Example Politics Essay

The upcoming general election campaign for May 5^th promises to be somewhat more interesting than the campaign in 2001.

There are certainly more controversial issues at stake, such as the Iraq war and immigration. But more significantly perhaps Labour has now been in power for eight years and cannot so easily blameany failings, of the public services or in other areas, on the las tConservative government. The widespread perception during the last campaign that the electorate were willing to give New Labour another four or five yearsto prove itself, especially since the Conservatives were still quarrelling amongst themselves about Europe and the crushing defeat in 97, has completely dissipated. However, arguably for this very reason the 2005 British general election campaign also promises to be amongst the most bitterly fought and negative campaigns in British political history.

In the following analysis I shall argue that the 2005 election campaign is living up to this promise. Thus far, it has been dominated by each party taking aim at eachother, rather than a contest between competing visions of a better world. Firstly, I will point out some general reasons why the major political partiesin Britain might be more likely to adopt negative campaign strategies than inprevious general elections. Then I will consider in more detail the present campaigns of the Labour and Conservative parties and how they have presentedthe issues in a predominately negative rather than positive manner. I will concentrate on thecampaigns of the Labour and Conservative parties since they have so far dominated the overall campaign and the interplay between the two parties best illustrates what I shall claim is its largely negative character.

British election campaigns: some structural tendencies and recent trends.

Governments of all descriptions tend to become unpopular after a prolonged period in office, particularly in Britain. This is arguably because British governments tend to receive more blame for many of the countries ills.In this respect governmental power in Britain can be something of a poisoned chalice. Whilst the British constitution offers governments with a majority inthe House of Commons a greater degree of power than in other democracies, this also means that they take a greater share of responsibility for the countries failings. In 2001 Labour could absolve itself of much of the blame forcontinuing inadequacies in the public services, but after eight years of Labour rule they cannot.On the one hand then the Conservatives have much more scope for attacking Labour whilst Labour have more need to attack the Conservatives. This is not an unusual scenario in British politics however, which is known to be especially adversarial. Partly for the reasons outlined above, partly because it has afirst past the post electoral system in which the winner takes all, and partly because it is a predominately two party system the conduct and style of British politics tends to be adversarial in character and therefore arguably prone tonegative campaigning.In this respect it is similar although not as extreme as the United States presidential elections, which also employ a first past the post winner takes all electoral system.

But perhaps the single most significant effect upon the conduct and style of British generalelection campaigns over the past few decades has been the increased importance of the media. The political parties now have to adapt their campaigns to theway in which political issues are treated by the mainstream media. This is not only because more voters than ever before have access to a greater variety ofmedia, and that more voters 'consume' this media. It is also because the mainpolitical parties cannot any more rely on a large guaranteed pool of votersthat normally remain loyal to their parties, as was the case during thepost-war consensus. Thus, if there are more floating voters then electioncampaigns are more likely to swing on issues at the time, which are chieflyinterpreted by voters through the mainstream media of television and masscirculation newspapers. But why does this mean that election campaigns shouldbe more negative? Perhaps this is because television and mass circulationnewspapers are entertainment driven and are therefore more likely to givegreater coverage to sensational, dramatic stories in order to maintain readerand viewing figures. In other words, a story about the personal history of aMinister might gain more coverage than a new policy announcement.

The campaign strategies

Labour's maincampaign slogan was unveiled explicitly to the public during their springconference on 11^th- 13^th February 2005, particularlyduring Blair's speech. For whilst he didn't name the day he warned the partyfaithful that there could be no complacency in their effort 'go out and earnevery vote, every seat . . .'He told them that their message should be 'forwards not back'. In a key passageduring the speech Blair made clear what their overriding aim should be to trywin back lost support. He said: Because now they are thinking, reflecting - dowe go forward with Labour, or back to the Tories. Our task is to persuade themto go forward. To vote for us not as a rejection of others but as anendorsement of what we are trying to do for the country.'

The Labour campaign strategy then, certainly as it ispresented to the public, is the opposite of the Conservative strategy, whichaccording to Blair in this speech is to 'spread cynicism'. In other wordsLabour's approach is to offer a vision of a way forward, to adopt a positive campaign.But is this really their main strategy? Does the Labour leadership reallybelieve that the best way to prevent voters from turning back to theConservative's is to offer them a positive vision of the way forward? Or is itmore fundamentally to make the electorate fear the return of the Conservativeparty? It is very difficult to provide conclusive empirical evidence one way orthe other in answer to these questions, certainly at this stage in thecampaign. However, since there are many issues at this election that votersappear to feel strongly about, such as immigration, crime, the NHS and Iraq isit really plausible that Labour could persuade those voters that there is aprogressive way forward with Labour? Are voters likely to shift from thinking thatLabour is failing or hasn't delivered to thinking that Labour actually has aprogressive programme for the future? Or are they more likely to shift fromtheir disenchantment about Labour to thinking that the Conservative's might beworse - that the Conservatives might either exacerbate failings or bring newones? Surely the latter shift is more likely.

Some recognitionof this seems to have been made by the appointment of Zack Exley otherwiseknown in the United States as the 'garbage man', as a campaign advisor.Exley is notorious in the U.S for his use of negative campaigning tactics,especially for his website called 'move on' which famously showed fakephotographs of George Bush smoking a joint. Furthermore there has been somespeculation that the recent exposure of the Conservative party deputy ChairmanHoward Flight's private remark that the Tories proposed 35 billion pound cut inpublic spending compared to Labour was only a hint towards much bigger cuts ifthey were elected, was the result of Labour dirty tactics.It has been suggested that is, that the exposure was the result of a Labourmole. It is of course not surprising that Labour have made considerable play onthe exposure and the consequent sacking of Flight over the Easter weekend.

However,the Conservative party can hardly been characterised as innocent in comparison.They have employed a campaign strategist from Australia called Lynton Crosby.Like Exley, Crosby is well known in his homeland for negative campaigningtechniques. 'Whether it is fears of asylum seekers, high taxation orunemployment, Mr Crosby . . . finely tunes his research to pinpoint the issuesthat can turn votes. Typically, media teams will work 24 hours a day analysingthe results of polling and voters will be addressed the same day with directmailshots on the issues ahead.' Therecan be little doubt that Crosby is behind the recent Conservative postercampaign, which cleverly displays different statements in handwritinghighlighting popular dissatisfactions. The conservative party emblem is notvery prominent so that readers simply read the message and presumably triggeranti-government thoughts.

Overall it can be said that the Conservative partycampaign lacks any guiding thread or vision except that it is anti-Labour. Ofcourse the issues are dealt with in a manner akin to neo-Thatcherite ideologybut this is rarely spelled out as explicitly as it was during Thatcher'sleadership or even during the terms of Hague and Ian Duncan Smith. By contrastMichael Howard's campaign, as one journalist recently noted, is just 'savagelypopulist'.

The Economy

To be sure, a successful campaign usually needs to bewaged against the background of relative economic prosperity or at leasteconomic growth. The fact that Britain continues to sustain a relatively highlevel of economic growth compared to other European countries with low levelsof inflation and unemployment should surely be the bedrock of Labours campaign.Indeed, there is much that Labour could build on here in terms of offering aprogressive positive alternative to the Tories. The problem is however, that toemphasise the economy too much would be to give too much credit to GordonBrown. The tensions between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair in recent years havebeen well documented and there is little evidence so far that Labour's campaignwill rely heavily on the economy. There are a number of other factors that givecredence to this point. Firstly, Alan Milburn, a devout Blair loyalist and foeof Gordon Brown is in charge of Labour's election strategy.It is arguably Milburn that has been responsible for the slogan forwards notback which as I indicated earlier is just as dependent upon exposing theconservatives as it is upon offering an alternative vision. Secondly, GordonBrown has thus far not figured a great deal. This, curiously, is despitepolling evidence that he is Labour's biggest asset and is more popular thanTony Blair.

The Conservatives by contrast have a much more explicitlynegative campaign on the economy. Since they cannot really fault Labour on theunderlying economic figures, such as inflation and economic growth, they canand have attacked the prospects for the future as being uncertain. In reply toBrown's speech Howard claimed that voters would 'vote now and pay later' forBrown's budget.In other words voters would have to pay later in higher taxes for the 168 billionpounds that the Chancellor intends to borrow over the next eight years.And they would not receive much improvement in public services either, as muchof this money is being spent on what he called 'waste', which the Tories aim tocut, by some 35 billion of course.

Public services

In that speech Howardgoes on to lay down a challenge to labour that wasteful spending andinefficiency in Britain's public services would be the key battleground in theforthcoming election. In this regard Howard has presumably learnt the lessonfrom Hague's campaign in 2001, which was accused of placing too much emphasison Europe and crime and not enough on public services, which is what theelectorate most cared about. But is the reduction of wasteful spending really acoherent positive policy for a future Conservative government. Historically,incoming governments, even Thatcher's, have found it very difficult to fulfilpromises of cutting back on regulation, bureaucracy and over-spending and infact have normally spent more than the previous government.

To be sure theConservative campaign does not just emphasise waste. It has also specificallytargeted particular public services, like the NHS, education and childcare. Butapart from attempting to be one step ahead of Labour on childcare provisions byoffering more maternity leave or larger childcare subsidies, its campaign hasbeen pretty negative. Their current poster campaign that simply states 'Howhard is it to keep a hospital clean', is a good example.

The improvementof public services is the territory upon which Labour are traditionally moreconfident than the Tories. It is moreover the territory upon which Labourshould surely be offering its 'way forward'. In his speech at the springconference Tony Blair offered the electorate a set of pledges many of whichentailed the improvement of public services. However, as the election becomesever closer the most high profile intervention on this issue has been Labour'sexposure of 35 billion pounds of cuts in public spending that it said wouldtake place under a Conservative government, thus meaning a reduction in thestandards of public services. Actually however this exposure initially servedto further highlight Labour's own negative approach because the media has beenmore dismissive of the evidence upon which this claim is based than it hasabout the disturbing nature of the Conservative proposals.

Immigration

By contrastimmigration is certainly not an issue that the Labour party has been especiallystrong on. Even though during the last election they were successfully able toportray the Conservatives as extreme right wing partly because of their policyon immigration, they are probably stepping on dangerous ground if they attemptto do the same in this election. Not only has immigration been a hot issueduring the campaign so far, it has been an issue articulated largely by thosewho believe there should stricter limits on immigration. Moreover, even thoughasylum applications have gone down in the past year Labour cannot too loudlyproclaim this as an achievement since it could be argued that most voters viewson immigration do not take figures into account.Government immigration figures are either might not be believed because theydisguise illegal immigration or might be ignored because voter'sdissatisfaction on Labour's record on immigration is often based on everydayperception. There is possibly little ground that Labour can win on this issueother than labelling the Tories as 'opportunists'.

Not so for theTories of course, for whom immigration already has been, and promises to be, aprofitable issue. There is little doubt that the Tories intend to make much ofthe immigration issue. And there can be no greater evidence of this that on theMonday after the weekend of the Flight affair the Tories announced a new policyproposal on immigration, namely to create a new border police to fight illegalimmigration.And their poster campaign highlights how bold they are willing to be aboutimmigration. It says, simply: Its not racist to impose limits onimmigration.' This statement is indeed backed up by concrete proposals tolimit immigration, for example the proposed withdrawal of Britain from the 1951Geneva Convention and holding asylum seekers outside the country. But can theseproposals really be used as an example of a positive campaign strategy? To aconsiderable extent this depends upon whether you agree with the Tories onimmigration. However, it is surely the case that the issue of immigration playson people's fears of the other and so is therefore arguably negative. Indeed,it could be said that this strategy has been deployed in the Tories efforts tohighlight the problem of Gypsy settlement sites. They have proposed tough newlegislation to impose firmer regulations on where Gypsies can and cannotsettle.

Iraq

Equally as important as immigration in the 2005 election campaign isand is likely to be, Britain's role in the Iraq war. Much of the existingantipathy towards Tony Blair and New Labour is centred on the Iraq war. And even though Labour may notlose much ground to the Conservatives on this issue, as the Conservatives alsosupported the war, there is still much capital for the Tories in raising thequestion of weapons of mass destruction. For though Howard supported the war heis probably opportunist enough and clever enough to distinguish the war itselffrom Blair's presentation to the public of ungrounded evidence on weapons ofmass destruction. And whilst this tactic may not bring Tory support on its ownit will certainly help to spread further doubt about the trustworthiness ofBlair and New Labour. That is, it will help to stimulate the sense that theLabour party is a party of spin and deceit. Indeed, Howard has alreadytaken the opportunity to make references to Labour's untrustworthiness asjustified by Blair's false presentation of the threat posed by Iraq. Infact he did so on the perhaps unlikely, but high profile occasion of his replyto Gordon Brown's budget.

By contrast Blair's best hope on the issue of Iraq might be to makeit into a question of leadership and personality between himself and Howard.Rather than focusing on the government's achievement in bringing an end to theregime of Saddam Hussein, Blair's effort to put his own personality andleadership credentials as a key electoral strategy/issue is evidenced by hiswillingness to confront the electorate head on in televised question an answersessions.This has been a tried and trusted method of Blair's in the past two electioncampaigns but one would surely find it understandable were he to avoid such astrategy this time round. But if Blair believes that his own personality incontrast to Howard, will be his chief electoral asset then this would surely bethe final nail in the coffin on his own declared strategy to look forwards notback.