Mayoral Elections | ukwatch.net

Elections Analysis from the Left List

Ellie Keen — Thu, 15 May 2008 23:23:46 +0000

This was a watershed election. For the first time since the New Labour election landslide of 1997 the Tories are in the ascendant. The result of the London Mayoral contest demonstrates that New Labour is now in meltdown.

The reaction of the soft left Compass group around John Cruddas, though doubtless an exaggeration, tells us a deal about the likely reaction among old Labour sections of the movement:

"New Labour is now dead. The strategy that saw the Party continually triangulate interests and concerns, tacking endlessly to the right, doing what the Tories would do only doing it first, fixating on a mythical middle England and denying that free market policies are having a damaging effect on society is now finished."

Like the late 1970s an exhausted and socially conservative Labour government is presiding over an attack on working class living standards. Unlike the late 1970s the extra-parliamentary and industrial struggle is not on the retreat.

But if we are to exploit this contradiction to strengthen the left and face new challenges from the Tory and fascist right we need to understand clearly what happened to the left in these elections.

The failure of the Livingstone strategy

Livingstone has moved progressively to the right since he first ran as Mayor as an independent eight years ago. He moved right when he rejoined Labour four years ago - and his vote went down. In this election he moved even closer to the Blair-Brown-City axis - and he lost.

Livingstone's residual left wing reputation meant that his vote was higher than the New Labour vote for the Assembly and his polling figures were higher than the government's rating but he was too closely associated with New Labour to be able to effectively combat the Tory tide.

Moreover, Livingstone's own regime in City Hall was part of the problem not part of the solution. Livingstone had no independent base in the labour movement. Indeed when he had the chance to build one out of his independent campaign eight years ago he deliberately refused to do so.

Consequently, the City Hall developed its own version of triangulation - combining left wing statements on racism and the Iraq war (which cost nothing) and City friendly policies on property development, the Olympics and privatisation (where a left wing policy would cost money).

The Livingstone campaign tried to reproduce this approach by constructing a huge cross party bloc stretching all the way from Blair and Brown to the Greens and George Galloway.

This failed in the face of a hard-line Tory candidate who mostly kept quiet and let New Labour's unpopularity with its own working class supporters do his work.

The Left and Livingstone

Livingtone's own clientist approach to the ethnic communities in London and the rest of the left reduced the impact of a really independent radical left. The Greens and Galloway claimed to be critical of Livingstone's neo-liberal economic policy and his loving up to the City, Brown and Blair~but infact have run campaigns that have traded largely uncritical support for Ken in return for his patronage.

This failed for Livingstone, but it also failed for the Greens and Galloway as well.

The Greens got massive publicity in return for calling for a second preference vote for Ken, but their vote stayed the same and they returned the same two GLA members.

Galloway got even less. A sectarian rally held in the middle of the 100,000 Love Music Hate Racism just a mile away at the end of Brick Lane drew less than 200 people to hear Livingstone give a less than explicit plug for Galloway. This was reported in the local press but then repudiated on polling day by local Labour candidate John Biggs.

Other than that the only fruit of this pact was a front organsiation, Operation Bangla Vote, which issued a leaflet with Livingstone and Galloway's picture on it.

The Left List took a different approach. The Left List argued that while we prefer Labour to the Tories we will not stop defending working people from New Labour's neo-liberal policies simply because Labour has made itself unpopular with working people. This approach stressed the need to organise independently of New Labour and Livingstone and not to simply to jump on to a sinking ship.

Anyone who remembers the decay of the Labour government in the late 1970s knows how essential it is to create the widest possible left able to organise independently of the pressure to collapse all points of principle in response to the Tory threat.

The Left List vote was disappointing but the campaign did demonstrate a number of important points:

1. The Left List mounted the only genuinely London-wide left wing campaign. We are the only left force that was able to mobilise enough supporters and raise enough money to stand in the Mayoral race, in all the constituencies and on the London wide list.

2. The Left List campaign was the only campaign that has been able through mass leafleting, canvassing, our entry in the Mayoral booklet, and TV and radio broadcasts to put a left argument to millions of Londoners.

3. In a dramatic final full week of campaigning we were the only force able to effectively intervene in the great joint union demonstration on the 24th of April and in the 100,000 strong Love Music Hate Racism carnival.

4. In husting after husting Lindsey German and our other candidates were able to pull the whole debate to the left. Here is how one contribution to the Guardian online discussion put it:

"Whenever Lindsey German's been invited to speak, she has quickly become a point of reference: At NO2ID hustings she gave Boris a torrid time. At University of London Union hustings Paddick started mimicking her line on Council Housing. At ULU and Stonewall Livingstone has lied about the name of her organisation to create a naughty confusion between her and former friends. At LSE and Goldsmith College other candidates all used the phrase "as Lindsey said...." at least once."

We've made more impact on the press than any other left candidate, including Galloway who lost out because of the strategic decision not to run a Mayoral candidate at the urging of Livingstone supporters in his group. The Left List appeared on BBC London TV news four times, on ITN news, in the Independent, the Guardian, The Times, BBC radio, BBC News 24, Radio 4's Today programme, The Evening Standard, the Pink Paper, in local papers, local radio stations and in online broadcasts.

5. The Left List candidates are the only really diverse candidate list in the elections. The Greens only had 3 non-white candidates. In contrast to the unfulfilled promise Galloway made to produce a 'broad list' it was actually the Left List that had a mix of trade unionist, Afro-Caribbean, Turkish, gay and lesbian, Muslim, Sikh, Jewish, young and old candidates.

The Left Vote

All the left from Livingstone to the Left List were overwhelmed by the massive rejection of New Labour that benefited the Tories and, even more worryingly, the BNP.

The Left List suffered from having a new name. This led to confusion which benefited Galloway. We know that a number of our supporters voted for Respect by mistake. So some of the difference between our 1.3 percent in the Assembly constituencies and the Galloway 2.3 percent on the Assembly list is down to confusion and electoral inertia.

And because voters could vote for the Left List for Mayor, in the constituencies and on the London-wide list the total number of people voting Left List was higher than the total in any one of these categories (ie voters gave us one of three votes).

The Left List Mayoral vote was massively squeezed by the 'stop Boris' vote for Ken. But it is worth noting that in 2004 we gained 61,000 first preferences and about the same number of second preferences giving a total of 120,000 first and second preferences. This year the second preferences were much higher than the 16,000 first preferences giving a total of 51,000.

The Left List vote was more evenly distributed across London, while Galloway's vote was an East London centric vote. Although even here the constituency vote for Hanif Abdulmuhit (the only Galloway constituency candidate) was down slightly from 15 percent to 14.5 percent. And Galloway's own Assembly list vote fell to 11 percent.

Nationally, the Left List is the only organisation with anything like a countrywide presence and the election results were as good, or nearly as good, as anything the old Respect achieved. In Preston we got 37 percent and missed electing a second councillor by 70 votes. In Sheffield we came second with 25 percent of the vote. In Manchester we won 12 percent and, in a newly contested ward, nearly 10 percent. In Cambridge and Bolton the vote was around 15 percent.

And although Salma Yaqoob's Sparkbrook ward returned another councillor the vote went down in the neighbouring Sparkhill and Kings Heath wards, both of which would need to see increased votes for her to win the whole parliamentary constituency of which they are a part.

The Left and the decline of New Labour

The crisis will produce two main reactions. New Labour loyalists, not just in the government but in the leadership of unions like UNISON, will argue that we can't rock the boat and must all stand behind the government or we'll get the Tories back just as we have done in London. Some of the left will go along or compromise with this view, just as they did with Livingstone (although it will be harder to carry this argument with no left wing banner bearer in Labour). No doubt if we get the Tories back this lot will argue we shouldn't rock the boat or Labour won't be re-elected!

The Left List must be part of that grouping on the left, which will contain many Labour party members, who think that fighting neo-liberalism is the best chance of reviving the left's fortunes irrespective of what the Labour leadership say.

There are some important developments that have been part of the picture of the last few weeks that show that this approach will have an echo. Teachers, lecturers, civil servants, RMT members are very open to this argument~as the united union demonstrations and strikes on 24th April showed.

In London the challenges that a Tory Mayor will throw down to the unions and the left may well provoke struggles on a higher plane than those of recent years - especially as the economic crisis continues to eat into working class living standards.

The LMHR Carnival showed that tens of thousands have already been mobilised against the Nazis - and will be ready to fight a threat that has become even more real in the last week.

Beyond this the anti-war movement remains in strong shape and will need to be deepened as the US presidential race concludes the interregnum in the Washington's imperial project.

The Left List can become part of this growing opposition to New Labour and play an important part in regrouping the left in the debates that are bound to attend the crisis of the New Labour government.

Contours of New Labour Descent

JamieSW — Mon, 05 May 2008 11:58:39 +0000

When Tariq Ali says "New Labour is dead", you don't expect him to be matched in his prognosis by the soft-left Compass group. It is necessary to pause for a second and ask who the gravediggers will be. Arguably in this case the assassins are Labour voters who decided to abandon the party for either the Lib Dems, the nationalists, the Tories, the Nazis, the smaller left parties or - probably by far the biggest beneficiary - abstention. (If the turnout was higher in London, it was higher mainly in the dead zones of the Tory suburbs, which will spend the rest of the summer smelling of bigotry and barbecues until some kind of divine Ballardian punishment crashes the party.) It is certainly true, as Jon Cruddas argues, that working class voters are abandoning Labour in both the heartlands and the marginals, and the Tories are expecting to capitalise on that. This is hardly news, and even New Labour commentators like Jackie Ashley are saying as much.

However, for the electoral slaughter of New Labour to be consummated and full burial rites executed in the way that Compass envisions, there would have to be some force within the party that is capable of performing that service. And, as I will not tire of pointing out to those tempted to return to its deathly embrace, there is no such force. Some kid themselves that the stale wreckage of the Labour Left in London, which so assiduously coat-tailed Livingstonite liberalism, has the way forward for New Labour to avoid electoral obliteration in 2010. (Oh, Seumas Milne, you really ought to know better.) It is true that Ken Livingstone didn't poll as poorly as New Labour in general. 36.38% of the mayoral vote went to Livingstone, but only 27.12% backed New Labour on the Assembly London-wide, and only 24% backed the party nationally. So a vague aura of leftism and independence helped Livingstone. But just over a third of the vote is still pretty poor, particularly when you've cut a deal with the Green Party, the Liberals and practically every non-Tory force that will work with you. New Labour is not dead, it is undead. And this is what the zombified party of government will do: it will segment its losses into the middle class, the 'white working class', and Muslims and ethnic minorities, and it will contrive a set of concessions for each group, based on a conservative agenda. To middle class voters it will offer to withdraw 'green' taxes or reduce them severely; to the 'white working class' it will offer a few miserly tax concessions, but try to deflect the main issues with racism by introducing a points system for immigration; to Muslims and other minorities, it will offer a combination of threats, cajolement and 'integration'. That will not work, not least because the Tories can do this stuff much better. And when New Labour loses again, the best organised forces in the party will be the Blairites and they will take the opportunity to move further to the right and replace Brown with Miliband. Don't look to a social movement to make any impact on this: if 2 million people marching in London couldn't find its way onto the conference floor, the party is now almost completely impervious to mass social unrest.

The more aggressive wing of the Tory right is gleefully plotting all sorts of revenge - especially against the unions and against those Muslims who have had the run of the place under the communist tyrant 'Red Ken'. Boris Johnson is pledging a 'fightback' against crime (so I'd keep an eye on Jeffrey Archer's house), and hoping with his new confederates to force a no-strike deal on the RMT and Aslef, which is highly unlikely. The Tories may be more aggressive than Ken Livingstone's administratrion, but they'd have to be prepared for an epic combat if they want to break the train unions. No sign of that yet. While Boris Johnson has appeared to accept in public that the PPP on the tube is a failure, his administration is likely to opt for the renegotiation of existing contracts and even sweeten the deal for Metronet rather than accept public ownership. He will keep the congestion charge, but probably protect Tory residents of the royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea from expansion, and also guard drivers of 'gas-guzzlers' against planned increases in their charges. His plans for increasing the number of police are actually not very extensive - 440 on first blush, and all of these 'community support officers' to move around on London's massive public transport system. The effect will be negligible. He may have to limit his idea of metal detectors and knife archways on the Underground if he doesn't want millions of pissed-off commuters baying for his blood. These things are not that popular in Heathrow Airport, and I can't see people appreciating being stopped at fast-moving, crowded public transport hubs for having ordinary metal objects on their person. Seriously, has anyone actually thought this through? In all, I can see Boris Johnson running an unpleasant, aggressive and divisive administration, a test-bed for future Tory politics at the national level, but he will not be allowed to go too far lest he ruins things for his boss.

Both New Labour and the Tories are subject to two overarching global pressures that they don't get to control. The first is that the capitalist system is entering its most chaotic phase since the 1930s, and may well experience a global collapse (one in four chance, remember?). Rising food and commodity prices has been coterminous with a real-terms contraction in spending power for many. If capitalism could deliver stable growth and rising living standards without accumulating enormous imbalances that lead to global crises, then New Labour would be alive and kicking. Moderate social democracy would probably be hegemonic. As it is, New Labour's electoral calculus in the face of any crisis is always to move right, throw a sop to middle class voters in the marginals and expect working class acquiescence. That is why they decided to clobber working class taxpayers and give a tax cut to slightly higher income earners. At the same time, their economic rationale is that of neoliberalism: when profits are squeezed, you defend the country's economic competitiveness by attacking the three main costs for any company - taxes, input costs and wages. This commitment to neoliberalism is tempered by the need to keep the unions on-side, but only marginally. This is why corporation taxes and taxes on profits are lower under New Labour, and why inequality has been allowed to soar, despite the minimum wage and some very modest redistributive measures. The Tories will respond in much the same way as New Labour, except that they don't have to answer to unions and working class voters, and so can be much more aggressive. In fact, they positively benefit by throwing red meat to reactionaries of all stripes, provided they don't go too far and alienate centrists.

The second overarching pressure is that the American empire, for which Britain is a big off-shore base, is hurtling toward defeat. It is losing its dollar dominance; it is losing ground economically; it can murder residents of Sadr City and Basra in the hundreds and thousands within days, but it can't defeat Iraq without a draft, and it can't attack Iran except through an Israeli proxy which would be hugely risky; Afghanistan is lost, and the commitment of a few thousand more troops won't change matters. When mainstream American politicians talk about reducing dependence on foreign oil, they tacitly (and sometimes explicitly) appeal to the popular desire to get out of extensive imperial commitments that are costing trillions of dollars and contributing to a great deal of social distress. New Labour's response to this is much like Old Labour's. Cling onto nuclear weapons under the American umbrella, try to act as a bridge between America and Europe, back up US military subventions, and try to neutralise and contain antiwar movements. This logic has taken Gordon Brown toward flirtation with neoconservatism, and David Miliband will probably move even further in that direction. The Tories will not necessarily be more aggressive in that respect. Split between foreign policy 'realists' and neocons, they are also in the position of having to woo antiwar voters in Shropshire, formerly solid Tories who have experienced the civilising influence of mass street protests. Further, it is hard to see how the Tories could be more right-wing in their global orientations than new Labour. Blair backed Berlusconi, Brown backs Sarkozy, both have been comfortable with Bush - the European and American hard right are the natural allies of New Labour. Meanwhile, Cameron is probably not going to have any difficulty dealing with a Democratic presidency.

The countervailing movements against capitalism and empire that opened the 21st Century and made some waves in the UK electoral system are both experiencing set-backs and crises, partly because while they could mobilise people, there was no clear and commonly held vision about how to translate that success into real power. A whole tradition - call it the classical conception of socialism - has been lost here, and needs to be rediscovered. That conception identified both weaknesses in the system that could be systematically attacked and an agency with the power to challenge the system. For all the ingenuity and dynamism of these social movements, without that understanding, a lot of the steam has been lost amid fractures and mutual recrimination. Two temptations have resulted: one has been to relapse into social democracy (or some apparently more radical substitute, such as the Greens), whose crisis helped produce the movements in the first place; the other, less significant but as mistaken, has been to collapse into ultra-left purism and separation from the movement. We had better get this right, because an almost choreographed sequence of global crises is battering us, and if we can't intervene effectively it will not be the centre that holds, it will be the far right that gains.

London Meltdown

JamieSW — Sat, 03 May 2008 10:34:44 +0000

What could go wrong did go wrong. Boris Johnson is mayor, with a convincing lead. The BNP got a seat on the Assembly. And the Left List failed to make an impact except in a few concentrated areas. The reasons for the latter are obvious enough: launching a new brand name in the space of a couple of months; set-back by a recent split in the organisation; squeezed by the Tory surge and the desire of many to 'Stop Boris' by backing Labour; squeezed by direct competition with those who still had the old name (who did poorly, but better than us overall, and much better in City and East); squeezed by a higher turnout. There were so many things militating against a strong Left List showing. But even I would not have expected last night's atrophy. New Labour has collapsed decisively not on some right-wing hocus-pocus about crime or immigration (although the media hysteria obviously contributed to this), but on the ten pence tax rate and the economy and the sense that Labour doesn't even try to represent ordinary working people any more. But the Left has not been in a position to make any inroads as a result. And, in part because of the poisonous climate generated over immigrants and Muslims, the Nazis of the BNP are on the Assembly while their estranged half-cousins from the National Front (who consider the BNP sell-outs) polled strongly in Bexley and Bromley as well as in Lewisham and Greenwich. There are some hard fights ahead.

The Blairites' advice was evidently no use to Ken, who lost it in the last few days with a series of bizarre declarations, building up to his claim that he wanted to arrest people for littering. Even Boris Johnson didn't go that far. The Blairite strategy is to move so far to the right on certain issues that even the Tories can't criticise you, while giving the left some friendly words. More accurately, this is the Clintonite strategy of triangulation developed by the Republican PR man Dick Morris. Livingstone listened to this kind of advice at his own immense peril, but what else did he have to offer? He tried at the last minute to cut a vaguely 'progressive' looking deal with the Green Party, but I suspect that most Berry voters would have given him a second-preference anyway. And the Greens didn't do all that well in the end, despite some locally strong votes. They kept two seats on the Assembly, but gained little from the extensive media exposure. Livingstone didn't have anything new to offer Labour voters, wasn't really keen to distance himself too much from the government, had no chance with most right-wing voters - his niche was exhausted and depleted. The Tories have been canny in selecting Boris because, despite his obvious unfitness for the role, his burlesque comedy obscures the memory of the 'nasty party'. I suspect that 'nice' centre-right voters who might previously have lumped for the Lib Dems went back to the fold. It's been hard to detect much in the way of policy from the Tories, and certainly little distinctive. Johnson did not win on an aggressive platform of clubbing the unions, hammering immigrants and brutalizing petty criminals. This isn't Margaret Thatcher, the next generation. It is BoJo the Bozo, the clown from hell, all slapstick and bravado. His platform consisted of some relatively unthreatening centre-right soundbites, which is one reason why the (quite legitimate) attempts to make him sound scary didn't work. One very small contributor to Johnson's win is highlighted by John Harris in the Guardian today: "the topsy-turvy, faux-progressive politics minted by the self-styled pro-war left". I don't credit Nick Cohen, Martin Bright and company with very much influence at all, but they certainly contributed to the reactionary media campaign about 'Islamism', providing a 'progressive' proscenium for the racist dramaturgy.

What of Labour's national wipe-out? First of all, we've just seen the complete enervation of the New Labour vision of a Whiggish coalition, a 'progressive' lib-lab bloc for centre-left hegemony in the 21st Century. New Labour collapsed, but the Liberals didn't pick up very much of the slack. In Wales, as in Scotland, the nationalists are getting the benefit of the anti-New Labour vote. In England, the Liberals lost control of some councils and gained some, and they seem to have a net gain overall of just one council. It is surprising in this context to see the Lib Dem result being spoken of as if it's a credible one for Nick Clegg. Commentators have been quick to draw comparisons with 1983, but the last time Labour's share of the vote was this low was in 1968, shortly after Enoch Powell's 'rivers of blood' speech and at the height of Harold Wilson's unpopularity over devaluation. Wilson's government had also, despite some moderate reformist pledges, reneged on many commitments at the behest of the IMF. What is different this time round is the extent of Labour's collapse in its heartlands. It didn't just crumble in the marginals. It lost core votes across Wales, in Hartlepool, and in Wolverhampton. It lost a strong presence in Reading, by no means a marginal seat. It was kicked out of Bury in Greater Manchester after 22 years. The rapid erosion that began under Blair is now an avalanche. Blair's 2005 election victory was more of a loss for the Tories than a thumbs-up for New Labour, with just over a third of voters backing the government and with less voters than supported Labour when it lost in 1992. It is now obvious that the Labour Party will crash to a poor second in 2010, while the Tories will pick up around 40% of the vote. The Lib Dems will not match their 22% vote in 2005.

Anyone who thinks that Labour is about to turn left is kidding themselves. Far more likely is that the government will take a more aggressive stance toward the unions (as it did in 1969, with 'In Place of Strife') and make a demonstrative crackdown on immigration (as it did with the Commonwealth Immigrants Act in 1968). Labour doesn't contain the resources for a regeneration of its battered left, any more than it did when John McDonnell failed to get enough PLP support to even run a campaign against Gordon Brown. The last vaguely leftish credible alternative to Brown was the late Robin Cook, whose standing after his dignified antiwar resignation speech would have made him the obvious candidate. And even he would have struggled. Just because the left-of-Labour vote was poor, just because the Tories have made a decisive recovery, don't think that we can place our hopes in a New Labour conversion, or that we can avoid continuing to try to build a left-of-Labour alternative. We will be lying to ourselves in quite a dangerous way if we imagine that we can claw back some space by just abandoning the electoral terrain to New Labour. The fact that it is now a more difficult task in the short-term does not mean it can be wished away.

For socialists, however, elections are not our main kind of activity. Saying that, I run the risk of appearing to diminish the hard work put in and the hopes invested in the campaign, and that is not my meaning. However, while we should spare no blushes in being directly honest about what just happened, we should not allow ourselves to disappear up our own ballot-boxes. How we intervene in the coming crises over pay, the economy, and the rising threat of racism and the far right, is far more significant than how many votes we rack up. One of the first things we can do is turn out for the protest against the Nazi BNP outside City Hall, this coming Tuesday at 6pm.

The end of New Labour

JamieSW — Sat, 03 May 2008 10:15:17 +0000

I knew it was going to be rough last night but not even the deepest pessimist in me thought it would be on this scale. Whoever thought that in our most solid heartlands like Northumberland, Hartlepool, Blaenau Gwent, Wolverhampton and Merthyr Tydfil Labour councillor after Labour councillor would lose their seats.

Simply expressing disappointment and blaming the world economy makes Gordon Brown appear to be in denial about how serious the political situation is for the government. The new PR team in Number 10 can't spin its way out of this electoral disaster. The announcement today that in response to Labour's worst local council results in 40 years the prime minister is to re-launch a draft Queen's speech borders on the delusional.

It's not just the recent debacle over the 10p tax rate, the reality is that on the doorstep in increasing numbers people just don't believe Labour is on their side any more. The 10p issue was important because it symbolised the unfairness of our taxation system which Gordon Brown as both chancellor and prime minister has failed to address. Increasing the tax burden on the poorest whilst non-doms and company directors pay less tax than their cleaners grates against our supporters' sense of fairness.

New Labour has systematically alienated section after section of the coalition we need to win and retain power. The teachers and civil servants strike was an indication of the depth of anger about the pay cut strategy being imposed by the government. When 15,000 aggrieved police officers march through London and prison officers defy the law and come out on strike, the message of public sector workers discontent was loud and clear.

It is the same frustration felt by pensioners forced onto means tested benefits, students saddled with debt by loans and tuition fees, and families trapped on housing waiting lists for years because councils are not allowed to build the homes anymore.

In this climate of discontent and disillusionment Labour's core vote is crumbling and the era of New Labour is coming to an end. The question that has still to be decided is whether the party is able to jettison New Labour and its outworn ideological baggage before the electorate does at the next election.

New Labour's credibility was entirely based on its claim to electoral appeal. But now that voters are deserting us in their droves it has nothing to offer but electoral defeat. If we are unable to radically change direction and start to address our supporters' key concerns, the party's future is bleak. Our activist base is demoralised and disintegrating and we no longer have the foot-soldiers on the streets in many parts of the country to get our vote out. You only survive as a governing party in these circumstances as long as the opposition remains in disarray but as soon as that changes you're in trouble.

It's no use Gordon Brown saying that he's going to listen and then carry on as if nothing had changed. We've got to demonstrate that we are back on people's side once again. People just want fairness; fair pay, rights for workers, decent pensions, a fair and progressive taxation policy, access to secure and affordable housing, free good quality education and we need the government to start attacking poverty rather than the poor. Actually, all we need is a real Labour government.

A "Partisan and Right-Skewed Press"

Ellie Keen — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:31:53 +0000

A number of academic texts about the British media, such as Tunstall (1996), have concluded that the press is ‘partisan and right-skewed’ in the way it selects and angles news stories, in their leaders and in their backing of parties during election campaigns. At the same time it is claimed that columnists are ‘autonomous exceptions to the normal discipline of editorial approval and sub-editing cuts’ (Tunstall 1996, p.281), therefore not predetermined to be part of this bias. This essay will show that not only is there evidence of a partisan right-wing trend within the editorial stance and news reporting of the national press, but also that it is visible today in the opinions expressed by political columnists. My focus will not only be on the publications which are openly right-wing, but also on the columns in the liberal press.

The most obvious time when a newspaper has to reveal clearly its political preference is in the period leading up to a Parliamentary Election. Historically more papers have ‘voted’ Conservative than Labour during election campaigns ‘with The Express, Mail, Star, Telegraph, Times and Sun all espousing right-wing positions’ (Masterman, 1989, p.83). After labelling the Labour Party as ‘loony lefties’ in the build-up to the 1992 General Election, the ‘tabloid newspapers were judged to be so hostile to Labour messages that no useful working relationship was possible with them; neither group wished to sustain this position in 1992’ (Franklin, 1994, p.20).

In recent years several newspapers, especially those owned by Rupert Murdoch, have switched allegiance. This, however, does not signal a move to the left by the press; it is a result of the Labour party, led by Tony Blair, moving to the centre right as ‘for Blair, no effort was too great to win friends in the mass-circulation newspapers’ (McSmith, 1997).

Franklin (1994, p.13) states that the ‘media are not independent of politically and economically powerful interests within society.’ It would, therefore, be naive to think that whilst editorialising to pursue these interests, the same newspapers would allow substantial freedom to their political columnists to voice opinions that contradict the views expressed by these interests. It is more likely, however, that editors would employ columnists who reinforce the newspaper’s political position. The accepted idea that ‘editors are expendable; proprietors are with us until death us do part’ (Cudlipp, 1990, p.5 cited in Franklin, 1994, p.37) is also true of columnists and it would be quite possible for an owner or editor to replace a column writer who regularly rebelled against the political stance of the paper.

Edwards and Cromwell (2006) suggest that columnists are generally honest and believe what they are saying; there is no right-wing corporate conspiracy. The reason that their views are partisan is due to the system that selects them. Noam Chomsky also expressed this view, in an interview with broadcaster and columnist Andrew Marr. ‘I don’t say you’re self-censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is, if you believed something different you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting’ (Chomsky, 1996 cited in Edwards and Cromwell, 2006, p.89). So, while columnists are technically free to say what they want, in reality if they held certain left-wing views they would not be working in mainstream media.

The general trend of columnists has been to criticise politicians, mostly those of the government, whichever party is in power. Whilst this may seem like they are acting impartially, the majority of criticism centres around government policy not being right-wing enough. By examining the columns of Richard Littlejohn (a writer for the Daily Mail and formerly of the Sun), it is possible to see examples of this. Whilst he has said his role ‘is to sit at the back and throw bottles’ (Guardian, 1993 cited in Franklin, 1994, p.15), and he has successfully done this to politicians both from the left and right, his views indicate that he thinks both sides' policies are not right-wing enough in every instance. This has led him to criticise government environmental policies making such comments as ‘if the eco-loonies and climate change fascists are convinced they're right, why not let their theories be tested forensically in court?’ (Littlejohn, 2008).

The current election campaign for London mayor is clearly divided between right and left. The paper devoting most coverage to the election, the Evening Standard, while not a national paper, requires analysis due to its influence as the only paid-for daily London paper. Wilby (2008) illustrates how the paper has forgone any duty to impartiality when it comes to scrutinising the two leading candidates, Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson. Even the columns of Andrew Gilligan, whom Wilby refers to as ‘a lefty like me’, shows considerable partiality towards the right-wing candidate, Johnson, by failing to subject him to the levels of scrutiny which Gilligan applies to Livingstone. While the majority of London constituencies in the last Parliamentary Election had left-wing views, 12 Conservative, 26 Labour, 3 Liberal Democrat, 1 Respect (London Housing, 2005), the press coverage available to them is not representative, with no paper to provide impartial or left-leaning reporting of the mayoral election.

Franklin (1994) illustrates how the media can help politicians to gain public support for their policies by communicating them in a favourable way. This was evident when Tony Blair made the case for the war with Iraq, which, by receiving popular support at the time from the media, displayed a right-wing bias within the press. Edwards and Cromwell (2006) argue that by not questioning the case for war, the press were themselves helping the British and American governments initiate an illegal conflict. At this time there was a distinct lack of opposition from left-wing columnists, with most leaders and opinion articles supporting the war. This resulted in Guardian columnist, Brian Whitaker, writing ‘[Saddam] could still save his skin by allowing weapons inspectors – who were thrown out of Iraq in 1998 – to return’ (Guardian, 2002, cited in Edwards & Cromwell 2006). There was no mention in the piece that the inspectors were told to leave by the US government who were preparing an invasion and likewise there were a lack of columnists from any newspapers questioning the decision to go to war.

Further acts of British columnists supporting the right-wing policies of the US government are explored in Edwards and Cromwell (2006) such as the Independent’s comment editor, Adrian Hamilton’s views that ‘the US’s worst crime was inaction’ with regards to plans for intervention in Haiti, promoting ‘the liberal media’s dissident credentials, without harming, or calling down the wrath of, power’ (Edwards & Cromwell, 2006, p.129).

While there are a handful of columnists who consistently represent the views of the left, such as John Pilger and Naomi Klein, in mainstream media, their paucity constitutes a significant under-representation of left-wing opinion in British society, as is the lack of left-wing newspapers, with ‘only the Guardian (Liberal/centrist) and The Mirror (right-wing Labour) reflecting centre or slightly left of centre positions’ (Masterman, 1989, p.83).

The previous examples show that while on the face of it columnists are autonomous, in reality their work, even when writing in left-wing publications, is skewed to the right. There are three factors that have led to this partisanship: Firstly, ‘there has been a persistent and growing tendency towards concentration of ownership’ (Franklin, 1994, p.34). Secondly, due to an increased reliance on PR material as disclosed in Davies (2007), which has been generated by large corporations keen to pursue a right-wing agenda. Finally, newspapers have become more reliant on advertising revenue and therefore advertisers have an increased influence on the news agenda (Edwards & Cromwell, 2006). These factors have a large influence on the work of political columnists, resulting in a significant right-wing bias in their work which is set to continue and possibly increase as newspapers become more dependent on advertisers and the ownership of newspapers contracts further.

References

Davies, N., 2007. Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media. London: Chatto and Windus.

Edwards, D. & Cromwell, D., 2006. Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media. London: Pluto Press.

Franklin, B., 1994. Packaging Politics Political Communication in Britain’s Media Democracy. New York: Routledge.

Littlejohn, R., 2008. Eco-loonies reject an inconvenient truth. London: Daily Mail. Available from: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/
columnists/columnists.html?in_page_id=1772&in_article_id=537512&in_author_id=322 [Accessed 23 April 2008].

London Housing, 2005. General Election results in London – 2005. London: London Housing. Available from: http://www.londonhousing.gov.uk/doc.asp?doc=14345&cat=2620 [Accessed 22 April 2008].

Masterman, L., 1989. Teaching the Media. London:Routledge.

McSmith, A., 1997. Faces of Labour:The Inside Story. London: Verso.

Tunstall, J., 1996. Newspaper Power The New National Press in Britain. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Wilby, P., 2008. Standards slip on impartiality. Media Guardian, 21 April, p.7

Dog Whistles and Guard Dogs

Ellie Keen — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 09:53:53 +0000

‘I opposed the idea of a directly-elected mayor,’ wrote Ken Livingstone in 1998, because it tends to personalise debate and thus obscure the issues at stake.’ Ten years on, Mayor Livingstone is engaged in a bitter battle with Boris Johnson that comes straight out of Have I Got News For You.

It is a fight that Johnson could win. And while the image of buffoonery can be endearing, his politics are less so: in favour of the war on Iraq, railway privatisation, nuclear power, public schools and staghunting. The left-leaning Compass pressure group labelled Johnson ‘a type of Norman Tebbit in clown’s uniform’. They are right.

Behind the casually racist turn of phrase that has seen Johnson describe black people as ‘picanninies’ lies a more consistent playing of the race card, orchestrated by his campaign strategist Lynton Crosby. Crosby was behind the 2005 Conservative campaign that denigrated immigrants, then asked voters ‘Are you thinking what we’re thinking?’

Thankfully, they weren’t. But this same style of ‘dog-whistle politics’ has been successful elsewhere. The trick is to speak in a code that chimes with racist assumptions, without making ostensibly racist statements. In this case, the Tories are building on a discourse established by the Evening Standard, the Daily Mail’s London stablemate, which has vilified Livingstone for lavishing money on anti-racist groups. Crosby may or may not have orchestrated these attacks, but his campaign message feeds off the racist fantasy that Ken ‘gives all the money to minorities’ just the same. And it is not just Johnson who benefits: come 1 May, there is a strong chance that the BNP could gain seats on the Greater London Authority.

The mud slinging also comes from a neo-con ‘left’ that sees Livingstone’s engagement with Muslim groups as a threat. Martin Bright of the New Statesman came to this position off the back of writing a report on Islamism for the Cameronite think-tank Policy Exchange. Nick Cohen has also taken a break from Iraq war cheerleading to argue that ‘Ken Livingstone is not fit for office’.

These claims are backed up by accounts of Livingstone’s bullying advisers. ‘Vote Ken Livingstone, get Socialist Action,’ as Bright put it. But the real scandal is not that a left- wing mayor has left-wing advisors or that they oppose racism. The problem, as any left or anti-racist activist who has encountered Livingstone’s guard dogs will tell you, is that they have consistently denigrated community struggles, grassroots activism and anything that veers from whatever they deem politically correct or opportune.

Socialist Action does not represent ‘the most successful Trotskyist entryist operation since Derek Hatton’s Liverpool’, as Bright argues, but the futility of entryism itself. The state is far better at transforming entryists than vice versa – although what remains unchanged, in this case, is a distaste for democracy in line with the worst of left traditions. The problem is exacerbated by the flawed structure of London government. Livingstone once denounced the mayoral system as ‘barmy’ because it concentrates power without accountability. His advisers have set out to prove him right.

The resulting politics are highly contradictory, as was dramatically embodied in the aftermath of the 2005 London bombings. Livingstone admirably steered clear of inflammatory rhetoric by referring to it as an attack on all of London’s ‘diverse communities’. Two weeks later, Jean Charles De Menezes was killed by the Metropolitan police, and Livingstone offered unblinking support to the police chief who sanctioned a ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy.

On the economy, Livingstone’s positive endorsement of a London ‘living wage’ contrasts favourably with Johnson’s rejection of even the minimum wage. But this has to be set against his extended love- in with the Corporation of London, whose ‘trickle down’ economics have proven so successful that the gleaming towers of London’s finance district back onto some of the poorest neighbourhoods in the country.

Despite this, Livingstone continues to project London as a ‘world city’ built on finance capital. In January, he went to the World Economic Forum to hawk an Olympic Games that will distort development prospects in the east end way beyond 2012. In February, Livingstone attacked the government’s plan to tax millionaire tax-evaders £30,000 a year for fear that it might drive away investment. Such policies have effects beyond London, as the City is a key node of global neoliberalism. Livingstone, like Johnson, supports it.

So whichever way you vote, the mayor always gets in. But sometimes there really is a lesser of two evils, and the electoral system makes this a relatively simple choice. A first preference vote for the Greens’ Sian Berry would send Ken a clear and progressive message. But a second preference for Livingstone remains an important signal that Johnson’s dog- whistle racism has no place in London politics.

This article is reposted from the Red Pepper website. They have a lively debate on the elections at this page

Why Greens should vote for Ken

tim — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 12:31:58 +0000

Whenever I hear cynics complaining that politicians nowadays are all in hock to vested interests and unprepared to show leadership, I respond with two words: Ken Livingstone. London’s mayor has made the UK’s capital a world leader on environmental and transport issues – often in the teeth of determined opposition from the media and the political Establishment. If he loses the 1 May election to the charming Tory buffoon Boris Johnson, it will be a tragedy both for London and for global environmental politics as a whole.

Ken is that rare thing in today’s world: a politician who is prepared to lead rather than follow public opinion. If the congestion charge had been put through new Labour’s focus groups it would never have happened. Opinion polls were dead set against the scheme right up until it became a success, at which point most people switched allegiances or argued that they had actually been in favour all along. In 2004, the Conservative Party’s mayoral candidate, Steven Norris, pledged to abolish the congestion charge – and lost. Now, even Boris says he wants to retain the scheme, although in what form remains unclear. The progress of the congestion charge has been keenly watched from abroad: New York’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is planning to introduce a similar scheme in Manhattan.

Livingstone has been much attacked – particularly by such critics as the London Evening Standard and the NS’s Martin Bright. But Livingstone is by far the best-qualified candidate to run London – and from an environmental perspective, this is even more the case.

While Johnson is on record as opposing the Kyoto Protocol – as the Green candidate, Siân Berry, has repeatedly pointed out – Livingstone helped bring together big cities in the United States to keep the Kyoto flame alive during George Bush’s disastrous presidential reign. Livingstone has forged partnerships on all sides. His London Energy Services Company, which aims to make decentralised energy solutions mainstream across Greater London, is a partnership with EDF Energy, whose parent company operates nearly 60 nuclear reactors in France (Ken is strongly anti-nuclear).

As mayor, Livingstone set up the London Climate Change Agency to co-ordinate the capital’s response to what he identifies as “the biggest long-term challenge facing humanity”. The mayor’s Climate Change Action Plan aims to reduce CO2 emissions by 60 per cent by 2025 – to my knowledge the toughest targets adopted by any major political entity anywhere in the world. These targets would – if emulated by governments internationally – go most of the way towards solving the global warming problem. That written targets are already backed up with practical achievements makes them doubly valuable: London is the only major city in the world to have seen a shift from car use to public transport, and with large-scale investment in bike lanes cycling has increased by a heady 83 per cent. (In the country as a whole, cycle use is still flatlining.)

The contrast with Johnson could hardly be starker. The Tory candidate is still waffling on about recycling and planting trees, suggesting he is stuck back in the light-green era of the 1980s, despite his much-trumpeted credentials as a cyclist. Though he says he will “make London the greenest city in the world”, this turns out to be more about parks than emissions. Johnson’s manifesto says that he will keep Ken Livingstone’s climate-change targets – but there is a lack of both consistency and enthusiasm running through his statements. While both Ken and Boris oppose a third runway at Heathrow – today’s litmus test for climate-change credentials – Boris supports the construction of an entirely new airport somewhere in the Thames Estuary, on the grounds that “London’s airport capacity has to expand”. That doesn’t sound very climate- or environment-friendly to me.

While loyal Greens will no doubt wish to support Siân Berry’s candidacy, I wholeheartedly endorse her and Livingstone’s call for Labour and Green voters to put each other’s candidates down as their second preference.

Let’s keep Boris in the TV studios by all means – he’s a gifted entertainer – but let’s keep him out of City Hall.