‘Imagine my initial confusion’, tweeted Labour member of parliament Jess Phillips, ‘as I worked in sexual health MSM means Men who have Sex with Men’. The MSM, or the so-called ‘mainstream media’, has become the scapegoat for many about the grievances they feel with the world. If it is not going their way, it must be the media’s fault.
The ‘ferocious’ media and its reporting of ‘Tory myths’ are largely to blame for May 2015’s defeat in a winnable election, argued the long-awaited Beckett report last month. In ‘Learning the lessons from defeat’, it cited the unfairness that ‘every Labour spokesperson on any current affairs programme faced, not just disagreement and opposition from two other major parties – par for the course – but disagreement which was tightly coordinated’. As if it is unfair that the Tories do their job. ‘From the outset’, she argued, ‘it was hard for Labour’s counternarrative to be heard.’ Responsibility for this does not appear to fall on the leadership, the content of what the party had to say – which around a third of the report repeats and defends – or Labour’s own message-carriers.
The media is blamed for almost everything. In fact, it is the only part of the report that is comprehensive in its analysis. Example after example flows. ‘Major policy failures by the coalition … were allowed to slip from public attention’ not because our attack was not strong enough or widely supported but ‘despite our best efforts’. The bias against Labour is confirmed when ‘the Tories made promises that were wholly uncosted or unquantified … without the media storm that any such proposals from Labour would have provoked.’ Comparisons with Tony Blair’s portrayal as ‘Bambi’ when leader of the opposition are also referenced. But the fact that he cast off this image long before the short campaign was not. Ed Miliband, however, ‘faced an exceptionally vitriolic and personal attack’.
What is problematic is the way the report, as Miliband himself had done, made a virtue of the fact that Labour received bad coverage. As early as 2012 Miliband wore it as a badge of honour, saying, ‘There are no hard feelings between me and News International. They want me to lose, I want them in jail.’
Most insulting is the Beckett report’s conclusion that, ‘We need a comprehensive media strategy, which includes local, regional and national media, print, broadcasting and social media. While recognising that by far the greater part of UK media supports our opponents, we should work to establish and maintain good professional relationships with media practitioners.’ To suggest Labour’s problems were to do with its press staff failing to prosecute the strategy could not be further from the truth. The party continues to attract highly professional and competent staff, especially in this area. They went above and beyond over five years, and especially in the short campaign when others joined them from the private sector to expand capacity. It was not that Labour’s press team did not rival its Tory opponents, it was that it was issued with blunt knives while George Osborne and Lynton Crosby were handing out automatic weapons.
So what should one conclude? Just one thing. If you do not like what the press is writing, do not reach for Leveson – make better stories. If you are finding it hard to get purchase, ask deeper questions. Is the argument right? With its values intact, what could Labour say that experts or independent opinion-formers might repeat? If you can win them over, the press will not be able to avoid reporting your story and communicating your narrative. The West Wing’s Josh Lyman tells his colleague Donna Moss that ‘getting political reporters to write about issues in the first place is like getting kids to eat their vegetables … It helps if there’s nothing else on their plate.’ Labour’s leadership must learn to clear the decks and draw the media’s focus. At Progress annual conference 2014, Owen Jones attacked the leadership for having a ‘see your GP in 48-hours’ pledge, but then failing to keep that line of messaging going for even 48 hours. That should have set off alarm bells.
2015 saw the Tories perfect Crosby’s ‘dead cat strategy’ – a provocative attack designed to start a fight and move the story on. However, the masters of the tactic seem now to be allies of Jeremy Corbyn, using it against themselves. At a recent prime minister’s question time Corbyn lifted the morale of MPs and focused his attack on Osborne’s cuts to student grants. Within hours, leader’s aides were briefing the press about the Falkland Islands. At the Fabian Society new year conference, Corbyn led on domestic policy, only to have John McDonnell move the gaze by raising the Falklands (again) and Emily Thornberry as new shadow defence secretary on Andrew Neil’s Sunday Politics. Before that Osborne was making a speech about how precarious the economy had become under his stewardship while Ken Livingstone took to our screens to float the idea of leaving Nato.
Since the election, Labour has been undergoing a process of SNPisation. First came the Twitter trolls and sexist online abuse, then came the moral sanctimony mixed with a Millwall fan’s ‘No one likes us and we don’t care’; finally protesting against the ‘British Biased Corporation’ and calling for Nick Robinson’s sacking was aped by Seumas Milne in the midst of a botched reshuffle. Labour spin doctors turned their focus on Laura Kuenssberg for having the political intelligence to know someone was resigning and get them to announce it live on air. Instead, reflect on why the most overbriefed and longest reshuffle stifled out any message Labour might have about the Tories.
The reshuffle ended with rallying cries from all sides to focus our fire on the government. This is obviously right. But the conclusion not made by Beckett, which should have been, is this: unless Labour is a better alternative to the Tories it will be simply shouting at the ‘mainstream media’, rather than leading in it. And if you think the media is to blame, try talking to the public. As Deborah Mattinson reports in Progress this month, they have one or two choice lines for Labour.
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There isn’t any doubt that the print media as a whole, is strongly biased against Labour. But just sitting around complaining about it, is like whining about how unfair it is that cancer exists rather than working out a strategy to deal with it.
Only the other week, the Tories’ housing bill passed through the Commons. I only discovered this when John Healey the shadow housing minister came to speak to my local CLP, such had been the lack of publicity. This is a horrible piece of legislation, which even the Daily Telegraph criticised, and with only a majority of 12, it seems hard to believe that if Labour had mounted a sustained public campaign against it, we couldn’t have found more than 6 Tories with half a conscience to vote it down.
Instead, the Labour leadership spent its entire time dithering about whether to sack Hillary Benn or not. The real crime of the reshuffle was not whether it took too long, who was sacked etc. – these are questions that are only of interest to us politicos. It was that it diverted so much attention away from issues that are going to affect real people. Just as it doesn’t really matter whether you’re for or against Trident, whether you think the Falklands belong to Argentina or not. It’s that these are the issues are being picked up by the media whilst the Tories get away with doing what they want.
Over refugees, over tax credits – Labour has shown that it is possible get cut-through in the media and force the government to change policy, which helps ordinary people and gains us credibility as an Opposition. The media is a dangerous wild animal. But instead of trying to contain and control it, we keeping jumping straight into the cage without any clothes on, and then complaining we got bitten.
“Since the election, Labour has been undergoing a process of SNPisation”
Good they won. Usually defeating Labour because the New Labour image was tarnished beyond credibility with the majority of voters. By all means blame the media. Print media is largely a foreign or tax exile owned business. But have a strategy to deal with them and don’t pander to their base instincts and alien interests.
There is a tendency in the debate about Labours relations with the media to forget some salient facts. One is that the print media does not want Labour to succeed at least, not with any policy that might threaten their notion of what’s acceptable in economic or political terms. Acknowledging that fact is not the same as ‘blaming the media’ for our defeat. Miliband was right to take on News international over its appalling behaviour which even his own readers condemned. What was missing was a sustained attack on the values promoted by the likes of the Sun and NOW and a spirited defence of those which mark most coverage in the Daily Mirror. We should have continued to point out the problems associated with allowing the likes of Murdoch untrammelled access to Ministers and we should have defended the BBC. Those are not unpopular ideas with voters. But we did not make enough of them.
Secondly it’s worth remembering that during the New Labour years, the Labour press operation was pretty ‘robust’ with the press. Tactics were used which were downright ugly but they were effective. It wasn’t just our policies that appealed to the electorate, it was the way that Alastair Campbelll and his team ensured that the Press would not be able to find a way of attacking Labour before it won power.
Thirdly, the background of the run up to winning in 1997 was favourable. The media narrative was that the Tories were tired and had run out of steam. Even diehard Conservative hacks said they were not looking forward to the idea of another period of Tory rule and were positively willing New Labour to win.
None of this was true in 2010 or in 2015. But we did gift it to the Coalition govt in 2010 and again in 2015 by having an internal battle over our leadership. I for one am a little tired of this new habit of defeated leaders throwing in the towel immediately. Why? Wilson won an election after losing. Kinnock very nearly won with his second throw of the dice. Leaders of political parties are not football managers sacked after a bad run in the league the should show some leadership in defeat too and allow the Labour Party to have a considered view about its defeat away from the febrile atmosphere we have now.
As ever with Phillips, a typical concoction of lies, ignorance and deliberate childlike confusion. So far inside the Westminster/media bubble that she has slipped into a parallel universe. Bah.
Just before the 2015 election I was busy producing newsletters, leaflets and posters for local candidates. I’ve done for general elections since 1997. For the first time I had no idea what the key messages for the campaign were. So I asked candidates and party officers for help. No-one could help. Now with the warfare between the PLP and Corbyn things are worse. And we blame the media?
Three comments 1) The press were particularly vicious towards ‘Red Ed’ just look at the final day or so when the Sun personalised their front page attacks and provided their readers with the Sun supplement on how to stop Red Ed in the marginal seats. The Daily Mail went patriotic with a Union Jack on the day before the GE with its appeal to get out tomorrow and ‘Save Britain’ from the threat of Red Ed and SNP. These headlines were prominent in supermarkets and breakfast TV reviews etc.,
2 Now its more ‘subtle’ (and please grasp this as Labour people including many at Progress do not ) . *You have about 6 daily Tory papers setting a ‘Tory News Agenda’ * ( eg the Ed and SNP governing our country scare) . The BBC TV News absorbs this ‘Tory News Agenda’ both in its press reviews but seriously in its news stories. It is no longer neutral – it follows the herd. The loudest and ‘smartest voices’ get heard and Lynton Crosby was masterful at that.
3) I agree we had the wrong leader and Ed was disliked on personal grounds as unconvincing and not personable enough to be the PM. Also the strategy and campaign was problematic and the fact that our Labour vote in places like Harlow went down from 51% under Tony Blair to 30% under Ed and that we lost seats like Derby North – well it says it all.
4) The Centre Left have been too quiet for too long. as we see this week from the Telegraph : “The Conservatives have opened up a 27 point lead over Labour on which party has the better leadership team, the biggest lead since 1989” The Tories best lead for 27 years!(MORI)