The Labour government is learning the hard way a few inconvenient truths that should be borne in mind when seeking to govern.
The first is that much of our media is essentially trivial, so that if there is a choice between a controversial story about the prime minister’s wife’s clothes or the chance to explain the intricacies of social care policy, nine times out of 10, the frocks will win.
The second is that double standards come easily to the right wing newspapers, which continue, despite falling circulations, to exercise an excessive influence over broadcasters.
So they will happily turn a blind eye to Covid corruption, Boris Johnson’s repeated misconduct in his private and public lives, the buying up of the Tory Party by Russian oligarchs, or the extent to which Rishi Sunak’s wife’s business interests flourished under his government, but spare no effort to turn Keir Starmer’s fondness for Arsenal FC into a front-page sleazefest.
The third is that the media need backroom baddies in a story – it is a role I had forced upon me for much of the time I worked in government, and for which today Downing Street chief of staff Sue Gray has been singled out, doubtless helped by enemies within.
The question is, how do you deal with all of the above? And the answer is that you make sure they have bigger and better things to write and talk about, and the key to that is strategy, and strategic communications, which is the simultaneous development, execution and narration of the driving strategy of government.
Change was the slogan, and Labour’s five missions were the pillars of the strategy on which they built the campaign that secured a landslide victory. At an event with business people in London last week, I asked how many could identify the missions. Most were aware of the commitment to grow the economy, some that the aim was to be the fastest growing economy in the G7, and sceptical that that could be done from the current economic base without substantial investment and a total reset of relations with Europe.
Beyond that, in an audience of pretty well-informed people, there was next to no awareness. The media may be part of the explanation for that. But it is the government’s responsibility to fix the problem.
Most important in that is relentless focus on the promises made to turn the country around, and constant explanation and argument as to the what and the why and the how they are doing. But also avoiding giving the media any excuse to go down their preferred routes of trivia, froth and personality clashes.
“They’re all as bad as each other” is a dream line of attack on a Labour government for the right wing media. Making your friends and donors multimillionaires on the back of a pandemic might strike most reasonable people as being a tad more serious than any of the “scandals” that have commanded so much media space in recent days.
But that is not the point. The point is that government is harder than opposition, Labour governments are generally held to higher standards, and the media is not there to make life easy for you. So don’t make it easier for them to make it harder for you, by doing things you know will give them the chance to go into frenzy or outrage mode.
Right wing media outrage has a new annual event in the calendar, namely Last Night of the Proms. This is because the campaign group Thank EU for the Music has taken to handing out European flags and getting the audience to wave them in solidarity with UK and EU touring musicians whose careers and livelihoods have been damaged by Brexit.
This year the story in some of the right wing rags was that the Royal Albert Hall had banned the flags on the grounds that they were symbols of “protest and hatred”, and that security confiscated them rather than have this hatred spoil the evening.
This was all very Trumpian, given that anyone who watched on TV could see the sea of blue and yellow, EU flags galore. As to the issue, and the need to keep campaigning, research by the Musicians’ Union and the Independent Society of Musicians shows that more than half of UK musicians who have previously toured the EU no longer do so, because of the additional costs and balls-aching administration required.
Just before the election, Keir Starmer was asked about the issue on LBC radio. “There are brilliantly talented individuals in bands, groups, drama, you name it,” he said, “who are going to other countries to perform often for a few days, then coming back or going to another country. They are nothing really to do with immigration, yet are simply going to play in other countries, and those other countries want them there. So we have to make that easier. It’s been very tough, particularly for musicians. So anything we can do to ease that, the better.”
Culture is one of our greatest assets, both for exports and for soft power, both of which have been harmed by Brexit. So the sooner Labour come up with the “anything we can do to ease that”, the better.
Alcoholism having intruded into my life all too often, I was somewhat dreading seeing The Outrun, the story of a recovering alcoholic in the Orkneys, adapted from Amy Liptrot’s memoir. But it seemed rude to turn down an invite from actor Saoirse Ronan, and her partner Jack Lowden, who produced the film, to a special screening and Q&A, so along we went.
Saoirse and Nora Fingscheidt, the director, said that when they first began working on The Outrun, they worried that the book was “unadaptable” for the big screen. They have proved themselves spectacularly wrong.
Saoirse’s portrayal of the descent into alcoholism is absolutely harrowing at times. She is a fabulous actor, and a lovely, warm human being. I cannot recommend the film enough. And if you go to see it on my recommendation, don’t be surprised to see me alongside you at the cinema. It is definitely one of those films that merits more than a single viewing.
You think you know somebody really well, and then…
My daughter bullied me into bullying my podcast co-presenter Rory Stewart into doing a joint appearance on Grace’s podcast, Late to the Party, which is about parties (and not of the political kind.) Having now spent several hours a week with him over more than a couple of years, I have developed the sense that Rory shares my ambivalence about socialising, that if he is offered a choice between work and play, serious and light-hearted, big talk and small talk, he will opt for the work, the serious and the big talk every time.
So I was shocked, I tell you, when he blurted out to Grace that he loves dancing and that he likes nothing better than to go out clubbing. I can just about imagine him in full Highland gear doing the Gay Gordons or an Eightsome Reel at a posh folks’ ceilidh in a Scottish castle. But I cannot for the life of me see him strutting his stuff on the dance floor in a noisy London club, any more than I can imagine myself being there to witness it.
Grace was clearly convinced, however. “I wish Rory was my real dad,” she concluded after our joint grilling.
