The "Digital News Microclimate"

Are the Brexit Remainers creating an echo chamber? 

I haven’t seen any reference in the UK media to an article which appeared in the New York Times Magazine on 8 May in print under the title, The Storyteller and the President, and on their website as The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign-Policy Guru. It is a lengthy profile by David Samuels of Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications in the White House, 38 and described by Samuels as “The Boy Wonder of the Obama White House”:

He is, according to the consensus of the two dozen current and former White House insiders I talked to, the single most influential voice shaping American foreign policy aside from Potus himself … in addition to the two to three hours that Rhodes might spend with Obama daily, the two men communicate remotely throughout the day via email and phone calls. … On the largest and smallest questions alike, the voice in which America speaks to the world is that of Ben Rhodes.

Perhaps in the UK we are all too wrapped up in the forthcoming referendum on EU membership, but it’s worth remembering that Obama was here on 22 April telling us that we would be at the “back of the queue” in any trade deal with the US, if the country chose to leave the EU. Private Eye caught the tone of his message when their cover captioned the Obamas’ photo-opportunity with the young Royals:

If Samuels is right, Rhodes is very likely to have been involved in formulating Obama’s messaging in London – if nothing else, as a fan of CS Lewis and George Orwell he would be aware of the usage of “queue” here rather than “line”. Samuels emphasises how close Rhodes is to Obama:

Part of what accounts for Rhodes’s influence is his “mind meld” with the president. Nearly everyone I spoke to about Rhodes used the phrase “mind meld” verbatim, some with casual assurance and others in the hushed tones that are usually reserved for special insights. He doesn’t think for the president, but he knows what the president is thinking, which is a source of tremendous power. One day, when Rhodes and I were sitting in his boiler-room office, he confessed, with a touch of bafflement, “I don’t know anymore where I begin and Obama ends.”

Although Rhodes’ background is Eng Lit/creative writing not foreign policy/international affairs:

Like Obama, Rhodes is a storyteller who uses a writer’s tools to advance an agenda that is packaged as politics but is often quite personal. He is adept at constructing overarching plotlines with heroes and villains, their conflicts and motivations supported by flurries of carefully chosen adjectives, quotations and leaks from named and unnamed senior officials. He is the master shaper and retailer of Obama’s foreign-policy narratives, at a time when the killer wave of social media has washed away the sand castles of the traditional press. His ability to navigate and shape this new environment makes him a more effective and powerful extension of the president’s will than any number of policy advisers or diplomats or spies. His lack of conventional real-world experience of the kind that normally precedes responsibility for the fate of nations — like military or diplomatic service, or even a master’s degree in international relations, rather than creative writing — is still startling. 

Having recently spent time working in Hollywood, I realize during our conversations that the role Rhodes plays in the White House bears less resemblance to any specific character on Beltway-insider TV shows like “The West Wing” or “House of Cards” than it does to the people who create those shows. And like most TV writers, Rhodes clearly prefers to imagine himself in the company of novelists.

But it seems that Rhodes’ skills are now the relevant ones (my emphasis):

Price [Rhodes’ deputy, Ned Price] turns to his computer and begins tapping away at the administration’s well-cultivated network of officials, talking heads, columnists and newspaper reporters, web jockeys and outside advocates who can tweet at critics and tweak their stories backed up by quotations from “senior White House officials” and “spokespeople.” I watch the message bounce from Rhodes’s brain to Price’s keyboard to the three big briefing podiums — the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon — and across the Twitterverse, where it springs to life in dozens of insta-stories, which over the next five hours don formal dress for mainstream outlets. It’s a tutorial in the making of a digital news microclimate — a storm that is easy to mistake these days for a fact of nature, but whose author is sitting next to me right now.

Because, according to Samuels, we are in “the soft Orwellian vibe of an information space where old media structures and hierarchies have been erased by Silicon Valley billionaires who convinced the suckers that information was “free” and everyone with access to Google was now a reporter”:

The job he was hired to do [in 2007], namely to help the president of the United States communicate with the public, was changing in equally significant ways, thanks to the impact of digital technologies that people in Washington were just beginning to wrap their minds around. It is hard for many to absorb the true magnitude of the change in the news business — 40 percent of newspaper-industry professionals have lost their jobs over the past decade — in part because readers can absorb all the news they want from social-media platforms like Facebook, which are valued in the tens and hundreds of billions of dollars and pay nothing for the “content” they provide to their readers. You have to have skin in the game — to be in the news business, or depend in a life-or-death way on its products — to understand the radical and qualitative ways in which words that appear in familiar typefaces have changed. Rhodes singled out a key example to me one day, laced with the brutal contempt that is a hallmark of his private utterances. “All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus,” he said. “Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”

A long section in the article is an account of how the nuclear deal with Iran was sold in the US, so not particularly relevant to the UK, although one extract is interesting:

Rhodes “was kind of like the quarterback,” running the daily video conferences and coming up with lines of attack and parry. “He was extremely good about immediately getting to a phrase or a way of getting the message out that just made more sense,” Kreikemeier [one of the team] remembers. Framing the deal as a choice between peace and war was Rhodes’s go-to move — and proved to be a winning argument.

Interesting because of Cameron’s speech on Brexit on 9 May at the British Museum in front of an audience which included the US ambassador:

The serried rows of white headstones in lovingly-tended Commonwealth war cemeteries stand as silent testament to the price that this country has paid to help restore peace and order in Europe. Can we be so sure that peace and stability on our continent are assured beyond any shadow of doubt? Is that a risk worth taking? I would never be so rash as to make that assumption.

So the Brexit Remain campaign might be expected to follow Rhodes’ approach:

“We created an echo chamber,” he admitted, when I asked him to explain the onslaught of freshly minted experts cheerleading for the deal. “They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.”

Today, five former NATO secretaries-general have written to the Daily Telegraph, warning that it "would be very troubling if the UK ended its membership of the European Union” and The Times has a letter from 13 former US secretaries of state and defence and national security advisers telling us “The special relationship between our countries would not compensate for the loss of influence and clout that the UK would suffer if it was no longer part of the EU”.

Samuels’ article, which seems to have created a small storm inside the DC Beltway, is well worth reading in full. Some of it probably needs to be taken with a pinch of salt:

[Rhodes’] New York City prep-school-kid combination of vulnerability, brattiness and passionate hatred for phonies suggests an only slightly updated version of what Holden Caulfield might have been like if he grew up to work in the West Wing.

Obama won’t be President for much longer, and Rhodes will probably be persona non grata to the next White House incumbent, whoever “she” may be:

He [Rhodes] referred to the American foreign-policy establishment as the Blob. According to Rhodes, the Blob includes Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates and other Iraq-war promoters from both parties who now whine incessantly about the collapse of the American security order in Europe and the Middle East.

But political messaging has probably changed for good:

Rhodes has become adept at ventriloquizing many people at once. Ned Price, Rhodes’s assistant, gave me a primer on how it’s done. The easiest way for the White House to shape the news, he explained, is from the briefing podiums, each of which has its own dedicated press corps. “But then there are sort of these force multipliers,” he said, adding, “We have our compadres, I will reach out to a couple people, and you know I wouldn’t want to name them — ” 

“I can name them,” I said, ticking off a few names of prominent Washington reporters and columnists who often tweet in sync with White House messaging. 

Price laughed. “I’ll say, ‘Hey, look, some people are spinning this narrative that this is a sign of American weakness,’ ” he continued, “but — ” 

“In fact it’s a sign of strength!” I said, chuckling. “And I’ll give them some color,” Price continued, “and the next thing I know, lots of these guys are in the dot-com publishing space, and have huge Twitter followings, and they’ll be putting this message out on their own.” 

This is something different from old-fashioned spin, which tended to be an art best practiced in person. In a world where experienced reporters competed for scoops and where carrying water for the White House was a cause for shame, no matter which party was in power, it was much harder to sustain a “narrative” over any serious period of time. Now the most effectively weaponized 140-character idea or quote will almost always carry the day, and it is very difficult for even good reporters to necessarily know where the spin is coming from or why.

On this side of the Atlantic, my guess is that the Conservatives might be ahead of Labour in appreciating what’s involved in the new spin, though if Number 10 has a Rhodes equivalent, he or she seems to have been too busy with Brexit to take on the Mayor of London campaign.  Although Seamus Milne, Corbyn's spin doctor, may be politically well to the left of his New Labour predecessor, Alastair Campbell, he too comes from a traditional newspaper background.  Whether by 2020, Labour will have a new leader, mind-melded to someone versed in these new arts, remains to be seen.

Ages at the Audience

Peter Morgan’s play The Audience has ended its first theatre run in London. Its subject:

For sixty years Elizabeth II has met each of her twelve Prime Ministers in a weekly audience at Buckingham Palace – a meeting like no other in British public life – it is private. Both parties have an unspoken agreement never to repeat what is said. Not even to their spouses. The Audience breaks this contract of silence – and imagines a series of pivotal meetings between the Downing Street incumbents and their Queen. From Churchill to Cameron, each Prime Minister has used these private conversations as a sounding board and a confessional – sometimes intimate, sometimes explosive. From young mother to grandmother, these private audiences chart the arc of the second Elizabethan Age. Politicians come and go through the revolving door of electoral politics, while she remains constant, waiting to welcome her next Prime Minister.

In April 2013 Helen Mirren was awarded best actress at the Laurence Olivier Awards for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in The Audience. After the 2006 film, The Queen, also scripted by Morgan, she received numerous awards for playing the same part.

I didn’t see the play, but can’t help thinking that the key word in the description above is “imagines”. The confidentiality of these meetings allows a dramatist considerable scope in providing an evening’s entertainment, but one has to wonder if the audience will go home much the wiser. As far as I know, British Prime Ministers’ memoirs all conform to the rules of omertà on the subject. For example, almost at the start of The Downing Street Years, Mrs Thatcher tells her readers:

The Audience at which one receives the Queen's authority to form a government comes to most prime ministers only once in a lifetime. The authority is unbroken when a sitting prime minister wins an .election, and so it never had to be renewed throughout the years I was in office. All audiences with the Queen take place in strict confidence - a confidentiality which is vital to the working of both government and constitution. I was to have such audiences with Her Majesty once a week, usually on a Tuesday, when she was in London and sometimes elsewhere when the royal family were at Windsor or Balmoral.  

Perhaps it is permissible to make just two points about these meetings. Anyone who imagines that they are a mere formality or confined to social niceties is quite wrong; they are quietly businesslike and Her Majesty brings to bear a formidable grasp of current issues and breadth of experience. And, although the press could not resist the temptation to suggest disputes between the Palace and Downing Street, especially on Commonwealth affairs, I always found the Queen's attitude towards the work of the government absolutely correct.  

Of course, under the circumstances, stories of clashes between 'two powerful women' were just too good not to make up. In general, more nonsense was written about the so-called 'feminine factor' during my time in office than about almost anything else. I was always asked how it felt to be a woman prime minister. I would reply: 'I don't know: I've never experienced the alternative.''  

After the audience, Sir Philip Moore, the Queen's Secretary, took me to his office down what are called 'the Prime Minister's stairs'. … (pages 17,18)

18 years later, one of Thatcher’s successors had his first audience:

… I practically fell upon the Queen's hands, not so much brushing as enveloping them. I recovered sufficiently to find myself sitting opposite her. I had met her before, of course, but this was different. It was my first audience. There is much to say about the Queen. At this encounter, I noticed two things: she was quite shy, strangely so for someone of her experience and position; and at the same time, direct. I don’t mean rude or insensitive, just direct. 'You are my tenth prime minister. The first was Winston. That was before you were born.' We talked for a time, not exactly small talk but general guff about the government programme, the conversation somewhat stilted. Then Cherie was brought in to pay her respects … (Tony Blair, A Journey, page 14)

He notes at the time of his departure from office a decade later, the Queen’s being “as ever, very gracious” (page 662).

In the three volumes of Alastair Campbell’s diaries covering his years in Number 10 working for Blair, the ‘audience’ subject is indexed only in Volume 3, Power and Responsibility 1999-2001, with just the one entry of any real interest:

21 March 2001  

… I tried to pick his [Blair’s] brains on whether the Queen was a hundred per cent happy at the way Prince Charles was piling in [on the foot-and-mouth disease epidemic, see 5 March entry]. He was unbelievably discreet though, occasionally told the odd funny story about their meetings, but even with me, rarely let slip anything of substance from their discussions.

It seems to me that the only thing that most of us can be sure of about these audiences is the identities of the participants and their ages. What would that tell us? Firstly, that it takes some effort to pull the information together, and my first attempt at presenting it led to the chart below. This shows the ages of Sovereigns and Prime Ministers since the start of Queen Victoria’s reign in 1837.

Some points of interest across this period are:

1. Victoria was the youngest Sovereign, just over 18 at succession.
2. Elizabeth is the oldest, currently 87.
3. The oldest PM in office was Gladstone, 84 when he left in 1894.
4. The youngest PM in office was Cameron in 2010, at 43.
5. Between 1935 and 1937, Baldwin was PM to three different Kings. Data visualisation is fashionable, so it seems worth reflecting on the insignificance rendered to the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936 by this particular form of graphical presentation.
Also, 6. Until the 1960s, PMs were nearly all over 50 and most were over 60. There has, however, been a downward trend in their ages since Churchill left office in 1955. It seems unlikely that this trend will continue further, so it will either reverse, or PMs from now on will be in their 40s.

Secondly, the same data can be presented in a different fashion (left) to show the age difference between Sovereign and PM over the same period, but with time running down the page. To be of much significance in relationships between adults, their age difference probably has to be large enough for them to be conscious of belonging to different generations - the remarks Blair quotes seem to have the subtext: “I am old enough to be your mother”. In modern advanced societies (or in the higher social strata of poorer ones) generations are usually taken as being 25 to 30 years apart. So once an age difference between adults is more than 15 years, it might begin to affect the view they take of each other. The blue-grey bands on the chart are set to indicate 17.5 to 20 year differences. Some further points of interest emerge:

7. The biggest age difference, over 51 years, between Sovereign and PM was that between Elizabeth and Churchill from 1952 to 1955.
8. The Sovereign and PM closest in age were Elizabeth and Mrs Thatcher, the latter being six months older.
9. The biggest age difference between a Sovereign and a younger PM is that at present, 40 years.
Also, 10. From 1870 to 1936, the Sovereigns and PMs were close enough in age to be regarded as being of the same generation (except during the Rosebury administration of 1894/5). This applied again between 1964 and 1997 but not since.

Finally, what might the situation be in 2017? More confidently than for most predictions, it can be assumed that the Sovereign is likely to be as at present or Charles III or William V. But the PM? If the coalition’s economic policies turn out to be a success and the Conservatives win the next election, Cameron could still be PM or could have stood down. In the latter case, the bookies’ current favourite as next Tory leader is Theresa May. My view, not that I’ve bet on it, is that in those circumstances George Osborne would be well-placed to take the credit for the recovery and the leadership. However, the bookies’ favourite as next PM is Ed Miliband. For the age differences under these scenarios, see the Table below and draw the obvious conclusions about generational age differences, if you think these matter.

As for The Audience, Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph thought it was magnificent and “persuasive”, while in the Observer, Susannah Clapp thought “Morgan's very entertaining play is a skinny thing, a string of sketches dependent on high-grade mimicry”. Robert Hardman, maker of the ITV documentary Our Queen, probably provided in the Daily Mail one of the best-informed reviews and concluded:

… what the Queen genuinely thinks of her Prime Ministers will be sheer guesswork for a long time to come until future historians are one day granted access to the diaries and papers of a sovereign who has listened to them all — and never leaked a thing.

which rather assumes that there will be such access.


NOTES

1. The dates of reigns, of prime ministerships and of birth come from Wikipedia.
2. On a few occasions in the Victorian period the country had to manage without a PM for a day or two – the rise of the British Empire doesn’t seem to have been interrupted. The gaps are not shown. 3. The age differences are those on 1 July each year – regrettably this restriction excludes the Russell administration of October 1885 to June 1886. Edward VIII’s brief reign is captured.
4. I hope that the inevitable errors are not significant. I am happy to correct any that are. The way Excel was used to handle dates was described in a previous post. The graphics were produced using PowerPoint and the alignments are not always exact.


UPDATE 19 DECEMBER 2013

According to an article by Chris Hastings in the Mail on Sunday on 15 December:

Theirs was a difficult relationship that has become the stuff of West End drama – and today The Mail on Sunday can reveal one possible source of the tension between The Queen and Margaret Thatcher. Official papers just made public show the Prime Minister repeatedly rescheduled and cancelled their weekly audiences, risking the irritation of Buckingham Palace. Even Mrs Thatcher’s own aides warned her of ‘pushing her luck’ and potentially ‘spoiling the relationship’ with the Palace over her requests to rearrange the meetings. …

All credit to the MoS for its efforts:

Mrs Thatcher’s bids to rearrange the meetings are revealed in official papers declassified following a Freedom of Information request by The Mail on Sunday, and covering the three years after Mrs Thatcher took office in 1979.

but Prime Ministers are very busy people, rather more so than constitutional monarchs, and this sort of thing may always be happening. There will almost certainly be further FOI requests for other PMs and, if so, we might learn more.

Falkirk – an unlikely Falklands

It is part of modern British political mythology than Mrs Thatcher only won the 1983 election because of the resurgence in her popularity which followed the favourable outcome of the Falklands campaign in 1982. For David Cameron to be confident of securing a Conservative government after the 2015 election, he needs something similar (to see the size of his problem put Con 40% Lab 35% and LD 13% into Electoral Calculus). For the moment Cameron is having a good try at hanging the trade unions around Miliband’s neck, particularly after the shenanigans concerning Labour’s candidate for the forthcoming Falkirk [by-election] reselection.

Will it do the trick? At PMQs on 3 July Cameron mentioned the Unite union 8 times and Unite’s General Secretary, Len McCluskey, 6 times. On 10 July it was 8 and 2 times respectively, but by then Miliband had taken appropriate action both tactically with regard to Falkirk and more widely in floating the idea of a new relationship between Labour and the unions.  Miliband also moved onto the offensive at PMQs, asking some pointed questions about Tory funding. Unlike the Falklands, union funding and Falkirk do not seem the sort of issues which move substantial numbers of voters’ minds and, moreover, there is a slight risk that Miliband may come out of it well as a strong reformer and avoid being labelled a weak placeman of the unions.

Anyway the whole thing seems just a bit stagey. Of the four volumes of Alastair Campbell’s Diaries, the first, Prelude to Power 1994-1997, concentrates on the task faced by the Leader of the Opposition as an election approaches. It’s also the one which covers the time before Campbell became a civil servant (of sorts) so presumably its content was determined entirely by his judgement rather than being subject to the official protocol which would have applied to the later three. Pugnacious by nature, Campbell had no hesitation in recording the combative relationship which prevailed most of the time between Blair, Labour’s last permanent Leader of the Opposition, and the PM of the day, John Major. But he also mentions the mysterious occasions when Blair disappeared for discussions with the PM. Either Campbell wasn’t told what these were about, or he didn’t choose to write about them. He reports that on one occasion Major threatened to publish private correspondence between himself and Blair – again we are not told what about (page 380).

Almost certainly that’s the way things have always been done and there are good reasons for such arrangements continuing. For example, recently it was reported that Miliband had attended the National Security Committee (not for the first time) in late June for a discussion on Syria and why not? However, perhaps the lesson to be drawn is that governments and oppositions from time to time make common cause without necessarily telling the public or the media all about it. I can’t help wondering whether in this case the cause might turn out to be that of funding political parties out of taxation – the main ones of course.

McCluskey is an interesting man who seems to like SW France. Described by Rachel Sylvester in The Times (£) on 10 July:

Mr McCluskey — an opera buff, who loves attending Glyndebourne and visiting French vineyards (“St Emilion is my favourite wine and such a beautiful village”, he told me when I interviewed him a couple of years ago),

he is a left-winger but with right bank tastes, and tastes which extend beyond red wine according to the Spectator’s Steerpike on 13 July:

The wine waiters at Claridges are taking a keen interest in the investigation into malpractice in Falkirk. And they’re hoping that Unite will be fully exonerated. Len McCluskey likes to celebrate political victories at the hotel bar with a glass of pink champagne. His most recent visit was in July 2011 after Rupert Murdoch’s ‘humblest day of my life’ admission before a Commons select committee. McCluskey toasted the press mogul’s self-lacerating words by downing a bottle of pink fizz with his old mucker Tom Watson. As they say, nothing’s too good for the workers to subsidise.

(Actually it was “most humble day of my life”.)


UPDATE 13 JULY

A few hours after this was originally posted, a typically elegant article by Matthew Parris for today’s The Times appeared on their website, Guess who’s going to pay for politics? You!  He expands on the theme that “The political parties will ask the taxpayer to pay their bills once unions and tycoons have walked away” and that:

The very notion will be massively unpopular. There will have to be a tacit deal between party leaderships not to break ranks and exploit public indignation.

My notion was that the “tacit deal” is rather nearer than he seems to think. Parris is, of course, much better–informed than I am, just as he is a much better writer.


UPDATE 11 SEPTEMBER

Matthew Taylor was Tony Blair’s Chief Adviser on Political Strategy when he was Prime Minister and then became Chief Executive of the RSA in November 2006. On 9 September he posted on his blog Party funding – the future is out there (no thanks to me). This extract describes a past attempt at a “tacit deal”:

Back in 2006, working for Tony Blair and having previously written a think tank pamphlet on party funding, I was asked to explore a new funding settlement. The precipitating factor was the cash of honours allegations which led to several Labour advisors being arrested and placed on police bail.  

Although the negotiations were behind the scenes, agreeing a basic package with the Conservatives (newly led by David Cameron who was keen to show his statesman-like credentials) proved relatively straightforward. Although historically the Tories have relied much more than Labour on high value donations, Cameron knew how toxic this issue had been for his own Party and how dangerous it could one day become again.  

… The deal we had careful put together was sabotaged by anti-Blair elements in Labour’s ranks. There is little doubt that they did so on the instruction of those around Gordon Brown – who was at the time keen to grasp any stick with which to beat the Prime Minister.

‘Borgen’ and British politics

White Doors or Open Doors (Strandgade 30), 1905

Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864–1916)

 ... awaiting Kasper and Katrine

Until early 2011, when the British thought at all about Denmark, it was probably in association with Hamlet (Prince of), Carlsberg, Lurpak, Bang and Olufsen, Kierkegaard, Hammershøi (left) or other things according to taste, but not television dramas. Then BBC4 started showing the first series of DR’s (Danish Broadcasting Corporation) The Killing (Forbrydelsen – The Crime) which developed a cult following stimulated by opinion-forming chattering-class comment in the media. Its attraction was probably as much the fashionable Scandinavian noir setting as the central character, a jumper-wearing woman cop, Sarah Lund (Sophie Grabøl). After all, Cagney & Lacey started over 30 years ago and Helen Mirren began playing Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect in 1991. But The Killing certainly caught on, the third and probably final series ending its BBC4 run in December 2012 with an audience of over a million. David Cameron, we have been told, is a devotee of the series in box sets. As he told the House magazine in January during a rather sycophantic interview:

THE HOUSE: What was your favourite Christmas present from Sam?  

PM: She did give me the Killing III, that was our luxury at Christmas. So that’s it, we’ve done it. We had a decent time at home. We did a bit of back-to-back [viewing of episodes]. We cheated, she gave it to me before Christmas, so we opened it early.

Encouraged by the success of The Killing, BBC4 started showing the first series of DR’s Borgen in January 2012. This political drama (to paraphrase The Archers, an everyday story of coalition folk or contemporary drama in a political setting) mostly takes place in Copenhagen's Christiansborg Palace  which houses the Danish Parliament and Prime Minister's Office and is known to Danes as “Borgen”, (castle). The central character again is female, Birgitte Nyborg Christensen (Sidse Babett Knudsen), Denmark’s first woman Prime Minister and leader of the governing coalition. Among a large cast, the other main parts are Nyborg’s spin doctor, Kasper Juul (Pilou Asbæk), and his girlfriend Katrine Fønsmark (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen), a TV news journalist. Although not achieving quite the ratings popularity of The Killing, Borgen has probably been even more of a hit with the UK commentariat – at least up until the recent end of the second series (2 Feb 2013). One of the few sceptical voices has been that of Rachel Cooke in the New Statesman. A third, and again probably final, series is currently being shown in Denmark and no doubt will appear on BBC4 in due course.

But where there’s politics, there’s politics. On 30 January, The Times (£) second section, Times 2, appeared with Alastair Campbell and Sidse Babett Knudsen on its cover (left), with a report by Campbell, Has Borgen got a new spin doctor? Nej!, of his visit to Copenhagen to meet Babbett and Asbæk. He took a particular shine to the latter:

Pilou Asbæk has certainly learnt a thing or two about spin doctoring. He bows on meeting, and within a minute has said he is “honoured” and “thrilled”, that he only agreed to the interview because it was with me, enjoyed researching my “amazing” life, and asks if I mind that he sees me and a US Republican — Karl Rove — as the top exponents of what he calls our “art”. You may be surprised to know I took an instant liking to him.

And later:

Pilou admits that one of the by- products — lessons — of the series is that he has started to speak differently. “Always talk in headlines — then people remember you,” he suggests. The conversation is peppered with his perfectly formed soundbites. “You cannot create chemistry. It is a gift between actors.” … And then, reaching what I suggest to him is Mensa level spin capacity: “I am answering that question by not answering it.” Happily he has learnt to respect the art of communication and see through the clouds of media cynicism. “People see Kasper as a dark lord and I don’t accept it. Guys who do that kind of job are mothers and wives, husbands and fathers . . .”  

“Tell me about it . . .”

Campbell had explained earlier that:

Everyone seems to watch it [Borgen], including the real Prime Minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, a personal friend who I saw for dinner the night before meeting Sidse and Pilou.

Thorning-Schmidt is, of course, Neil Kinnock’s daughter-in-law, and readers of Campbell’s diaries will be aware of the closeness of his family and the Kinnocks.

Sidse and Pilou must be busy people. On 4 February, the Scotsman’s Rory Reynolds reported, Borgen’s Filmhouse finale wows Edinburgh:

… the phenomenal success of Borgen reached the streets of Scotland yesterday, … Hundreds of devotees -– including Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, along with other MSPs – gathered at the Filmhouse for the special screening of the final two episodes.  

… Sidse Babett Knudsen, who plays fictional Danish prime minister Birgitte Nyborg, travelled to Edinburgh yesterday … And arch spin doctor Kasper Juul – a shadowy figure modelled on Alastair Campbell – could not have fixed it better himself when Knudsen arrived to meet fans dressed head-to-toe in red and black tartan.  

… “Why do we like it?” Ms Sturgeon asked the audience. “Maybe it gives us a glimpse of the country we could be.” She said she found herself in an unusual role for a politician. “I was interviewing her for Scottish television. The only thing I managed to get her to reveal is that there is to be a Scottish love interest in the next series.” Nyborg will fall for architect Jeremy Welsh in the next series, played by Monarch of the Glen star Alastair Mackenzie.  

Mrs Sturgeon said Borgen was often realistic. “It’s a drama but with an authentic twist. As a politician I can relate to it.”  

… Fans were interested in Knudsen’s views on Holyrood and the referendum next year. They also sought her take on her considerably popularity among politicians here, such as Alison Johnstone, the Green MSP, who was also spotted in the audience. However, she managed to both charm her audience and avoid the question on several occasions, except to say that she was “a little bit stunned” at the admiration.

Any apparent alignment of Borgen with Labour (pace the Staggers) and Scottish Nationalist politics, was not given substance by Adam Price, a Dane of English descent, who is producer and co-writer of the series.  In a recent Guardian interview he emphasised the feminist aspect of the series, which is universal, and not politics. But perhaps it’s not surprising that the House interview went:

THE HOUSE: Are you into Borgen?  

PM: No! God, no. It’s just whether Morgen Shmorgen is Health Minister or is Education Minister..it’s too much like work.

Nor that in The Times (£) on 6 February Alice Thomson should be telling us:

Few of the Cabinet watch Borgen, the TV drama about a fictional Danish prime minister. Samantha Cameron has banned it from Downing Street — it’s just too close for comfort with its plot revolving around a divorce and an unhappy daughter.

The date of the Scottish Referendum is not yet finalised, but will be in the autumn of 2014, so not so long after the showing of Borgen III, another glimpse of the country Scotland could be – unless the BBC decide to bring it forward.

 

The two Eds: smoke and fire or neither?

The majority of us, far from the inner circles of politics as we are, can only glean what is going on from what we are told by the media. Much of that is fed to us, directly or indirectly, by an army of media handlers and is intended to manipulate our opinions rather than to inform us. On the other hand, more than ever before there are numerous accounts what actually went on in the not too distant past available in the form of diaries and memoirs. So, although we have to pick our way through what is presented to us day by day, we probably have better tools for intelligent and sceptical scrutiny than people had even twenty years ago.

As an example, consider the story by Andrew Pierce in the Mail on Sunday on 2 September about poor relations between Leader of the Opposition Ed Miliband and Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls, The Ed to Ed feud that could wreck Miliband's No10 dream. The article is well worth reading in full, but some key extracts are:

Earlier this year, as Ed Miliband launched into one of his long-winded speeches to his shadow cabinet, everyone at least tried to create the impression they were giving the Labour leader their undivided attention. But there was one notable exception, a man who made no effort to conceal the fact the Labour leader had lost the interest of the room. Ed Balls, the pugnacious shadow chancellor and devout disciple of Gordon Brown, was nonchalantly reading and sending messages on his BlackBerry while Mr Miliband droned on. As Mr Balls tapped away, indifferent to the embarrassment of colleagues and anger of the Labour leader, Mr Miliband asserted his authority and snapped: ‘Ed, people can be just as interesting as BlackBerries . . .’ The spat was the latest sign that the relationship between the two men is breaking down both in public and private. They neither like nor trust each other and, crucially, Mr Balls thinks he could do Mr Miliband’s job much better. …  

But the poisonous history between the Eds goes back to the early days of the Blair era, when they were youthful advisers to Mr Brown after he became shadow chancellor in 1994 and then Chancellor in 1997. … Mr Balls was economics adviser, while Mr Miliband was a mere special adviser. Ed Balls, now 45, loved to lord it over his staff, just as he does today. Colleagues at the time recall he treated Mr Miliband, 42, like the ‘office boy’. Mr Balls liked Mr Miliband to make his coffee every morning. ‘He loved to bark out “coffee time”,’ says one well-informed source. ‘Ed sheepishly got up to make it.’ …  

Today as leader it is, of course, Mr Miliband who is more senior. It is he who plays the role of ‘chairman’, summing up the views of his colleagues at the end of shadow cabinet meetings. But, tellingly, this happens only after he has invited Mr Balls to give his verdict on the contributions made by other members of the shadow cabinet to any meeting. The result is that Mr Balls sometimes talks for three times as long as Mr Miliband. ‘A fly on the wall would assume Balls was leader,’ says one witness to the proceedings. …  

It should have been a marriage of equals between leader and shadow chancellor. They are both Oxford educated. Mr Balls studied at Harvard and Mr Miliband taught there. But increasingly these days whether it is in meetings or on the telephone, Mr Balls talks over his leader. It infuriates Mr Miliband but he does little other than shrug his shoulders and say: ‘That’s Ed.’ …  

But the problems between them go beyond personal ambition and resentment over the handling of the shadow chancellor portfolio. Mr Miliband is trying to detoxify the Labour brand so damaged by infighting between Blair and Brown. Labour pollsters have identified Gordon Brown’s term in Number 10 as a ‘huge negative’ for the party’s election prospects. And no one in the Labour Party is more closely associated with Mr Brown than Ed Balls. …  

One party figure said: ‘The two Eds have a fundamental disagreement over the City but Balls is making the running and bullying Miliband’s people into submission on a range of policies. ‘It began with Labour’s spending commitments, but now we have to get permission from the shadow chancellor’s office on everything from the future of Trident [nuclear missiles] to keeping open police stations at weekends. Power has shifted from one end of the shadow cabinet table to the other.’  

It is an uncanny echo of the Blair and Brown relationship. And the question is whether it will fester in the same way — and once again tear the Labour party apart.

So, what to make of this? Of course the Mail is a Conservative-supporting newspaper. It must be expected to run stories unhelpful to Labour, particularly in the hope of Labour’s opinion poll lead being dislodged by post-Olympics feel-good and all the positive spin that can be wrapped around the Coalition reshuffle. At the same time, how better to take the heat off a beleaguered Chancellor than to turn it up on his Shadow? Certainly at PMQs on 5 September David Cameron took up the opportunity presented by Pierce’s article:

The Prime Minister: First, I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman mentioned the issue of Chancellors, because I have got my first choice as Chancellor, while he has got his third choice as shadow Chancellor. Apparently, he still has to bring in the coffee every morning—that is how assertive and butch the Leader of the Opposition really is. … 

Edward Miliband: The difference between the shadow Chancellor and the Chancellor is that the shadow Chancellor was right about the economy and the Chancellor was wrong. …

The Prime Minister: … He praised his shadow Chancellor to the gunnels, but let us remember that it was the shadow Chancellor who landed us in this mess. Who was the City Minister when the City went bust? The shadow Chancellor. Who was the man who gave us the biggest budget deficit in the developed world? The shadow Chancellor. That is what that team has delivered and that is why the British people will never trust them again. …  

The Prime Minister: The big difference in British politics is that I do not want to move my Chancellor; the right hon. Gentleman cannot move his shadow Chancellor. The fact is that in spite of all the economic difficulty this is a strong and united Government, and in spite of all the opportunity this is a weak and divided Opposition.

On the other hand, Pierce has his reputation to protect so his references to:

Senior party figures are talking openly  

Colleagues at the time …

says one well-informed source.

One shadow cabinet source said 

The Miliband camp fears 

Blairites wryly observe  

One party figure said

are likely to have some substance and look as though they come from individuals close to Miliband. Mary Riddell had followed the Mail story up in the Daily Telegraph (another Tory-inclined paper) on 4 September in a thoughtful article (again worth reading in full) which, somewhat surprisingly, sought to redress the balance. Indeed, she gave the impression of having spoken to persons close to Balls:

The wars convulsing the Tories and the Lib Dems are supposedly being mirrored by a struggle between Ed Miliband and his pugnacious shadow chancellor, Ed Balls. The evidence for this stand-off is somewhat slight. Reports that Mr Balls sends messages on his BlackBerry while the leader is addressing shadow cabinet, and that he hogs the floor, are less than incendiary. Mr Balls is indeed an inveterate texter whose meeting room etiquette may leave something to be desired. None of that is new. …  

The shadow chancellor, capable of inspiring both loyalty and loathing, is a textbook villain. To those who do not like or trust him, he remains Gordon Brown’s “kneecapper”. Yet Mr Balls’s insistence that any policy with a cost attached should be cleared with him is indeed imperative, according to allies who point out that the worsening economic situation means that Labour cannot make any new spending promises for after 2015. Minor disgruntlement on some colleagues’ part has, supporters say, been blown up into a baseless storm. Certainly, the two Eds are not re-enacting the Blair/Brown campaign of mutually assured destruction. …  

And yet the rumours are not entirely baseless. Where Blair and Brown could stake out separate fiefdoms, with Mr Brown (or Mr Balls) calling the economic shots, now the economy is all that matters. That leaves the Eds encamped on the same terrain. No one disputes that there are differences. A Balls ally describes the divides as small and bridgeable, but another observer cites “real tensions and problems”. The latest poll lead, down to six per cent, gives little cause for complacency …  

Labour’s attempts to reforge a one-nation Britain will depend on the alignment of Planet Miliband and Planet Balls. That confluence will, in turn, mean determining exactly where power lies. The interests of both Eds, not to mention the party and the country, may rest on just how assertive the leader is prepared to be. Mr Miliband cannot afford the creeping perception, expressed by one insider, that he “is physically and mentally intimidated” by Mr Balls. While both men would dispute that impression, it is now incumbent on them to demonstrate its untruth.

And if we turn to the diaries and memoirs? An insight into life on Planet Balls during the Labour government comes from Alastair Campbell’s Diaries – for those who lack the stamina to reach down all four volumes, the index pages for Volumes 3 and 4 for “Balls, Ed” are shown below (left and right), and the tone of many of the entries is probably enough. One gets the impression of Campbell’s heart sinking whenever Balls came into sight. The entry “has a civilised discussion with AC” was presumably so rare an occurrence as to merit being recorded for posterity!

A broader perspective can be found in the Epilogue in Alistair Darling’s memoir of his time as Gordon Brown’s Chancellor from 2007 to 2010, Back from the Brink:

Perhaps most damaging, for Gordon in particular, but for all of us in the end, was that he surrounded himself with a cadre of people whose preoccupation was the removal of Tony Blair and the installation of Gordon Brown. They had their own reasons, some political, others personal, but blind loyalty meant that Gordon was only told that which he wanted - or could bear - to hear and that meant, ultimately, that he was ill-served. Speaking truth to power never came into it.  

It would be wrong to claim that there was a plot to get rid of Tony Blair; there was no plot. A plot is secret. This was an open campaign, and as far as the Brownite cabal was concerned, you were with them or against them. It was a fairly brutal regime, and many of us fell foul of it. After Gordon became Prime Minister, the cabal sought fresh enemies and as chancellor I quickly found myself in the firing line. Their underhand tactics, particularly the continuous briefings and leaks to the media, were difficult to bear and were also incredibly damaging to the reputation of the party. Tony and Gordon dominated the Labour party for more than ten years and were an overwhelming force for good, but by the end their feud allowed a cancer to grow which, I believe, contributed to our defeat in 2010. The lessons of this crisis have yet to be fully Iearned and the consequences of what happened are still playing out. (pages 322/323)

All of which leads me to conclude that the smoke isn’t concocted and to suspect fire. After all, I can remember people telling me a few decades ago that newspaper stories about the problems between Prince Charles and Princess Diana were invented, and something similar about the early reports of the Blair-Brown feud. In fact, while the reports in the media may not always have been accurate or complete, the underlying sense of the situation in both cases wasn’t too far from what turned out eventually to have been the reality.


ADDENDUM 6 September

Ed Balls was interviewed today for the Independent by Steve Richards and Andrew Grice, and dismissed the subject discussed above as “complete and utter, total garbage”. In more detail:

… There have been reports of seething tensions between the "two Eds" over policy and Balls' apparent rudeness towards Miliband in Shadow Cabinet meetings. His version is expansive and unequivocal.  

"I came back from holiday and discovered while Ed was also on holiday we are having this big dispute. It was more laughable than concerning. I got back on Sunday and we spent an hour and a half together three days running, talking about what we are doing and where we are going and we spent very little time talking about these stories because they are complete and utter, total garbage."  

The Shadow Chancellor dismisses the stories by placing their complex relationship in a much wider context –the now openly-admitted running battle between the two Eds' former bosses Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. "We are two of the people who in the last Government were trying to fix problems with Alastair Campbell and others. We have learnt from all those problems. The reality with me and Ed is that if there's a problem we sort it out between us because we have the sort of relationship where we can sit down in a room and resolve it and that's how it will be. If there's anyone – whether its Conservatives… or any other noises offs who think their briefings can become a self-fulfilling prophecy by inventing this kind of stuff – we will prove them totally and utterly wrong."  

One allegation, that presumably came from within the Shadow Cabinet, is that Balls ostentatiously consults his BlackBerry while Miliband speaks at length to his frontbench team. Balls jokes about the habit and suggests he is by no means the most addicted to the device. "I was the first person who informed the Leader of Opposition during a Shadow Cabinet meeting a year or so ago about the forthcoming Royal Wedding. All of us are a bit guilty of using our BlackBerry but Yvette [Cooper, Balls' wife] said to me: 'Me and Douglas [Alexander, Shadow Foreign Secretary] are far worse than you!' "

Readers might be forgiven for concluding that Balls’ recollection of his relationship with Campbell is as shaky as his wife’s grammar. The article concludes:

Today Miliband and Balls speak at a special conference on economic policy. Balls describes it as one of several "stepping stones" towards the next election, in which they seek to frame and win the "intellectual" as well as the political debate. More Labour policy detail will come next year, as Labour combines Miliband's "responsible capitalism" agenda with the party's traditional goal of redistributing wealth. "We need to look at the rules that govern competition, corporate governance. They need work in a long- term way. But for a route to a fairer society the minimum wage and tax credits are essential."  

Whether the "two Eds" succeed in navigating the "stepping stones" together is one of the biggest questions in British politics. For sure, they are fully aware of the fatal consequences if they fail to do so. ...

ADDENDUM 7 September

The Independent has come back to the subject again today, this time in the form of an opinion piece from its chief political commentator, Steve Richards. Although headed Ed and Ed won't split – they know there's too much at stake and sub-headed There will be no repeat of the Blair/Brown rivalry that still traumatises Labour, what follows is a little more ambivalent by the end:

The relationship between Ed Miliband and Ed Balls is the most important in British politics. David Cameron and George Osborne are in power but their relationship is settled and fully formed. As close friends, they have set their course. The more complex and less harmonious relationship between the two Eds evolves with big strategic and policy decisions still to take. If they can make the partnership work, Labour's chances of winning the next election will be high. If they fail to do so, Labour will lose, irrespective of the Coalition's obvious failings.  

The media tends to frame the present by what has happened in the immediate past. In the case of Miliband and Balls, the temptation to present the duo as a repeat of the Blair/Brown rivalry is proving irresistible, not least because the parallels are obvious. Like Brown, Balls was the more senior figure when the leadership vacancy arose. Like Blair and Brown, the two Eds are two contrasting personalities.  

… Unlike Cameron and Osborne, they are not close. When Miliband left the Treasury for a year in the US, he told friends it was to get a break from Balls as much as from Brown. Not surprisingly, given his experience and range, Balls would at some point like to be leader and Prime Minister. Miliband is nervily aware of this and gets worked up when he reads that Balls is the real leader of the Labour Party. 

So there are the outlines of a potential collapse of a relationship even before an election is won. For their part, Blair and Brown won three. Yet the parallel is too easy and superficial. It does not stand up to closer scrutiny. The differences between the Blair/Brown relationship and the one between the two Eds are far more marked and significant than the similarities. If I were Cameron and Osborne, I would not count on a major split. 

… In terms of ministerial pasts and proximity to power, the two of them are the most experienced leader of the Opposition and shadow Chancellor for decades. Unlike most such duos, they also have a big chance of winning an election after a single term. Given this benevolent context, they will have only themselves to blame if they give fatal ammunition to malevolent internal briefers who only help Cameron and Osborne, the duo who prove that genuine friendship does not guarantee a smooth political ride.

Ed Miliband, the Blairs and the Olympics

A few posts back, I commented wryly on Tony Blair’s looking for a new big job as his 60th birthday looms:

I feel I’ve got something to say. If people want to listen, that’s great, and if they don’t, that’s their choice …

Well, something seems to have turned up. According to the Office of Tony Blair, he addressed the Labour Sports Dinner at White City on 11 July, and said:

… it is an honour to be here tonight to support our Party, whose values and principles I have always believed in and always will. And to support Ed, support his leadership, support his drive to make our Party win. Leaders need support. What they usually get is ‘advice’. So Ed, you don’t need my advice but you will have my support.

The dull-as-ditchwater Ed Miliband website has yet to put up his speech nor did @Ed_Miliband tweet about it, but the Labour Party site pre-announced ‘Ed Miliband MP, speaking at Labour’s Sports Dinner, will say’ including:

Mr Miliband will announce that Labour’s Policy Review will consider how best to learn the lessons from the Olympic Games and maximise both its economic and its sporting legacies. Tony Blair has agreed to contribute his ideas and experience to Labour’s Policy Review on these issues. The work will be co-ordinated by the Office of the Leader of the Opposition, along with input from the Office of Shadow DCMS Secretary Harriet Harman, and Shadow Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell.

Juliette Jowit in the Guardian the next day under the headline, Meet the new Labour adviser: Tony Blair, reported that:

Tony Blair is to take his most active part in the Labour party since retiring from frontline politics, contributing ideas and experience to Ed Miliband's policy review. Blair, who stepped down as prime minister five years ago, will be giving advice on the Olympic legacy and in particular how to "maximise both its economic and its sporting legacies", Miliband said last night.  

… The controversial move – perhaps especially within the Labour party – was announced at a fundraising event when Miliband and Blair symbolically shared a platform to make speeches. Miliband, who was more closely allied to Gordon Brown during the 13 years of Labour government, declared that Blair's help for the party marked a "coming together of the Labour tribe".  

… The joint appearance was organised by Alastair Campbell, Blair's spin doctor for his first six years as PM, the former Labour general secretary Lady McDonagh, and Richard Caborn, sports minister during the successful Olympic bid. Other guests at the event included the former deputy prime minister Lord Prescott.  

… With much of his own party – and the country – still angry about the legacy of Blair's decision to take Britain into the Iraq war, and Labour's clear departure from socialism under his reign, Miliband will be aware that Blair's new role will not be universally welcomed. Last night aides played down Blair's policy position, saying it should not be "over-interpreted". "It's something Tony knows a lot about," said one insider. "He's got the sports foundation and he was instrumental in bringing the Games to London."

Tony Blair's new quartet

Miliband’s motives in getting closer to Blair have since been the subject of some speculation. Followed shortly afterwards by his appearance at the Durham Miners Gala, it could be that Ed is working at sealing over any party fissures with the Blairites on the one hand and the Old Labour union base on the other. After all, the next election may be sooner than 2015. Not surprisingly then, Blair’s re-entry into British politics hasn’t been welcomed warmly by the Tory press. The headlines of Peter Oborne’s article in the Daily Telegraph on 14 July, Tony Blair's back - and he's dangerous for the Tories and Labour, The former prime minister’s rapprochement with Ed Miliband is a coup, but his business interests may come back to haunt the Labour Party, and Paul Scott’s in the Daily Mail two days later, Return of the Perma-tan PM: He's earning £20m a year and gained a taste for deep-sea fishing. But suddenly Tony Blair is courting Labour again - and dreaming of a startling comeback, sum it up without having to read further.

But there is also the issue of who takes the credit and who manages to avoid any blame after the London Olympics. It’s interesting that there are three critical articles (by Nick Cohen, Andrew Gilligan and Charles Moore) in July 14th's Spectator homing in on the deficiencies of the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006, obviously the responsibility of the last Labour government, and on the theme of the Olympic authorities’ and the sponsors’ tastelessness and heavy handedness in protecting their brand interests. Fraser Nelson weighed in again on the Spectator’s Coffee House website, The Battle with the Olympic Censors.  At which point it is only fair to quote the Culture Olympics Media and Sport Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, on BBC1's The Andrew Marr Show on 15 July to the effect that the sponsors are covering half the cost of the games.

Labour will presumably want to get its share of any credit – ‘Blair who won it for London in 2005’ – and Miliband can also deflect any resentment about the ‘corporatist dystopia’ identified by Cohen onto the ancien régime – ‘those Blairites again’. Even better, should people start wondering whether it was such a good idea in the first place for the UK to have hosted the Olympics.

En passant, while “sources” in the Daily Mail and elsewhere can’t always be trusted, the conclusion of Scott’s article slips in something we might hear more of:

Sources close to the family say 28-year-old Euan, Tony and Cherie’s eldest son, has quit his job at the London office of U.S. bankers Morgan Stanley in preparation for his own career in politics. He is said by friends to be keen to find a Labour seat where he can stand as an MP.

Is Blair reaping as he sowed?

A biblical quotation seems appropriate for a man of faith like Tony Blair:

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. Galatians 6:7

but if you are one of those people who think Blair should be indicted as an Iraq war criminal, this post is probably not what you are looking for.

On 2 May 1997, a few days before his 44th birthday, Tony Blair became the youngest Prime Minister since the 42 year old Lord Liverpool in 1812 (a record which passed to David Cameron in 2010). Another record of sorts was also set that day and is still held by Blair’s immediate predecessor, John Major, who had lost the election at the age of 54. Before Major the only Prime Ministers in the 20th century to have left office for good below the age of 60 were Anthony Eden, in 1956 in poor health, and Lloyd George in 1922, both 59. Those of us who were part of Britain’s post-war bulge (ie born between 1946 and 1948 as explained in a previous post) could only look on bewildered in 1997 as power passed from a man older than us (much older in his outlook) to a younger man, born in 1953. In fact the only ‘one of us’ to feature significantly in politics since 1997 has been that great survivor Jack Straw, who was born in August 1946 and was present in all the Blair and Brown cabinets until 2010.

In 1995 Blair famously told his party conference that Britain was “a young country” and on 19 September 1996 published the seemingly now-forgotten New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country. The book certainly doesn’t get a mention in Alastair Campbell’s diaries, but a part of the entry for that exact date is worth noting. Campbell had sat in on an interview in which the subject of Blair’s mother’s sudden death when he was 22 had come up:

I said to him afterwards I’d never realised he was so close to his mum because he had never really opened up like that before, even in private. He said she was a wonderful woman and he still felt guided by her. … He said the thing his mother’s death had given him above all was a sense of urgency, the feeling that life is short, it can be cut even shorter, and you can pack in as much as you can while you’re here, and try to make a difference.

Last week there was a surge of media coverage for Blair, possibly carefully co-ordinated, ostensibly to mark the fifth anniversary of his leaving Downing Street. I’ve already mentioned his 24 June appearance on BBC1’s mid-market The Andrew Marr Show and this was followed three days later by guest editorship of the London Evening Standard (given away free but directed at white collar Londoners) and then on 30 June by a lengthy interview in the up-market FT magazine. The changes in style are quite amusing, from globally-concerned rock star semi-inarticulacy on Marr:

No it's absolutely not true - and, by the way, they did have their point of view. I mean this is why … The notion that cabinet never discussed this issue is absurd. I understand why people disagree over it, but it‟s not a matter of … There is no great … You know they’ve gone over this so many times. There is no great hidden conspiracy about this. It was a decision. Now some people agree with it, some people disagree with it. I think when you look at the Middle East today, I think again in the broad sweep of history people will take rather a different view of it.

to measured senior global statesman-speak for Lionel Barber in the FT:

“The rationale for Europe today is not peace; it is power. The rationale for Europe today is that [we are] in a geopolitical landscape that is rapidly changing, in which even a country the size of Germany, let alone France or the UK or Italy, is a fraction of the size of what are going to be the main geopolitical players. We can’t afford to be left on our own. We need the collective strength to advance individual interests.”

But the message from all three sessions was that Blair wants a big job:

ANDREW MARR: (over) Yes. But in domestic/European terms, another big job in it for you?  

TONY BLAIR: Well you know I‟ve always said I'm a public service person first, so I‟d have been happy carrying on as Prime Minister, I‟d have been happy taking the European job as President of the European Union. But you know if I'm not doing that, I'm going to make a difference in a different way. I think here you know where I can contribute, I will. If people want to listen, that's fine. If they don't, that's also fine.

Sarah Sands (editor of the Evening Standard) wrote:

Blair has said that he would like to do a big job in public life again, but when I try him on a job description, he looks wry, and reminds me that he was prime minister for 10 years: “What I can do is contribute to the debate, whether it is Europe or the Arab Spring or areas to do with economy and public service reform here.”  

Okay, I say. Let’s go for the obvious one. If you were offered another term as prime minister would you take it? “Yes, sure, but it’s not likely to happen is it, so…”

And with the FT's editor in the magazine:

Barber: “So what’s your route back?”  

Blair: “I don’t know exactly.”  

Barber: “But you want it. It’s clearly something that you feel ready [for].”  

Blair: “Yes, I feel I’ve got something to say. If people want to listen, that’s great, and if they don’t, that’s their choice … I would want to emphasise how fast the world around us is changing and how incredibly dangerous it is for us to think we can stand still.”

Well, we’ll see what turns up for him. One suggestion came from Jane Merrick in the Independent on Sunday the next day:

However The IoS understands that one job Mr Blair may be offered is director general of the World Trade Organisation, a post that comes up next year. The current holder, Pascal Lamy, is French and has served two four-year terms, and diplomatic sources have hinted that a British candidate would be in a good position to get the job. Even David Cameron is understood not to be opposed to Mr Blair's possible candidature.

The last sentence probably says it all, and anyway back in March the Guardian thought this was a job for Peter Mandelson.

Sands and Blair at the Evening Standard

Why all this exposure now? As a first guess Blair will be 60 next May and perhaps he takes such milestones seriously. After all, in 2007 he made sure that he stayed PM until 27 June – if he’d gone before 10 June he would have left office younger than Major. Also, there must come a point when the goldmine of prestigious and lucrative appearances as a speaker approaches exhaustion. It’s even possible that his JP Morgan advisory role (£2.5million a year the FT reckons) will come to an end eventually – surely not a contract which expired at 60?

If I sound a bit jaundiced about Blair entering his seventh decade, it’s probably because of the effect that his cult of youth had on the public sector’s attitude towards its older employees. Within a few years of New Labour’s taking office many of the 50-and-overs were getting the message that their faces no longer fitted. Any lingering ambitions for promotion were soon replaced by early retirement being a far more likely prospect. At the same time policy and strategy units were being set up in Downing Street and elsewhere setting the tone with staff whose principal qualification seemed to be that of being younger than Blair. And of course some of the SPADs of that period and type are now sitting on the Shadow front bench.

Subsequently the escalating pension bill has led to substantial increases in the pensionable age across the public sector. And although addressing age discrimination certainly wasn’t a New Labour priority, it eventually came under regulation in 2006 and appeared in the Equality Act 2010. But, if Blair is now feeling that his age is, quite unfairly, catching up with him (bus pass and fuel allowances due in 2013 - if they haven’t been abolished) and doesn’t care much for it, some of us might be forgiven for thinking that he might be reaping a little of what he sowed. But Blair, like Campbell, lives in an irony-free zone.

UPDATE 24 JULY

Tony Blair was interviewed for the Daily Telegraph on 24 July by Charles Moore. Moore explains that:

The Westminster Faith Debates, chaired by his former home secretary Charles Clarke, will close with a conversation tonight between Mr Blair, the Archbishop of Canterbury and me. The subject is religion and society.

and most of the interview has a religious theme, although Blair seems readier to talk about religions than his own Roman Catholic beliefs. Moore concluded with:

It has been a lively conversation, but I detect in him something like Britain’s famous problem of having lost an empire, but not yet found a role.  

At 59, he’s still young for a man in his position. He has been out of the game for five years, and now, you can see, he wants to get back in. ''Since I left office, I have learnt a huge amount, especially about what is happening in Europe and the world. Sometimes it’s quite shocking to me: how useful would this knowledge have been!’’  

He thinks, I suspect, that he’d be a better prime minister now than he was before. ''I’d like to find a form of intervening in debates.’’ How? By getting elected again? ''I don’t think that’s possible.’’ A peerage? A wonderful look of amused contempt suffuses his tanned face. Something in Europe, perhaps? ''I would have taken the job [the presidency of the European Council] if they had offered it to me, but they didn’t.’’  

Europe, he says, is ''opening up’’. I thought it was closing down, I say. Tony Blair grins. ''Well, what is happening now is not sustainable.” There are ''big, big questions here, involving the political reconstruction of Europe. The single currency will break up unless we stop it.’’ And on that exciting note, the man who would like the job is gone.

UPDATE 30 JULY

In the Guardian on 27 July Simon Jenkins took a very dim view of the possibility of Tony Blair’s reentry to British political life. He also referenced an interview that Blair gave to CNN's Christiane Amanpour on 17 July which includes the following:

AMANPOUR: Is there more public office in view for Tony Blair? Everybody’s talking about how you’re positioning yourself to make a comeback.
BLAIR: I’m not really. It’s just that people ask you the question in a way that says, you know, rule it out, and I kind of think, well, why should I? But that’s not the same as planning to do it. You know what I mean? So I - I’m a public service person. You know, I would have liked staying as prime minister. I would have taken the European job had it been offered me. So that’s my preference. But I’m also enjoying the life I’ve got and doing lots of things and you know, I kind of let the future take care of itself.
AMANPOUR: You didn’t want to step down?
BLAIR: It was - you know, it became very difficult for me to stay, other than a lot of damage to my party, but also probably to my country. So I decided to go. And I’d done it ten years, you know, it’s a long time.
AMANPOUR: Sounds like you’re keeping the door open, though.
BLAIR: It's literally - I mean, maybe I should just shut it, but I just kind of think, “Why?” I mean, you know, the - so, look, I've still got plenty of ideas and energy. But I can't see anything happening on the horizon. I'm not planning or plotting or scheming.

Tony Blair on The Marr Show

BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show this morning included an interview with Tony Blair who had left office as Prime Minister almost five years ago (27 June 2007). It is worth watching (42 minutes in):

to hear his views on the euro crisis and its implications for the UK. He was also asked about the Independent on Sunday’s splash ‘How Blair misled Cabinet on Iraq’.  Subsequently a BBC news webpage covered both topics, stating on the latter:

The former PM also said there was nothing new in the suggestion, in Sunday's Independent, that he had stopped the attorney general telling the cabinet the full detail of the legal concerns ahead of the Iraq war in 2003.  

"No, it's absolutely not true... the notion that Cabinet never discussed this issue is absurd... there is no great hidden conspiracy about this, it was a decision (to go to war). Now some people agree with it, some people disagree with it," he said.

The IoS had based its story on the latest (4th) volume of Alastair Campbell’s diaries, much to the latter’s irritation - according to his blog:

I went into rebuttal mode with reporter Jane Merrick on twitter, pointing out that the text she quoted did not remotely justify the headline.

Marr had started the programme by introducing his paper reviewers, Dambisa Moyo and Mary Anne Sieghart (right below):

followed by a glimpse of Blair about 30 seconds later:

This was an intriguing conjunction for fans of Campbell’s diaries because, on 21 April 1977 (Volume 1), he had entered:

We left for Bury and Bolton and had the creepy Mary Anne Sieghart on the bus, who gave TB a card from her daughter to CB’s annoyance. [*]

followed on 30 April by:

Mary Anne Sieghart had taken to bringing her daughter to the press conferences and she was trying to ask a question. GB ignored her though the two of them [Blair and Brown presumably] went over to talk to her afterwards.

Blair took office on 2 May 1997 (at which point Volume 2 of the diaries starts), and on 9 June Campbell recorded:

I went to [Rupert] Murdoch’s [Head of News Corps] do. There were a few ministers – GB, Nick Brown, Frank Field, DB. JP didn’t want to go. CB was clearly giving the cold shoulder to Mary Anne Sieghart [Times].

Subsequent mentions of Sieghart are merely incidental in this volume and Volume 3. However, in the latest we read that, on 4 October 2002, Campbell

… got a message from Cedric that Charles Reiss [Evening Standard] was picking up a line from Mary Anne Sieghart's [Times] column that GB was ‘insanely jealous’ of TB. TB wanted us to put out a very pro-GB line and make clear he would never sanction such a statement being made. But it was worrying, given he had said those very words, and I wondered to whom as well as to me.

So do we, Alastair, so do we.

By the way it was Sieghart who selected the IoS story for discussion during The Marr Show paper review.

*For normal people: TB = Tony Blair, CB = Cherie Blair; GB = Gordon Brown; and also JP = John Prescott, DB = David Blunkett.

Replacing Glenda

After the 2010 election, the Westminster MP with the smallest majority was Sinn Fein’s Michelle Gildernew, member for Fermanagh & S Tyrone, who had two more votes than the Social Democratic and Labour candidate. On the mainland, the smallest majority was in London's Hampstead and Kilburn where the results were:

Glenda Jackson was well-known as an actress from the 1960s to the 1990s when she entered politics. In June this year she announced (not as yet on her website) that she will stand down at the next election – in 2015 she will be 79. On 22 July Richard Kay had a story in the Daily Mail, ‘Will Fiona Millar be MP for Labour's luvvieland?’.  Ms Millar is the partner of Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former Director of Communications and Strategy, who has previously been the subject of posts here.

Mother-of-three Fiona, 53 … is in line to replace the double Oscar-winning actress Glenda Jackson as Labour’s next candidate for the Hampstead and Kilburn constituency. And unlike Glenda … Fiona has the happy distinction of already living close to hand. The fashionable North London constituency, which is home to dozens of rich Labour luvvies, is the second most marginal seat in the country.
…
One figure key to Ms Millar’s ambitions is Melissa Benn, feminist daughter of veteran Left-wing firebrand Tony and the woman who is expected to run Fiona’s election campaign when Glenda retires in four years’ time. The two women share a passion for education — they are in favour of comprehensives and against academies, grammar and public schools. A one-time journalist, Ms Millar founded the Local Schools Network to promote state education and is said to have cold-shouldered friends who have sent their children to be educated privately.

Shortly afterwards, Ms Millar told a local newspaper that “I haven’t got any plans to stand”, a well-known form of words for a non-denial, not being equivalent to “I will never stand”. But this was understandable, given that the Boundary Commission for England had embarked on its 2013 review.  This review is intended to produce parliamentary constituencies with no more than 5% below or above 76641 electors (based on the December 2010 registers) and will lead to a reduction from 533 to 502 constituencies in England. The Commission has now produced its initial proposals under which London would lose five of its current 73 constituencies, with only four being unaffected. The proposals include:

45. In Camden, we noted that the existing Hampstead and Kilburn constituency, which contains wards from the boroughs of both Brent and Camden, had an electorate within 5% of the electoral quota. However, with the inclusion of the Fortune Green ward in the Finchley and Golders Green constituency, it was necessary to alter the Hampstead and Kilburn constituency. We propose that it should contain only two Brent wards (Kilburn and Queens Park) and eight wards from Camden, including three (Gospel Oak, Highgate, and Kentish Town) from the existing Holborn and St Pancras constituency. The seven remaining Camden wards, including one (Belsize) from the existing Hampstead and Kilburn constituency, form a Camden and Regent’s Park constituency, together with four wards from the north east of Westminster.

Some heroic number-crunching by the Guardian Datastore has attempted to analyse the impact of the changes, with the caveat that their work is “Based on a crude analysis of the composition of the new constituencies, using the 2010 election results in old ones. Assumes uniform vote across old constituencies”.

This analysis seems to suggest that Hampstead and Kilburn would become a less marginal Labour seat in future, and that for a Labour candidate adoption would be a prize worth having. Apart from those lucky enough to have London seats, most Labour MPs have to travel some distance to their constituencies which tend to be concentrated in South Wales, North East and North West England and Scotland.

However, even if at the next election Ms Millar were elected in Hampstead and Kilburn, her victory might be Pyrrhic. If the boundary changes are implemented, Labour will need a bigger lead over the Conservatives than in the past to form a government (UK Polling Report assessment). However, as Daniel Finkelstein pointed out in The Times (£) on 14 September:

One way in which this [fewer seats, especially safe ones] all might play itself out is simply that MPs band together to prevent the new boundaries being put in place. There are serious figures in Downing Street who think that the review will never be implemented because it is too radical.

Even assuming that there is a Labour government in 2015, Ms Millar may face another problem in recasting the educational system to be more comprehensive. This would be the consequence of another Commission, one to address the ‘West Lothian question’. As the FT reported on 9 September:

Ministers are to ask a commission of independent experts to address one of the toughest questions thrown up by devolution: should Scottish, Northern Irish and Welsh MPs be allowed to vote on legislation that affects only England?
The so-called “West Lothian Question” – named after the constituency of Tam Dalyell, the former Labour MP who first raised the issue – has led to growing calls for “English votes for English laws”, since Scotland and Wales were granted devolution in the late 1990s.
English MPs are not allowed to vote on many matters that are now devolved to other UK assemblies and there has been a long-running debate on whether equivalent restrictions should apply to Scottish and Welsh MPs.

Education and health are the two major devolved issues. If Labour MPs from Wales and Scotland were to cease to vote on English educational matters, a Labour government might well not have enough English MPs to carry votes on major changes such as placing academies and free schools under local education authority control.

Before becoming an MP, Ms Millar would have to be selected as prospective candidate. Her partner is not exactly popular in, to use Richard Kay’s words, the ‘fashionable North London constituency, which is home to dozens of rich Labour luvvies’. One elite Hampstead resident’s views of Campbell might not be unrepresentative:

"a Burnley-crazed apparatchik churning out propaganda for a dead political regime – one whose own name is a byword for bullying and mendacity"

So said playwright Sir David Hare, according to the Sunday Times (£) in 2008, after Campbell had referred in his diaries to Tony Blair “looking like a prat” in a Nicole Farhi sweater. Nicole Farhi is Lady Hare – of course, the Hares may or may not be Labour party members with a say in the choice of candidate.

Ms Millar might, in the end, look for adoption in the other Camden constituency, Holborn and St Pancras, currently held by Frank Dobson, who will be 75 in 2015, or, if the boundary changes are implemented, in the new Islington North constituency. Both are safe Labour seats according to Guardian Datastore:

Meanwhile, if David Cameron manages to pull off both the boundary changes and the removal of Welsh and Scottish MPs from English parliamentary business, he will probably have done more for the Conservative party’s influence than any of his predecessors since Joseph Chamberlain.

ADDENDUM 18 SEPTEMBER

The above may have underestimated David Cameron. According to the Guardian on 15 September, a government white paper published in the summer is proposing the introduction before the 2015 election of individual electoral registration rather than household registration.

The policy has been described by Jenny Russell, the chair of the electoral commission, as the biggest change to voting since the introduction of the universal franchise. … Russell warned: "It is logical to suggest that those that do not vote in elections will not see the point of registering to vote and it is possible that the register may therefore go from a 90%completeness that we currently have to 60-65%."
…
Tristam Hunt, a Labour [political and constitutional reform select] committee member, said: "These plans show how little this government really cares about democracy or fairness. If they get away with it, the effect on the 2020 general election will make the chaotic boundary review published this week look minor. This is designed to wipe the poor and the young off the political map. "We are moving from a notion of registering as part as a civic duty to something akin to personal choice like a Nectar card or BA miles."
…
Roger Mortimore from pollsters Ipsos Mori warned: "It is a very dramatic change and I am opposed to it. So far there is a political effect, it is most likely to disadvantage Labour", because "people that are least engaged in politics — the poor, the young and the ethnic minorities and all those groups, when they do vote at all are more likely to vote Labour".