UK Politics
Tactical Briefing
Published 24 April 2008
From: The Unit
To: GB
Subject: We Get It
So, pretty good week. Feel the US trip went well. Almost all the UK press obviously focused on the visit being overshadowed, but really that wasn't the true story of the visit. Understand it was difficult to get this line out, as all the faxes, internet bandwidth and press office space was being used by Vatican officials and monks.
Still, it seems possible to us that the visit may have been responsible for the totally unaccountable poll bounce that seems to have come our way. Is there an argument for spending more time in the US? The king across the water? We could possibly suggest that there are things so important happening in the World Bank/IMF/UN/NFL that you need to be over there. Think this would chime well with the public perception that you are a very competent person, but not necessarily when it comes to running UK Government. That you have high-minded, popular and widely lauded principles, but not when it comes to UK social and economic policy.
So, if your totally overshadowed US trip couldn't have caused your poll bump, we've been asking ourselves: what was it? This is a real poser. Would be great to ask around and see if anyone in your staff or anywhere else in the wider party can remember anything at all, however minor, that we have done lately that has been received in any way positively? Could it be something little on housing or an agriculture thing that no one told us about? Or light bulbs? Really feel that there must have been something?
The other possibility - and this is one that is interesting some of our top guys here - is that the political disconnect from the public has reached the final "decoupling" stage, where there is no longer any relationship whatsoever between anything we do or say or enact and our popular image.
The level of reinterpretation may have reached the stage where the original activities undertaken are impossible for the public to determine. It's not that what we do is irrelevant. But our actions are like eruptions on a distant star, which may be viewed months or decades hence by analysts who may totally misinterpret what they are viewing.
It's very exciting.
Anyway. Back-bench meeting went very well. Really like the "We get it" line as a response to the 10p-rate righteous fury. Sounds very now. Implies a lot of knowledge, an "OK, you can stop going on about this now" world-weariness. A hint of "Yeah, we've got this covered with a great new policy/task force/manifesto that will be released soon if you will just shut up for a minute". Think "We get it" could be a slogan we employ for a lot more stuff.
Public: "We don't like you." Us: "We get it." Public: "We don't like your policies." Us: "We get it." Public: "We're not voting for you." Us: "We get it." And if necessary - Public: "You're no longer in power." Us: "We get it."
Let us know your thoughts.
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