Posts Tagged ‘1992’

This election needs a soapbox or an Irn Bru crate

18/04/2015, 11:47:04 AM

by Atul Hatwal

Paralysing fear has infected every aspect of the parties’ campaigns.

Strategists fear the voters, so they stage tightly controlled events, away from the truculent public. Junior staffers fear any slight mishap that might make the news, so even the most minor decision is dictated by a safety first doctrine.

And Ed Miliband and David Cameron fear everything and anything, otherwise they would not accept the counsel of caution from their advisers which shackles all that they do.

The result is an arid campaign, a dismal parade of media moments contrived for broadcasters that lack the incident and passion to galvanise anybody but the already committed.

A news vacuum is developing. The manifesto launches commanded attention earlier in the week, but now what?

The front pages are already drifting away from the election. Soon, as is always the way in politics, this lacuna will be filled with the grumbles of worried candidates and plotting leadership contenders, taking aim at their leaders.

It doesn’t have to be this way. For the party bosses running the party campaigns, there is an alternative.

1992, which has already provided much of the template for this contest, also offers a lesson in how to fill that vacuum without the need to scramble out new half-baked policy announcements dreamt up the night before or to escalate the ferocity of personal attacks to shock a path into the news.

Imagine if one or more of the party leaders took a leaf out of John Major’s book and didn’t just do managed Q&As with pre-vetted, politically emasculated supporters, but actually went out to meet the British public on the high street, in the shopping centre and at the market.

If they went to where the public are, rather than hiding in a hall ringed with security, put down a soapbox, stood on it and spoke to real voters.

Jim Murphy is Scottish leader in no small part because of his one man campaign across Scotland in the independence referendum, speaking to the Scottish public from atop his Irn Bru crate.

There were baying nationalist mobs, protesters, eggs, but also, fabulous pictures for print and broadcast, personal guts and raw emotion.

The plaudits from journalists or every persuasion – right, left, nationalist and unionist – after the clip below was shared were extraordinary. It’s hard not admire Jim Murphy’s passion, resilience and commitment.

(more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon

Yes, the Tories were in the gutter yesterday. But that’s where elections are won

10/04/2015, 09:53:43 AM

by Atul Hatwal

It’s the hope that kills. That’s what large sections of the Labour party are about to find out. I certainly did in 1992. Now, as then, the Tories are accused of being in the gutter. Now, as then, several of the headline polls flatter.  And a few weeks from now, as then, Labour will be left to wonder how it all went wrong.

Yesterday, while Twitter was rapt with Ed Miliband’s rising ratings in Survation’s latest poll, a more apposite survey went without comment. The Sun’s YouGov poll, which asked who voters’ preferred as PM – Cameron or Miliband – found 40% opting for David Cameron and 24% for Ed Miliband.

Elections are a comparative choice. Only those questions which force voters to make a choice between the applicants for the job on offer, approximate the electoral decision-making process. Polls such as Survation’s, which ask questions on approval vs disapproval are better at capturing the public’s views of a leader’s performance relative to their past perceptions of that politician.

Some good days for a historically poorly rated leader could result in quite a bounce. Vice versa for a leader traditionally well regarded who stumbles.

This is what happened yesterday with Survation. On Tuesday, when the poll was conducted, Ed Miliband did well while David Cameron and the Tories looked awful defending non-doms.

But as James Kirkup astutely highlighted, while the public stand with Labour on the issue of non-doms, few votes will be switched. The perception of Labour as more committed to fairness is well established. As is the Tories’ penchant for backing the wealthy elite.

All of this has already been baked into voters’ perceptions. Which is why, when forced to choose between the two on preference for prime minister, those self-same voters, who will have seen an improved Ed Miliband over recent days, would still opt for David Cameron by double digits –  a majority that has remained stubbornly in place for years.

A few weeks from now, Thursday’s excitement will seem like yet another cruel false dawn. Rather than being viewed, in the words of an excitable Guardian splash as the “day the polls turned,” the focus will be on the Tories much derided mud-slinging strategy as a tactically telling intervention.

Michael Fallon and his Tory colleagues have been castigated for gutter politics with their emphasis on Ed Miliband’s conflict with his brother and patently ludicrous claims about Labour abandoning Trident. As news of the positive polls broke, the Labour Twittersphere was convinced that the Tory attacks were the last desperate act of a flailing campaign.

The Conservative’s onslaught was exactly the type of behaviour which alienates the public from politics. But parties, all parties, habitually engage in these types of attacks because they work.

The objectives of yesterday’s seemingly random act of political ABH were threefold.

(more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon