Media

It’s the story which has been simmering throughout the election campaign, and now it has has boiled over onto the front pages: fear and loathing in the Labour ranks.  After rumblings in the Sunday Times yesterday, its sister paper splashes with the headline “Labour in turmoil as pressure on Brown grows”.  And, inside, Francis Elliot and Suzy Jagger report on the “jockeying to replace Gordon Brown”.  Meanwhile, the front of the Independent speaks of “growing recriminations in senior Labour ranks over a lacklustre campaign that has seen the party relegated to third place in opinion polls.”  The spotlight is finally turning, white-hot, on to Labour – after ten days of

David Cameron is recording his interview with Jeremy Paxman at 5.15 today, it’ll air at 8.30. Cameron didn’t want to do this interview. Originally, Clegg was the only leader to agree to be interviewed by Paxman. But after the first debate, Brown said yes and the Tories decided that Cameron couldn’t be the only party leader not to do it. There is, of course, history between Paxman and Cameron. When Paxo interviewed Cameron during the 2005 leadership contest, Cameron turned the tables on Paxman spectacularly, attacking the whole Paxman school of interviewing. Cameron’s approach in 2005 was previewed by a very funny piece by Michael Gove in The Times which

One thing’s for certain: the Lib Dems are coming in for greater scrutiny and attention from the media.  The covers of the Telegraph, Sun, Mail, Express and, yes, The Spectator are testament to that – even if some are less substantial than others.  But the question is: will this derail the Clegg bandwagon?  And, like Iain Dale, I’m not so sure. Iain’s point is that some of the coverage is so spiteful that it will “serve to increase his popularity and position in the polls”.  He adds that this would be a “sure sign that the power of the press to influence an election is on the wane”.  He’s right,

“All my life, I’ve opposed the old politics,” says Nick Clegg ad nauseam. Not so it seems. Peter Oborne’s Mail column reports that one youthful indiscretion has been omitted from Clegg’s CV: ‘In fact, he has a background as a Westminster lobbyist with the firm GJW, where he worked as an account executive for 18 months. (Something he has omitted from his curriculum vitae on the Lib Dem website).’ So, Clegg glosses over his stint of political kerb-crawling. Hypocrisy always makes a good story but the Tories should, and probably will, shun this story. They have lost the media narrative and the last thing Cameron needs is for the campaign

The Charlie Whelan problem is intensifying for Labour, with more revelations in the Mail on Sunday today taking on from our cover story in this week’s magazine. Whelan’s behaviour may be no worse than that of Ed Balls and Gordon Brown – but he is more careless. Like McBride, he was actually caught: and his tactics documented in a formal seven-page report. Not the sort of document you want surfacing during a campaign. So it’s little wonder why Whelan used Carter-Ruck to try and deter The Spectator from any further investigation in the bullying case: it threatens to expose Gordon Brown’s entire modus operandi and the methods which he uses

Right – the pizza has been ordered, my glass is overflowing with raspberry Ribena (New! And delicious!), and I’ve fired up the old cathode ray tubes. But, somehow, I’m still feeling quite ambivalent about tonight’s TV debate. Maybe it’s because I still suspect it will be a cautious affair – with neither side wanting to risk the kind of mistake which could define their evening. Maybe it’s because of the wall-to-wall coverage of the past few days. Or maybe it’s because the New York Times has a (deliciously arch) point when it writes that UK politics is finally “moving into the television age”. In the end, the most interesting thing

We’ve already collected some of the general blogosphere response to Labour’s manifesto launch, but this addendum is worth making separately.  In a post describing the hostility of the Labour crowd towards the gathered media, Adam Boulton writes (with my highlights): “The crowd, including some cabinet ministers, booed and shouted at questions they didn’t like. Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor, had his question interrupted by jeering and Graham Wilson of the Sun was booed just for identifying his newspaper. Labour did not behave like that in the last three elections when the Sun backed them. Gordon Brown was happy to join in this confrontational mood. It was the most substantive

Woah. I doubt Brown will endure many tougher twenty-minute spells during this election campaign than his interview with on the Today Programme this morning. You could practically hear the crunching of his teeth, as John Humphrys took him on over Labour’s economic record; practically smell the sweat and fear dripping down his brow. It was compulsive, and compelling, stuff. Humphrys started by putting a grim story to Brown: that his “handling of the economy was not prudent … your record suggests that the economy is not safe in your hands.”  The PM’s mission was to deny all this, and he did so with his usual stubborness and disingenuity.  His pitch

Want some more David Cameron?  Well, the Tories are happy to oblige.  After their party leader’s speech yesterday, he is interviewed in the FT and appeared on the Today programme earlier.  The FT interview was certainly the more comfortable of the two.  In it, Cameron stikes a confident note – saying that his party have “come a long way,” and that “people are gagging for change”.  And he stresses that he thinks – and, apparently, Ken Clarke thinks – that George Osborne is “the right person” to be Chancellor. But Cameron had a tougher time in his Today Programme interview.  It started well, with Today highlighting the supportive letter that

There’s little doubting it: the Tory plan to (at least partially) reverse Labour’s national insurance hike has handed George Osborne a high-calibre weapon for tonight’s TV debate.  It is, I suspect, an attractive and attention-grapping policy in itself.  But it also helps the shadow Chancellor paint the Tories as the party of aspiration.  Or, as Tim Montgomerie has put it: “Seven out of ten working people will be better off if Cameron becomes Prime Minister.” But announcing the policy this morning has also given Alistair Darling and Vince Cable a chance to very publicly denounce it later today.  We’ve already had a preview of what’s likely to form the central

Public sector net borrowing, public sector net debt, total managed expenditure, departmental expenditure limits … zzzzz.  One of the main reasons why Labour has been able to fashion an economic narrative, against all odds, is because they can rely on some pretty esoteric language.  Thus debt becomes interchangeable with deficit, and cuts can be hidden under layers and layers of different spending metrics.  Perhaps more than anything, this almost-casual deception is Brown’s greatest skill. Which is why it’s encouraging that the Tories have tried to demystify some of the fiscal debate, putting it into language that everyone can follow.  They’ve set out their “more for less” argument by referring to

Strange days, indeed.  While most of the frontpages today are unflattering for Labour – particularly, and unsurprisingly, those of the Telegraph and the Sun – I imagine that Brown & Co. will be quite pleased with the general tone of the Budget coverage.  Much of it mirrors the Independent’s view that Darling “played a weak hand well”.  Or, elsewhere, there’s a kind of detached indifference about what is described as a “boring” Budget. Yes, if you like, you can take that as proof that the Darling-and-Mandelson approach to the public finances is less politically toxic, and a good degree more sensible, than the Balls-and-Brown approach.  But, to my mind, it

Last night’s Dispatches programme was a concentrated double blow for Labour.  Not only did the limelight burn more unflatteringly on their party, but it has also undermined their careful Budget operation.  For the next few days, at least, it’s possible that broken politics may trump the broken economy in the public mind.  And Alistair Darling is going to have a difficult, if not impossible, task in bridging that chasm of “distrust and disbelief” with his prescriptions tomorrow. It doesn’t help the Chancellor’s cause that, by most accounts, we’re going to get an unconvincing and unspectacular Budget – some spin about lower borrowing forecasts; none of the tax rises that Peter

Paul Goodman wrote a thought-provoking article for ConHome last week, in which he suggested that “authenticity vs artificiality” will be one of the key battles of the forthcoming election.  Not only do voters crave authenticity after years of spin, deception and malice on the part of politicians, wrote Goodman.  But, also, this election is specifically wired to expose inauthentic behaviour.  Blogs, YouTube, mobile phone cameras, poster spoofs – all will work to undermine the cold and the stage-managed methods of elections past. Which is why the Tories are getting all excited about David Cameron’s more or less spotaneous performance in Lewisham last week.  It’s proof, they say, that all those

Gordon Brown has been shameless in using the tools of state to advance his party political objectives – to him, government is electoral war by other means. Anyone who has turned on a commercial radio station recently will have worked out his latest trick: a mass propaganda splurge before an election campaign. Get on a bus, and it can be 100 percent state adverts – advising how Big Brother will help you get a job, buy a car, see off door-to-door salesmen, give you a job in the prison services – anything you want. We at The Spectator have tracked down the figures that show the extent of all this.