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Posts Tagged ‘leadership’

Give Ed credit – his leadership has just changed gears

11/07/2011, 01:00:14 PM

by Kevin Meagher

Last week was a watershed for lots of reasons. It saw a recalibration of the relationship between the tabloid media and politics. It spelled the end of Rupert Murdoch’s infallibility; with the media Mephistopheles left looking vulnerable and hopelessly out of touch. And it marked the point where David Cameron’s teflon coating started to rub off. The familiar attacks on his poor judgement and his arrogance fusing in one perfectly resonant episode.

But it saw something else too; the point where Ed Miliband looked, sounded and acted like a leader. He was not the architect of the events that unfolded last week – opposition leaders seldom make the weather like that – but he has become the first leading politician in living memory to get up off his knees and challenge the malign hold Murdoch and his acolytes have on British politics.

Tentative at first, by the end of last week his positioning was assured. In calling for Rebekah Brooks’ head, the scrapping of the press complaints commission and then pressing for the appointment of a judge to lead the hacking-gate inquiry, Ed was on the front foot throughout. His robust performance at this morning’s press conference further evidence that this episode marks a change in gear for his leadership. (more…)

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Too many coups spoil the plot

14/06/2011, 08:13:16 AM

by Dan Hodges

As no one in the Labour party appears willing to admit their part in the plot to bring down Tony Blair, I’ll cough. I was up to my neck in it.

I briefed and span. Placed stories. Sowed seeds of confusion and dissent.

Ed Balls says he wasn’t involved. Fair enough. He was the only person outside Downing Street who wasn’t.

Westminster in the months after the 2005 election was like a murder mystery party at the Borgias. Febrile doesn’t come close. No one spoke above a whisper. A discreet alcove couldn’t be had for love nor money. I attended a friend’s marriage and an MP I’d been conspiring with was so terrified of being photographed next to me that he sprinted to the other end of the wedding line.

The Telegraph got excited about some scrawled notes and polling. They’d have had an embolism over the spread sheet that was floating around laying out a provisional “transition timetable” with a series of colour coded “waypoints” that need to be passed in order for Gordon Brown to become prime minister before the 2010 election. Or the breakdown of every Labour MP, identifying their perceived level of support or opposition, graded on a sliding scale. 1 was ultra loyal to Gordon. Tony Blair was a 5.

The catalyst for the final move against Blair was an interview Blair gave to the Times around the end of August, effectively claiming that Blair intended to “go on and on”. I remember because I was in the Rivington Grill in Greenwich (highly recommended), when my mobile went off, and a co-conspirator asked me to start tipping off hacks.

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Ed Miliband is safe as houses, for now

10/06/2011, 02:00:35 PM

by Dan Hodges

True story. Last party conference before Iain Duncan-Smith is sent to sleep with the fishes. His senior aide is approached by a delegation of Tory grandees. “It’s over”, he’s told. “This is Iain’s last act as leader. You need to help us to help him. We are going to do this properly”.

The advisor is told to station thirty loyal supporters at strategic points around the conference hall. They are handed a copy of key passages from his speech. As soon as the passages are delivered they are to rise and start applauding. The conference will rise with them. The crown will be set down. But with dignity.

Except there’s a problem. Since the speech was distributed there have been amends. Sections have been adapted. Transposed. Duncan Smith begins his valedictory address. Within the first 15 seconds the first clap line appears. The acolytes rise. In moments the hall is on its feet.

The lost leader moves on to a new passage. This was supposed to be seven pages in. Now it is the second paragraph. Again, the cheerleaders rise. Again, so does the entire conference. The quiet man is turning up the volume.

He begins the third passage. It again includes one of the clap lines. The thirty are on their feet. Conference is on their feet. By now the Tory faithful are caught between a quandary and a frenzy. They are applauding every passage of note. How can they stop?

Iain Duncan-Smith received more than 20 standing ovations. Two weeks later he was history. The moral? When the Tories move against a leader, they move. They do it properly, even to the point of ensuring that their victim is allowed an open casket.

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Our class based attacks on Cameron are missing the mark

02/06/2011, 07:46:31 AM

by Peter Watt

To paraphrase Sun Tzu in The Art of War, you need to know your enemy. But does Labour know who David William Donald Cameron is? Understanding him, his relationship with voters and his party is an important part of Labour’s preparation for the tough elections to come.

I suspect that while we think that we understand him, we are deluded. Instead we are judging him through our own partisan prism, which is in contrast to much of the electorate. Ask most Labour party folk what they think of Cameron and they will emphasise his class. They will talk of Eton and the Bullingdon club, of the baronets in his lineage and the millions he has in the bank. This all adds up, so the theory goes, to one seriously out of touch (and obviously posh) politician.

But this emphasis on his “poshness” is currently cold comfort. Let us start with first principles: he is likeable and popular with voters. According to the latest You Gov poll for the Sunday Times, his approval ratings are at +2, with 48% saying he is doing very well or fairly well. Nearly one in five Labour 2010 voters agree. And popular leaders tend to win elections more often than not. As importantly, according to a Populus poll, in early May, Cameron is comfortably beating the other party leaders on leadership attributes like “standing up for Britain”, “determination” and “competence”. It is true that Ed does have a lead on “shares my values” and “on my side”, but these leads are small.

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We must learn to make hard choices, or fail

12/05/2011, 05:42:56 PM

by Rob Marchant

There are four types of election result. Ones that are undeniably good. Ones that are undeniably bad. Ones that are on balance good, but look otherwise. And those that are on balance bad, but look otherwise.

The most dangerous, obviously, are the last. There is a risk that, like an alcoholic, you don’t notice, or don’t accept, that there’s a problem.

And, excluding Scotland, we had a night that looked good. We won back a bunch of seats in the English local elections and scraped home in Wales. A mixed bag, perhaps, but respectable.

Now, Scotland was clearly a disaster and deserves a separate post all to itself (let’s be fair, it seems a problem all its own, unconnected to Labour’s national strategy). Wales, again, is a separate case. As for the positive results in England, three possible explanations come to mind.

One: a vindication of Labour policies. It’s not. This one’s straightforward: we don’t yet, by common consent, have defined policies. Ergo, it can’t be a vindication of them.

Two: the first electoral vindication of Ed Miliband as leader. It’s not. That’s not because he’s not a popular leader: it’s just too early to say. And that’s for the simple reason that most of the population, outside the Westminster and party bubbles, will still have no idea who he is and what he stands for. That’s the reality of having a relatively unknown figure suddenly come to prominence. Therefore, this cannot be reasonably seen as a vindication of his leadership.

Three: discontent with the Coalition. The only reasonable explanation: discontent was manifested with the Lib Dems in particular, Nick Clegg reprising his now-familiar role of lightning conductor for the Tories.

However, we also need to be aware of the difference between, on the one hand, giving the Coalition a bloody nose; and, on the other, giving it its marching orders. (more…)

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Three kinds of leader in the age of the insurgent

25/04/2011, 12:00:58 PM

by Kevin Meagher

Like bad luck, musketeers and Neopolitan ice cream, our political leaders come in threes. Consolidators, new brooms and insurgents; a trio of broad headings that sums up the different approaches to party leadership -Tory, Labour and Liberal alike.

First, we have consolidators. They are elected to lead divided parties, offering a familiar, reassuring presence, often at a moment of peril and self-doubt. They provide a small “c” conservative choice for parties turning in from the world. Michael Foot, Iain Duncan-Smith and Ming Campbell fall into this category. Their election is often a mark of intellectual defensiveness for their party, sometimes at the fag end of a period in office. Douglas-Home, Callaghan, and Gordon Brown also fit this bill.

Consolidators are kept on a short leash by their party; sometimes only too willingly. Their guiding belief is “hold what we have”, which really means that the party believes it is right, regardless of what the electorate has decided. Although never leader, this is Tony Benn quipping that Labour’s disastrous 1983 election result was “eight and a half million votes for socialism”. (more…)

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Cameron fails the leadership test

22/02/2011, 07:00:22 AM

by Stefan Stern

One industry that seems likely to be recession-proof is the one that is constantly coming up with new management fads and theories about leadership. The production line of gurus with books to sell and lecture halls to fill never sleeps. With a Twitter feed and a Facebook page we can all be experts now. This may or may not represent progress.

Leadership provokes more guru-fuelled debate than any other topic. The subject is discussed not merely on the business pages, but in the sports sections and of course in political coverage. You are about to get a few more paragraphs on the subject here (leave quietly if you’ve already heard enough). Because it is David Cameron’s particular brand – pun intended – of leadership that lies at the heart of the continuing “big society” debate. The idea will sink or swim thanks to the Cameron approach. That is why I think it is already sinking, if it isn’t quite sunk, yet. (more…)

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Tom Watson promises Ed Miliband that he’ll stop behaving like a child

13/10/2010, 10:03:38 AM

Ed Miliband is more like the early Tony Blair than either he or Tony would publicly admit. He is patient with his colleagues, considerate and engaging. He is irritated by complacency and policy inertia. And he is murderously ambitious for electoral success.

As Neil Kinnock once famously said “to lead a political party, first of all you have to establish whether the political party wishes to be led”. Ed’s got to put the band back together. Re-pitch the big tent.

And with what was a sublime re-shuffle – respect for defeated opponents, dignified exits for distinguished big beasts, early promotion of a cadre of new MPs – I think the band might soon, for the first time in many years, be playing in harmony.

He’s made some spectacularly audacious and very clever appointments that make it just possible for this happen. Anne McGuire joining the team as his PPS is an act of genius. She’s canny and well-respected by MPs. (more…)

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Dan Hodges backs a Blairite for the leadership

02/09/2010, 10:00:10 AM

And so it ends. By this week-end, three quarters of the votes in the 2010 Labour leadership election will have been cast. The contest will effectively be over.

We’ve learnt a lot. That a lengthy campaign, far from creating a platform for intensive debate, only deadens it. That a large field of candidates, rather than introducing diversity, allows only a superficial assessment of their merits, (The ‘Newsnight’ hustings would have shamed a secondary school debating class). Most crucially, we know that the last thing a political party should do after being dumped out of office is launch straight into electing itself a new leader.

Over the past months we have been assailed by a conformity of originality. Diane Abbott promised the “turn the page election from the turn the page candidate”. Ed Balls was building a “consensus for change”. Andy Burnham pledged to move the party beyond a “London-centric elite”.

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Our new leader will need to move quickly to define our narrative, says Peter Watt

16/08/2010, 09:05:28 AM

Whatever people once thought, Labour must be rueing the decision to allow the leadership contest to drag on. This window has allowed the Con/Lib government to to create a sense of moral outrage about Labour’s so called ‘profligacy in government’. They’ve tricked us in to thinking that cuts of up to 40% in departmental budgets aren’t savage – and to do anything else would be irresponsible at best and probably immoral to boot.

Eric Pickles reinforced this last week with his decision to open up the DCLG books. Eric, who must surely be seen as having one of the strongest performances of any cabinet member so far, has pulled a master stroke. How credible does it look for Labour to challenge the government on spending when it allowed tax payers pounds to be spent on massages, trips to the races and swanky hotels?

Over the coming months, journalists and armchair auditors will be poring over the lists of payments and drip-feeding a diet of ‘excessive spending’. It doesn’t matter what the reality is, the perception will be as the public suspected; spending had got out of control. The mood of the day is that although it might be painful, it needs doing.

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