The Open Road

London and local elections – the fallout

2008-05-06T08:55:00Z

Well it certainly looks far more likely than it ever has before. Until now, while you may have felt that Brown didn’t look like a winner, you were never necessarily sure that Cameron’s Tories had done enough to be outright winners.

Well they still haven’t done enough but that didn’t matter in these local and London mayoral elections. Even though Boris had very few policies and is not known at all for competence or ability to manage anything, dislike for Labour, dislike of Ken and ‘time for a change’ was enough.

Boris was well advised in this campaign by Lynton Crosby and others. Be serious, do not have too many new policies as they might unravel under questioning, focus on Ken’s cronyism and on time for a change. And go for the outer London boroughs where you can build on a stronger Tory bedrock of support.

The Tories were also helped by Andrew Gilligan and the Evening Standards’s constant drip drip of allegations about Ken’s cronyism, Lee Jasper and Ken’s personal life that was responsible for turning Ken’s initial poll lead into a significant Boris poll lead. Importantly, the Sun came out on Boris’ side. That is potentially hugely significant. It is the first time since 1992 that the Sun has backed the Tories. If Boris doesn’t mess up completely, it is now possible that some or all of the Murdoch papers could support the Tories at the next general election. Andy Coulson of Conservative Campaign HQ – take a bow.

Across the country, the Tories have done well in the local elections and have even started to re-enter the North of England. That is only a start for them, but an essential stepping stone.

Will these results be replicated in a general election in 2009 or - as looks increasingly likely - May or June 2010?

Labour support in a general election will not be as low as the 24 per cent in these elections. They were hurt in their heartlands this time by the 10 pence tax rate row and Brown will not make that mistake again (surely!). And in general elections where Labour supporters will not allow themselves the luxury of a protest vote, the core Labour vote will probably be 30 – 35 per cent.

That cuts the likely Tory lead significantly. Also, incumbent governments tend to reduce the lead of oppositions in the run up to a campaign. So the likely Tory vote would be (looking at it right now) between 38 – 42 per cent. And the Lib Dem vote held up pretty well and so the Tories may struggle a little to win all of the seats they might like to from Nick Clegg’s team.

Incidentally, the figures above mirror the long term trend of pollsters asking about Gordon Brown vs David Cameron.

So looking at the position right now, the Tories as the largest party is highly likely. A Tory government with a workable overall majority is a distinct possibility.

There is a far better way of delivering PSB, says Martin Le Jeune

2008-04-24T13:12:00Z

I agree whole-heartedly with the BBC. This is a terrible idea. However, my reasons for doing so have little in common with the apparatchiks of White City.

The corporation dislikes top-slicing for the perfectly sound reason that it might reduce its income. But it can’t say so. It prefers, as always, to clamber on the nearest piece of moral high ground and argue that top-slicing would destroy the precious accountability between licence-fee payer and BBC.

There’s not much in this. Accountability is a fairly evanescent concept when applied to the relationship between an organisation which levies a compulsory tax and those who pay it, whether willingly or not.

No, the real argument against top-slicing is that it might offer a fresh lease of life to an interventionist PSB system and a licence fee when we need them less and less. About one-third of households already pay up while consuming less than five hours of corporation programming each week. As audiences fragment, consumption of state-supported television channels will continue to decline. A middle-class minority who watch them will have their pleasure paid for by their poorer compatriots who get little value. That is inequitable.

Ofcom’s partiality to top-slicing appears to be based on the idea that plurality in public service content is essential “to keep the BBC honest”. Fine. But in fact there is bags more plurality in the form of public service content on non-PSB broadcasters (14,000 hours per month according to the multichannel TV trade body) and via the internet than ever before.

Then Ofcom argues that UK original production is central to PSB and the multichannel lot don’t deliver it. The case for intervention is made.

But this won’t do either. Take a look at the original PSB characteristics. They focus - rightly - on quality. But in the new consultation the emphasis on UK origination has been deliberately increased. So manic has Ofcom become in its attempts to make UK origination central to the debate that it even claims educating viewers about the world requires a lot of programmes made over here. By Brits. Isn’t this a bit lacking in logic?

I’d rather pass over in silence the deliberate attempt by Ofcom to understate the value of multichannel UK origination by the crude device of excluding sport. That’s simply shameful.

The final bit of analytical trickery is implicitly to assume that all UK PSB content provided by the terrestrials outside the BBC was the result of regulation. Without Ofcom no Corrie or national news? Hardly.

There is a better way. Keep the BBC focused on delivering PSB: it does it very well. It should get smaller over time - a steady reduction in the licence fee would be a good financial discipline - as commercial players provide more public service-style content. And they will. According to Ofcom’s own research, there is a huge appetite out there for that kind of material. So step back and let them provide it.

Pennsylvania Keeps Clinton Alive

2008-04-23T08:13:00Z

Whether one applauds her tactics or not, you have to hand it to Mrs Clinton – she doesn’t quit. Her victory speech, while more personal than usual, was a re-affirmation of that tenacity and determination (she entered the Bellevue-Stratford ballroom in Philadelphia tonight with the twanging guitars of Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” playing in the background). She was outspent in Pennsylvania more than 2 to 1 and yet still won the vast majority of the state geographically. She found a way, ten days ago, to stop the Obama surge and recover her lead. She continued to be highly successful convincing seniors, blue collar workers, Catholics and rural dwellers that in difficult times she is more likely to be able solve their problems. And, perhaps more importantly for the pursuit of the nomination, she continued to raise doubts over her opponents ability “to close the deal” and his ability to win key constituent groups in important bits of the country. She added a bit of fear to her standard arguments about experience and in Pennsylvania’s culturally conservative, cautious communities, they resonated.

And yet she still probably cannot win.

At the end of the day, the process – and the maths that goes with it – remain against her.

With a 10 per cent win, a margin of almost 200,000 votes, the delegate division from tonight so far stands at 55 to Hillary and 42 to Obama allowing Obama to continue to hold a considerable overall delegate lead.

Over 32 million Democrats have participated in primaries and caucuses so far. Obama has a lead of between 300,000 – 600,000 in the popular vote (depending on how you count). He has won almost twice as many states (with 9 more contests to go) and has had greater success mobilizing young people than any national politician in a generation.

These are some of the facts facing the almost 800 super delegates.

But equally, they know that Senator Clinton has won the largest States, has won the swing States that matter in November and has had tremendous success mobilizing women. Her blue collar, Latino, Catholic coalition is the traditional coalition of Democratic electoral success.

The dilemma the Democrats now face is that Senator Obama has fallen from earth. Weeks of attacks have taken their toll and Senator Clinton – to the delight of Camp McCain – has raised questions in voters minds about Obama’s judgement and his electability. At the same time, there is no way for Hillary Clinton to “win” the nomination before the August convention. The only way for her to secure the nomination is to “take it away” from her opponent by persuading super delegates that she is the only candidate that can beat Senator McCain.

It seems impossible to imagine the Party allowing that to happen if she continues to trail in all the key indicators – pledged delegates, popular vote and states won. Tonight, in Pennsylvania, she cut the popular vote lead by 200,000 but moved only marginally in the other categories. I think it will be very difficult for super delegates to put aside Mr. Obama’s lead and hand the nomination to Mrs Clinton because she convinces them she is most likely to beat Senator McCain. Having occupied the high moral ground on counting votes since the November 2000 debacle in Florida, ignoring the popular will of the Party’s rank and file, would be hugely damaging, embarrassing, provide ammunition for the Republicans and would be likely to lead to an internal split in the Party. In a cycle where Democrats seemed poised to take power back in Washington, it’s hard to believe the Party elders will allow that to play out.

So what next?

Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia and North Carolina. The first three all border on Ohio – sharing a demographic profile like Pennsylvania. Obama needs to demonstrate to super delegates that he can win a rust belt state. So Indiana has become the new (or next) Pennsylvania, (which was the next Texas/Ohio, which was). The Clinton campaign will now argue that Obama has been unable to connect with those working and middle class voters who decide battleground states. Someone needs to revive the 1992 mantra and remind Senator Obama that – particularly in times like these – “It’s the economy, stupid”. His ability to convince these voters that he can protect and help them may determine not only whether he is the nominee but whether or not he can win the Presidency in November.

Meanwhile, Mrs Clinton’s needs to continue her momentum, shoring up her argument with super delegates by being able to say that she finished strong, all the while cutting into his numerical leads. She needs to rack up a series of victories and finish the primary season on June 3rd with a clear wind behind her back.

I suspect that she will now be nervous about “going more negative.” It helped her in Pennsylvania but it has a potentially divisive effect on the party. The Washington Post is already reporting tonight that many in the Obama camp now want to hit her harder and that a debate has broken out over whether this is a “winning strategy” or not.

I don’t think it is. More importantly, I can’t help but cringe every time I hear all these paid Democratic pundits suggest on cable news that this increasingly nasty battle isn’t hurting the party’s chances in November. If this process plays out till the Democratic Convention there will not be a candidate until September. That means four months of this level of hostility and bickering. Four months of focusing on each other rather than on the Republican opponent. Four months of chasing money to fund that fight rather than building a war chest for the autumn. I remain to be convinced that this can be a good thing for Democrats.

I have to admit that when watching Barack Obama fend off question after question last week, I suddenly found myself thinking about Adlai Stevenson, Willie Horton and windsurfing off the coast of Nantucket. Would Obama become another smart liberal Democrat – like Kerry, Dukakis and an earlier Senator from Illinois – easily caricatured by the Right as wimpy and out of touch, unable to muster the stomach or strength to counter punch? We all remember swift boats.

Over the past weekend as his tv ad buy seemed endless it was clear that the Illinois Senator was willing to fight back. On the stump and on tv he struck back as the Clinton campaign attacked him on multiple fronts. It wasn’t always elegant, nor was it very complementary to his “new” politics approach, the “politics of the hope”. But, as he said on national television yesterday, “if you get elbowed enough” eventually you have to stop it.

And “stop it” is what more and more party insiders are saying they will expect Howard Dean, Al Gore, John Edwards and the other undeclared elders of the Democratic Party to do in June. One Beltway insider said to me tonight, “They need to get a grip on this process” and “encourage” ( a New Jersey art form based on subtle persuasion)) super delegates to indicate their intentions sometime after the primaries finish in early June. Many now believe that allowing this to drag out another 3 months till the Convention would be a catastrophe for the party’s chances in November. Whether the leadership can pull that off remains to be seen as the campaigns themselves are more interested in winning and less concerned about the state of party unity.

For the candidates, going forward, their focus is clear. It now seems inevitable that the 2008 update of the aforementioned Carville quip will be, “It’s the super delegates, stupid.”

Clinton vs Obama – the latest TV debate

2008-04-21T08:37:00Z

Well, today I will risk retribution and say I am disappointed. Last night, watching the first 45 minutes of the Pennsylvania primary debate I couldn’t help feel despair and disappointment. For the first 45 minutes of a 2 hour debate - which had the potential to impact on next Tuesday’s primary outcome - the ABC News team of Charlie Gibson (whom I have always respected and liked) and George Stephanopolous (whom I have always liked and come to respect) fired question after question at Senators Obama and Clinton. Were these about healthcare, education, energy prices and/or conservation, war and peace etc? Oh no, they were more representative of what gets the media salivating than what matters to the country. So instead we got to play the “gotcha game”. Are you culpable for what your pastor preaches? Did you dodge Bosnian bullets or not? Weren’t you being patronising and elitist by calling small town folk “bitter”. This went on and on and on.

Because the truth is that in a race where both candidates have almost identical policy positions on most issues, no one is interested in hearing the nuanced differences that separate their economic policies or their healthcare plans. The media would argue that they are asking these questions because this is what people are talking about. They would tell us that their polls suggest these issues are what keep popping up in the results. Not for them to encourage a more civil, substantative debate. Not for them to direct the public back to the issues of the day – war, recession or the environment. I like to think that the Greeks (ancient that is) – who had a more noble sense of public debate – would be turning in their graves as they watched the Fourth Estate surrender its opportunity to lead.

To give them some due, last night’s moderators did manage to create a few interesting commitments and comments which might matter next Tuesday, moving towards the August Convention and in the fall, the general election.

First, Senator Clinton was forced to admit that Senator Obama can beat Senator McCain in November. Considering that in private she and her husband are vigorously lobbying super delegates that the Illinois Senator “cannot win” this is an obvious contradiction. To some degree – for the sake of the party - she had to say this but if any of the super delegates break ranks and protocol and publicly expose how the Clintons are arguing this in private it will further undermine her “trustworthy” numbers with the broader public. A poll in yesterdays Washington Post found 6 in 10 Americans do not trust her. This is an extraordinary figure (has anyone been elected with numbers this bad?) and one campaign insiders admit in private they are very worried about. Lots of people don’t like John McCain but most American think he is an honourable, honest man. Any event or comment which seems to further illuminate this problem is trouble for Camp Clinton.

Second, and this is a mistake both candidates made to varying degrees, it’s never good policy making to make iron clad commitments and promises months before taking office on issues of great volatility. Senator Clinton gave an absolute commitment to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq on Day 1 – one brigade per month at a minimum – irrespective of the military advice regarding the situation on the ground. Senator Obama gave himself a bit more wiggle room but also emphasised the fact that in the US, military policy making is done by the civilians and it is up to the President to decide on the mission while the military advise on tactics. There is no question that Senator McCain will ridicule such a commitment made months before any assessment of the battlefield situation can be made. In Red (Republican) States this will be positioned as hopelessly naïve and the Republicans will claim that the entire Iraq project and any recent progress will be jeopardized by what will be labelled as pandering to the anti-war left of the Democratic party. This was an interesting commitment to make in Pennsylvania as well, a state with a large military population (veterans and active duty families) and only time will tell if those voters – disproportionately concentrated in the more rural western bits of the state - embrace such an approach.

Tax was the other area where both candidates made blanket promises not to raise them for “middle class families”. Not knowing what the US economy will look like in January 2009 this was also a gamble. Again, after 8 years of the Bush-Cheney administration ensuring the well-off stayed well off there is great appetite for such commitments. Whether fiscal realities will allow them to be kept remains to be seen. As Bush senior remembers too well “No new taxes” can be a noose around a fiscally challenged President’s neck.

In terms of who will be the next Democratic nominee I suspect last night will not have moved the needle very much. Both Senators tried to convince critics that recent gaffes were not windows into bad judgement. It is more likely they bolstered their existing support rather than converted floating voters. There are five days to go before the election and it still feels to me like Mrs. Clinton will prevail here. Varied polls have margins between 6 and 16 points but with as many 10-15 per cent undecided and with margins of error of 5-7 points, anything can happen.

So we wait, knowing that a large Clinton victory means the campaign will continue through June. An Obama victory of any type would put tremendous pressure on Clinton to step aside. Anything in between (a small win for Hillary) will mean the process goes forward with the media and pundits turning North Carolina, Kentucky and West Virginia into the next “decisive battlegrounds”.

Last week it was reported that all the varied candidates, to date, have already spent just under $775 million on their efforts. So, even if no one else is happy that the process continues, I am absolutely sure that the campaign consultants and advertising executives will not mind a few more months of big fat cheques.

The Economy, an Alternative View

2008-04-16T16:19:00Z

These were big underlying problems and the UK media was very concerned about them and claimed that they had to be addressed urgently.

So great news recently then. The banks are pulling back from borrowing excessively and beginning to restore their balance sheets. Consumers are having to rein in their borrowing and who knows they may even start to save a little more over time. Sterling has dropped against the euro and a range of other currencies so our exports should increase. House prices are ceasing to rise which should prevent what could otherwise been a major crash and in the long term this will mean that first time buyers (those with good deposits at least) will not be priced off the housing ladder. And interest rates are down.

So have the media remembered to say that a lot of the problems they were worried about nine months ago have begun to improve?
Errr, no.

Undeniably, there are choppy waters ahead. There is pain in the housing market, in the property sector and in retail. Interbank lending rates remain high which feed into higher mortgage payments which reduce disposable income. Inflation, food, energy and oil prices remain stubbornly high. And the US economy may suffer a short recession followed by a period of low growth.
But it is important to remember in all the doom and gloom that UK economy is due to rebalance, which will be better for the long term. There will be short term pain with an economic slowdown. But the UK economy should grow by 1.6 per cent in 2008, and by a similar amount or more in 2009 which, while not great, is not a disaster.

The Biofuels Fallacy

2008-04-15T08:12:00Z

Biofuels are turning out to be an environmental hazard and potentially a disaster for sustainable development. The EU and the UK governments would be well advised to retreat away from policies they are currently promoting to increase the use of biofuels. Why?

Biofuels take vast amounts of land to produce which could otherwise be used for the cultivation of food. With world food prices now rising faster than they have done for 20 years, there is a huge risk that hunger will be on the rise again throughout the world. Is it really right to use valuable plants to power your car when they could feed people instead?

Deforestation causes up to 25 per cent of climate change gases. The Stern report pointed out that this must be an area for the world to tackle if we are to reduce climate change. But in Brazil and in other areas of the world, there is a huge risk that deforestation could be caused by the desire to cultivate land for biofuels.

Bad for sustainable development, likely to encourage further rises in the price of food and likely to increase deforestation – does not sound like a winning environmental policy to me. The US, EU and UK need to withdraw gracefully from their support for biofuels until such time as they can be proven to have a genuinely positive impact.

The London Race

2008-04-11T13:21:00Z

One of Livingstone’s problems is that he has been entirely unwilling to obey any of the laws of best practice in crisis management. He believes in the rightness of his cause and he will brook no opposition. The PR rule book says that when something goes badly wrong, you should: immediately show your concern; establish the facts asap; if something has gone wrong personally and immediately apologise for the mistake; and then explain what you’re going to do to put it right.

But with the whole Lee Jasper episode, Ken has ignored all of this. He has not been willing to accept that anything that has happened has been of concern and has even said he wants to give Jasper his job back asap.

He feels (and he is right about this bit at least) that his enemies at the Evening Standard, the Daily Mail and elsewhere have been deliberately searching for and storing up as much dirt on him as possible so that it can be released for maximum political impact in the run up to the May 1 elections. He doesn’t want to accept that his enemies have successfully drawn blood and wants to show his defiance.

Unfortunately for him, it has sent the message to voters that his friends and cronies may be corrupt and that he is not willing to clamp down on any of his associates. It has caused his opinion poll ratings for trustworthiness to plummet and that is probably the main reason for Boris’ current lead. Boris does not lead on the main policy areas like environment and transport and Ken even does well on the question of whether he has been a good Mayor for London. But because of the way Livingstone has handled the recent allegations, Boris is way ahead on honesty and trustworthiness (as well as on crime) and that is the reason for Boris’ lead in the polls. (And to be fair to Boris, he has at least buckled down and tried to take his candidacy seriously.)

If Boris wins it will initially be seen as a further kick in the teeth for Gordon Brown. But if he wins and then messes up badly as Mayor, as I would expect him to, what would that do for Cameron? It makes you wonder whether Cameron really wants Boris to win or is quietly petrified at the prospect and would prefer him to come an extremely close second.

Brown’s Travails

2008-04-11T13:03:01Z

So we now have the extraordinary spectacle of the Conservative Party voting in favour or tax redistribution and the Labour Party voting against it a few days before the Mayoral and local elections on May 1. And meanwhile the bad news on the economy continues.

The silver lining for the government is that the latest opinion poll shows the Conservative lead slipping a little. Populus for the Times has the Tories on 39 per cent with Labour on 33 per cent. Voters seem to have forgotten the Budget which had prompted widespread misery and resulted in Cameron’s lead jumping to well over ten points.

Human rights and the enemy, an old dilemma

2008-04-10T12:48:00Z

When the British captured Napoleon after the Battle of Waterloo there was the issue of what to do with this spectacular prisoner. We tend to think relatively benignly of Napoleon now, but amongst Lord Liverpool’s government there was little affection for this defeated enemy.

Napoleon was responsible for the slaughter of millions, for a debt in the hundreds of millions and for behaviour that at the time was considered beyond the pale – those who have read the first few pages of War and Peace may recall the characters discussing the scandal of the murder of the Duc D’Enghien. Perhaps not the Hitler of his day, he was certainly the Kaiser Wilhelm.

The government was determined on one thing - not to bring him to Britain. The reason was simple – the Whig opposition would have issued a writ of habeas corpus and put him on the West London party circuit. Imagine Saddam Hussein at the 2004 Oscars.

In the end of course the little fellow was packed off to his comfortable one man Guantanamo Bay on the island of St Helena. Creditably, it never seems to have occurred to the government to simply hand him back to the French royalists, who were quite likely to have killed him as they did Marshals such as Ney.

And so the same problem has returned, in the form alleged Al Qaeda leader Abu Qatada, whom it seems Britain is stuck with. It seems that we can learn a lot from the statesmanship of Lord Liverpool.

Firstly – know your own laws and enforce them properly. The government was very careful to keep Napoleon out of Britain in 1815. It seems that the hapless immigration service should never have allowed Abu Qatada into Britain.

Secondly – there is no need to sacrifice important principles. However much the government hated Napoleon, it seems they never considered turning him over to a probably unpleasant fate.

Thirdly – find a solution. St Helena was a legal fudge, but no-one ever objects to it as inhumane treatment these days. It was a proportionate punishment for Napoleon’s crimes.

The island is, as far as the outside world can tell, still there. I doubt anyone wants another Guantanamo, but I am sure there are people who might prefer exile in the South Atlantic to torture and death in the dungeons of the Middle East.

Guest Blog from Jonathan Russell on BA and T5

2008-04-07T15:17:00Z

Julia Simpson, head of corporate communications, was the ritualistic sacrificed messenger in the weekend press. She it was who reflected what the feeding frenzy of the media – descending from their holding position stacked above Heathrow for the last few months to pick over the bodies – seemed to want. “The brand has been damaged by this,” said Simpson, although clinging to the belief that the “mea culpa” from Willie Walsh was the best mitigation. Up to a point, Julia.

What she and the “brand experts” who rushed to agree with her, and more importantly with Mr Walsh, forgot about was the basis of the text book recovery three months ago with the headline grabbing 777 belly flop.

You will recall that on that occasion the BA media team deftly anticipated the key questions that arise when a large metallic object decided to obey, rather than defy, the laws of physics. Thereby they reflected a reassuring “it’s good to be British in a crisis” feeling to the public. It was that team, surely, who would have briefed Captain Willie and his crew to talk frankly in the aftermath of events then.

No so last week. Apparently the concern was not misleading the media on “a fast-moving story” – ironic given the slow speed of baggage belts and staff to adapt to their new home. So could Mr Walsh have performed any differently? Most emphatically yes. His visible performance (or absence) let the airline down. It was no time to lead from the back. The airline hid itself behind the security blanket of the prepared statement on day one and when the main man emerged in his hair-cloth it was too little, too late.

There is a subtle psychological positioning being played out when any business resorts to rhetoric, as when politicians or litigants deploy “statements”. It is the same in the more traditional advertising approach to marketing. It goes something like this: “I am apparently so supremely confident in our position as the leading opposition to the government/as the barrister for the prosecution/as the world’s favourite airline (delete as appropriate) – because my case is supremely subjective and defensible against counter argument, and the majority can trust my words.”

The trouble is that once that confidence is breached by objective evidence, it cannot simply be sidestepped or moved on by simply saying “sorry”. Where is the evidence? We need to talk about this, Willie. We, the fare paying public, need to have answers. They may not be the exact right answers, but we will be able to tell whether you are indicatively heading back to the rails. Talking to customers has always been a misnomer, for what BA should be more concerned with now that its position is more vulnerable is talking with customers/stakeholders.

BA always used to be able to do this. Led by the A-team of Marshall, King and Burnside, beneath a veneer of arrogance were hearts that instinctively knew what questions the customer was asking of the flag carrier. The Saatchi brothers then applied their huge creativity to dressing a business in the Union Jack in a way that did not feel superficial or shallow.

Admissions of guilt count for little without taking a dialogue forward with the customer, proactively. It is a misleading truism these days for businesses to say they operate in a “no blame” culture. Try telling that to the Mail. Step one is easy – to say sorry as Mr Walsh has emphatically done. The big step is to quickly start to demonstrate that at worst BA has been caught napping by instigating an action plan and timetable. Terminal 5 is not the Millennium Dome, yet even that other iconic development was a white elephant in search of a cunning plan as fans of Zeppelin, Springsteen and Tutankhamen will attest. Let’s hear what the next steps are, Willie. Heads may possibly need to roll, but not for the sake of it.

And while you are at it – maybe put your investment where your mouth is. I remember an audacious BA once giving away every ticket for every flight in a 24 hour period in order to kick start an ailing industry and I don’t recall a single lost bag incident. Maybe sort the baggage system then give away every seat out of Terminal 5 for a day to test drive the reborn service. I am pretty confident you have the people who can rise to the challenge – just tell them to pretend it’s like getting passengers out of a crippled 777.

PR Week podcast on Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife’s state visit to the UK

2008-04-04T11:44:00Z

Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife’s state visit to the UK

Getting Hammered with Nicky

2008-03-27T14:46:00Z

It is 100 days today since Nick Clegg became leader of the Liberal Democrats and, like his predecessor but one, it appears that he is obsessed with being hammered, although not quite in the same sense. See if you can spot a pattern…

Thursday 27 March 2008

Nick Clegg criticises plans by the Commons authorities to appeal against an Information Tribunal ruling calling for the full breakdown of 14 MPs and ex-MPs’ expenses to be published.

“The reason why this feels like a needless, additional hammer blow to public confidence in the House of Commons and what MPs do, is, I think we all now accept, that there should be a full declaration of all MPs’ expenses”.

Friday 14 March 2008

Nick Clegg reacts to the publication of ‘the John Lewis List’, showing the maximum amount that MPs have been able to claim on expenses for common household items.

“Clearly the recent scandals about MPs’ pay and expenses have delivered a real hammer blow to public confidence in politics. It needs to change rapidly”.

Thursday 21 February 2008

Clegg is invited to the Today Programme to comment on a data blunder at the Crown Prosecution Service, connected to serious offenders from the Netherlands being left free to commit crimes in the UK.

“This is just yet another hammer blow, if you like, against public confidence, which has been so severely damaged over recent months by the various cases of data losses”.

Friday 28 December 2007

The newly appointed Liberal Democrat leader offers his condolences following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

“Her tragic death is a hammer blow against the dream of pluralism and tolerance in modern day Pakistan”.

Friday 14 December 2007

In his very last days as Home Affairs spokesman, Clegg took issue with the ruling that found that a terrorist suspect had not breached their control order.

“This ruling is another hammer blow to the increasingly discredited control order regime”.

It is easy not to blame Clegg. After all, who ever pays such close attention to anything that the Liberal Democrats have to say? Nevertheless, the time may have come for the third party to think up some new terms of condemnation. This will be at the forefront of Clegg’s mind, no doubt, as he plots the next 100 days.

Time to wean the junkie BBC off its tax habit

2008-03-12T12:35:00Z

Nationalisation may have triggered an agitated debate when it came to Northern Rock, but in broadcasting it elicits no more than a shrug of the shoulders. In the past year the tax funded BBC has acquired a commercial publisher of travel guides (lonely Planet) while the state-owned Channel 4 grabbed 50 per cent of Emap’s music television channels.

That there are defenders at all for the licence fee, an aggressively policed and regressive tax, is one of the wonders of British life. A third of households in the UK consume less than five hours of BBC broadcast content each week, yet pay as much as those who listen religiously to John Humphrys and adore David Attenborough.

It is no longer good enough to say that the licence fee continues because it insulates the BBC from political interference, or that all other opinions are worse. The government already determines the level of BBC funding by setting the licence fee. It should ignore the squeals of those who benefit from this patent unfairness and announce that the licence fee will end - sooner rather than later. If the state wants a broadcasting arm, it should be paid for from taxes, advertising, subscription or a combination of them all.

But the funding issue is a technicality compared with the policymaking blindness that has afflicted TV since the arrival of satellite and cable companies. These offer hundreds of channels and range of programming that Reith would have found inconceivable.

Successive culture ministers, and Ofcom itself, have politely acknowledged the contribution of a sector now worth (in annual revenue terms) £5bn and broadcasting 14,000 hours per month of public service content - and carried on as if it did not exist.

Ofcom’s challenge is to develop a vision driven by the interests of consumers - and not by broadcasters, who generally shout the loudest. In doing so it should escape from the endemic paternalism that has driven PSB since it started: the belief that unless viewers and listeners are “educated” to watch certain types of approved programming, Gresham’s law will apply and the bad will drive out the good.

The explosion of choice in past decades has conclusively demonstrated that competition brings you more of absolutely everything, including public service content: more news, more reality, more arts, more game shows, more documentaries, more cookery, more quizzes, more sport, more films and so on. People do not all choose the things that the establishment likes, but the right to choose is a socially positive development. Ofcom should encourage more competition and resolutely turn away from pleas for the subsidy - including those from channel 4.

In taking a radical approach, Ofcom would also save the BBC from itself. The corporation clings to the licence fee system. But in doing so it condemns itself to making hours of programming that is indistinguishable from material on commercial channels in order to justify its universal tax. That is a waste of creative talent that should be focused on providing material the market cannot or will not provide but that society values. And when it tries, the BBC is magnificent at doing just that.

Every time the BBC promises - in the course of a licence fee bid, typically - to boost public service content or stop buying US imports, its good intentions are swiftly undermined by the need to chase ratings. It is time to wean the junkie off its tax habit and give the BBC back its real mission.
Ofcom should start that process.

Financial Times March 11 2008

Opinion Research has its limits

2008-03-11T14:37:00Z

Four examples demonstrate different aspects of this and I think that this is the only thing that Hillary Clinton, Heineken, obesity and ethical consumerism have in common (but let me know if I’ve missed something there).

American pollsters have been embarrassed recently by their failure to pick Hillary as the winner in New Hampshire and more recently in Texas where they showed Obama leading in the last few days of the campaign.

In the UK, one of the best examples of political pollsters getting it wrong was in 1992 when all of the polls had shown Neil Kinnock leading John Major only to go down to defeat. One reason for that failure was the reluctance of voters to admit to voting Conservative as it was unfashionable at the time.

In the US, the reasons for the failure in New Hampshire in particular are less clear. Did a lot of voters in the Democratic primary only decide on the last day or so of the campaign? Or did a number of voters tell pollsters that they supported Obama as that is how they wanted to be seen, while secretly actually supporting Hillary? Some commentators have said that one possible reason might be that some voters in New Hampshire wanted to be thought of as being able to support a black candidate when in fact they weren’t.

This highlights one of the perennial weaknesses of opinion research. People answer according to how they think they ought to answer or how they would like to think they will behave. That does not always reflect how they behave in practice.

This is seen in the many surveys done over the years about the propensity of consumers to choose products on ethical grounds.

If you are asked the question – will you choose one product over another on ethical grounds, you are likely to answer Yes. Will you do it in practice? Errr, no. In fact, people choose their favourite brands out of habit, or choose the most convenient or the cheapest. They like to think they would seek out the most ethical, but they don’t very often.

As a result of this, polls consistently exaggerate the percentage of the population who are ethical consumers. The number of such consumers is important and it is growing, but it may still be as little as 5 to 15 per cent according to some more reliable polls.

The obesity debate reflects a more deep seated problem with market research for products.

The food industry got itself into a lot of trouble over the quantity of fat, salt and sugar in its products.

The industry was being accused of deliberately causing the obesity epidemic. In fact what it was doing was responding to consumers in taste tests who all said that they preferred the products that tasted better. And of course being human we all love the tastes of salt, fat and sugar.

Sometimes the right answer isn’t always whatever consumers say in research. Sometimes there are other bigger factors at work.

The last example is that of Heineken.

Remember ‘Heineken refreshes the parts that other beers cannot reach’? Probably you will as it was one of the most successful ad campaigns in the last thirty years and was run for well over a decade.

But the campaign bombed in its initial research. A lot of other hugely successful ads also bombed in the research phase. The idea for Loaded, the lads mag did not do well in research either but it went on to be a huge seller for many years.

Brave company executives had a hunch that they would work over time once consumers got used to them. And they were right.

There is a difference in how a consumer thinks of something the first time they hear it and how they feel about it after they’ve seen it many times over many years.

A problem with marketing departments is that sometimes they follow focus groups and research too much and not enough their instincts or knowledge of the market place.

This of course links into politics again. If a politician only follows focus groups, he or she will only follow public opinion and never lead it. Consumers are often willing to follow if someone who has convictions is prepared to take a lead and sets a clear course.

There is an old saying in physics that the act of observation changes what is observed. In other words, the fact that you are observing means that you don’t actually see the full reality as you have changed it by observing. It sometimes applies to opinion research.

Snooker Loopy

2008-03-05T17:02:00Z

It is no secret that the new Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Andy Burnham, is football-mad. Not only is he a life-long follower of Everton FC, he is also a former Chairman of Supporters Direct, and a regular in the parliamentary football team.

Burnham has now gone and out-done himself by being the first politician to suggest that the public realm be treated as though it were a game of football.

The Evaluation of the Impact of the Licensing Act 2003, which was commissioned by Gordon Brown and published by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on Tuesday 4 March, puts forward a number of recommendations designed to further the fight against binge drinking.

One of these is the proposal to subject retailers, particularly those accused of encouraging underage drinking, to a new ‘yellow and red card’ alert system when said retailers are in breach of their license conditions. In his Written Ministerial Statement, Burnham even promises that “when the circumstances are right, it will be a straight red”. Blimey.

What matters here is not the merits of the proposal. Burnham is clearly onto something in trying to blur the boundaries between the worlds of sport and public policy.

Here is what you could be tried next:

Random drugs testing: This is now prevalent in all sports and has brought about the demise of many a Tour de France cyclist and Olympic athlete. Surely there really is no other way of explaining Margaret Hodge’s recent pronouncements on the Proms (see here)?

The Sin Bin: Used in Ice Hockey, the House of Commons already has a similar system (most recently, George Galloway and Derek Conway). Would the deterrent not be even stronger if rogue MPs were made to purge their sentence inside the Chamber, stuck inside a plexi-glass box, watching the action unfold without them?

The Blood Bin: Ministerial scandals are often followed by the (not always inevitable) demise of a competent Cabinet member (Peter Mandelson, David Blunkett). One way to remedy this could be through the introduction of a rugby union-style ‘blood bin’ whereby a temporary replacement, usually a rising star (a junior minister?) or an experienced old hand (a former Secretary of State?) comes off the bench, literally, to take over duties while the incumbent is taken away, patched up, and returned to the fray once their confidence restored.

Video replay: Increasingly, technology is used to settle moments of contention in sport. Would the accountability of the Government to Parliament not be enhanced by capacity for video replay during Oral Questions? Did the Minister answer the Honourable Member’s question or not? Let’s see what the video says.

The video replay: coming soon to a bicameral legislature near you.

There must be more…