Spinners and bangers

January 20, 2012 by
Filed under: Politics 

‘Sell the sizzle not the sausage’ goes the old advertising phrase. Political strategists too have been creative in exploring the stretchable space between substance and message. As a former member of the New Labour junta I am hardly in a position to complain, but the Coalition publicity machine does seem to have gone into a super-fast spin cycle since the New Year.

There is a good example this morning. Normally in Government when ministers are told there might be a problem they will ask their officials to check the facts closely before admitting anything publicly. It is interesting to see the logic reversed as it has been this morning by Chris Grayling, the employment minister, and Damian Green, the immigration minister. Writing in the Daily Telegraph the ministers give the clear impression that there is a major problem with migrants illegitimately claiming benefits.  The ministers’ article gets a predictable front page splash with the implication that this problem of benefit abuse involves 370,000 people.

But as a searching interview of Chris Grayling by John Humphries revealed on the Today Programme, the evidence of actual wrongdoing is much, much smaller. Indeed of the 370,000 only 2% were found to be making fraudulent claims. There is a large batch of cases in which the claimant is yet to be fully identified, but on the surface at least, there isn’t any very strong reason to think the proportion of fiddlers will be much higher in this group.

It is unusual for ministers apparently to seek to alarm the public about an existing policy, but even more odd when the factual basis for the concern seems so tenuous. Two of the Government’s vulnerabilities right now are unemployment (which is high and rising) and immigration (which is also high and rising despite a high profile Coalition commitment to reduce it). In the short term, at least, it isn’t clear Government can do much to put either trend into reverse.

Put the two challenges of rising unemployment and immigration control together and the populist script writes itself. Facing this danger – reinforced by the continued toxic salience of immigration in opinion polls – ministers may well have decided that it was vital to show they were getting a grip on the issue.  I will leave others to decide whether presenting the public with alarming, but arguably misleading, statistics is a price worth paying to pre-empt allegations of complacency.

The Grayling/Green article is the second high profile example of the Coalition volunteering concern about its own policies. The first was David Cameron’s recognition of the inequities of removing child benefit from households containing a higher tax payer. I am not for a moment doubting the sincerity of the Prime Minister’s concern but it is noteworthy that not only did the Chancellor almost immediately confirm his intention to implement the change but, as Gavin Kelly pointed out, it is hardly credible that Mr Cameron has only just noticed a flaw (namely that a household with a single income of £45k will lose out while one with a combined income of £80k might not) which must have been apparent from the very first time it was floated by officials.

There is no reason why ministers cannot acknowledge problems with their own policies, indeed it could be seen as welcome candour. But aspects of both cases (the ministers’ apparent indifference to the impression created and Mr Cameron’s ‘discovery’ of the perverse impact of benefit withdrawal) suggest that the Coalition has of late been listening rather too carefully to the spin doctors’ advice.

Given the tough policies it is pursuing the Coalition’s popularity is holding up pretty well and most of the media continues to give it the benefit of the doubt. In these circumstances spinning can feel like an easy game to play. But as the weather of public opinion changes the political wicket takes spin less and less well.

Regardless of disagreements about the pace of spending cuts, there is no question the Coalition is trying to do something tough and brave with its austerity programme. Given the pain being suffered by ordinary folk, the credibility of the Government is important not just to its political aspirations but to national morale.

Modern politics inevitably involves creative communication, but selling a sizzle will stop being such an effective strategy once people start noticing the frequent absence of sausage.

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Comments

5 Comments on Spinners and bangers

  1. Mshel on Fri, 20th Jan 2012 12:23 pm

    2. I am dismayed again, that in spite of the recurring social patterns recession creates in Europe, MP’s still try and get away with targeting helpless scapegoats. We, the intelligent public, know it’s just a pathetic attempt to draw the attention from their own shortcomings. Shame on any Government for pedalling those worn out archetypes and the press for playing along.

  2. Jonathanrowson on Fri, 20th Jan 2012 12:41 pm

    3. Great blog. I particularly like the line:
    “spinning can feel like an easy game to play. But as the weather of public opinion changes the political wicket takes spin less and less well.”

  3. hk on Fri, 20th Jan 2012 4:45 pm

    4. great blog. I’ve just read the article you cite. Wow.

    “There’s a natural instinct that says that no one from other countries should receive benefits at all”

    “We’ve already identified some with serious question marks over both their right to benefits and their immigration status. Investigators are calling to see them”

    i feel overwhelmed with compassionate conservatism

  4. junius on Sat, 21st Jan 2012 11:19 am

    5. In the majority of cases, ministers found that the migrants claiming benefits were eligible for the money. In a small sample group, details from a quarter of claimants could not be verified, while 2 per cent of them were suspected of making fraudulent claims.

    Mr Grayling and Mr Green write: “We’ll be investigating the records of all

    those people claiming benefits to make sure they are entitled to what they are receiving.

    “We’ve already identified some with serious question marks over both their right to benefits and their immigration status. Investigators are calling to see them.”

    This extract from the Daily Telegraph article suggests your interpretation- that the two Government ministers involved are inferring that all 370,000 immigrant claims to benefit are ‘illegitimate’- is incorrect and constitutes spin in itself.

    The Grayling/ Green and Telegraph articles flag up the seriousness of the failure of the previous (New Labour) Governments to gather and record information on immigration and benefit claims in terms of our understanding of numbers and costs involved and whether entitlement conditions are being satisfied. The issue of taking measures to ensure proper data gathering and checks to satisfy that conditions of entitlement are being met is quite different from a bald assertion that all claims are illegitimate.

    Could you allay my concerns, Mr Taylor, that blog pieces like this are not being used as distance rebuttal exercises which follow a particular party ideological pespective or preference without daring to mention its name. Instead, through using the RSA portal, it aspires to claim a spurious ‘charitable ‘independence’?

  5. matthew taylor on Mon, 23rd Jan 2012 11:06 am

    6. Thanks for the comments. I guess I ought to respond to ‘Junius’.

    I hold to my view that the headline of the newspaper was sensationalist and that the ministers seemed to be keen to argue that the scale of wrongdoing was higher than the actually so far discovered 2%. As I say, it is unuualy and worthy of comment when ministers seem to want to argue that things in their department are worse than we know. This was indeed the crux of the debate between Grayling and Humphries on Today.

    In terms of Junius’ tedious allegations of poltical bias I will simply point out (a) that a posted earlier in the week in defence of a Government initative and (b) that last monday Michael Gove’s special advisor gave the RSA public credit for influencing Government/OFSTED policy.

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