Category: Political Spin
Conservatives promise to keep a tighter rein on political spin doctors
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Will the fall-out from the scandal over MPs’ expenses – and the probable election of a Conservative government – lead to a clean-up in the spin culture of Downing Street and Whitehall? Greater transparency has become the mantra across the public sector and the government’s spin machine is unlikely to escape unscathed. Change is already afoot. John Bercow, the new Speaker, has promised that he intends to curb the advance trailing of ministerial statements so as to ensure that announcements are made first to the House of Commons. Simon Lewis, the Prime Minister’s newly appointed director of communications, says his aim is to apply to the government’s information service the greater transparency which the commercial sector has been forced to adopt as a result of tighter rules on corporate governance. An even greater shift towards openness and accountability could follow the election of a Conservative government because David Cameron and George Osborne are planning to implement a significant reduction in the number of politically-appointed special advisers. Under their proposals, spin doctors who are appointed by the party and who do media work for political advantage would be confined to Downing Street; cabinet ministers would no longer have their own personal publicists. If the Conservatives actually implemented this policy – and there has to be a big “If” attached to the story – it could cut the number of special advisers by a third, bringing the total down from seventy to around fifty. By eliminating twenty or so ministerial spin doctors – and by ensuring that the remaining special advisers concentrate on giving policy advice rather than engage in a briefing war with their colleagues -- Cameron and Osborne would be returning to the kind of regime which applied under Margaret Thatcher and then John Major. It was Tony Blair who in 1997 agreed to double – and then nearly treble – the number of special advisers because of Alastair Campbell’s belief that each minister needed a personal spin doctor if the government was to have any chance of getting its message across to the public. But the Labour government has paid a heavy price by giving free rein to politically-motivated spin doctors. Their abuse of their role as temporary civil servants has brought shame on the party. The mention of three names – Charlie Whelan, Jo Moore and Damian McBride – should suffice to make the point. Whelan departed after being suspected of undermining Peter Mandelson; Ms Moore plumbed new depths even for Labour’s spinners by suggesting 9/11 was a good day to bury bad news; and McBride blackened the good name of the Prime Minister after he was caught on a No.10 computer writing emails intended to smear the Leader of the Opposition and the Shadow Chancellor. What has proved just as damaging has been the way in which the rival teams of spin doctors under Blair and Brown were allowed – perhaps even encouraged -- to perpetuate years of feuding between the Treasury and Downing Street, infighting which has continued to this day as Blairite and Brownite spinners brief against each other and fuel stories of splits and leadership challenges. Cameron and Osborn are suggesting that under a Conservative administration their teams of party spin doctors should be corralled together in No.10 and No.11 (Guardian, 3.7.2009) so as to prevent a repetition of the emergence of rival power bases in Downing Street and the Treasury. While this offers no guarantee of less spinning, it would make it easier for the Conservatives to enforce the “line to take” and reduce the freelance operations which have so often backfired and damaged the government. Special advisers attached to ministers currently play a central role in trailing announcements; they advise ministers which news outlets (and often which political correspondents) should be briefed exclusively and on an off-the-record basis about the content and scope of forthcoming statements. It is this practice of trailing announcements in advance – to meet Campbell’s edict that government departments must grab the agenda – which has become institutionalised within Whitehall and which has done so much to undermine parliamentary accountability. Another consequence of allowing party spin doctors to effectively politicise the flow of news and data from Whitehall departments is that it has undermined the independence and effectiveness of the government’s information service – a failing which Simon Lewis intends to address. Brave words have been spoken before about the need to end the culture of spin – an undertaking Brown gave himself in the summer of 2007 – and in all probability Cameron and Osborne will become so desperate to influence the news agenda that they too will fall back on spin and the dark arts of media manipulation. Speaker John Bercow will play a central role. Will he have the courage and determination to call errant ministers to account? Speaker Betty Boothroyd forced six ministers to apologise to MPs after she caught them leaking in advance statements should have been made first to the House of Commons. (Speech by Nicholas Jones to communication students at Leeds Trinity and All Saints University, 7.7.2009)