‘Email-gate’: changing culture requires taking responsibility
With the promise to post two blogs today – the second about some fascinating new American research on altruism and social capital – I ask my reader for patience as I return to ‘email-gate’…..
I find from The Guardian this morning that I am part of a coordinated Blairite backlash against Downing Street dirty tricks. It’s news to me. Perhaps I shouldn’t have alluded to the time I was the hapless victim of an alleged McBride briefing. I certainly don’t want to add my voice to the pious chorus coming from people like Frank Field (who was, of course, innocent of the constant briefing against Harriet Harman when the two ministers were at war over welfare reform in Blair’s first administration).
There is a subculture of off-colour humour and irresponsible gossip in politics just as there is in most professions or workplaces. In Westminster it is fed by certain types of special advisors, journalists and politicians; the kind who actually enjoy hanging around the bars of Westminster Palace late at night. When I first got involved in national politics I was one of these people, mistaking cynicism for sophistication, gossip for influence. The problem with McBride was that he put this kind of stuff into a Downing Street email and seemed seriously to think that, despite his position and the source of his wages, he could be involved in establishing and feeding an ‘independent’ scurrilous website.
My criticism of the Brown operation is less about its morals than its effectiveness; as I said yesterday it can seem to be all tactics, no strategy. Today there is anotehr example. Political strategy, which was my job after the 2005 election is all about thinking through consequences: ‘if we do this, the opposition will do that’, ‘if we say this, won’t we be asked that?’ etc. I provoked a major debate in Downing Street in the summer of 2006 about whether Tony Blair should name a date for his departure. I was in favour, others strongly against. We all had to argue through a variety of scenarios in front of each other and ultimately the Boss – who, in the end, decided against my position. But does this kind of searching self-critical debate happen in Downing Street today?
I wonder because Children’s Minister Ed Balls was forced this morning to make an obviously contradictory argument. On the one hand, he stuck to the line that no one had any idea either about the McBride email or about attack briefings from the Brown office now or at any time in the past. On the other hand, he took the high road arguing that this was a chance to reform the whole of our political culture.
He’s right about the seocnd part. I was drawn into commenting on this affair becuase it is an opportunity for Labour in particular, and the political class in general, to give up an outdated, failing and discredited poltical culture in favour of something which might genuinely engage the populace in the major dilemmas the country faces. But Balls can’t simultaneously assert that McBride was an isolated maverick and that the problem is the system. When a position doesn’t add up like this people sense it is inauthentic, even if they can’t precisely explain why.
The reason Gordon Brown should go further than expressing regret is that he can only have credibility in arguing for change if he is willing to recognise that he and his generation of politicians and advisors (and yes that includes me) have been complicit in a political culture that is now broken. What’s best for Labour right now is what’s best for the country. This is to level with people about the kind of challenges we face and the impossibility of those being properly addressed, let alone overcome, unless new types of leadership are combined with a willingness by people themselves to be engaged, self sufficient, altruistic citizens.
It is still possible for good to come out of the McBride affair but only if Labour’s leaders accept – as all leaders must – that taking responsibility is the necessary precursor to real cultural change.
After email-gate, a last chance to get real?
I ought to have lots to say about ‘email-gate’ as it is being called. After all I write a blog, I used to work in Number Ten and I was once the subject of a nasty smear allegedly circulated by Damian McBride (that I had leaked a letter from Adair Turner to Downing Street). But what is there to say? In a prescient article some weeks ago the Guardian’s Martin Kettle developed the ‘good Gordon – bad Gordon’ thesis that is now being picked up by every other commentator. I’m not sure whether GB’s bad side is that much worse than anyone else’s but it feels so because of his carefully cultivated image as a man of unblemished high mindedness.
The game of politics is like any other sport. In a perfect world we would win playing beautifully, but if it takes a last minute dive in the opponents’ area – ‘well, after all, we did deserve to win really’. Who knows whether Red Rag really had been abandoned but if it was it would have been for tactical rather than ethical reasons. The contents of the McBride e-mails were nasty and puerile but the political classes are no less prone to inappropriate and childish humour than any other in-group. But it’s best not to get caught.
The problem for the country is not the damage to Brown’s reputation or to Labour’s (more senior ministers will no doubt now be wondering how they might decouple the latter from the former) but to politics as a whole. Friday sees the release of the apparently hilarious ‘In the Loop’, the film based on the characters from ‘In the Thick of It’. This will confirm the impression that politics is a game played by unprincipled, talentless, weirdos.
To say our country (which means us) faces big issues is an understatement. From the economic crisis to climate change, from civil liberties to pensions, there are huge choices to be made. There is a documented tendency in political journalism over the last two decades to focus ever more on the political game at the expense of exploring the issues behind the contest for power. Away from the froth there are important debates emerging between the centre left and right, not just on economic policy but on the role of the state, family policy and Britain’s relationship with Europe. Many other issues – most obviously climate change – are being suppressed as neither of the main parties wants to confront us with the full implications of an adequate response.
Somehow, all of us who want the next election to be a chance to open up rather than close down the issues, who want the choice we focus on to be about policy options not brand propositions, need to find ways of making this happen. Maybe we had to get to the absolute nadir before we could demand a different frame for our political choices.
This is Labour’s scandal. The answer lies not in handwritten letters or ministers scuttling round studios with the latest ‘line to take’ but in an authentic attempt by the Government to make the next twelve months of politics about policy choices. To do this would involve taking risks, sticking to them even when it meant telling difficult truths. It would mean sending a completely different kind of message through the political system – one that people would initially assume was just a tactic.
It isn’t likely, especially in an administration whose political motto should be ‘all tactics, no strategy’, but in as much as it often takes desperation to inspire genuine change, who knows, we could end up being grateful for email-gate.
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