

You probably won’t read as much as you should about Andy Parsons in today’s newspaper. But, make no mistake, we inflicted a defeat on the government yesterday. We did so because, after months of probing, we got to the facts, and David Cameron over-reached himself.

The genius of opposition is the devil of government: the detail. Yesterday’s lesson for our front bench is clear: read the small print.

Tom Watson is Labour MP for West Bromwich East.

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Snapper and film maker u-turn, what about the rest of them? Tom Watson wants answers

16/11/2010, 01:42:10 PM

TWSirGus

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Cabinet Sec goes into bat over vanity snapper – at same time Cameron makes U-turn

16/11/2010, 11:25:15 AM

SirGus-TW

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Protest or power? We can’t have both.

16/11/2010, 10:30:03 AM

by Dan Hodges

My old generalissimo at the GMB, John Edmonds, used to have a nice line on demos. “If we’re going to have a march, lets make sure it’s a public demonstration of our strength, not our weakness”.

Watching the pictures of Millbank Tower being invaded by a hoard of rampaging journalists, the odd student anarchist in tow, I was reminded of those words. In terms of numbers and organization, last Wednesday’s protest was impressive. It has been a while since the unions managed to get 50,000 on the streets in support of a single issue.

Nor did the unfortunate dénouement at Tory HQ appear to undermine public support. A Sunday Times poll found that 65% of those questioned backed the demonstration, an even higher number than opposed the government’s policy on tuition fees. The issue dominated the media, captured the Parliamentary agenda, and energised the movement. A triumph of direct action.

But a counter-productive one. Set aside the violence, indefensible though it was. What was alarming wasn’t the spasm of aggression. Or the lack of awareness of potential damage to a wider cause. It was the sheer enthusiasm. The love of protest. (more…)

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The moment to stand up and be counted

16/11/2010, 07:00:12 AM

By Len McCluskey

Millions need trade union help and protection as never before. This is a moment for us to stand up and be counted.

We are in a deep economic crisis. Hard-won pay, conditions and pensions are under threat from Cameron and Clegg.

The government is making ordinary people pay for the bankers’ crash with the most savage public spending cuts ever seen – that’s you, your parents, your children and their schools, your neighbours in difficulties, your daughter’s chance of a home of her own on the line.

And jobs are being blitzed. Over a million more people will be on the dole because of Osborne’s plans. Another “lost generation” looms for young people. The anger students have already expressed is increasingly shared across the country. (more…)

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Tuesday News Review

16/11/2010, 06:30:07 AM

Miliband committed to 50p tax “for foreseeable future”

Alan Johnson had surprised colleagues by saying that, in five years’ time, Labour might not see the need for the higher rate introduced by Alistair Darling earlier this year. But the Labour leader had indicated, along with other candidates in the party’s summer leadership election, that the 50p rate was permanent. Mr Miliband said in the summer that the new level of tax should stay because it was “not just about reducing the deficit, it’s about fairness in society”. He added: “Let me say plainly: I would keep the top rate of income tax at 50p permanently.” Yesterday, Mr Miliband moved to restate his commitment to the higher rate. His spokesman said: “We remain committed to it for now and the foreseeable future. – The Telegraph

Ed Miliband has started to retreat from his totemic pledge to make “permanent” the 50p top rate of tax, under pressure from Alan Johnson, his shadow chancellor. The Labour leader’s promise to take half the earnings of richer individuals in tax was a key part of his pitch for the Labour leadership, helping him to win union support and pip his brother David to the top job. But on Monday Mr Miliband began the latest phase of his drive to take Labour towards the centre ground, dropping his earlier insistence that a 50p rate should be retained indefinitely. “We remain committed to it now and for the foreseeable future,” Mr Miliband’s spokesman said – a shift in position that brings him into line with the more moderate views of Mr Johnson. – The FT (more…)

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Poor communities will be cut more than rich

15/11/2010, 05:07:53 PM

by Michael Dugher

After the comprehensive spending review, the institute for fiscal studies said that the government’s policies will hit the poorest families harder than the better off. It said that the tax and benefit changes were “regressive”, and would have a greater impact, relative to income, on people at the lower end of the scale. David Cameron says “we’re all in this together”, but as various reports will show in the coming weeks, how badly affected you are depends on where you live.

Key to this unfairness are the cuts in funding to local authorities, who all face reductions of seven per cent a year. But this will not mean that all local authorities will face equal cuts in their budgets. The reductions in central government grant will clearly have a much bigger impact on those councils who serve more deprived areas. In areas like my own in Barnsley, needs are higher but the council tax base is lower. If you are more reliant on central government funding and raise less funding locally, you will not have the capacity to recover funding shortfalls. (more…)

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Politicians can’t hide on Twitter

15/11/2010, 12:02:55 PM

by India Knight

If it weren’t for social media – Twitter, specifically – I would never have known that Kerry McCarthy shares my fascination with Jacob Rees-Mogg (though it’s a thin line, isn’t it, between fascination and, um, the baser longings? Just saying). The world would still turn. The stars would still glint away in the sky. Labour politics would still feel a bit like we’d travelled back to some doleful time in the Eighties, with Neil Kinnock droning on tragically about the rightful order being restored and all being well. But the world – my world, at any rate – would be a drabber place. I love that McCarthy tweets from the chamber with barely-concealed trepidation whenever Rees-Mogg stands up to speak. The juxtaposition of the solemnity of the business at hand and of normal human behaviour delights me every time.

Prior to this, I was dimly aware of the existence of the member for Bristol East, but being a punter rather than a lobby hack or a politician, that was pretty much it. I’d never have read her blog, for instance, or any other MP’s, a) because nobody was holding a gun to my head and b) because I thought that reading politicians’ blogs – as opposed to political ones – would be as jolly as hunkering down for a riotous night in with some fabian society policy reports and a macramé project. (Obviously, I realise that this is some people’s idea of the most terrific fun, and I can only apologise for my own lamentable shallowness).

It’s a hackneyed old chestnut that politicians are “all the same”, but it’s a tenacious chestnut that not only endures but has recently grown, richly fertilised by ye olde expenses, to mega-chestnut, Chestnut of Doom proportions. Politicians of all parties are broadly perceived as, variously, pompous, monomaniacal dullards, disengaged freakazoids, Pooterish nobodies or hideously corrupt – sometimes, treat of treats, all four at once. (more…)

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Liar, know thyself

15/11/2010, 09:00:20 AM

by Eric Joyce

Upon reading the dozens of bitter and bileful comments below Peter Watt’s thoughtful Uncut piece on the Phil Woolas episode, I was struck by how many people there are around of unimpeachable personal integrity, their lives un-marred by a single personal error of any significance.

As a pure person who has never done anything I later regretted, I felt among kindred spirits. Indeed, if you check out the letters page of any newspaper, you’ll see that such virtue is commonplace these days. While, at the same time, recent research (at yougovstone.com) shows that most people are pretty sure that most politicians are lying most of the time.

So why is it that all politicians, apart from me, are such lying liars? Why are they all, with the same caveat, such cowardly cowards? What’s so wrong with democracy that it only elevates to public office scoundrels and never the pure (me aside)? It’s a puzzle.

It occurs to me that, just for laughs you understand, it might be worth taking a look at these questions through the other end of the telescope. What if it were the case that our democratic system does not systematically and dysfunctionally send just the scum of the earth to Westminster? What, instead, if it were true that many people were living lies and using politicians as a means of exorcising their own demons of guilt and frustration; politicians the vessel for their own imperfections? (more…)

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Monday News Review

15/11/2010, 07:04:58 AM

Lib Dems feel the heat

The Liberal Democrats are facing twin electoral assaults from the Green Party and the National Union of Students in the wake of the party’s U-turn on tuition fees. The Independent understands the Greens are drawing up a strategy to target Liberal Democrat MPs in the most marginal seats – a move which could potentially unseat up to 10 per cent of the party’s MPs. The Greens are unlikely to win the seats but they could do what UKip has done to the Conservatives and win enough votes to deprive the Liberal Democrats of a majority in several seats across the country. At the same time the NUS has announced plans to target high profile Liberal Democrat-held constituencies with large student populations including Nick Clegg’s constituency of Sheffield Hallam and Don Foster’s in Bath. They are also considering putting up a candidate in the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election – which the Liberal Democrats hope to win from Labour following the ejection of former immigration minister Phil Woolas. The election will be the first big test of the Coalition’s popularity. – The Independent

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg was struggling to contain a revolt over tuition fees yesterday as the party’s new president vowed to vote against the rise. Tim Farron MP, elected to the post on Saturday, also said the party would be “stark- raving mad” to deepen its alliance with the Tories. He challenged Mr Clegg by declaring he would oppose raising fees to up to £9,000 and appeared to back last week’s student demo, saying it made him feel “nostalgic” for his radical youth. Mr Farron said: “You would have to be stark-raving mad to think there’s any chance of a merger or closer relationship or a pact.” Shadow Business Secretary John Denham also weighed in with: “Nick Clegg has no credibility on tuition fees.” – The Mirror

Students are angry that the party has failed to stick to its pre-election pledge to oppose charging for university. The NUS claims Lib Dem MPs were elected on that promise and should now be removed from power. The campaign will target Mr Clegg in Sheffield Hallam, Simon Wright in Norwich South, Stephen Williams in Bristol West and Don Foster in Bath. Aaron Porter, president of the NUS, said the aim is to force out Lib Dems who break their pre-election pledge to oppose any rise in tuition fees. Mr Porter has said the NUS will urge a parliamentary recall for MPs who have broken their promises on tuition fees based on a coalition idea for holding MPs to account known as the “right to recall” initiative. – Sky News (more…)