In the campaign of 1987, however, e

In the campaign of 1987, however, even a vastly improved structure of
internal communication management could not prevent Labour’s defence
policy from once again upsetting the strategy. We have already referred to
Kinnock’s disastrous interview with David Frost. In 1987, as in 1983, senior
leaders’ confusion about, and apparent lack of commitment to, the party’s
non-nuclear defence policy greatly weakened the campaign overall. Despite
the efforts of Mandelson, Gould, Hewitt and the SCA ‘it was hopeless to
imagine that the party could successfully campaign on a non-nuclear policy,
when the policy itself was internally inconsistent, and self-evidently evasive’
(ibid., p. 16).
The work of the Shadow Communications Agency carried on to the 1992
election, when it was suggested that the party should ‘deal with Mr Kinnock’s
image problem by giving a higher profile to attractive and able front-benchers.
He should be protected from hazards, particularly from contact with the
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tabloids, and should appear in as many statesman-like settings as possible’
(ibid., p. 88). Thus, he was seen touring the country in a distinguished, ‘prime
ministerial’ car, flanked by police outriders, and carrying himself with the
bearing of one confidently on the verge of real political power. Slick, photogenic
front-bench spokespersons like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were preferred
in public campaigning work to the more radical voices of John Prescott, Tony
Benn and Ken Livingstone.
Such tactics were again insufficient, however, to deliver electoral success.
Labour improved its position by comparison with the results of the 1987
election, but failed once more to deprive the Conservatives of an overall
majority. In the aftermath of a fourth consecutive general election defeat, an
internal debate began within the party which echoed earlier ambiguities
about the value of political marketing. Once again, senior Labour voices
could be heard decrying the pernicious influence of the image-makers and
asserting that Labour should dispense with them, or at least downgrade their
role in campaigning. The SCA was accused of robbing the party of its
socialist identity, in favour of red roses and gloss.
Despite such criticisms, however, the election of Tony Blair as leader in
July 1994 signalled the ascendancy of Labour’s image-managers: those like
Patricia Hewitt, Peter Mandelson and others who believed that a Labour
victory was conditional on ‘moving from a policy committee based process
to a communication based exercise’ (Heffernan and Marqusee, 1992, p.
103). The astonishing, and unpredicted landslide election victory of May
1997 vindicated that approach, which inevitably followed New Labour into
government. Professional communicators like Mandelson, Alistair Campbell
and Charlie Whelan were key players in the first Labour term, often commanding more media attention than the politicians who were ostensibly their
masters.
As ‘the people who live in the dark’ moved into the media spotlight,
however, political public relations, and spin in particular, became a victim of
what I have called elsewhere ‘demonisation’ by journalists (McNair, 2004),
its techniques and practitioners almost universally reviled. In the most blatant
example of ‘spinning out of control’, a media adviser in the government’s
transport department, Jo Moore, was caught out when, on 11 September
2001, she sent an internal e-mail suggesting that this would be ‘a good day to
bury bad news’. She survived that incident but was removed from her post a
few months later after another PR gaffe, as was her minister in charge,
Stephen Byers. In September 2002 the Sunday Times reported the ‘dirty tricks’
activities of New Labour’s so-called Attack Unit, which varied from simple
rebuttals of perceived smears against the party and its leadership to compiling
dossiers on opponents and leaking negative details from them to the media.
As a result of such stories, coverage of which was increasingly dominating the
political news agenda in the first half of Blair’s second term, his government
was required to trim some of the excesses of its communication apparatus and
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be more discrete in its use of media management and political communication
techniques.
Following the furore caused by the Jo Moore e-mail the government set
up an independent review of the government communications apparatus,
chaired by former broadcasting executive Bob Phillis. Interest in the Phillis
review’s work was heightened in the wake of the Andrew Gilligan affair,
which began in May 2003. BBC reporter Gilligan had alleged on Radio 4’s
Todayprogramme that, according to his anonymous source, the government
had ‘sexed up’ a dossier on the threat posed by Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction, in order to ease the way for war on Saddam Hussein. In the
ensuing clash between the government and the BBC, allegations of excessive
government spin by the prime minister’s Director of communication Alistair
Campbell and others, extending to the deliberate misleading of public and
parliamentary opinion, were set against suggestions that Gilligan and the
BBC had got their story wrong. A bitter dispute followed, in the course of
which Gilligan’s source, government scientist David Kelly, committed
suicide, throwing the spotlight on the machinations and manipulations of the
government communications apparatus as well as the BBC’s structures of
editorial management.
In order to defuse the growing scandal the government set up the Hutton
inquiry into the circumstances surrounding Kelly’s death, which reported in
January 2004 with findings critical of the BBC, and widely read as letting the
government off the hook.
10
Alistair Campbell had in any case resigned in
August 2003, citing family reasons. This was seen in some quarters as an
acknowledgement that under Campbell’s direction, government communications had become the problem rather than the solution, and that it was time
for a different style. Campbell was replaced as the government’s communication Director by a much lower-profile figure, who subsequently avoided the
kinds of controversies which accompanied Campbell from 1994 to 2003.
Phillis’ interim report was published in August 2003, and confirmed the
widespread unease expressed by journalists, politicians and members of the
voting public as they viewed the development of government communications under New Labour. Citing research indicating a breakdown in trust
between politicians, media and public, Phillis argued that both politicians
and the media had to rethink their approach to political communication. In
the case of the latter, ‘the response to a rigorous and pro-active news management strategy has been to match claim and counter-claim in a challenging
and adversarial way, making it difficult for any accurate communication of
real achievement to pass unchallenged’.
11
Echoing the criticisms of ‘hyperadversarial’ journalism coming from other quarters (Fallows, 1996) Phillis
urged the media ‘to recognise that their attitude and behaviour is a vital part
of the process’.
To the government, Phillis recommended greater clarity in the roles of
communication officials, and more transparency in the procedures governing
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141
their work. He advocated a ‘pan-media’ approach to information dissemination, with less emphasis on broadcasting. To depoliticise government
communication Phillis recommended the creation of a new Permanent
Secretary for Government Communications, who as a civil servant would
not be seen as a political appointee of the prime minister. He also recommended the creation of a Government Communications Network in order
to strengthen and co-ordinate information structures within Whitehall.
Phillis delivered his final report to Tony Blair in January 2004, who accepted
most of its recommendations, after which substantial reform of the
government communications system was enacted.
12
Since Gilligan, Hutton
and the publication of the Phillis report, although spin has continued to be
a theme of political journalism in the UK, it has receded in importance as a
narrative framework for understanding political events and their presentation. Spin is not dead, but it has lost much of its visibility. New Labour’s
2005 and 2010 election campaigns accordingly emphasised delivery over
spin and substance over style.
After the resignation of Blair as prime minister in 2007 Alistair Campbell
published his diaries (The Blair Years, 2007), providing a rich source of data
for political communication scholars on the inner workings of the New
Labour PR machine. A further volume of unexpurgated material from the
diaries was published as The Alistair Campbell Diaries: volume one in 2010,
a month after Labour’s defeat in the general election.