There was a short time in October 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, with our leading banks close to collapse, when Alistair Darling tried to generate a cross-party approach. The spirit of national unity lasted several days, until the Conservatives judged that it would help a Labour government and work to their disadvantage. I realized a few months later quite how incendiary such talk can be in our tribal political culture, when I referred in passing in my Mail on Sunday column to the public perhaps wanting to see a government of national unity in an emergency. It was seized upon as evidence that I was agitating for a place in the Brown government: wrong, but a damaging accusation in a system predicated on inter-party rivalry and conflict.
There is an underlying problem with our model of strong government and weak Parliament. Governments find it easy to guarantee the passage of almost all legislation unless it grievously offends their own party. Even then, many government MPs can be bought off by being given jobs (the ‘payroll vote’), plum positions on select committees, perks like foreign travel for those who are flattered by such offerings, and promises to help resolve constituency issues. There remain a handful of irreconcilably independent-minded MPs in any parliament who are described as the ‘usual suspects’. Parliament has been blessed on the Labour side by characters such as Jeremy Corbin, Frank Field, Kate Hoey, John McDonnell, Dennis Skinner, Bob Marshall-Andrews and Mark Fisher and, before they severed their links, Clare Short and George Galloway – the latter the best natural orator in the House. Among the Tories, there are Bill Cash, Sir Peter Tapsell, Douglas Hogg and Richard Shepherd. But only very rarely do the usual suspects attract a sufficient number of other rebels to put the government’s majority at risk.
If Parliament is to flower and to challenge the power of the elective dictatorship of government, more is needed than an occasional, accidental, hung parliament. There are several essential changes. One is to end the winner-takes-all system whereby one disciplined party, with a minority of support among those who actually bother to vote, can wield almost untrammelled power on the basis of an artificially large majority. The Scottish parliamentary model has shown in a UK context how it is possible to combine a constituency-based system – which has undoubted merits, as well as attractions to existing MPs – with greater proportionality. A second is, through reform of the House of Lords, to ensure that there is an effective revising chamber which can give new legislation a more satisfactory cross-examination than the usually derisory, token review given by the Commons. There is now a broad consensus that such a chamber would have to be predominantly elected in order to enjoy democratic legitimacy. Third, in the present poisonous atmosphere of public cynicism, there is little appetite for more politicians, so any reform would have to be accompanied by a substantial scaling-back of the number of MPs and lords, with a more austere and disciplined approach to pay and expenses.
Political celebrity status is not achieved by parliamentary performance alone. There are some very able parliamentarians – fine speakers, conscientious attenders, knowledgeable authorities on procedure, incisive questioners of ministers, cunning tacticians – whose names are largely unknown outside their own constituencies (or perhaps even there). They can be forgiven for feeling frustrated at the national media publicity that some high-profile colleagues, including me, succeed in attracting. I share some of the bemusement. Only a couple of years ago my idea of a good week in the media would have been a splash in one of the two weekly newspapers serving my Twickenham constituency, an interview on the BBC News channel, and an occasional outing on an agenda-setting programme like Today or Question Time.
Politicians have a symbiotic relationship with news and political journalists. They need and nourish each other like the tick birds that feed off the parasites on the backs of hippos (though which are the tick birds and which the hippos in this analogy is open to debate). Or, switching to another colourful image, attributed to Enoch Powell, for politicians to complain about the media is like fishermen complaining about the sea: if they don’t like it, they should find another way of earning a living.
I try to treat print, television and radio journalists with respect. I rarely refuse interviews, try to return calls, answer questions as directly and fully as possible, and engage in debate with journalists on topical issues that they are often struggling, as I am, to get on top of. I cannot complain about the resulting coverage. But I am always conscious that any major blunder or indiscretion would be punished as surely as my better contributions are praised. And I could just as easily become a victim of changing fashions as I have recently been a beneficiary. Having built a reputation in part on a successful analysis of economic bubbles, I have become something of a bubble phenomenon myself and have no doubt that there are plenty of pins out there waiting to burst it.
The public has, I think, little appreciation of the way in which a story becomes news and the mechanisms by which parties and individual politicians become part of it. I have become very weary of conversations with party supporters or members of the public who assume that whenever my party is absent from coverage in the main news bulletin or the newspapers, it is due either to laziness or incompetence by the party’s spokespeople or to a vast media conspiracy to exclude us. There is certainly a constant battle between the parties for coverage and the output reflects the resources put into it. Television editors and correspondents and, even more, print editors have their political predilections, and exercise them with varying degrees of brazenness. My own party has a small but professional operation and we have to work harder than our competitors to keep in the story and get our views across. But it is not impossible, and I relish accounts of paranoia and jealousy among our rivals. (I have heard it on good authority that whenever my name appears in certain newspapers before those of Tory economic spokesmen, the Conservatives make a formal complaint.)
The focus of activity is the media ‘round’ whenever there is an important (in my case, economic) story with political implications. Press officers try to secure ‘bids’ with the BBC, ITN, Channel 4 and Sky to take a live interview or a ‘ pre-record’, reflecting the party line, for a later news bulletin. For the party spokespersons, the first requirement is to be available quickly and to have a sound bite sufficiently important, interesting or distinctive from the other parties for it to be carried forward into the main news bulletin. The Lib Dem will rarely be accommodated as of right, and so has to have something especially memorable to say or to have carved out a reputation as being the effective opposition, as Charles Kennedy did during the Iraq War and I have been trying to do in relation to the financial crisis. The print media are a more complex challenge, requiring a combination of snappy, prompt press releases; the building of relationships with journalists who want political quotes to reinforce their stories; and the carrying out of proactive research, with the help of the party’s paid researchers, to create a story and to take ownership of it. Sometimes the rewards from this activity are slow to arrive. I used to put out regular press releases, from 2003 onwards, warning of house-price inflation and burgeoning personal debt, which were regarded at the time as eccentric or scaremongering; but some journalists remembered, notably Evan Davis of the Today programme, who was able to tell George Osborne, when he attempted to raise the problem, that he was five years late.
Beyond the world of the sound bite and the ‘ rent-a-quote’, politicians have to prove themselves in one-to-one interviews. Prime ministers and politicians in demand may try to seek out the soft option of friendly interviewers who will not ask awkward questions, will tolerate sloppy or evasive answers and offer an opportunity for the delivery of propaganda, which seems less blatant from a studio couch than from a conference lectern. Anyone in the political world who expects to be taken seriously has, however, to run the gauntlet of less deferential interrogators: John Humphrys, Jeremy Paxman, Andrew Neil, Jeremy Vine, Adam Boulton, among others. Their job is to keep us honest, and it is one of the strengths of British democracy that they have a licence
to treat evasive, unprepared and dishonest politicians with disrespect. I have enjoyed torrid arguments with several of the above, but have learned, sometimes the hard way, that clear, brief, honest answers provide a reasonable defence.
Interviewers do not have to be aggressive to be effective. The Marr programme is popular with politicians because the host gives the guest plenty of scope to develop a theme directed at the Sunday late-breakfast audience. But for those who provide enough rope to hang themselves, Andrew Marr will tie the noose. The programme also organizes breakfast afterwards with the non-political guest stars, which in my case included Helen Mirren, Samantha Bond, Kevin Spacey and Richard Dreyfuss, the first two in particular reducing me to open-mouthed, adolescent awe. Kirsty Young of Desert Island Discs is utterly charming but, with the help of meticulous prior research, manages painlessly to extract personal intimacies from her interviewees, including me.
For the political aficionados – and there are still some – the biggest draws are still the weekly Dimbleby debates on Any Questions and Question Time. The public can be reassured that there is no fix. The questions are not revealed to the panellists in advance. With a little common sense and research it is normally possible to work out what most of the questions will be about. But all participants dread being called first to answer some obscure or quirky question that they know nothing about or for which they do not have some prepared repartee. These two programmes, in their different ways, are very testing, since the panellist is trying (or should be trying) to engage with three different audiences: the live and usually lively audience in front of them; the rest of the panel, including the presenter; and the distant millions who are picking up messages from body language or tone of voice. Contemporary politicians are not used to live audiences, except of the party faithful, and these programmes have the salutary effect of exposing ministers to hostile booing, perhaps for the first time in their lives (which is why many ministers decline to appear), and forcing the rest of us to master skills long atrophied, like weighting answers to create a punchline.
But the political aficionado belongs to an increasingly rare species. Learning to wow a Radio 4, Newsnight or Question Time audience goes far, but leaves untouched the majority of the public who regard politicians as beneath their contempt or above their understanding, or read newspapers only for the sex, horo-scopes or football. For this reason, some of us take our political lives in our hands and appear on comedy quiz shows or reality TV, or take up invitations to be interviewed by (in my case) Esquire, Good Housekeeping or The Lady. It is difficult to know where to draw the line. Charles Kennedy won many admirers for his performances on Have I Got News for You. But I doubt that George Galloway enhanced his reputation by appearing in a catsuit on Big Brother, lapping milk at Rula Lenska’s feet.
Have I Got News for You makes Question Time seem a doddle: two hours (before editing) of intense concentration, trying to avoid the twin pitfalls of either being marginalized by the witty exchanges between Paul Merton and Ian Hislop – a little like trying to follow high-speed tennis – or else trying too hard, with a clumsy, tactless intervention that is remembered for years afterwards. I just about survived, in part thanks to Ian Hislop’s reassurance and the kindness of the editor who left my sillier comments on the cutting-room floor. After my appearance on that and several other shows I have developed a healthy respect for the serious humorist’s craft.
It is also to reach a wider audience that I write for the Mail on Sunday on a regular basis and, whenever asked, contribute to the Sun and the Star. I often encounter a purist view that one should only talk to, and write for, ‘serious’ newspapers with ‘progressive’ leanings. I take the opposite view: that the real challenge in politics is to find ways of engaging with those who take a different or hostile position or are simply uninterested.
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Having learned to surf the media, I am now discovering that the waves of mass communications are changing direction radically. I recall with grim amusement that my political career was almost terminated fifteen years ago by a committee of Lib Dem activists who decided that my media skills were hopelessly inadequate, on the basis of my having failed to top and tail a practice local press release. Every weekend ever since, I have bombarded local newspapers with press releases. But having spent a decade and a half developing good links with local journalists, I find that local newspapers are disappearing fast. My local journal of record, the weekly Richmond and Twickenham Times, has become part of the Newsquest empire, has lost many of its journalists and struggles to survive as a free sheet; while another local free paper is fighting off the collapse of advertising revenue. The sense of community and local political engagement that went with having a lively local press is now in jeopardy. The media is fragmenting.
Like most politicians, I spend a growing amount of time communicating through the ‘blogosphere’, email round-robins and websites. Gordon Brown’s YouTube adventures demonstrated the perils of the new media as well as the potential. But the Obama campaign brought to the surface the significance of the rapid development of the new media. The USA is unlike the UK in the sense that there is no strong national press and radio and TV are regionally fragmented. It is still possible in the UK to conceive of sustained political debate via the main terrestrial TV channels and the national press. At the time of writing, the BBC’s News at Ten still represents the best news outlet; the Today programme the best forum for a day’s agenda setting; and good coverage in the Mail the best way to reach a mass readership. But, like other MPs, I am having to learn rapidly about the new world of blogging, the use of Facebook, and contributions to online debates. Just as my correspondence has switched from 5 to 95 percent email in the last decade, I suspect that the balance of old and new media will switch by comparable amounts in the next. I have no problem with learning new tricks. But I worry that the splintering of the media and the cornucopia of choice will have the effect of stifling anything that could be called a national conversation at the heart of our political culture.
The experience of Obama suggests, however, that geographical and medium fragmentation need not dissipate an underlying message. In my more modest way, I have discovered through the response to my book about the credit crunch, The Storm, and the extraordinary turnout at public meetings around the country, that there is a hunger for debate on issues of importance and for direct contact with those who seem to have something to say. It is as if the technology of the twenty-first century is producing a reversion to the political styles of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: appropriately enough for an economic crisis that seems to have emerged from that era, and which has in turn been subsumed in a deeper political crisis around Westminster MPs.
The expenses scandal of May 2009 has created the biggest political crisis in my lifetime. Within a few weeks, the old certainties about our political institutions, particularly Parliament, were brutally swept away. The reputation of the institution I laboured for so long to join and in which I have spent the best years of my life has been totally shredded. People I have worked with for a decade have been disgraced, and at the time of writing some of the people in Parliament for whom I had – and have – the highest regard were being swept away, while the chancers, the opportunists and the seriously greedy were getting away with a token apology.
As the scandal unfolded, I felt a sense of despair that I was part of a profession and institution that had suddenly become the focus of popular anger and contempt. ‘They are all at it’ summed up the public mood. I had been, on a much smaller scale, part of a similar storm in Glasgow when several of my colleagues were marched off to Barlinnie prison for fiddling their expenses, and it was generally assumed that councillors were ‘on the take’ or spent their time and public money on ‘ fact-finding’ trips to Barbados or the Côte d’Azur. At Shell I had been made to feel that I was part of a corporate monster, polluting the planet and engaged in war crimes in Nigeria. But the parliamentary scandal was much worse because it was based n
ot on innuendo and guilt by association but on hard facts about how large numbers of MPs had taken advantage of expenses claims.
On a purely personal level, I escaped criticism. This was gratifying to the extent that those of my constituents who knew and cared did not believe me to be a fraudster and a thief. I also received flattering reviews from, among others, Kelvin MacKenzie in the Sun for ‘swimming against the tide of sewage’. I was frankly puzzled to find myself in this position, which stemmed, essentially, from a decision – by myself and the other outer London Lib Dems – not to take advantage of the availability of expenses for a second home near Westminster, but to commute from my home in my constituency in the suburbs. Commuting, quite simply, helped me to be a good constituency MP without impairing my work in Parliament.
I think, perhaps, that at a deeper level I still carried around my parents’ puritanism and concern for reputation, as well as my own theoretical and academic, rather than practical and personal, interest in making money. On becoming an MP I had given up a better-paid job, but for something that gave me far more satisfaction, and I regularly subsidized rather than profited from my office. So the discovery that large numbers of MPs had managed to turn parliamentary expenses into a supplementary source of income or a means of acquiring a property portfolio and attendant capital gains was a genuine shock. Perhaps I had been naive or simply unobservant. But there was no refuge in self-righteousness. All of us were affected. The two occasions when I appeared on Question Time before hostile audiences at the height of the furore were among the most emotionally draining experiences of my years in Parliament.
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