Posts Tagged ‘labour’

On the 4^th of January The Conservative Party launched their election campaign by releasing this new 15-ft wide poster, which is erected on 759 sites across the country. Already it has been one of the talking points of the election campaign and like marmite, people either love or hate it. So, I wanted to have a look at the key features that are drawing attention:

The face: The Conservative Party have conceded that the face has had ‘minor’ airbrushing. Left-wing critics have drawn attention to this saying it shows his preoccupation with style, whilst the Conservatives say the picture was chosen partly by Samantha Cameron as it was serious-looking.

The clothes: Cameron is shown without a tie, which has become a common feature of his leadership. Apparently this was developed by Steve Hilton, his PR guru, to show that he is both in touch and ready for business. Advertisers have said that this image gives off a strong message of his willingness to get on with the job of Prime Minister.

The text: The use of the term ‘I’ in the second sentence has been used to emphasise Cameron’s popularity over Gordon Brown, advertisers suggest. Combined with the photo it emphasises him rather than the party as the selling point to the voters. It is reported that Conservative polling suggests this is one of Cameron’s big pluses. Critics have parodied the big brother nature of the poster and said it shows Cameron is a modern element in an old-fashioned party.

The message: The message, highlighting the NHS, has been used to counter the Labour attempts to define themselves as a party of investment. It is also highlighting one of the cores of the Conservative election strategy - the size of the budget deficit.

Some people have highlighted the use of the term ‘cut’ in the same sentence as the NHS may impact negatively. The terms could be associated and seem too negative.

Reaction to the poster

Labour party figures immediately attacked the poster because it was airbrushed. John Prescott went on the attack parodying David Cameron and the Daily Mirror also criticised the poster.

But other advertising figures have said it sends a strong message and plays to his key strengths. Commentators also say that it shows the speedier start to the election campaign on behalf of the Conservative Party. This could reflect the greater funds reported to be at the Conservative leaders’ disposal.

So, bearing that all in mind, what do you think? Hit, Miss, Maybe?

For me it is a HIT - simple, effective and to the point. But I know others will think differently.

As the Queen arrives at Westminster it is worth remembering that the Monarch is not permitted to enter the House of Commons and is only allowed into the Palace of Westminster by invitation. It remains the only royal palace to which the Monarch has no automatic right of entry.

Charles I was the last Monarch to enter the Commons in 1642 when he attempted to arrest John Pym and four other Members of Parliament for treason. The Speaker William Lenthall, when asked to point out the conspirators famously replied:

“May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here.”

However, the Monarch has been invited today to open Parliament and she has now arrived at the Monarch’s entrance.

Black Rod will approach the House of Commons and the door will be ceremonially slammed in his face. He will ten use his rod to knock the door three times. This is to allow the Commons to confirm that he is not the Monarch and signifies that although the Monarch is on the premises he is merely a messenger delivering her command.

The Queen's Speech - far from a royal affair.

On Wednesday this week the Queen will stand before the House of Lords and present the Government’s agenda for the coming year. This is an extremely important event; a chance for the Government to highlight its upcoming priorities and for the opposition parties to take them to task over their proposals and suggest how they would do things differently. With a General Election to be called by June 2010, this is to be the last Queen’s Speech before the election. For this reason I’d like to take a look at the importance of the speech and give some predictions of what to look out for:

Why is the Queen’s Speech important?

I think there are three fundamental reasons that this year’s Queen’s Speech is so critical:

• Policy: In a normal year the Queen’s Speech is important because it sets out the Government’s policy agenda for the coming year and outlines the Bills that will be proposed. As this is an election year the speech is essential as it is one of the Government’s last chances to state publicly and formally their agenda for the coming year and stake a claim to hold onto power come the election. It is also a good opportunity to draw the battle lines with the Conservative Party on key policy issues such as finance, education, crime and health ahead of the General Election. For this reason the opposition parties will be looking to discredit the Government and highlight their own policy priorities
• The Polls: 4 of the last 5 UK polls have put the Conservative Party 14 points ahead of the Labour Government with the Lib Dems trailing 4-10 points behind Labour. Taking the average scores for each party over the last five polls the Conservative Party would have a majority of 58 if these trends were reflected at the next General Election. But just a 2 point drop for the Conservatives and a 2 point rise for the Labour Party would deliver a hung parliament. So for Labour the Queen’s Speech is a chance to showcase a range of policies and hopefully reduce the Conservative Party’s poll lead. For both opposition parties it is a chance to analyse Gordon Brown’s proposals; discredit them and promote their own policies. It is important for the Conservative Party and Lib Dems not to give way significantly to Labour in the polls and it gives the opposition parties a chance to look at some of Labour’s headline policies in detail and criticise them publicly
• Time is running out: With only 70 more sitting days of Parliament until the next election Labour only have three big opportunities to state their case before the election is called: The Queen’s Speech; the Pre-Budget Report and the Budget. Of those three opportunities the Queen’s Speech is most focused on policy direction and prospective bills and sets the policy agenda. Also, it does not have to focus so much on important economic figures such as economic growth and unemployment, which have been sources of distress during the economic downturn. The opposition parties will be keen for the Government not to steal a march in the polls on the back of the Queen’s Speech. They will see it as a small victory if the polls do not radically change on the back of the Queen’s speech as it will mean that Labour are running out of high profile opportunities to change public perception.

What is predicted?

The Speech: It is suggested that Gordon Brown will go for a short sharp Queen’s Speech highlighting headline bills on: fiscal responsibility; social care; energy; policing and crime; health and education. Gordon Brown is clearly gearing these bills up to be the basis for his election manifesto and it is being suggested that the Bills to be proposed are specifically targeted at areas that the Conservatives have opposed, such as targets in the NHS and the DNA database. This is clearly throwing the gauntlet down to the Conservatives Party and defining the political battlegrounds between the two main parties before the election. The Government are looking to take the initiative and outmanoeuvre the Conservative Party in key policy areas.

The Conservative response: The Conservatives are likely to oppose the Speech in two different ways. Firstly, David Cameron will almost certainly criticise Gordon Brown for announcing policies late in the day; not having the time to bring them through before the next General Election and that this is blatant headline chasing, which does not change the fact that Gordon Brown has lost the voters’ trust. Secondly, each Shadow Secretary of State will outline both the principles they disagree with in the Speech and the detail. They will be looking to define their position in opposition to the Government’s proposals. The Conservative Party will face a race against time; they will want to wrest control of the electoral battleground from Labour by defusing any popular Labour announcements made in the Speech and highlighting their counter measures. David Cameron will want to try and focus media attention on Gordon Brown’s weakness and the failings in the Speech rather than allowing the media debate to focus on Brown’s new policy announcements.

The Lib Dem approach: As the third largest party the Lib Dems are in a difficult position. The Leader, Nick Clegg, has come out and called for the Queen’s Speech to be scrapped in favour of an emergency announcement on political reform. Clearly this is not a viable option as the speech is a long-standing tradition, but it has given Nick Clegg front-page media attention before the Speech and gives him a platform from which to discredit the Government’s proposals. For Nick Clegg it is a case of chasing any possible headlines lest the Lib Dems be sidelined in favour of the main battle between the Conservative Party and Labour Government.

These are just predictions of course, so follow Ruder Finn on this blog and on Twitter (@Ruderfinnuk) on Wednesday 18^th of November from 11am for our build up and live minute-by-minute analysis of the Queen’s Speech.

Please leave your own predictions or any insights as I would love to have a flavour of any important issues people are focusing on or awaiting from the speech.

Reports have popped up this morning after the announcement that Downing St is to review its press lobby methods and the rumours are Peter Mandelson may become the second most visible government member behind Gordon Brown, if he wasn’t already, by giving weekly televised press briefings.

Of course, this is tip of the hat to the fact that Brown is not the great communicator that Tony Blair was, but we all knew that. Having Mandy act effectively as Press Secretary, is an extremely clever move.

In place now is the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesperson (PMOS), Simon Lewis, who previously worked for the Queen as well as the private sector, in particular Vodafone.

But the PMOS’ briefings are daily but don’t necessarily sell Government policy, although naturally it does toe the party line as you would expect. It is more reactive rather than proactive process, fielding questions from the press regarding policies and issues of the day to clarify or confirm, not necessarily sell. The meatier issues are announced at the PM’s monthly press conference or during any ad hoc policy announcements or press conferences.

But from what I’ve read, televised, weekly press conferences would be designed to explain the Government’s messages and policies in the run up to the next election. This will be especially useful to highlight the budget bonanza that I think we can all expect from the Government, especially if the UK is showing growth as has been predicted.

What is missing from the Labour Government at the moment is a clear and effective messenger. The policies are there, but they are being lost in a sea of errors and poor news cycles, the mums.net biscuit farce and the Gordon Brown condolence letter are perfect examples. A messenger is the key.

It is common knowledge that Mandy is one of the smoothest political operators around. Whether you like him or loathe him, that’s a pretty universally view, especially amongst MPs I’ve spoken to. If you watch him against the hardest journalists like Jeremy Paxman or Andrew Marr, he still somehow charms them.

With Mandy helping to sell the message on a weekly basis, this could maybe get Labour back on message.

Thoughts?

Cross posted with my personal blog.

The Internet has been changing every facet of modern life, even the mother of parliaments (at least to a certain extent anyway). An exact state of affairs at parliament would be tricky to gauge, as innovation seems to be happening in different places.

Examples include the recent guide to Twitter, published by Neil Williams, head of corporate digital channels at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), which outlined how the micro-blogging service could be used to share policy information and engage the general public around issues of interest.

The main political parties have shown enthusiasm in adopting social media as well, although this hasn’t necessarily translated across to their respective Parliamentary Members where there is the more familiar range of adoption patterns from early adopters to laggards to complete technophobes. Pretty much every Member of Parliament and election candidate not contesting a safe seat has a web presence of some sort, whether that is through a party backed website, or through extensive social media branding. Most of these are run through constituency or Westminster offices however, there are few MPs who are leading the way in the digital space.

Amongst the social media front-runners are:

• Tom Watson. The Labour Party MP for West Bromwich East is known for being the first blogging MP and lists the digital world and social media as being keen personal interests
• Kerry McCarthy has been made Labour’s Twitter Tsar, managing social media engagement in the lead up to the next General Election, as well as being an active tweeter and blogger
• Jo Swinson. The Lib Dem MP for East Dunbartonshire has 1.901 followers on twitter and may have been the first MP to tweet from the House of Commons Chamber and was definetly the first MP to mention Twitter in a Parliamentary Debate
• Tom Harris. Tom Harris, the Labour MP for Glasgow South, was recent voted the best MP, Scottish and Left-of-Centre blog by readers of Total Politics
• John Redwood MP. The Conservative MP for Wokingham was recently voted the second best MP blog by Total Politics readers, losing his number one position last year to the aforementioned Tom Harris

Apart from the lack of uptake of social media tools across the Parliament as a whole, the biggest area where there seems to be a lack of understanding about social media is that it is a conversation. Although Twitter lends itself nicely to sound bites there doesn’t seem to be that much political engagement going on. There also doesn’t seem to be that much awareness about the impact of what they can be talking about. For instance, one MP recently complained about the workload required to deal with constituents. In another case, an automatic news feed on Peter Hain’s Facebook page prominently displayed an embarrassing piece of coverage.

Peter Hain's Facebook Feed

Despite the high profile digital campaign of Barack Obama, the US generally isn’t anywhere near the level of near universal digital and social media adoption that one would expect. For example only 29.5 per cent of US Congress members and Senators are on Twitter – 123 House members and 35 Senators out of a possible total of 535. .

But the fact is, the next election is going to be a hard fought campaign and this is likely to have a transformative effect on digital politics as a new generation of politicians come through.

So where is the opportunity in digital for parliamentary and public affairs campaigns?

The most obvious use of social media is for campaigning as it is easy to demonstrate support for a cause, through re-tweets or number of members in a Facebook group. Social media both facilitates and reveals groundswells of popular support. Nixon’s famous silent majority, are no longer silent or invisible to politicians.

For electoral candidates, Obama’s secret was always to tweet asks and Calls-to-Action and this should be harnessed by MPs or PPCs. There is no particular need for an MP to tweet about what they are having for breakfast, although the ‘inane’ tweets do personalise the tweeter so they can be beneficial.

But the key is, actively engage and converse with users online by asking supporters, party members and voters to do something. Come to my rally, get one friend to help deliver leaflets, donate £5 to the party, come knock on doors with me. Tweets like these that actively call for support and include the public are far more likely to help the candidate get elected.

This method of personalised engagement and Calls-to-Action can also be harnessed for out and out public affairs campaigns. It isn’t something that will transfer well to asking for support for a bank’s or defence company’s campaign, because the public will always be wary of sinister motives. But it will transfer brilliantly to campaigns surrounding NGOs, charities, patient groups, green and sustainability projects, local engagement and welfare organisations due to the need to rally support through calls-to-action.

A second and underrated factor is providing content for researchers. Like the rest of the UK, parliamentary researchers will often hit Google as their first point of call when finding out about a new subject and developing a point-of-view for their MP. Providing the freshest, most relevant content around a particular area, particularly if it has an industry rather than a specific corporate slant is one of the best ways to influence from a digital point-of-view.

There has been an increasing level of political social media analysis in the recent months. Tweetminister essentially aggregates tweets by Members of Parliament, as well as blogs on interesting issues surrounding communication and an open Parliament while the Hansard Society has recently published a report into the use of Facebook by MPs.

We would love to hear your views on the matter, so please feel free to leave comments.

Cross posted with my personal blog

There has been a fantastic response to our survey  Why there are less Conservative tweeters than Labour and Lib Dems? With MPs, Prospective Parliamentary Candidates, political activists, PR professionals and many more telling us they have filled in the survey, we are building up a great bank of responses to answer this conundrum. The party political range has also been fantastic with Conservative, Labour, Lib Dems, Greens and UKIP supporters tweeting the survey and passing it on to their colleagues.

BUT, we would love even more responses.

We are going to keep the survey up for a little longer and keep pushing it on Twitter, so please join in and help us get the broadest possible snapshot of how people view MPs’ contribution to Twitter.

Please forward it on to friends, family and colleagues and even your local MP so that we can have truly representative results and get the fullest answer to the question: Why are there less Conservative tweeters than Labour and Lib Dems?

Survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Jag7hJARKIXxAZB5bkTmSw_3d_3d

Here is the survey we are conducting on why there are proportionally more Labour and Lib Dem tweeters than Conservatives.

Fill it in and have your say so that we can get to the bottom of this conundrum…

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Jag7hJARKIXxAZB5bkTmSw_3d_3d

Well, it has happened, the first big UK political name has been brought down by British bloggers. I won’t go into a detailed discussion on the events because if you are reading this post, you will likely know the story (here is a good synopsis here in the Telegraph).  But to quickly recap, Damian McBride, a senior figure within Downing Street, albeit behind the scenes, has been brought down by the power of blogging and it looks like another senior Labour character, Derek Draper, is also losing in the battle of the bloggers between his blog, Labour List and Paul Staines, who runs the conservative blog, Guido Fawkes.

The point I want to make here, instead of getting into the history of “Emailgate”, is that both Labour and the Tories are seemingly struggling to understand how to campaign online and their efforts seem all very ad hoc with no real direction. Draper himself admitted only in February that he didn’t know the difference between “my RSS from my elbow” and from my standpoint, there has very little positive interaction with the voting public so far. While Guido Fawkes, as the name suggests, is just trying to bring down the Labour Government, although his aim is to replace it with a Conservative one and doesn’t have the anarchic goals of his namesake.

Its obvious Labour has set up their web presence to try and get some kind of Obamaesque traction on the blogosphere and from voters, after all, I may be cynical, but it is an awfully big coincidence that Draper and Co. devised Labour List in November, around the time of Obama’s victory. And as I have mentioned in a previous blog, the Conservative’s seem to be behind in this regard.

However, Labour List, Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale, another high-profile Conservative blogger, seem to just snipe and battle each other from across the political spectrum. While this is interesting from the point of view of a political junkie like myself, Becky McMichael, a colleague and fellow blogger, put it perfectly - they are just preaching to the converted.

There is no real engagement, no real message, no grass roots campaigning, no real harnessing of support from people who don’t already support either party.

There is a new post on Labour List by Mark Hansen titled “Labour is gaining fast online: Don’t let Guido wreck it“, where the author states “Just ten days ago a ragbag group of Labour bloggers and campaigners was gathered (organised by Derek Draper) to offer ideas as to how to build the resources on Labourlist and make it more useful to Party members at constituency level. How to build this Labour-minded community.”

Mr Hansen has summed up Labour’s and the other party’s problem quite succinctly without knowing it - they are trying to engage with Party members and registered supporters. These people won’t win you an election, it is the swinging voters who get you elected, any student of electoral politics will tell you that.  They must deliver their message outward, not just inward.

Peter Mandelson wrote in his first blog on Labour List about new media and the fact that “we have to recognise that the days of command and control are over. Instead we need to learn to embrace and engage.” I guess they are still learning.

Cross posted with my personal blog.

It would seem that the Brown Government has taken up President Obama’s online campaigning baton. Numerous Labour and Labour surrogate sites seem to have been popping up out of nowhere.

Labour List is apparently a place “where Labour minded people come together”. It has been around for a few weeks and is currently a beta, although it is updated at an extremely high-frequency. It’s due to be formally launched on the 12^th of February.

It was founded, according to the About Us section, by New Labour identity, Derek Draper and numerous Labour characters such as Liam Byrne, Andy Reed, Hazel Blears, Keith Vaz, Ken Livingston, Ed Miliband to name but a fwe. The actual list of contributors is huge and even Ken Clarke makes an appearance as a blogger, albeit Ken Clarke the Regional Director for the London Labour Party, not the other one.

GoFourth is John Prescott’s site which aims to propel Labour to a fourth term, hence GoFourth. The site’s USP include blogs and vlogs from the former Deputy PM himself.  It was initially dreamt up in 2008 (although Prescott didn’t start posting until late January 2009) by some well-known Labour names; John Prescott, Glenys Kinnock, Richard Caborn and Alastair Campbell and aims to “create a broad grassroots movement to secure a progressive Fourth Labour Term.” Prescott also explains he once bought Tony Blair a singing fish to cheer him up.

Alistair Campbell has also launched his own site suitably called, Alistair Campbell.org. Alistair is in the unique position of not being in the Government, but is still as feared by most Tories as much as any other Labour head kicker, so his vlogs will be interesting to watch. After posting his first blog only four days ago, he intends to;

…use this site to bring together the various things I do - writing, speaking, strategising, campaigning, whether for Labour or charitable causes close to my heart. I will blog when I feel like it, vlog at least once a week, give Dave Cameron the odd whack, and hopefully engage in a bit of lively debate. Tories welcome. Some of them anyway, if only to be told where they’re going wrong.

I’m looking forward to it.

On Alistair’s links page, there is yet another Labour site, CampaignTV, which claims to be the home of progressive politics on the web. This site is video after video of pro-Labour and anti-Tory imagery. It even rekindles footage of John Major from old Spitting Image episodes.

All this of course comes after the Number 10 website upgrade midway last year to include a number of social media additions including twitter feeds, flickr and facebook posts and so on.

We already knew that Labour has a crack team already in place to win over the voters occupying the digital space, but they are certainly trying to get their message out to as many people as possible by as many people as possible. But could all these voices effectively be drowning each other out?

If anyone can think of any huge leaps the Conservatives have made into the digital world, apart from the odd tweets from the Conservative Party, please let me know, but otherwise I think they are being left seriously behind by Labour in this department.

So, Gordon Brown and Labour are apparently rising from the dead after the Glenrothes by-election. Pre-election favourites, the SNP, failed to pick up another seat in a Scottish constituency Labour used to think of as safe.

However, it was only a couple of months ago that we were all discussing when Gordon Brown would be replaced rather than if. After taking hit after hit in the polls, the loss of the Crew and Nantwich by-election in May and the disastrous defeat in Glasgow East, one of the safest Labour seats in Britain, Brown’s days seemed numbered.

Then came his speech at the Labour Party Conference, then the spectre of a global meltdown loomed heavily over Wall St and the City.

Without doubt, the financial crisis, has taken its toll on some members of the British Parliament. However, it has been David Cameron’s Conservatives that are on the backfoot. Brown however, seems invigorated and has even been seen to crack a smile.

Brown and Chancellor Darling’s bail out of the British Banks have been credited as the most decisive move by any Government globally and the results are beginning to show judging by the by-election result and Labour’s forward momentum in the polls.

Cameron however, has been left in Brown’s wake, is grasping at policy straws and was left seemingly helpless in the wake of the Shadow Chancellor George Osborne‘s misguided attempts to attack Lord Mandelson in what has now become the infamous Yachtgate Scandal.

Now, if I was Gordon Brown and if I was a betting man, I would be seriously thinking about calling a snap election in the spring of 2009. His poll numbers are firming, gone is Mr Bean and his Iron Chancellor persona is slowly peeking out from behind the curtain in the face of a looming recession. Most importantly, his own party appear to be no longer waiting in the shadows for the next slip-up. Nevertheless, this can only last so long.

No matter how strong Brown appears, there is a looming spectre of increased unemployment, upwards inflation, higher bills and nation wide budget cuts – not issues that make for a happy constituency and incumbent governments should be wary.

Should the election be called in 2010, Britain may only just be coming out of a recession that would have taken its toll on the voting public. If Brown calls the election soon, there may not be such a huge backlash and he may be able to benefit from his current momentum.

This is all very clearly hypothetical and as shown the dilly-dallying around the prospect of an early election in late 2007, Brown plays it safe, maybe too safe when it comes to his own fortunes.

Thankfully, I’m not a gambling man because neither is Brown.