Politics
Kick out the image-makers
Published 12 February 1999
Politicians should stop caring about whether their decisions are popular and start worrying about whether they are right. Kenneth Clarke gives all parties a piece of his mind
We live in a world of strong journalists and weak politicians. The phenomenon is not new; when I began in politics, as an unsuccessful candidate in the election of 1964, the then leader of the Conservative Party was Sir Alec Douglas-Home, a man to whom television did no kindness. It was the first year in which there was a "TV election" and television played a large role in our defeat. Home would say of himself that however hard make-up ladies tried, they could not stop him looking like a skull on the television screen.
Yet in the constituency I was fighting TV made little local impact; I fought a campaign entirely centred round public meetings every evening, attended by a large number of people. Not so very long ago.
Our world has changed since then, but I have not. I do not wear a bleeper with a little screen on which the line of the centre is communicated to all. I can't speak in sound-bites. I refuse to repeat slogans, though all the experts say it is the key to political success. I hate focus groups. I absolutely hate image consultants: anybody looking at me can see that. And of course I hate spin-doctors. I resist all these techniques, not because I have become a crusty old fool but because I think they are useless - indeed, worse than useless. I think they are dangerous - and suffocating our politics.
What do I base myself on for these views? I served Margaret Thatcher's government in many different posts. It was not a bit like any government that anybody would form now. Mrs Thatcher never read a newspaper. If you wished to deal with Mrs Thatcher as your boss, you had to realise that there was no point in going in with your head full of what the newspapers were saying, because she didn't read them. She did not think she had the time. Bernard Ingham, her press secretary, would give her a digest, but it was neither balanced nor did she often take the time to read it.
Mrs Thatcher did, however, listen to the Today programme. Everybody knew she listened to the Today programme: you were aware when you were being interviewed on it that, probably, your prime minister was listening.
New Labour is often said to wish to imitate the style of Mrs Thatcher's government; but it must first remember, or learn, what it was really like.
We did not use focus groups, or pursue popular policies. We did not judge policies that way: every essential policy was always unpopular in the opinion polls at the time we were doing it. Every privatisation was unpopular when we did it. The health service reforms and the education reforms were unpopular; the changes we made in taxation were unpopular; poll ratings were always low; the government was always held in low esteem. The things we did were the things we thought it right to do, not because they were part of some media-oriented exercise.
In this sense, I do not think that Tony Blair is doing what Mrs Thatcher did at all. Indeed, I do not think Tony Blair would have done any of the things that Mrs Thatcher did, because he will not embark on controversial or unpopular policies. He might have thought some of them were a good idea, but Alastair Campbell would have explained that they played badly with the focus groups - and so he would give up.
Today, politics is presented in slogans, through press briefing and media management. I believe there is a serious danger that these techniques will take precedence over any decision of principle about what should be done with the great departments of state and with the public services.
I am not anti-American; I believe very good things come over the Atlantic, and not only jazz. But I do blame the Americans for this current state of mass-media-dominated politics. I blame a ridiculous book called Primary Colors: it created the myth that President Clinton was put into power by brilliant professional operators, who still dictate how political life should be run.
Anybody could have beaten the government in which I was serving in 1997. The public was convinced that we were divided and they were convinced that we were being damaged by sleaze and scandals. They were also very worried about the health service and the education service. Those were the issues.
But the campaign was awful, on both sides. The bits of Labour's campaign I can remember were dreadful - but then, so was ours. We had a chicken running around after Tony Blair, which hardly seemed to stir either the passion or the intellect. Both sides had awful posters. I don't want to insult my old friend Maurice Saatchi - but the vast amount of money we spent on posters at the last election was wholly ineffective. "New Labour, New Danger", and our lion with the bleeding eye, turned out to be disastrous.
I believe Labour's were disastrous, too - but they were so bland I cannot remember any of them. I dimly recall Tony Blair looking visionary, interspersed with grim hospital wards and weeping nurses; nothing else remains.
Today, we are having a rest from politics. The public likes Tony Blair; they like him because he is not a Conservative and he removed the last government. But those of us who want to defeat him must not believe we can do so with spin-doctoring and manipulating the media. Whatever forces move our political ground, they will not be those that continue the nonsensical political management of the past few years. If this goes on for too long, we will see a dumbing down of political debate in this country. It is a great pity for we probably have the most highly educated electorate we have ever had. This dumbing down will reinforce the apathy of the younger generation towards political events.
We are coming to the position where politics is entirely dominated by what the technicians tell you, and they tell you what you want to hear.
There's a tendency for the parties to crowd together: after all, if both sides run their focus groups fairly accurately they will presumably all be told the same things - "this is what's popular so this is what you've got to do". The political actors crush together and compete for the same blasted slogans.
The result is a complete lack of political leadership. A crowd of aides surrounds all leading politicians, wanting the trappings of power they think they helped you acquire, getting in the way of each other and feuding with each other.
My advice to both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor is to thin out some of the entourages who spend their time fighting each other. In so doing, they might improve their own presentation to the general public.
This fluff on the skin of politics can become more than that: for if you are not careful, and do not ride above the techniques, government loses a sense of purpose - and so, some might say, does opposition. An extremely senior American statesman, whose (household) name I won't quote because I am not sure if he would have said it publicly, said to me recently that politicians still sought his advice but that "they don't any longer ask me what I think they ought to do; all they appear to want to know is what they ought to say". This, he said, told us a lot about what is happening to parties.
Good government does not depend on image: good government depends on a rather simple thing - taking the right decisions as often as you can. After you have taken a decision, decide how you are going to present and explain it. Do not put it the other way round. Do not begin with "what shall we say?" and allow that to dictate what you should do to get the right headlines.
Your press officer cannot govern the country and get away with it for more than a few months.
The writer was Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1993-97. This article is based on his recent Brian Redhead Memorial Lecture
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