This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/10/labour-disputes-chaos-jeremy-corbyn
The article has changed 3 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 0 | Version 1 |
|---|---|
| Labour’s disputes should not always be seen as chaos | Labour’s disputes should not always be seen as chaos |
| (10 days later) | |
| Those who complain about the power of the media ascribe to it a decisive effect on the way people vote. In fact, political scientists have never been able to find anything but a negative correlation between a newspaper’s proselytising and the voting patterns of its readers. | Those who complain about the power of the media ascribe to it a decisive effect on the way people vote. In fact, political scientists have never been able to find anything but a negative correlation between a newspaper’s proselytising and the voting patterns of its readers. |
| David Runciman memorably recalled the hitherto Labour-supporting Sun swinging behind Thatcher in 1979. “Subsequent research found not only that a majority of its readers continued to vote Labour, but also that a third of them believed that the Sun had encouraged them to do so, despite the fact that the banner headline on election day read: VOTE TORY THIS TIME.” | David Runciman memorably recalled the hitherto Labour-supporting Sun swinging behind Thatcher in 1979. “Subsequent research found not only that a majority of its readers continued to vote Labour, but also that a third of them believed that the Sun had encouraged them to do so, despite the fact that the banner headline on election day read: VOTE TORY THIS TIME.” |
| Related: Let a year that began with Labour’s tribulations end with Tory chaos | Owen Jones | Related: Let a year that began with Labour’s tribulations end with Tory chaos | Owen Jones |
| However, the fear and reverence with which politicians treat publishers are warranted: the media can have a profound effect in making a party look divided or united. Lloyd George said of the moguls of his day, Beaverbrook and Northcliffe, that he valued above all their power to shut out his detractors. David Cameron could say the same of the Barclay brothers or Rupert Murdoch – they could make so much more of the Conservatives’ internal divisions: on the EU; on the funding crisis in the NHS; on cuts to local government, which were met with astonished distress by the Local Government Association, where the Tories are the dominant party. The prime minister is extremely fortunate his detractors get so little airtime. | |
| This same could not be said of the opposition, which looks so divided as to give the government a free pass. And that widely made observation only divides the Labour party more, as they squabble over whose fault this is. Today Jeremy Corbyn set out his programme in plain, plausible, human language: but before that, it was pretty much impossible to tell what was going on. | This same could not be said of the opposition, which looks so divided as to give the government a free pass. And that widely made observation only divides the Labour party more, as they squabble over whose fault this is. Today Jeremy Corbyn set out his programme in plain, plausible, human language: but before that, it was pretty much impossible to tell what was going on. |
| Who was conducting the revenge reshuffle briefings? Whose fault was it that Sadiq Khan’s mayoral announcement was overshadowed by infighting? Where did the rumours about Hilary Benn, swiftly followed by his breathy and irrational lionisation as the biggest of the beasts, spring from? | Who was conducting the revenge reshuffle briefings? Whose fault was it that Sadiq Khan’s mayoral announcement was overshadowed by infighting? Where did the rumours about Hilary Benn, swiftly followed by his breathy and irrational lionisation as the biggest of the beasts, spring from? |
| Did Corbyn have a plan, did he even have any interests, aside from his huge mandate? Was he launching attacks on the government that were simply being ignored by the media, or was he – in the spirit of the new politics – only talking ideas with those lucky enough to bump into him on a rally about arms trading or arts centre closures? Was the revenge shambles occurring in the vacuum of his silence; or was he making plenty of noise that simply went unreported? | Did Corbyn have a plan, did he even have any interests, aside from his huge mandate? Was he launching attacks on the government that were simply being ignored by the media, or was he – in the spirit of the new politics – only talking ideas with those lucky enough to bump into him on a rally about arms trading or arts centre closures? Was the revenge shambles occurring in the vacuum of his silence; or was he making plenty of noise that simply went unreported? |
| This confusion solidified last Wednesday, when MP Stephen Doughty resigned in protest about the reshuffle, the nub of which was never completely clear (broadly, “you fired Pat McFadden, and I liked him”, a kind of teenage version of a conscience resignation). | This confusion solidified last Wednesday, when MP Stephen Doughty resigned in protest about the reshuffle, the nub of which was never completely clear (broadly, “you fired Pat McFadden, and I liked him”, a kind of teenage version of a conscience resignation). |
| He stood down live on the BBC’s Daily Politics, a move whose orchestration was described by the producer: “Within the hour we heard that [BBC political editor] Laura [Kuenssberg] had sealed the deal: the shadow foreign minister Stephen Doughty would resign live in the studio. Although he himself would probably acknowledge he isn’t a household name, we knew his resignation just before prime minister’s questions would be a dramatic moment with big political impact.” | He stood down live on the BBC’s Daily Politics, a move whose orchestration was described by the producer: “Within the hour we heard that [BBC political editor] Laura [Kuenssberg] had sealed the deal: the shadow foreign minister Stephen Doughty would resign live in the studio. Although he himself would probably acknowledge he isn’t a household name, we knew his resignation just before prime minister’s questions would be a dramatic moment with big political impact.” |
| I am genuinely agnostic about whether or not this contravenes the BBC’s duty of impartiality: it is emphatically not their job to shut out Corbyn’s detractors. But is it their job to amplify and abet them, at the expense of reporting any conflict or mismanagement within the party of government? A PMQs that should have been about holding the prime minister to account turned into an awkward moment for the opposition leader instead. | |
| I can see both sides and empathise strongly with the subsequent confusion at the BBC, where one minute they were deleting the producer’s blog from the site (damn that pesky internet, where nothing ever disappears), and the next, justifying themselves by setting up another on-air resignation, as if to post-hoc establish a new normal where this kind of thing happens all the time. | I can see both sides and empathise strongly with the subsequent confusion at the BBC, where one minute they were deleting the producer’s blog from the site (damn that pesky internet, where nothing ever disappears), and the next, justifying themselves by setting up another on-air resignation, as if to post-hoc establish a new normal where this kind of thing happens all the time. |
| Related: Jeremy Corbyn: ‘Reshuffle? Focus on Tory failings in health, housing and education instead’ | Related: Jeremy Corbyn: ‘Reshuffle? Focus on Tory failings in health, housing and education instead’ |
| The departure of Alison McGovern, from the mouthful job of “running the shadow chancellor’s economic policy review into reducing child poverty and low incomes” is even stranger than Doughty’s. The given reason is that she chairs Progress, which John McDonnell called a hard-right clique last Wednesday, although apparently she had to wait until today to mind enough to resign – presumably because that was the soonest the BBC’s current affairs team could get her into the schedule. | The departure of Alison McGovern, from the mouthful job of “running the shadow chancellor’s economic policy review into reducing child poverty and low incomes” is even stranger than Doughty’s. The given reason is that she chairs Progress, which John McDonnell called a hard-right clique last Wednesday, although apparently she had to wait until today to mind enough to resign – presumably because that was the soonest the BBC’s current affairs team could get her into the schedule. |
| McDonnell’s remark was childish and could have been solved by a simple phone call. “On which ideas do we disagree? Don’t say electability; which actual ideas?” But neither side wants to find common ground, because the chasm is strategic on McGovern’s part, to establish Corbyn’s leadership as unviable (on McDonnell’s, he simply doesn’t like consensus, otherwise he wouldn’t be John McDonnell). | McDonnell’s remark was childish and could have been solved by a simple phone call. “On which ideas do we disagree? Don’t say electability; which actual ideas?” But neither side wants to find common ground, because the chasm is strategic on McGovern’s part, to establish Corbyn’s leadership as unviable (on McDonnell’s, he simply doesn’t like consensus, otherwise he wouldn’t be John McDonnell). |
| The difficulty for the voter, the onlooker, the democratic process, is in trying to understand the new politics through the prism of the old media. Labour under its new leadership was never going to march to the same beat; but a leadership that claimed to want “debate” has to be able to have it, and relish it, and be straightforward without being haughty. Meaningful reporting, meanwhile, has to be able to render that conflict fairly – at a bare minimum, soliciting both sides of an argument – and with modern eyes. Disagreement – sometimes bitter – is a necessary stage of any ambitious process. The characterisation of all dispute as chaos is yesterday’s world. | The difficulty for the voter, the onlooker, the democratic process, is in trying to understand the new politics through the prism of the old media. Labour under its new leadership was never going to march to the same beat; but a leadership that claimed to want “debate” has to be able to have it, and relish it, and be straightforward without being haughty. Meaningful reporting, meanwhile, has to be able to render that conflict fairly – at a bare minimum, soliciting both sides of an argument – and with modern eyes. Disagreement – sometimes bitter – is a necessary stage of any ambitious process. The characterisation of all dispute as chaos is yesterday’s world. |
| • This article was amended on 20 January 2016 to clarify that the LGA is not predominantly Tory: the Conservatives do not have an overall majority. |