Over the years, you always knew when there was a real crisis on, when you heard there was a meeting in COBRA.  Whenever a news reader announced that the prime minister had chaired a meeting of COBRA it was generally pretty serious stuff.  Apparently, in the interests of accuracy, the meetings are actually called COBR meetings – room A refers to just one of the secret command and control centres in and under Whitehall.

Wikipedia describes COBRA as:

“A term used to describe the formation of a crisis response committee, coordinating the actions of bodies within the government of the United Kingdom in response to instances of national or regional crisis, or during events abroad with major implications for the UK. The constitution of a COBR will depend on the nature of the incident but it is usually chaired by the Prime Minister or another senior minister, with other key ministers as appropriate, and representatives of relevant external organizations such as the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Local Government Association.”

These meetings and their venues were once so secret, it was only in 2010 that a single photograph of “room A” was released.

In recent years, and I may be wrong about this, it seems that COBRA has convened more often:  summer riots, foot and mouth, terrorism, contingency planning for fuel strikes and volcanic ash clouds have all prompted the COBRA to raise its head. It is all perfectly sensible that the government has the ability to bring the right people together with the information they need to make effective decisions quickly. Not a panic move, but a good example of our government working to maintain essential services and keep us safe.

But at this very moment, while we teeter on the brink of a disaster, we do not seem very prepared and I am pretty sure that COBRA hasn’t met. Frankly I am beginning to get nervous and I am sure I am not the only one.  If, as looks increasingly likely, Greece defaults and exits the Euro; let’s be honest, no one quite knows what the hell will happen next.

How much are the banks set to lose and will any go under?  If my bank is over-exposed could I face ATM’s that stop giving me my money?  Will there be civil disorder or a military coup in Greece?  What will be the impact on the wider economy?  How many more jobs will be lost?  Will the contagion spread to Spain, Portugal, Ireland or Italy?  At what point does social disorder spread?  Could UK citizens become trapped in Europe as transport grinds to a halt when airlines and holiday companies collapse?  Europe is our major export market so what will happen to our economy?  Who will protect the most vulnerable, in an economy where the only discernable growth comes from the soup kitchen, when the proverbial really hits the fan?

If this was any other sort of crisis, we would be contingency planning morning, noon and night.  Our preparations would dominate political discourse, and rightly so.  But instead, the body politic is obsessed with hackgate; the machinations of the 1922 committee and voter registration.

All these issues may well be important; but we are also facing an enormous crisis, with substantial implications for each and every one of us, that has slowly gathered pace for months now.  Day-by-day the potential catastrophe seems more and more likely.  And yet according to George Osborne this week, we shouldn’t even be talking about it as it makes the situation worse:

“It is the uncertainty that is causing the damage, of course countries have got to make difficult decisions about their own public finances… but it’s the open speculation from some members in the eurozone about the future of some countries in the eurozone which I think is doing real damage across the whole European economy. The British recovery has been damaged over the last two years by uncertainty in the euro and that uncertainty would be magnified were a country to leave. It is that uncertainty and not austerity that is doing real damage to the European recovery and indeed the British recovery.”

He is right in one way; we shouldn’t talk ourselves into disaster. But for pity’s sake, the bloody Greeks are talking about the possibility of leaving the Euro; every newspaper is speculating about it; financial institutions are busy attempting to price in the implications into their forecasts and President Hollande told Chancellor Merkel that, “everything has to be on the table”.

George – the cat is out of the bag. Working to contain the situation is not the same thing as preparing for the worst.  Presumably that is why COBRA met to discuss “potential” fuel strikes for instance?

The handling of any crisis is always part reality and part perception.  It seems, however, that our Government is incapable of exerting any influence over events and therefore just waits for events to happen. The Government being seen to have at least some sort of control, or preparedness, is vital if people are to retain what little confidence in the economy they still have; but from where I am sitting, I do not feel very confident about the future, and neither do consumers or businesses.

And so, any minute now, I am hoping desperately to hear that “the prime minister has today chaired a meeting of COBRA, to discuss the potentially significant economic disruption that could result from ongoing Eurozone instability.”

At least then I’d know the whole mess was being taken seriously.

Peter Watt was general secretary of the Labour party

The news that unemployment fell by 45,000 in the first three months of this year, compared to the last three months of 2011, is very welcome. It suggests the current recession in the UK – if it is not revised away when the next set of GDP data are released – is likely to be a very mild one. The drop in youth unemployment – by 18,000 in the latest three months – is further good news.

But there is reason to be cautious.

The labour market is not improving because firms are recruiting more full-time employees. It is improving because more people are taking part-time work, reluctantly, and because more people are setting themselves up in self-employment, possibly also reluctantly.

The 105,000 increase in employment in the latest quarter was more than accounted for by part-time workers. The number in full-time employment fell by 13,000. We know many of these part-time workers are unhappy because the Office for National Statistics asks part-time workers if they would prefer to be working full-time and 1,418,000 said ‘yes’ in the latest three months – the highest number since comparable records began in 1992.

Looking at the numbers differently, 90,000 of the 105,000 increase in employment in the last quarter is due to an increase in self-employment. Unfortunately, the ONS does not ask the self-employed if they would rather be working as an employee – but it is a fair bet that some of the recent increase reflects people who would rather not be self-employed but cannot find a company to employ them.

These are not new trends. The following table shows the change in employment over the last four years (i.e. comparing the first quarter of 2008, just before the recession, with the first quarter of 2012).

The big picture over this period is that total employment in the UK has fallen by just under 300,000. But the number of full-time employees is down by 800,000, while the number of part-time employees and the number of part-time self-employed people are both up by about 250,000. There has also been an increase over this period of over 700,000 in the number of people working part-time who say they are doing so because they want a full-time job.

The continuing legacy of the recession, therefore, is a labour market characterised by companies that are reluctant to take on more full-time employees and workers who are reluctantly working part-time – either for companies or for themselves.

Tony Dolphin is Chief Economist at IPPR

As the post-election dust settles, we must hope that the party is, somewhere, currently holding a quiet post-mortem, to take away the lessons for next time. There are many positives we can take away, of course: that the locals went swimmingly and so did the London Assembly. And that we held Glasgow, that vital first step in turning around the Scottish party, a task which is, in turn, a sine qua non for preserving the very Union.

However, in a post-mortem, the biggest lesson to learn – and the easiest to forget if, as in this case, things have gone well – usually comes from what went wrong, not what went right.

In this case, it’s staring us in the face: we lost the mayorals to a mediocre candidate whose party was fairly unpopular, while our London result overall was a resounding win. And what went badly wrong was not the policy offering or the party’s campaign tactics, but the Livingstone candidacy itself.

What is the long-term lesson for Labour, then? How should we be fine-tuning our London strategy? There’s no need to go through again how the election was thrown by the candidate (although, if you need one, there’s a summary here). But he is just one man, and now he is gone. So, job done, right?

Well, no. Labour’s pressing task now is to ensure this can never happen again. And, by the way, he is not gone.

Some people are already asking the right question: how could we end up with a candidate whom so many members disliked so much, they could not bring themselves even to vote for him?

The facile answer is to dismiss the need for change by saying Livingstone is a unique person who aroused unique emotions. It’s also wrong: had Diane Abbott been the candidate, the result would almost certainly have been the same.

The real answer lies, of course, in the selection process. A number of people, including our own Atul Hatwal, have remarked that it should never have been run in parallel with the leadership contest, because it made the process too short: true, that certainly didn’t help. But it’s also not enough to justify the result on its own. It seems difficult to believe that even a process twice as long would have produced a candidate other than Livingstone.

Which brings us to the elephant in the room. Why was Livingstone elected by a process which, as a Progress editorial says, “effectively put the choice of the candidate in the hands of eight union leaders”?

Yes, individual union members got to vote. But let’s not forget that, apart from the GMB, none of the unions who supported Livingstone actually included Oona King’s leaflet in their pack to voters. A practice worthy of the former Soviet Union, not a modern trade union. In short, it wasn’t a block vote, but it wasn’t exactly a free vote, either: being the labour movement, it seems we couldn’t resist a stitch-up.

Aside from that, union members who help choose the candidate are not necessarily the same people who knock on doors, leading to a disconnect between the candidate chosen and the motivation required to get members campaigning for them. Selecting someone who so radically divided the rank and file of the party was never going to result in a strong campaign.

No, what is clear is that the selection process must change. And there is a window to change it now, in time for 2016. It will not be easy, but important things rarely are. It may be primaries, as Peter Watt and others are advocating, it may be something else; but the current system – also inexplicably different from the Scottish and Welsh systems – is unsustainable.

And there is a little matter which may influence the outcome of that change.

One might be forgiven for thinking, on reading his numerous political obituaries over the last couple of weeks that Livingstone will, from now on, focus on developing his already-lucrative media work and retire from politics altogether. But that view, really, fails to understand the character and motivations of the man.

In more than forty years in politics, possibly the longest time he spent neither in elected office nor campaigning for it, was about a year, between his defeat in the 2008 mayoral race and deciding to run for mayor in 2009. He is deeply wedded to the limelight. And media exposure with office, however modest, is preferable to media exposure without office: without it, you are just another ex-politician. An office means that you are guaranteed coverage when you criticise the party.

The words “this will be my last election” was Ken being cute: he is still standing for the constituency section of Labour’s NEC.

Unencumbered by either an electorate or a party whip to please, and with a strong media profile, there are already signs that his presence there post-election is likely to cause much more trouble for the leadership than before. But there is something else. It will allow him to retain some influence over the running of the London and national parties, as the de facto representative of London. Whilst mayor, or campaigning to be mayor, he has lacked the time and the motivation to rock the boat; now he has both.

It is hard to see Livingstone backing the party reform which Labour desperately needs; and in particular, any change to the mayoral selection process which might allow a more mainstream candidate to win.

We have the choice, in these NEC elections, to give London a fresh start, away from the man who has dominated it for the last thirty years. Whether to choose, in the words of our old campaign slogan, the future, or the past.

It’s up to you, Labour.

Rob Marchant is an activist and former Labour Party manager who blogs at The Centre Left

A little tidbit from Gus O’Donnell’s written evidence at the Leveson Inquiry yesterday:

“When Alastair Campbell was appointed Director of Communications at Number 10, an Order in Council granted him the power to instruct civil servants. I thought that the power was an inappropriate one for a special adviser to have. I felt it was important to have a good civil servant as the Prime Minister’s official spokesperson, without any outré Orders in Council. Civil servants are more able to achieve impartiality in briefing and avoid being drawn into political briefing. They have conducted all press briefings on behalf of the Government since that time – Gordon Brown stuck with that approach and so has his successor.”

O’Donnell clearly felt he was making a telling point. A political appointee directing civil servants was such a self-evidently bad thing that neither of Tony Blair’s successors had chosen to repeat this ill-starred experiment.

That’s one view.

Alternately, part of the reason that press coverage of each of Tony Blair’s successors has careened off the rails so violently is that there hasn’t been a single, partisan media chief in control of the government communications machine since Alastair Campbell.

Gordon Brown and David Cameron have each appointed media advisers, but with a limited reach across Whitehall.

The vast empire of hundreds of departmental press officers has been outside of Number 10’s purview. This army of media managers reports up through the civil service hierarchy, independent of the government’s political operation.

It’s an important distinction. Despite the frequent and genuine pleas from civil servants to their ministers that all they want to do is serve them effectively, ultimately, departmental press officers’ future career advancement is in the hands of the mandarins.

That means they are beholden to different masters.

In good times, this is rarely an issue. But when the pressure is on, the wheels of government turn slowly and, at worst, the gap between the interests of the democratically elected party in office and the senior civil service view of good government becomes a chasm.

When trouble erupts, attempts by Number 10’s political media team to orchestrate a clear line are always mediated from through senior civil service media ranks, down into the departmental press operations.

It’s not possible for a political appointee to direct frontline press officers. And so every extra link in the chain of command delays action and increases the risk of misunderstanding.

As the story breaks, information on the detail flows up through multiple departmental filters before a sanitised version is passed to the political high command.

Inevitably Number 10 starts behind the story and frequently stays off the pace over repeated news cycles.

That’s on a good day when the civil service operation is only reacting slowly. On a bad day, the mandarins might have a very different view of the best interests of the country.

One example. In the dying days of the Brown government, the call went out from Number 10 for examples of innovative policies that could be used to showcase government achievement.

It was February 2010 and the sands of time were nearly out for Labour. An election was coming and the civil service was nervous about the likely change of government. At the department for energy and climate change (DECC), Ed Miliband relayed Number 10’s directive to his civil servants.

He was disappointed with what he got back.

The civil servants were almost entirely detached and in open revolt. At the time, one press officer said to me, “It’s like Downfall in Downing street. We’re trying to manage this situation and get through this”. Manage this situation. Get through this. The implication was crystal clear.

This wasn’t a lone, rogue press officer. She was just reflecting the view from her bosses. And they were reflecting the view from theirs.

Whether it is the institutional inertia of layers of press office bureaucracy or an actively hostile agenda, the division of media command between Number 10 and the civil servants is often lethal for the electoral prospects of the politicians.

But for Gus O’Donnell, giving his views to Leveson, this was irrelevant. The evidence of disastrous headlines that befell Gordon Brown and shambolic media management from David Cameron’s team; all discounted.

What mattered to O’Donnell, above all else, was a return to the established civil service view of governance. No political control of civil service media operations, irrespective of the impact on effective government communication.

In a nutshell, all that is wrong with the attitude of the senior civil service.

Atul Hatwal is associate editor at Uncut

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be Ed Miliband was very heaven.

Rejection of our Tory government has given us 824 new Labour councillors. Rejection of austerity by French and Greek voters presages a new chapter in Europe’s history. Everything seems to be moving in Miliband’s direction. He said this would be a one-term government and maybe it just might.

He began as leader by talking about the squeezed middle and was derided for doing so – but not now. As Alison McGovern noted, when introducing him as key note speaker to the Progress annual conference on Saturday, squeezed middle was the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of 2011. Just as it is undoubtedly worrying that the definitive English dictionary conflates the plural with the singular, even if these two words demonstrate our leader’s capacity to capture the zeitgeist, so too the potency of Miliband’s omnishambles line has been undeniable. No wonder Mary Riddell told the conference: “Ed Miliband has proved himself to be so far ahead of public opinion.”

A new dawn has broken, has it not?

Phil Collins opened his remarks to the conference with this quip. And the sun was shining on Saturday. But it was chillier in the sun than might have been expected.

Collins suspects the Tories will try to turn the general election into a leadership referendum. Recent polling gives some support to this view. He also expressed a “slight worry that the return of growth will let Labour off the hook of answering the key question: What does it mean to be Labour when there is no money?” We’ll need a return to growth, which seems elusive, before that becomes a live concern. But there are several crucial points here.

First, the possibility of pro-growth rhetoric, rather than the reality of growth, creating a false sense that Labour can get off Collins’ hook.

“The Tories failure”, as Andrew Adonis sloganised, “is deep and simple: pro-austerity and anti-growth. Our prescription needs to be equally simple: anti-austerity and pro-growth.” While, as Adonis acknowledged, “an urge for growth is no more going to work than an urge to go to the gym is going to make you fit”, a sense may take hold, as Labour’s long-standing stress upon growth is accepted from the White House to the Élysée Palace, that this stress can answer all questions.

How will we fix the economy? Growth. How will we pay for this or that policy? Growth. Even with the best possible set of growth-orientated policies, such answers wouldn’t entirely convince.

Not least because of the second issue involved with Collins’ hook: the continued inevitability of highly constrained public resources. Riddell rightly raised concerns about social care and argued that Labour should address these concerns as part of a “reworked universalism”. If we want decency for all of our increasing numbers of elderly and vulnerable then it will cost money, which will be money that we won’t be able to spend on other things.

Third, as Peter Kellner argued, voters want to be reassured and they turn away from parties that they regard as risky. Labour’s victory in 1945 and the Tories in 1979 now seem sea changes but Kellner claims that voters experienced them less as risky leaps into the unknown but as reassuring embraces of practical advances from failed status quos. There is every chance that voters may perceive the Tory status quo as failed at the next election but for Labour to be reassuring we cannot be unaffordable; we cannot evade Collins’ hook.

Did Miliband confront this hook in his speech?

Partially. He concluded the Q&A thus: “We’ve got to show we are a party for tough times, as well as good times, but also need to show that we are different”. That seems the very definition of reassuring, fiscally realistic change. But, apart from an emphasis upon securing a better deal from vested interests, the details of how this will be done were not fully developed.

Miliband’s main focus was addressing the profound anti-politics mood. Liam Byrne had earlier said that the public are “boiling with rage” with the government but that “their strategy for anger management is abstention, not a vote for the alternative”. Miliband cut a relaxed and confident figure, as at ease with his audience as his audience were with him, as he appealed for Labour to be this alternative.

In more difficult periods of Miliband’s leadership, his defenders have sometimes said: “He’s very charismatic in front of small audiences.” And his detractors have shot back: “Yes, so were Ted Heath and John Major.”

While Progress can’t yet boast an audience for its annual conference to match that which the televised leaders debates will attract at the general election, Miliband displayed poise and fluency that gives reassurance that should the Tories, as Collins suspects, turn the election into a leadership referendum then Miliband would be up to this challenge.

We’ll need, though, a more robust response to Collins’ hook if the Bastille is to be stormed, in a reassuring way. The warm and generous applause of the troops did, however, indicate that Miliband is a leader for which they are ready to walk into the bullets or at least onto the doorsteps.

Jonathan Todd is Labour Uncut’s economic columnist

Last Sunday, France elected a technocratic centrist. He tips slightly to the left of the centrist band but not far. He’ll shift the debate at the EU level about emphasising growth but expect incremental rather than seismic change. He’s really just a French version of Mario Monti only with a democratic mandate. The problem is that it is not at all clear that is who the French thought they were electing. They think they voted against austerity but they did anything but.

Hollande’s election slogan was ‘le change, c’est maintenant.’ More accurately, it will largely be a case of plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose – domestically at least. Hollande’s fiscal consolidation plans track Sarkozy’s for the first year then deviate slightly, returning the French budget to fiscal balance a year later. The major flaw in his economic programme is the lack of any determination to reform France’s labour markets. It has some of the heaviest regulation and highest unit costs in the EU. The best performers in Europe on unemployment are those with moderate regulation (lightly regulated countries such as the UK perform less well than the moderate group). France’s regulation is a drag on growth and employment – as is that of Spain – but these are structural concerns whereas there is an immediate issue with demand.

Overall though, his plans are largely sensible. He plans to cut small business tax, enable the state to employ the young unemployed and create a national investment bank. He intends to decentralise the French state. Any European moderate will be completely relaxed about all of this – indeed, they would applaud it. The problem was not in the programme, it was in the rhetoric. On Sunday, Hollande declared:

“In all the capitals… there are people who, thanks to us, are hoping, are looking to us, and want to reject austerity.”

The simple fact is that austerity has become defined in a very broad manner across the EU. It now basically means public spending cuts and tax increases. The bar is set very low and this narrows room for political manoeuvre. Europe’s voters (including in the UK) are being told by political leaders on the left that the choice is either growth or austerity. Would you like to chew on mud or munch a tarte tatin? I’ll have the tarte tatin please.

The problem is that, unfortunately, in this convulsive and volatile world, someone has sprinkled the tarte tatin with mud. And we’re very hungry. What to do?

Hollande has told the sadistic lot in the financial markets that France will chew on mud while telling the French people that they can feast on tarte tatin. And how do you think the voters of Jean-Luc Mélanchon are going to react when they realise what’s happened? Hatred of Nicolas Sarkozy will only take them so far. As Hollande bows down before the EU Fiscal Pact, how much more confident and forthright will Marine Le Pen become? Betrayal of trust is grist to Front National mill.

So Hollande’s hope rest on Europe. In other words, Hollande’s hopes rest on Angela Merkel and Germany. Slim chance in other words.  The fiscal pact with its debt limits, fines, balanced budget amendments and short-term deficit reduction is not up for negotiation. There will be some rider to the pact which discusses ‘competitiveness’ for which read single market extension and domestic deregulation.

Eurobonds seem unlikely. The simple fact is that once the eurozone starts acquiring its own debt then its institutions have to rapidly evolve. Germany will be very wary of simply transferring national debt to the European level which is, in effect, what eurobonds would do. It would be on the hook in a way it currently isn’t quite. Bringing forward structural funds in the EU budget seems unlikely also other than marginally  – that transfers the responsibility out of the Eurozone and into the EU.

Germany looks at the economy as an extension of moral life. It is not simply out of national interest that it treats Greece with disdain. It is out of moral condemnation. Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, rejected debt-financed growth measures thus:

“That would be like vowing to improve oneself by first committing a new sin.”

And in a speech on finding a middle path between ‘Anglo-Saxon’ debt-financed stimulus and German moral rectitude, Italy’s prime minister, Mario Monti, argued that economics in Germany was “a branch of moral philosophy” and growth “is seen as the reward of good behaviour.”  For those on the left who argue for a moral economy of the common good such as that of Germany, this is the dark side of that approach which can’t be ignored.

If we want to talk moral economy then in what moral universe is youth unemployment of 50% acceptable? It’s quite clear that Greece shouldn’t be in the eurozone and Europe’s leaders are behaving despicably in not finding a way for it to exit – whether it wants to or not. The consequences will be severe but not unmanageable. A way out is needed before lunatics are in charge of Greece which becomes ever more possible as the pain deepens.

Hollande’s best hope for additional growth stimulus is two-fold. Firstly, there is scope for Germany to increase wages. Profits are currently high and it makes economic sense to ensure some of that is diverted into wages which will help to reflate the European economy. The second route is through capital investment. The characteristic of capital investment such as infrastructure spending is that it both raises short-term demand and the productive capacity of the economy. It is good debt.

An EU institution that could help in this regard is the AAA-rated European Investment Bank. Despite its profitability, it has had to cut investment over the last couple of years at just the wrong time as the chart below taken from the EIB’s operational strategy demonstrates:

A sensible move would be to return its borrowing to 2009 levels – i.e. an additional €30billion or so. In the context of the entire European economy, this is not spectacular but every little helps. This would add to Europe’s infrastructure as well as providing a slight boost to its economy.

Where will all this leave Hollande? Within Europe it will place him in the group of technocrat centrists along with Mario Monti and perhaps Mariano Rajoy of Spain who has also called for greater investment stimulus at the European level. Most likely, there will be plenty of face-saving without necessarily much in terms of substance in terms of an EU growth pact.

Domestically, it leaves him on very shaky ground. If Germany boosts wages, there is some investment at the European level and there isn’t further chaos caused by another financial crisis or a Greek exit then he might get lucky. Perhaps chaos could buy him time or jolt Germany out of its moral inertia.

But really, if the left’s political strategy is getting lucky then it’s not going to take it very far. That’s where Hollande has left himself which is a real pity because his programme has a great many strengths and he seems assured and confident. Let’s hope for all our sakes that the Eurozone and most particular Germany does significantly change course. Like Hollande, it’s largely out of our hands. He may already have made his biggest error before even taking office.

Anthony Painter’s new book ‘Left without a future? Social justice after the crash’ is published by Arcadia books in July.

The reviews for Andy Coulson’s performance at Leveson yesterday might have been glowing, but he did reveal one critical fact. A fact with no caveat or wriggle room.

It came during the passage of questioning on Coulson’s vetting. When asked by the lead counsel for the inquiry, Robert Jay QC, whether he had attended meetings of the National Security Council (NSC), Coulson was unusually clear.

“Yes” he said.

There was no “maybe”, “might have” or “I can’t recall.”

It’s important because attendance at full NSC discussions requires the highest level of clearance, developed vetting (DV) so that participants can view content classified as top secret or above. As has been well established, Andy Coulson did not have this clearance.

So what you might say. If Coulson attended a meeting without the right clearance then that’s not ideal, but hardly front page news.

What elevates this from being another example of shoddy internal government process to significance is the identity of the chair of the NSC: the Rt Hon David Cameron MP.

In this context, Cameron’s reported comments to the House of Commons on Wednesday 20^th July 2011 take on a new salience. Responding to questions about Coulson’s security clearance, he stated,

“He was not able to see the most secret documents…It was all done in the proper way“.

Think about it for a moment.

David Cameron had spent over a year chairing the National Security Council, where he had led debate on the highest security issues facing the UK. And sitting around the table, looking right back at him, advising him, was Andy Coulson.

Not just once or twice, but on a regular basis as the NSC sifted top secret documents, and considered how to keep the country safe.

It is beyond credible for David Cameron to claim that he didn’t notice Andy Coulson at these meetings. For Coulson to be present, he, the prime minister, would have had to have invited him.

It is equally ridiculous to claim that somehow Coulson’s junior clearance would have been appropriate for occasional attendance at the meetings. Within the civil service and security apparatus, access to documents and meetings that are top secret or above is fanatically enforced.

The reality is that David Cameron had spent a year in these most sensitive meetings, with Andy Coulson present, at his explicit direction, before flatly denying anything of the sort to the House of Commons.

This is not simply a case of a government press man occasionally seeing some documents he wasn’t meant to, it’s about the prime minister deliberately misleading the House of Commons.

David Cameron has got a long way with his Blair-lite ‘I’m a straight kind of guy’ schtick. But as his government progresses, the manifold instances of his political calculation and mendacity are being increasingly exposed.

On this, as with so much related to hacking, it’s the collateral damage that is most lethal. Coulson’s security clearance is in itself a minor issue. The deception perpetrated by the prime minister is another matter altogether.

Atul Hatwal is associate editor at Uncut

One of the perennial concerns of political observers and party campaigners alike is the problem of low turnout. It’s a particular issue for the Labour party given some of the most disadvantaged groups, who would potentially be natural Labour supporters, are also among the least likely to vote.

Admittedly, high turnout is not the be all and end all – after all, elections with 100% turnout are generally characterised by a 100% vote in favour of the excited gesticulating man in a general’s uniform. Nevertheless, there are lessons to be learned from the world of sales and marketing which could increase the number of our supporters making the effort to have their say.

When campaigning to increase turnout, the temptation is to take an approach which attempts to convince people that voting is ‘a good thing’ and that the current government are the heartless friends of bankers.

This may be accompanied by a range of well-meaning liberal talking heads despairing that voters are not exercising their democratic rights to fight back against the government and wondering what more can be done to win back these disillusioned voters.

Whilst this seems logical on the face of it, it is an approach that may actually be doing more harm than good. The reason? Social proof.

Social proof is the principle that people tend to do what other people are already doing. One person standing and staring into the sky is an oddball. A dozen people doing this will soon find themselves joined by a flock of fellow skygazers. The government have latched onto a variant known as ‘nudge’ but that doesn’t mean it can’t be of use for Labour.

In the book Yes by Goldstein, Martin and Cialdini, there is an illustration of how communications that do not allow for this principle can have quite the wrong effect. A petrified forest which suffered from visitors stealing small amounts of the wood erected signs to the effect that these multiple small acts of vandalism were destroying the forest.

The authors then tested 3 scenarios. In the first, a sign declared that these many small thefts were altering the natural state of the forest. In the second, there was no sign. The third was simply a simple sign saying “Please don’t steal the wood”.

The result?

Thanks to the power of Social proof, the sign observing that many people stole bits of wood resulted in 7.29% wood stealing, against just 2.92% where there was no sign at all. The alternative sign fared rather better, resulting in 1.67% theft.

So we can see that by drawing attention to a certain behaviour, our well-meaning efforts to counteract it could backfire spectacularly.

Clearly this indicates that our efforts to increase the number of disillusioned voters would be more productive if they were focussed on congratulating or thanking the millions of people who do vote, rather than drawing attention to, and thereby unwittingly validating, those who don’t.

There’s a refinement to the social proof principle. This is that social proof is stronger, the more like us the other people who are ‘doing it’ are.

This was demonstrated in an experiment testing different wordings for the notice in a hotel room encouraging guests to reuse their towels.

Much like the petrified forest, the first stage pitted the standard ‘think of the environment’ message against a social proof approach declaring that the majority of guests reused their towels.

This resulted in an uplift in participation.

They further refined this with a message that the majority of users of that particular room had reused their towel. This yielded even greater uplift in participation.

The lesson here is that people responded to social proof even more strongly when it was people like themselves who had carried out this behaviours. This seems to apply even when that ‘likeness’ is a tenuous as simply staying in the same hotel room.

So not only is it that every time we lament low turnout in general we are unwittingly making the problem worse, when we talk about particular groups such as young people not voting or being engaged with politics, we continue to amplify the problem.

The good news is that now we understand this phenomenon, we can start to harness it.

Communications can and should be aimed at key target groups, emphasising the participation of the majority. “Thank you to the 20,000 young people who voted for Labour in West London – the future is in your hands,” or “10,000 pensioners in Yorkshire will be voting this May to say no the government’s cuts, make sure you are one of them.”

As a bonus, we can also introduce another key sales principle – scarcity.

“Hurry while stocks last” is a cliché for a reason and it’s no accident the television shopping channels show the number of available items diminishing before your very eyes.

Likewise, Colleen Szot hugely increased sales of the NordicTrac exercise machine, shattering sales records with a new advert which changed the script from “Operators are waiting, call now”, to “If operators are busy, please call again.”

This is the power of shortage.

So when developing our communications, perhaps it is the very scarcity of elections that we should be emphasising.

The facts are on our side in this. Choosing your government is not an everyday opportunity and we should present it as such.

“You only get one chance to vote in 5 years. Join the 5,000 young people in your area and tell the government that cut your EMAs and brought in tuition fees, what you think.”

By targeting those sub-groups more likely to vote Labour and applying communications that utilise the power of both scarcity and social proof, we can go some way to increasing the turnout in the Labour-supporting demographics – a much easier challenge than talking to established Conservative voters and convincing them that they have made a terrible mistake.

Besides, David Cameron seems to be taking care of that side of things already.

Peter Goddard is a sales and marketing consultant

Real life is full of doubt and ambiguity; shades of grey dominate and we are rightly suspicious of people who peddle certainty.

But when it comes to politics it seems that certainty is still the preferred currency, or at least that is the perceived wisdom.  Politicians cannot express uncertainty, only 100% assurance, because to allow for anything else is to invite a charge of weakness and ridicule.

Much of the time we are all complicit in this nonsense.  Can you imagine if Ed Miliband, or any of the other candidates in the leadership contest, had said ‘I think I will make a good leader – but I’m not sure’?  Or if David Cameron had stood at the despatch box yesterday and after being excoriated by Ed Miliband, angrily asserted he was ‘reasonably certain’ that Ed was wrong!

Yet the truth is that most political decisions are subjective involving the weighing up of evidence and options and then making a decision that is hopefully right.  It’s not surprising that the public are increasingly sceptical about politician’s ability to tell the truth.  They just do not believe that politicians can or will deliver.

Remember how polls said that Ken’s fares policy was popular?  Well the same polls often showed that the public also did not believe that Ken could make this happen.  So for all Ken’s façade of certainty over his policy, including a promise to resign if he failed, the public were unmoved.

Politicians are caught between a rock and a hard place.  They must appear certain at all times or they will be seen as weak.  But this certainty does not mean that they are believed and in fact feeds a sense amongt voters of politicians as liars who do not, or cannot, deliver.

This dilemma came home strongly last Sunday when the chancellor and his shadow both appeared on the political shows.  George Osborne went first on the Andrew Marr show.

In a confident performance he defended the record of the government in the face of the terrible election results for the Conservatives.  He talked about his economic policies.  He acknowledged that the presentation of his budget could have been better and that the economy was not growing.  But fundamentally he was certain that the substance of the budget was right and that it was only by continuing to aggressively reduce the deficit could the economy be saved.

This was followed by a virtuoso appearance by Ed Balls on the Sunday Politics Show.  Ed was equally certain that not only was George wrong but that he, Ed, was right.  He made clear his position in the interview:

I say a job’s plan, a VAT cut, bring forward infrastructure, would actually be better over three or four years at getting the deficit down

So the two of them are both certain that they are right.  Both are certain that their answers to the complex problems besetting our economy are correct.

I suspect that the public believe neither, and with good reason.  On the same day that they gave their respective interviews the second round of the French Presidential election took place and the Greek general election.

The impact of these elections on the stability of the eurozone and the wider European economy is still playing out.  But what seems pretty clear is that no one knows what the outcome will be.  Will the stability pact breakdown before it has really started?  Will Greece be forced out of the Euro, and if so, what will be the consequences?  Will there be an easing of austerity?  Will there be more pro-growth spending and if so, will it work?  It is literally true to say that no one knows!

But despite this, apparently both George and Ed know with certainty what is best.

So once again we have the bizarre situation where politicians pretend that they are certain about something when the public knows that they cannot in fact be certain.  The public know that solving the economic problems is not something that either George or Ed can do singlehandedly.

And whilst they might prefer one over the other, that doesn’t mean that they believe that either is wholly right.  And George and Ed secretly agree with the public but they can’t say so even though admitting it is all complicated and quite uncertain would be a lot more honest!

It seems to me that this whole ‘I am certain/we are certain’ model of politics must be challenged.  The age of deference is well and truly over and the internet and social media have opened up politicians to more and more scrutiny.

Absolute certainty feels increasingly old fashioned.  Voters have become more sophisticated in their political consumption and I would suspect that they can probably cope with a degree of nuance from their politicians.

Perhaps now is the time for politicians to start admitting that generally speaking they can’t be certain of very much?  So for instance, Ed Balls could have said:

There is so much economic uncertainty at the moment and no one can say that they have all the answers.  But I say a job’s plan, a VAT cut, bring forward infrastructure, is likely to be better over three or four years at getting the deficit down.

It feels more honest because it is more honest.  It might however take some getting used to by fellow politicians, the media and the voters.

The public, for instance, may not actually believe what they are being promised but probably generally prefer politicians who give the appearance of being certain.  But over time a humbler more honest approach to issues that people know are complex could be a part of the process of rebuilding trust between politicians and voters.

Or we could of course just keep pretending that politicians have all of the answers and that the voters believe them.

Peter Watt was general secretary of the Labour party

One thing is clear from this derisory Queen’s speech. Underpinning the paucity of content and the laundry list quality to this rag bag of measures is a central truth: the gangrene of government has well and truly set in.

The most obvious tell-tale sign is the absence of a top-line.  If the BBC is calling your programme a “hotch-potch” with “no over-arching theme”, you know something has gone wrong.

The package of 15 bills and 4 draft bills is rare in that there is virtually no truly distinctive or news-worthy initiative. All of the headlines from these proposals will be generated by the politics of their parliamentary passage, notably with Lords reform, rather than the substantive impact of their delivery.

In coming forward with a programme like this the government has ceded the news agenda. It will be pushed and pulled by the rebellion du jour from right-wing Tories or left-wing Lib Dems on a variety of amendments to Dave and Nick’s anodyne bills.

The real question that should be asked about this Queen’s speech is why? Why is there not a single bill that will draw a dividing line between government and opposition? That will draw their side together and focus the debate on a distinction with Labour. How can the coalition party managers in have been so incompetent?

The answer lies not in their political ability or ambition, but the process of government.

When an opposition wins an election, it moves into government as a political party with an agenda to implement. Ministers are keenly political and the manifesto gives them a clear programme to deliver.

Over time, the process of government sucks the politics of the ruling party. The morass of civil service briefings, evidence-based analyses and options, swamps ministers in choices they never had in opposition.

Every decision becomes more complex as civil servants tut through the consequences of precipitate action. Ever growing concern at the potential for negative headlines means ‘safety first’ becomes the new guiding philosophy within the department, regardless of the political background of the minister.

And after the initial parliamentary sessions when the bulk of the manifesto is implemented, the capacity to develop distinctive policies dissipates as self-doubt dominates. The lowest common denominator is all that is left after policies are filleted in a multitude of cross-governmental committees.

Normally this takes a few years to set in, and frequently characterises second term administrations.

Labour might have turned on the investment taps for schools and hospitals after 2001, but this was a case of distributing the bounty of a booming economy.  The most contentious domestic political decisions were all made in the first term: joining the social chapter, implementing a minimum wage and slapping a windfall tax on the utilities.

Labour’s subsequent domestic political choices in the 2000s were increasingly defined by the stultified, bureaucratic process of government.

Anyone who worked in the implementation of initiatives such as the RDAs or any of the various project-specific funding streams of this period would have felt the dead hand of bureaucracy in all their workings.

It is this sclerosis that has gripped David Cameron’s government. He will undoubtedly have tasked his ministers and advisers to go forth into their departments and ‘think the unthinkable’.

All frustrated, embattled prime ministers issue this directive. And he would have got back exactly the same response that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did.

The problem with the unthinkable is that there will be a myriad of reasons not to do it. Otherwise it would have been done already. Some reasons will be valid, some chaff thrown up by the civil service. The impossible task for ministers is to discern which is which.

In 1970, when Barbara Castle was considering legislation that became the Equal Pay Act, the weight of academic evidence presented by the civil service suggested it would disadvantage the position of women in the workplace.

But she pressed on regardless, because she believed it was the right thing to do.

In the end, all radical policy that challenges the status quo will be opposed by the existing evidence.  And all radical policy that makes it through into legislation will essentially be faith-based, just as with the Equal Pay Act.

To make these decisions, a minister, and more pertinently, the prime minister, needs clear beliefs.

After the debacle of the health reforms – which in their initial version clearly did display a radical vision (albeit fundamentally wrong from a Labour viewpoint) – the prime minister has clearly had enough of belief.

So he is left. Wanting to do something striking but too scared by the omnishambles to take a chance. Gripped by the inertia of the civil service while wracked by the protests of his backbenchers.

No amount of re-launches, re-committal of coalition vows or revamped communications will change this essential condition.

Atul Hatwal is associate editor at Uncut