Posts Tagged ‘Michael Fallon’

This curious Tory campaign is coming to us from another country

13/04/2015, 09:06:27 AM

by Jonathan Todd

Famously, the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there. In that country, they have naked women on Page 3 of The Sun. That publication peddles lies about football fans crushed on the terraces of Hillsborough. And claims to be able to determine the outcome of general elections.

That which largely went unquestioned in 1992 would not do so in 2015. The Sun has changed to survive in a changed country. In such a country, it may not necessarily follow that treatment for Ed Miliband akin to that which Neil Kinnock endured in 1992 will contribute to the same electoral outcome.

The fears about Kinnock that the Conservatives and their supporters in the media were then able to arouse chimed with underlying public perceptions. It may be that attacks like those of Michael Fallon on Miliband will again tap into deep seated fears about Labour.

Equally, reflecting on Miliband’s improving personal ratings, Damian Lyons Lowe, founder and chief executive of Survation, concluded, “people like the happy warrior”. If Fallon were mainlining fears in the same way that the Tories did during the 1992 campaign, we might expect Miliband’s ratings to be going in the other direction.

The Tory brand is also not as robust as it was in 1992. This weakness – the persistence of the “nasty party” perception – is one of the reasons that I have anticipated Labour victory this year. When brands have limited purchase, their capacity to impact how other brands are perceived is also undermined.

If you go round slinging dead cats on tables, people will think, “these are the kind of people who sling dead cats on tables”. Boris Johnson – whom David Aaronovitch recently described as being “like a man who breaks wind in a lift and everyone wonders what smells so good” – could sling a dozen dead cats on the table. And we’d all laugh. Then ask him to do it again.

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Week 2 of the campaign: the good, the bad and the ugly

12/04/2015, 11:25:54 AM

In a new feature for the general election, Uncut will be looking back at the end of each week at the good, the bad and the plain ugly of the campaign.

The good

Labour’s non-dom policy roll-out

This had everything: the element of surprise, backing from almost all sections of the media and public and a clear dividing line that placed the Tories on the side of one of the most egregiously privileged groups while Labour was the champion of the mainstream.

The way in which the Conservatives issued three press releases in 12 hours on this one issue illustrated the level of panic it generated.

And the muddled response that the Tories ultimately settled upon – criticising the micro-detail of the announcement while hawking around a partially edited video of Ed Balls from January this year – demonstrated how they crack under pressure.

The obvious move would have been to co-opt the policy, pretend this was something that had long been under consideration and use it to illustrate how we are all “in it together.”

It would have been a deft act of political ju jitsu, but instead, the much delayed Conservative response demonstrated an aching lack of judgement.

Once a Labour campaigner, always a Labour campaigner

He might be 82, but Lord Alf Dubs (standing on the left) is still pounding the streets for the party. Labour’s former MP for Battersea (1979-87) was out canvassing for Lee Sheriff in Carlisle yesterday, fresh from a visit to Scotland knocking up for candidates like Gregg McClymont. An example to all.

Samantha Cameron’s interview with the Mail on Sunday

The purpose of these soft focus spousal features is to humanise the leader, to open a window onto their home life. Normally, they fall short. They are too stilted, too focused on the politician with the spouse never rising above adjunct, even in their own interview.

This piece in last week’s Mail on Sunday is different. The candid manner in which Samantha Cameron discusses her deceased son, Ivan, gives the piece emotional heft and lifts it above the standard fayre. Samantha Cameron comes across as her own woman, and by the end it is David Cameron who is the adjunct.

Paradoxically, this is why it works as a piece of propaganda – Samantha Cameron does in fact humanise David Cameron. His bloodless and cold prime ministerial pallor is invigorated (somewhat) through his association with a strong woman. (more…)

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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.

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Will the Pro-European Labourites please stand up?

29/10/2014, 09:28:14 AM

by Callum Anderson

Just when you thought that the subject of the EU would, at least, momentarily take a place on the back-burner, it came screaming back onto Twitter, our newspapers and television screens.

First, there’s been the case of the EU budget and the UK’s prospective £1.7 billion surcharge, an additional contribution to the EU budget – whilst the likes of France and Germany are set to gain rebates of £801 million and £614 million respectively. The prospect of the UK coughing up more money to the EU, when it is already one of the biggest contributors already, as well as effectively handing over money to equally rich Member States is undoubtedly a difficult one.

The prime minister has taken the opportunity to appear as morally outraged as possible, taking a progressively harder line, stating in the House of Commons that Britain would pay ’no way near’ what the European Commission wants them to.

But the emerging facts are yet again highlighting David Cameron’s school boy approach to EU diplomacy. It is beginning to become clear that the prime minster, the chancellor and HM Treasury knew of the likely additional payment that would be required of them. Furthermore, not only did it appear that the Dutch government, who are also required to contribute an extra £506 million to the EU budget, would pay their own surcharge, but that they had also made contingency plans in preparation for their likely additional contributions.

Second, the topic of immigration was brought into the limelight, with the Defence Secretary Michael Fallon stating that he UK could be “swamped” by EU migrants – ignoring the fact that Kent, where Mr Fallon’s constituency lies, was according to the 2011 census 89.1 per cent White British. Not exactly swamped.

Yet it has become clear that there is little appetite among other European Member States for the significant treaty change required to restrict the freedom of movement, with that ever important player Angela Merkel stating that she was wholly against restricting this freedom.

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