The problem with the Labour party? Too many Mikes, not enough Sullies
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Version 0 of 1. One problem the Labour party has at the moment is too many Mikes and not enough Sullies. I owe this insight to my six-year-old daughter who is a big fan of Monsters University. It is a fine kids' film that probably wasn't intended as a Westminster allegory, but we needn't let that stop us. (Warning: contains scenes of mild opposition peril.) The setting is a parallel world populated by freakish monsters whose main industry is sneaking into the human world and scaring children. Children's screams serve as the monsters' power supply. There's another, darker political analogy in there somewhere, but that can wait for another blog. Mike and Sulley are students at the academy where monsters train to become scarers. Mike has always dreamed of being a scarer. He collects famous scarer memorabilia and has read every scaring text book there is. He knows the theory and technique of scaring inside out. The problem: he isn't actually scary. "You look funny," says a bemused little girl when Mike leaps out from the shadows and attempts a harrowing roar. Sulley, on the other hand, can't be bothered with books or homework. But he has a ferocious, leonine roar that can frighten the bejesus out of grown men. To cut a long story short, they make a great team. Mike's scaremongering brains; Sulley's scary brawn. I'm not suggesting Labour MPs should be making children cry. For the purposes of this analogy, scaring is any communication that evinces a raw, instinctive reaction from the audience. It is the capacity to generate emotional energy – the most vital commodity in politics. Books have been published explaining how this ought to be done and why, when it is done, it works better than dry, analytical explication. Well-thumbed editions of The Political Brain and Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate are strewn around the upper echelons of the Labour party. But studying the set texts is for Mikes and it will only get you so far in politics without a few Sullies on side to put the theory into practice. Mike does the ideas; Sulley has the roar. I should emphasise, this is not a criticism directed exclusively at Ed Miliband. Yes, he is a natural Mike (predistribution, anyone?) but he is astute enough to recognise that tendency in himself. In his more confident moments he can be engagingly self-deprecating about his Mikishness, which is exactly the right approach. Miliband's closest advisers are also Mikes but that is what advisers are for. They don't have to knock on doors or go on TV, impressing sceptical voters with their Sulleyish stature. Political parties need Mikes and there is no reason why having one as the leader should be an obstacle to power. But he needs to be flanked by Sullies and that is where the Labour front bench is deficient. The most senior posts are almost exclusively occupied by former advisers – Ed Balls, Douglas Alexander, Yvette Cooper – who have advanced through the ranks by manoeuvring internally through the Labour machine. The battles they have won to get where they are have been with other Labour people of the same generation. The sites of their victories have been Westminster corridors. The new generation coming through, amiable and telegenic though it may be, also has a Mikeish aspect. Younger shadow cabinet ministers apparently poised for great things in government – Chuka Umunna, Rachel Reeves, Tristram Hunt – still too often come across as commentators and analysts: fluent, reasonable, personable, but still giving the impression that politics is their first language with something getting lost in translation. This communication gap frustrates Labour MPs and campaigners on the ground. I hear very few complaints about the party's policies and I encounter a fair amount of confidence that Miliband's strategic position is pretty much the right one. The problem, I'm told, is getting the message across. It can't all be done on the doorstep. Some of the work has to be done by big party figures appearing on TV and saying things that chime instantly. That means looking as if you are speaking your mind, unafraid of how it might come across, and finding happily that you have put into words the anxieties and aspirations of your audience. Nigel Farage is very good at it. When Labour politicians speak they too often give the impression of rolling internal censorship – the mental security vetting of impulses that might, if released through the mouth without being frisked first, detonate in horrible ways. It is an understandable caution born of bitter experience. There is a good description of the hazards of political language in Michael Ignatieff's book Fire and Ashes. Ignatieff is the ultimate Mike, a Canadian academic who left the comforts of the US ivy league to try his hand as leader of the opposition in his home country. It didn't work out so well. Of making the transition from normal conversation to political performance he says: "You leave a charitable realm where people cut you some slack, finish your sentences and accept that you didn't quite mean what you said. You enter a world of lunatic literal-mindedness where only the words that come out of your mouth actually count … If you find yourself explaining yourself at a press conference, you have already lost half the battle." Labour spends a lot of time explaining what it is really about and why common perceptions of it are wrong. Once we spell it out to people, say the candidates, they agree with us. But there isn't time to brief every voter on the detail and most of them aren't listening, which is why, although the polls put the opposition ahead and the Tories are teetering on neuralgic implosion, it still feels as if Miliband has a mountain to climb. It is why Labour is anxious about Scotland and, increasingly, about Ukip eating into its core vote in Northern England. It is partly why the Rotherham child abuse scandal has sent waves of alarm through Labour in South Yorkshire. Ed Miliband can hardly take the blame for what happened, but his is the party with the local monopoly on power. Passions are running high and there is no one at a senior level giving a clear sense of purpose and moral outrage in language that connects with the public. This creates the space where mavericks and demagogues flourish. "If there were a byelection in Rotherham tomorrow," one MP tells me, "Ukip would probably win it." This may sound harsher than I intend it to be. I like Mikes. Some of my best friends are Mikes. Hell, I am one, or at least I surely would be if I were foolish enough to try practising politics instead of writing about it. But I suppose that's really my point. It takes one to know one and when I look at the top of the Labour party, I see not enough people who are completely unlike me; not enough Sullies. |