Politics of Spin
Andrew Rawnsley writing in The Observer makes a good point about Ed Miliband rejecting the politics of spin and presentation which is that he used exactly these kind of cynical tactics during the Labour leadership contest with his own brother, David Miliband.
So I take it all with a big pinch of salt, as I suspect will most people because the real issue, as Andrew Rawnsley says, is Labour's lack of credibility on the economy where the Party has nothing fundamentally different to say from the Conservatives and Lib Dems.
Ed Miliband's lack of popularity is nothing to do with his photo-ops
The Labour leader's major problem is that voters don't think he's tough enough. Not that he looks like Wallace
Andrew Rawnsley - The Observer
Photos aren't the real problem for Ed Miliband. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA
I agree with Ed – indeed who wouldn't? There is "more to politics than the photo-op". But after listening to the speech in which Mr Miliband denounced the obsession with image for infecting the voters with cynicism, I was left wondering why the Labour party is in the process of hiring a new broadcasting officer and what this person is supposed to do during the election campaign. Keep a bag handy to shove over the head of Mr Miliband whenever a cameraman is present? Prove the sincerity of the Labour leader's feelings by organising a series of deliberately terrible photo-opportunities? Perhaps a sequence of calamitous encounters with bacon butties and other food that is hard to consume with elegance? Advise the leader to gurn whenever a lens is pointed at him?
I put this conundrum to a member of the Labour leader's team. He took the mockery in good part. "We're not saying we won't be doing any more photo-opportunities," he laughed. "Just that they won't be very good."
The speech also left me wondering how his cursing of personality-based politics had gone down with one former native of Britain, now doing good works in New York. When, this time four years ago, the contest for the Labour leadership was moving towards its climax, personality politics was very much exploited by team Ed to give him the edge over brother David. "Ed is the Miliband who speaks human," they liked to say to suggest that his older brother was an alien visitor from the Planet Wonk while the younger man was a regular Earthling who could commune with the masses without needing a translator.
Well, Mr Miliband has now had a long time to convince the masses that he has what it takes to be their prime minister and one of the risks he took with this speech was its acknowledgement that he's struggling. His personal ratings trail those of his party and last month fell to the lowest ever recorded in an ICM-Guardian poll. For weeks now, the Labour leader and his inner circle have been privately agonising about how to address "the Ed Miliband problem". They had tried denial, but refusing to talk about it didn't stop everyone else doing so, especially after the campaign pratfalls during the May elections. They had tried telling everyone that policies would trump personality, but Labour now has lots of policy and it hasn't given a lift to Mr Miliband's personal ratings when voters are asked to consider him as a potential prime minister. If anything, the popularity of some of the policy has made the problem more glaring by creating an unflattering contrast with the unpopularity of the leader. They have tried being angry, raging about a conspiracy between the Tories and their mates in the rightwing media to trash the Labour leader. Even if there is truth in that, trying to blame it all on the Conservatives and their press sounded defensive and self-pitying.
Which really left them with one last resort, which was to get Mr Miliband himself to confront the issue publicly. His speech in the art deco setting of the Royal Institute of British Architects came at his problem from two angles. The first was to be self-deprecatingly and humorously honest about his weaknesses as a political performer. He made jokes at his own expense about the butty debacle and looking like Gromit's chum, Wallace. "If you want the politician from central casting, it's not me, it's the other guy." To pre-empt some of the obvious jibes that the speech would provoke, he apologised for posing with a copy of the Sun.
The second, and trickier, element of his case was to try to suggest that his flaws are really virtues and to imply that the real problem is not him, but a culture that has turned politics into "a game of showbiz" that fewer and fewer people want to watch: "They believe we value posturing more than principle. Good photos or soundbites more than a decent policy. Image more than ideas. And it is no surprise that people think that. Because so often the terms of trade of politics – the way it is discussed and rated – has become about the manufactured, the polished, the presentational.
I've quoted that at some length because I think he has a point: the contrivances and manipulations of modern politics are two of the explanations for why many voters have become alienated. But you need a little history to understand how we got here and it is a history in which the voters themselves must take much of the blame. The 20th anniversary of Tony Blair's election as Labour leader has just been passed with a euphoric reception for him among the admirers who gathered to listen to him at Church House. Even many who loathe him will accept that he is still a great performer. It was during his time that Labour became the maestros of the snappy soundbite, the instant rebuttal, the meticulously field marshall choreographed policy launch and the cleverly contrived photo-opportunity.
This was in reaction to two things. One was the presentational ruthlessness that the Saatchis had introduced to the Tory party and its success with the electorate. The other was Labour's failed past: Michael Foot being ridiculed for the coat he wore to the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday, Neil Kinnock never being allowed to forget that he once fell over on Brighton beach.
The primacy that New Labour accorded to presentation was also because Mr Blair, a consummate communicator, was just so damned brilliant at the actorly side of politics. And it was because he, Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson thought that having a reputation for excelling at presentation was one of the ways to convince voters that Labour was a refreshed, reformed and modern party. They weren't wrong. It was a key ingredient of the election-winning New Labour formula.
After 10 years of being worsted by the man some of them referred to as the "Master", David Cameron and his friends adopted many of his techniques. They got slick at presentation just as Labour, under Gordon Brown, lost the knack of it. The story came full circle – and bit itself.
Voters have become distrustful of obviously thespian politicians such as Tony Blair and the not so accomplished imitator that currently resides at Number 10. Mr Miliband's most effective swipe at his Tory rival was to say the public had been made cynical by political stunts "like when someone hugs a husky before an election and then says they are going to 'cut green crap' after it".
A media-savvy public are now much more conscious of the level of artifice involved in political presentation and on high alert for fakery. On the other hand, they still want leaders who can communicate effectively, they still want leaders who can lift them with a vision and they still want their leaders to look the part when they are on television standing next to the president of the United States.
What is the answer to this contradiction? Mr Miliband's answer is to try to persuade voters that there are more important things in politics than coming over well on TV. He offered his definition of what he called "the gold standard" of leadership, arguing that "just as ideas are the most underrated commodity in politics, decency and empathy are the most underrated virtues". He may well be right, but this was also the most obviously self-serving part of his speech. The brighter spots of his personal ratings are when the public are asked whether they think he is man with principles and whether he is on their side. So it very much suits Mr Miliband to try to make these qualities the defining tests of what makes a good leader.
This was not really an attempt to abolish the politics of perceptions, but to change the terms of it to his advantage. Both parties head towards the election expecting it to be a highly presidential contest with the most intense focus on the leaders. The Conservatives want to frame the Cameron/Miliband choice as the tried and tested versus the inexperienced and implausible. They are heavily relying on this contrast to push sufficient swing voters into the Conservative column to give them victory. Labour would like to define the Miliband/Cameron contest as the empathetic and authentic versus the remote and counterfeit.
"If you want a politician who thinks that a good photo is the most important thing, then don't vote for me," said Mr Miliband.
Some around him reckoned this a rather bold thing to say, but I don't meet many people – and I bet he doesn't either – who really think that a good photo is the most important thing. It is not the central reason why he has such poor ratings as a potential prime minister. That has much more to do with the problem that his speech conspicuously did not confront: the widespread belief, fair or not, that he can't take tough decisions and the lack of confidence in Labour as a team that can be trusted with the economy.
That is Labour's fundamental vulnerability, the major handicap that it most needs to be thinking about before the party conference season, not its leader's resemblance to Wallace or his struggles with bacon butties.
