Politics and wordplay

By Darrell Goodliffe

So, our Head of Communications, Tom Baldwin, has written to media outlets calling for them to stop calling the government the coalition and start refering to it as ‘Tory-led’. Personally, I don’t like the ‘Tory-led’ term but that is by the by – there is a more important issue at stake here. Our obsession with ‘spin’ within government became legendary and the subject of much mockery and parody. I can’t help but feel that people thought of Malcolm Tucker as a pretty fair representation of our practice in government – especially during the Blair years.

There is a serious side to this though; spin is not thought of merely as communications but more sinisterly as manipulation. Voters don’t like it because they feel that ‘spin-doctors’ are playing them for fools.

Worse still it’s something that has specifically come to be associated with Labour. I would imagine that the majority of the public think Andy Coulson should depart but it’s not as much an issue and doesn’t taint this government as much as the antics of people like Derek Draper did for Labour.

That’s because people like Draper tapped into a wider contempt for a culture of spin which was perceived to be the government and Labour’s problem. The problems with this government are of a different nature – trust in both parties pretty much evaporated the moment the government was formed. For the Lib Dems, this is terminal. The Conservatives will probably survive although whether they will be richly rewarded in the highly unlikely event of an economic recovery remains to be seen. This is why the government – rather than trying to positively spin its own position – focuses almost exclusively on negative attacks on Labour. Their ‘spinning’ does nothing to erode their bond of trust with the public – it never really existed.

So, since this is ‘our problem’ to some degree, this makes the antics of Mr Baldwin even more damaging and even more ill-advised. Furthermore, there are other examples of this wordplay in place of politics. The seemingly desperate scramble of the leadership to label the government ‘right-wing’ is a case in point. It’s true – but the real intention behind it is to make Labour a bit more ‘left-wing’, and therefore like an opposition party, relative to the government. It’s the art of creating the illusion of motion whilst in fact going nowhere. Despite the alleged preference of the public for nice cosy ‘consensus’ politics there is a strong argument that they actually prefer a clear and definite choice (which, of course, implies conflict not consensus). So, we attempt to provide them with one not in terms of policy but in terms of rhetoric.

People deserve better from their politics and their politicians. Equally, I would suggest they would prefer somebody to strongly and clearly say ‘here I am, this is what I stand for and this is what I believe’ rather than have people play the fool with their hopes and dreams. Maybe they won’t always like what that person says nor agree with them but I, for one, would wager a dollar to a dime they will be more respected in the long-run than somebody whose opinions seem to be tailored solely to gain electoral success.

Specifically for Labour this episode is worrying because it shows we have not learned a cardinal lesson of our defeat. People don’t like the likes of Mr Baldwin trying to tell them what to think; they want to be trusted and respected enough to make up their own minds. If we give them that signal of our trust in them then maybe, just maybe, they might start to feel able to show it in us again.