One-Eyed (nearly official) Campaign Update
The Westminster rumour-mill has it that this will be the last unofficial one-eyed election update. All gossip seems to point to Monday for an announcement of the closely guarded secret election date - 050505.
The Westminster rumour-mill though, is fed by the rumour-mongers of the Parliament and the press, and those in Number Ten who have their complicated 'strategic press agendas' of bluff and counter bluff, smoke, mirrors and spin, that we mere mortals no nothing of and care nothing for. Monday would be good, but there's the little fact of running the country to be considered. Parliament, though it seems useless, actually plays a role in this as bills can't get passed if parliament isn't sitting. It's Easter recess now, so there's the usual legislative pile-up to clear in parliament before it rises for purdah. Mind you, this is not a Government that has ever let running the country get in the way of good PR.
My guess would be Wednesday. Although we're forecast a sunny weekend, Monday is looking like rain. It's the feel-good factor. Announcing and election is guaranteed to get you on telly, you don't want to be standing outside Number Ten looking like the master of all you survey getting pissed on with rain do you?
Wednesday gives the civil service time to bung a few bills thorough parliament, and would also give a great opportunity to set the agenda before Prime Ministers Questions. That's my stab, and I'm sticking to it. Let's hope it's as accurate as my "Tory self-destruct button" prediction last week, although many will argue that I didn't have to be Nostradamus to see that one coming.
On with the campaign update. I was going to include the BBC as a new entrant to the campaign this week, however I have decided against it on the grounds that it's unfair to draw a distinction between them and the Labour Party this close to an election.
Labour
A pretty slick week for Labour. Worries that the old style of going on about what bastards the Tories are was looking a bit defensive and dishonest have been elevated. Those lily-livered Labour MPs and journos who were voicing a desire to see a bit more of a positive campaign have been proved very wrong. Any coach knows that you've got to play to your strengths, and Labour has the best drilled mud-slinging machine around. Those waivers have now seen the light and piled back on the Tories. It may have been that they realised that positive campaigning requires stuff like a "message" and "policies" that can get you into trouble if you get elected, or that the old desire to put the boot into the Tories returned when they hit the deck in the shape of the loathsome Howard Flight.
Milburn will be delighted. For a while it was looking like putting him in nominal charge of Alistair Campbell's election campaign was a huge error. Campbell's success 1994 - Kellygate was that he never put his own head above the parapet. Everyone knew there was a vacuous sleazebag running the whole of the Government's PR, but no-one could nail him for it. Milburn is an MP and -officially- a Cabinet Minister - though his role seems more like he's the PM's lodger that helps out with the washing-up and does the odd bit of dusting. Milburn's public profile means that the dark arts required of the "Campaign Coordinator" have to be conducted in front of cameras and the public, rather than from some seedy Downing Street bunker as before and therefore puts a bit of a cap on what the guy can actually get away with. Still, having a ready-made public profile must be great when things are going well, and Milburn has been duly quick to cash-in this week.
Not for the first time in history, Labour's biggest asset this week has been the Tories idiocy. Tory economic strategist Howard Flight was recorded saying that there was more room than the Tories were letting on for reductions of the government's proposed spending increases. This was easily equated by Labour and the willing press into an admission of the Tories "agenda of cuts to public services" and the stink was big enough to make headline-crazy Michael Howard sack the guy on the spot. Right or wrong, Howard thought he's put the story to bed. But with Labour eager to validate their negative campaign and still seething over the failure of their "£35bn in Cuts" slogan and the press smelling blood the story grew and grew and grew. The impressive New Labour machine we all remember swung into motion and even Dr John Reed was caught smiling on TV!
The only sour note of the whole affair that has so far eluded the press is that Labour have effectively cashed in one of their spies. Someone recorded Flight in his pep talk to his team of Tory-Boys, and that someone must have been a mole. If this is the best they can do, and worth cashing in a well placed agent for then they might be a bit stretched when it comes to mud to sling later in the campaign. But then that's not something that we should be underestimating them on.
More shocks still though, as Tony Blair today announced that the economy should play a central role in the Labour election campaign. Shocking if you consider that Labour are actually the incumbents and thus a shift in focus onto the economy would mean a positive campaign strategy. Still, the image of the plotting Gordon Brown, brooding quietly in his sparse office at the Treasury was beginning to overshadow the 'shiny happy people' spin that Labour likes to put on the Cabinet at election time. Sulking Gord was ruining the 'hey we're best buddies' routine, so the campaign strategy has been hastily re-written to include him.
Alarm bells would have rung at Downing Street, as the Tory press seem to have decided that Blair is too easy a target nowadays with both the Spectator and the Telegraph latterly running anti-Brown articles where once they would have been anti-Blair. The Rovian tactic of "always attack your opponents strengths, let him reveal his weaknesses" dictates that the biggest danger to the Tories should get the roughest treatment by the Tory press. This week's round of Brown-bashing has shown that the Tories clearly see Brown as the next Labour leader. Bringing the campaign focus onto the economy can be seen as an example of Blair keeping his friends close, but his enemies closer.
The final shock from the Labour campaign this week was the sight of Jamie Oliver, celebrity Essex-boy and chef in a tie outside Downing Street. Oliver was delivering a petition bearing 271,000 signatures supporting his "Feed Me Better" campaign to supply school children with better nutrition. Oliver has been fêted by the press for drawing a £280 million spending promise out of the Government. Congratulations would be better sent to the Education Secretary, Ruth Kelly, for the speed at which she must have done her sums in order to get an announcement out literally hours after Oliver hit the headlines. Either there was something in the pipeline all along that they've kept quiet about, or there's been some serious back-of-envelope stuff over at DfES.
The Labour party is today facing an investigation over its use of 'cold calling' in breach of the campaigning code of conduct. Arhh to be sure the code is more like a set of 'guidelines' savvy? Don't think this has legs. Things are looking good over at New Labour, and expect them to sail through this with their usual gusto. The only thing between them and the election booty are the cursed ghost of Bootstrap Mandelson and about 30,000 Iraqis.
Conservative
Back down to earth with a bump this week for all the excitable young things at Central Office. The Howard Flight fiasco reminds them that in politics it doesn't matter what you say, it's what you're talking about that gets the headlines. Even if you think you're talking to your own, walls in Westminster have ears.
Mr Crosby missed a trick. A savvy political operator would have had the cameras in, filming the Victoria Street headquarters being swept for bugs, thus providing a shift of emphasis from a Tory MP's private musings to the New Labour 'covert-ops' teams with their recording devices, databases of associates, embedded 'sleepers' and black propaganda units. He could have even drawn attention to the story from last year about Labour staffers doggedly following a Tory MP for months recording his movements and revealing that he secretly went to gay bars to pick up gay men for gay sex, only to have their dirt ruined when they found out that he'd in fact come out the year before.
So it's been heads down this week for the Tories. They did their best at the weekend and the beginning of the week, turning up at press conferences, ready to make announcements, only to find that no one was listening, all people wanted to do was talk about someone nobody had heard of before being the downfall of the party. It was like the IDS days all over again.
The reason the press are loving this story, and that Labour are getting so much mileage out of it is simple: Howard Flight was saying what every other Tory is thinking - "we'll swallow this guff about increasing spending at a lower rate than the Government, then, when we're elected we'll do something about the preposterous size of the state".
This, unfortunately, is a PR disaster made in Conservative Central Office. The Tories have been savvy in noting the direction of the political wind - that people directly equate money-in with services-out and have no desire to know what happens in the middle, further, that people are now so protective of the intangible buzzword "services" that they are willing to fight for it against the equally intangible "cuts" even if it means that they have to pay higher taxes and are no healthier nor more educated as a result. That this is now the political culture represents a victory for previous New Labour agendas and acts as a stark reminder of the Tories failure to impact the political landscape over the last decade. If Thatcherite economic liberalism is now viewed as soulless, why too is the Blairite faith and dependence in the soft bosom of the state not equally ill-regarded? In dancing to the New Labour tune of taxes-mean-services-mean-everyone's-warm-and-fluffy, the Tories only have themselves to blame that their intellectual core has been exposed and soiled.
Today, after a full week, the dust has finally settled on the Howard Flight saga. Michael Howard is doing his best to get back to his base with a call for more police muscle to combat the nation's yobbery. This is good ground for the Tories, and should prove a quick win that could bring back some momentum for the campaign. Where they go from here, is less clear, as the sensible play would have been to go big on the economy and at the same time drive a wedge between Blair and Brown. This would isolate Blair, and focus more pressure on Brown and his pompous self imposed 'fiscal rules'. But if they make this play now there's no chance of scoring. Post-Flight Labour hold the ground on the economy, and as detailed above they show no signs of giving it up without a very dirty fight.
Expect more crime and drugs announcements from the Tories with probably a bit of MRSA and protecting out teachers stuff thrown in too. But the ball is back in Blair's court as we move into what is probably going to be the week that the real campaign agenda is set.
The Liberal Democrats
Like the rest of the UK, the LibDems enjoyed a restful double bank holiday weekend. They probably did a bit of gardening as the weather was nice, and maybe popped down to Ikea to pick up a shelving unit and a bag of those little tea-light things.
What they didn't do was campaign. If they carry on like this they will swiftly become the nation's favourite political party. Again, I tip my hat to the LibDems.
The strategy wobbled a bit on Tuesday, when the headline "Kennedy Urges Crime Solution" appeared, but on closer inspection, the headline turned out to be a full and accurate elaboration of what had actually happened: Charlie had said something like "we really ought to do something about crime". This followed the alarm bells that rang at the LibDem campaign camp site on Sunday as the papers reported that the LibDems would not prosecute mothers who shop-lift. For a while, it looked like the secret key demographic in the LibDem master plan - shoplifting mum - had been exposed. But nobody was that bothered so it turned out alright. We all had a good bank holiday thanks to the LibDems. Cheers Charlie.
Today sees the weekly LibDem policy re-hash. This time it's the local income tax thing that they've been rambling on about for a while now. Skilfully re-packaged as "LibDems vow to end council tax", who says that they don’t know how to make waves? Bless. A swift view of the LibDem web-site shows that they have a catchy taxation and economic policy that equates to "we won't do anything any differently apart from a new income tax band for those that earn over £100k. Oh, and the local income tax thing."
The LibDems this week were reported to be predicting their best ever election results. Not hard really.
The Westminster rumour-mill though, is fed by the rumour-mongers of the Parliament and the press, and those in Number Ten who have their complicated 'strategic press agendas' of bluff and counter bluff, smoke, mirrors and spin, that we mere mortals no nothing of and care nothing for. Monday would be good, but there's the little fact of running the country to be considered. Parliament, though it seems useless, actually plays a role in this as bills can't get passed if parliament isn't sitting. It's Easter recess now, so there's the usual legislative pile-up to clear in parliament before it rises for purdah. Mind you, this is not a Government that has ever let running the country get in the way of good PR.
My guess would be Wednesday. Although we're forecast a sunny weekend, Monday is looking like rain. It's the feel-good factor. Announcing and election is guaranteed to get you on telly, you don't want to be standing outside Number Ten looking like the master of all you survey getting pissed on with rain do you?
Wednesday gives the civil service time to bung a few bills thorough parliament, and would also give a great opportunity to set the agenda before Prime Ministers Questions. That's my stab, and I'm sticking to it. Let's hope it's as accurate as my "Tory self-destruct button" prediction last week, although many will argue that I didn't have to be Nostradamus to see that one coming.
On with the campaign update. I was going to include the BBC as a new entrant to the campaign this week, however I have decided against it on the grounds that it's unfair to draw a distinction between them and the Labour Party this close to an election.
Labour
A pretty slick week for Labour. Worries that the old style of going on about what bastards the Tories are was looking a bit defensive and dishonest have been elevated. Those lily-livered Labour MPs and journos who were voicing a desire to see a bit more of a positive campaign have been proved very wrong. Any coach knows that you've got to play to your strengths, and Labour has the best drilled mud-slinging machine around. Those waivers have now seen the light and piled back on the Tories. It may have been that they realised that positive campaigning requires stuff like a "message" and "policies" that can get you into trouble if you get elected, or that the old desire to put the boot into the Tories returned when they hit the deck in the shape of the loathsome Howard Flight.
Milburn will be delighted. For a while it was looking like putting him in nominal charge of Alistair Campbell's election campaign was a huge error. Campbell's success 1994 - Kellygate was that he never put his own head above the parapet. Everyone knew there was a vacuous sleazebag running the whole of the Government's PR, but no-one could nail him for it. Milburn is an MP and -officially- a Cabinet Minister - though his role seems more like he's the PM's lodger that helps out with the washing-up and does the odd bit of dusting. Milburn's public profile means that the dark arts required of the "Campaign Coordinator" have to be conducted in front of cameras and the public, rather than from some seedy Downing Street bunker as before and therefore puts a bit of a cap on what the guy can actually get away with. Still, having a ready-made public profile must be great when things are going well, and Milburn has been duly quick to cash-in this week.
Not for the first time in history, Labour's biggest asset this week has been the Tories idiocy. Tory economic strategist Howard Flight was recorded saying that there was more room than the Tories were letting on for reductions of the government's proposed spending increases. This was easily equated by Labour and the willing press into an admission of the Tories "agenda of cuts to public services" and the stink was big enough to make headline-crazy Michael Howard sack the guy on the spot. Right or wrong, Howard thought he's put the story to bed. But with Labour eager to validate their negative campaign and still seething over the failure of their "£35bn in Cuts" slogan and the press smelling blood the story grew and grew and grew. The impressive New Labour machine we all remember swung into motion and even Dr John Reed was caught smiling on TV!
The only sour note of the whole affair that has so far eluded the press is that Labour have effectively cashed in one of their spies. Someone recorded Flight in his pep talk to his team of Tory-Boys, and that someone must have been a mole. If this is the best they can do, and worth cashing in a well placed agent for then they might be a bit stretched when it comes to mud to sling later in the campaign. But then that's not something that we should be underestimating them on.
More shocks still though, as Tony Blair today announced that the economy should play a central role in the Labour election campaign. Shocking if you consider that Labour are actually the incumbents and thus a shift in focus onto the economy would mean a positive campaign strategy. Still, the image of the plotting Gordon Brown, brooding quietly in his sparse office at the Treasury was beginning to overshadow the 'shiny happy people' spin that Labour likes to put on the Cabinet at election time. Sulking Gord was ruining the 'hey we're best buddies' routine, so the campaign strategy has been hastily re-written to include him.
Alarm bells would have rung at Downing Street, as the Tory press seem to have decided that Blair is too easy a target nowadays with both the Spectator and the Telegraph latterly running anti-Brown articles where once they would have been anti-Blair. The Rovian tactic of "always attack your opponents strengths, let him reveal his weaknesses" dictates that the biggest danger to the Tories should get the roughest treatment by the Tory press. This week's round of Brown-bashing has shown that the Tories clearly see Brown as the next Labour leader. Bringing the campaign focus onto the economy can be seen as an example of Blair keeping his friends close, but his enemies closer.
The final shock from the Labour campaign this week was the sight of Jamie Oliver, celebrity Essex-boy and chef in a tie outside Downing Street. Oliver was delivering a petition bearing 271,000 signatures supporting his "Feed Me Better" campaign to supply school children with better nutrition. Oliver has been fêted by the press for drawing a £280 million spending promise out of the Government. Congratulations would be better sent to the Education Secretary, Ruth Kelly, for the speed at which she must have done her sums in order to get an announcement out literally hours after Oliver hit the headlines. Either there was something in the pipeline all along that they've kept quiet about, or there's been some serious back-of-envelope stuff over at DfES.
The Labour party is today facing an investigation over its use of 'cold calling' in breach of the campaigning code of conduct. Arhh to be sure the code is more like a set of 'guidelines' savvy? Don't think this has legs. Things are looking good over at New Labour, and expect them to sail through this with their usual gusto. The only thing between them and the election booty are the cursed ghost of Bootstrap Mandelson and about 30,000 Iraqis.
Conservative
Back down to earth with a bump this week for all the excitable young things at Central Office. The Howard Flight fiasco reminds them that in politics it doesn't matter what you say, it's what you're talking about that gets the headlines. Even if you think you're talking to your own, walls in Westminster have ears.
Mr Crosby missed a trick. A savvy political operator would have had the cameras in, filming the Victoria Street headquarters being swept for bugs, thus providing a shift of emphasis from a Tory MP's private musings to the New Labour 'covert-ops' teams with their recording devices, databases of associates, embedded 'sleepers' and black propaganda units. He could have even drawn attention to the story from last year about Labour staffers doggedly following a Tory MP for months recording his movements and revealing that he secretly went to gay bars to pick up gay men for gay sex, only to have their dirt ruined when they found out that he'd in fact come out the year before.
So it's been heads down this week for the Tories. They did their best at the weekend and the beginning of the week, turning up at press conferences, ready to make announcements, only to find that no one was listening, all people wanted to do was talk about someone nobody had heard of before being the downfall of the party. It was like the IDS days all over again.
The reason the press are loving this story, and that Labour are getting so much mileage out of it is simple: Howard Flight was saying what every other Tory is thinking - "we'll swallow this guff about increasing spending at a lower rate than the Government, then, when we're elected we'll do something about the preposterous size of the state".
This, unfortunately, is a PR disaster made in Conservative Central Office. The Tories have been savvy in noting the direction of the political wind - that people directly equate money-in with services-out and have no desire to know what happens in the middle, further, that people are now so protective of the intangible buzzword "services" that they are willing to fight for it against the equally intangible "cuts" even if it means that they have to pay higher taxes and are no healthier nor more educated as a result. That this is now the political culture represents a victory for previous New Labour agendas and acts as a stark reminder of the Tories failure to impact the political landscape over the last decade. If Thatcherite economic liberalism is now viewed as soulless, why too is the Blairite faith and dependence in the soft bosom of the state not equally ill-regarded? In dancing to the New Labour tune of taxes-mean-services-mean-everyone's-warm-and-fluffy, the Tories only have themselves to blame that their intellectual core has been exposed and soiled.
Today, after a full week, the dust has finally settled on the Howard Flight saga. Michael Howard is doing his best to get back to his base with a call for more police muscle to combat the nation's yobbery. This is good ground for the Tories, and should prove a quick win that could bring back some momentum for the campaign. Where they go from here, is less clear, as the sensible play would have been to go big on the economy and at the same time drive a wedge between Blair and Brown. This would isolate Blair, and focus more pressure on Brown and his pompous self imposed 'fiscal rules'. But if they make this play now there's no chance of scoring. Post-Flight Labour hold the ground on the economy, and as detailed above they show no signs of giving it up without a very dirty fight.
Expect more crime and drugs announcements from the Tories with probably a bit of MRSA and protecting out teachers stuff thrown in too. But the ball is back in Blair's court as we move into what is probably going to be the week that the real campaign agenda is set.
The Liberal Democrats
Like the rest of the UK, the LibDems enjoyed a restful double bank holiday weekend. They probably did a bit of gardening as the weather was nice, and maybe popped down to Ikea to pick up a shelving unit and a bag of those little tea-light things.
What they didn't do was campaign. If they carry on like this they will swiftly become the nation's favourite political party. Again, I tip my hat to the LibDems.
The strategy wobbled a bit on Tuesday, when the headline "Kennedy Urges Crime Solution" appeared, but on closer inspection, the headline turned out to be a full and accurate elaboration of what had actually happened: Charlie had said something like "we really ought to do something about crime". This followed the alarm bells that rang at the LibDem campaign camp site on Sunday as the papers reported that the LibDems would not prosecute mothers who shop-lift. For a while, it looked like the secret key demographic in the LibDem master plan - shoplifting mum - had been exposed. But nobody was that bothered so it turned out alright. We all had a good bank holiday thanks to the LibDems. Cheers Charlie.
Today sees the weekly LibDem policy re-hash. This time it's the local income tax thing that they've been rambling on about for a while now. Skilfully re-packaged as "LibDems vow to end council tax", who says that they don’t know how to make waves? Bless. A swift view of the LibDem web-site shows that they have a catchy taxation and economic policy that equates to "we won't do anything any differently apart from a new income tax band for those that earn over £100k. Oh, and the local income tax thing."
The LibDems this week were reported to be predicting their best ever election results. Not hard really.
