Right To Reply #5: Election Special

This week on SWSL has been officially designated Politics Week (yes, we’re not short of pomposity round these parts, you know) – which basically means a special extended Right To Reply discussion feature about the forthcoming General Election. Each day for the next five days will see a different issue debated by a crack team of blogging and non-blogging friends:

Ben - your host
Jez - likes Stereolab, dislikes Margaret Thatcher
Jonathan of Assistant
Jonny B of Jonny B’s Private Secret Diary
LMT of Between The City And The Deep Blue Sea
Lol - likes the high seas, dislikes last orders
Mike of Troubled Diva
Paul of 1000 Shades Of Grey
Pete of The Whole Wide World Of Fat Buddha
Phill of Danger! High Postage

Part One: Campaigning

What have you made of the campaigning so far?

Paul: Obviously the parties only officially began campaigning once Parliament had been dissolved, but then almost everything a party does is designed to appeal to the masses in some way.

Jonathan: To be honest, I think the pre-election campaign was more heated than the events of the last week or two, which have been fairly tame stuff.

Pete: So far, campaigning has lived down to expectations. Perhaps I have watched too many Preston Sturges films but I wish for once, someone would come out and try to inspire me; move me and make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and set my bottom lip aquiver. It ain't gonna happen though. The main parties no longer seem to have a distinct ideology, other than to get themselves elected, so their campaigning consists mainly of dissing their rivals, rather than promoting themselves. It's as though they are scared of their own opinions or do not have the courage of their convictions, such as they are. There is very little positive about it; it's all negative and quite depressing.

Ben: For each party – Labour and Conservatives in particular – there seems to be a greater emphasis on rubbishing and mocking the policies of rival parties as and when they’re announced than there is on the exposition, explanation and promotion of their own.

Lol: So far we have seen a predominantly negative campaign, focusing on leaders’ trust (or lack of) and track record. Generally the main parties are trying to fill any policy gaps left by their rivals whilst appealing to their ‘core’ supporters at the same time. One example is tuition fees. Labour are committed to introducing the fees with help for poorer students, the Lib Dems will scrap them altogether by increasing taxes for the well-off. The Tories would also scrap them but charge a commercial rate on student loans (poorer kids who wouldn’t be able to pay off their loan quickly and would need to borrow more to go to university would bear the brunt of the cost). All the parties agree that universities need more money but typically there is no consensus of the method for collection; rather they have seen a political opportunity, and developed proposals that play broadly within their own ideology.

Jez: So far it’s been pretty interesting, if only to watch the Conservatives’ tactics.

Jonny B: The Conservatives seem to have a “shit or bust” strategy - with one eye, I'd guess, on defining the ground for the NEXT election.

Phill: [The] Tories are playing dirty.

Jez: Their previous successes have historically been based on the economy. There’s very little they can do here to criticise the government (what would they have done differently?). So they are having to up the ante with their politics of fear campaign. If you believed their manifesto you wouldn’t step into the street unless you were a British version of Snake Pliskin - Escape From Newark anyone? Also their core voters seem to find the nationalism of UKIP appealing. The Tories are being attacked from all sides, an unusual experience for them if you discount the previous campaigns by the snarling (and barking) BNP.

Ben: The Tory campaign, partly focused on exposing the untrustworthiness of Blair and his government, has already seen its credibility torpedoed three times – by Howard Flight’s comments, by Ed Matts’s doctored photo of himself and Ann Widdecombe and by the exaggerated claim on campaign posters about the MRSA “superbug”.

Jonathan: I think for a time, when the Tories were pressing immigration to the forefront of the debate, it seemed that they had a chance, and it got everybody’s blood up. Since the Howard Flight debacle, which reminded everyone just how useless the Tories are, campaigning seems to have lost its urgency, with people more concerned about Blair and Brown and the great succession issue.

Jonny B: Labour's been fun – watching them suddenly realise that perhaps they're not a shoo-in after all.

Phill: Labour are trying to have as little debate as possible, so their policies don't get picked apart.

Mike: I will grudgingly conceded that Blair is playing a cannily judged game. He has picked his interviews well: a matey chat about prog-rock and The Stones with his former band-mate Mark Ellen in Word magazine, and an impressive front-cover interview about gay issues in Attitude magazine. He's busily covering as many bases as he can, in that all-things-to-all-people style of his. Then there was the ‘Tony and Gordon’ party election broadcast, which addresses the perceived division in the partnership that Bono helpfully dubbed the “Lennon and MacCartney of British politics”. It was simultaneously cringe-making and almost - ALMOST - convincing.

Ben: Blair and Brown’s old pals act is (hopefully) fooling no-one. As an attempt to save face and allay any suspicions that there’s a split between the two most important people in the Labour party, it’s about as convincing as Newcastle Utd’s recent PR efforts to convince fans that all’s well behind the scenes – a parallel not lost on certain "with it" Tory MPs.

Phill: The Lib Dems should capitalise but I'm not sure they will.

Jonny B: The Lib Dems constantly frustrate with their inability to communicate.

Ben: That’s the disappointing thing. The Lib Dems are styling themselves as “the real alternative”, and their policies are to my mind impressively honest (not least over tax) and progressive, but they really need to go out and get the message across to a public broadly disillusioned with the two main parties. There’s the potential for a left-leaning party to make real headway this election, and it’s frustrating to think that the Lib Dems might not realise that potential.

Mike: I've steered clear of most of the campaigning, as there is little information which I seek to gain from it. I know how I'm going to vote, and why, and there is nothing that can be said to me at this stage that will make any difference.

Phill: I'm not really interested in any campaigning at all, apart from when someone throws eggs at Kilroy - that always cheers me up.

How big a role has political opportunism or populism played in the campaigning?

Jonny B: “Populism”? Probably better to ask: “How big a role has sensible debate played?”

Pete: Populism and opportunism are the bench marks, which is no way for a mature democracy to behave.

Mike: So far as opportunism / populism goes, Blair's carefully maintained “respectful” line towards opponents of the invasion of Iraq has never wavered. He knows he has to keep them on-side, and prevent them from casting protest votes for other parties. Kennedy's recent fatherhood might have given him a useful populist angle, but little has come of it; an expert like Blair would have extracted every last scrap of PR potential from the situation.

Paul: The Tories in particular seem keen to jump on bandwagons, particularly with their comments on the collapse of Rover lately. However Labour’s Jamie-Oliver-inspired school dinners campaigning did rather stick in the throat.

Mike: But the most shameless populists this time round have to be the Conservatives, with their bizarrely disjointed shopping-list of causes which they think will appeal most to the knee-jerk brigade. Credit where it's due: “Are you thinking what we're thinking?” is a horribly effective slogan. A sly, conspiratorial nudge-and-wink that speaks to the individual rather than the collective mindset.

Ben: It’s been simple and crude lowest denominator stuff from the Tories so far, designed to play upon fears and inflate emotive issues – particularly immigration, crime and health. My concern is that this sort of tactic could prove quite effective, though the opinion polls don’t bear this concern out just yet.

Jonathan: As for opportunism, the Tories have stuck to a relentlessly unpleasant line which doesn’t seem to have done them the trick. They’ve drawn the racists out with their rhetoric, and you can’t help thinking that as nasty as it is to be confronted with such a volume of casually racist people in the electorate, there doesn’t seem to be enough of them to actually change this government, or take us back to the dark ages.

Tomorrow’s topic: Choice.