Alan Fisher
Parallels with 1992
The prime minister is regarded as a decent chap but not quite up to the job. An unpopular government fractured and disunited with talk of possible coups against the leader, and the country facing a huge financial crisis. It could be a summary of Britain now but it’s actually a description just ahead of the 1992 UK election.
There are some surprising parallels. John Major had taken over as prime minister from Margaret Thatcher who had won three consecutive elections. Gordon Brown did the same in the wake of Tony Blair. Neither leader was elected to the top job by the people. They were appointed by their parties. John Major was constantly fighting the splits, particularly among Thatcherites who believed he was moving away from her governing ethos and principles. Gordon Brown has fought a number of challenges from those still loyal to Tony Blair. Both went into elections behind the opposition. And, like 1992, this election result is not a foregone conclusion.
These uncanny connections are giving Labour hope, fuelling a belief that like John Major, the polls can be upset; that an incumbent government can come from behind and win even in an economic downturn. It seemed an unlikely victory clawed from an expected defeat and the established leader was preferred to the untried challenger by the voters. But here’s a word of caution. Historic parallels are never exact. And this one is flawed for several reasons.
Firstly, current Conservative leader, David Cameron, is not an obvious electoral liability. His approval rating is the highest of any of the UK party leaders, but the Labour leader in 1992, Neil Kinnock, had an approval rating in the minus range. He dragged down the Labour vote. People didn’t see him as prime minister.
Major’s premiership was seen as a significant change from the Thatcher years, bringing a softer ‘one nation’ Conservatism to the country. It gave the country a feeling that there had been change. And that’s the message being preached day in, day out, by David Cameron. Gordon Brown is seen simply as the next in line for New Labour despite all his protestations that he’s different from Tony Blair.
And then there are the polls. They had the Tories neck-and-neck with Labour for much of 1992, falling behind only in the weeks before the election. This time around, Labour has been below the Conservatives in the polls for more than two years. The closest they have been is just four points behind; the gap has been as big as 20. Famously on the night, the exit polls declared the result too close to call. They were seriously wrong. The Conservatives won with a working majority. John Major was saved because people trusted him and his party to handle the fragile economy. It’s what Gordon Brown is banking on as well.
While we’re talking about dates, the electoral maths makes the Conservatives’ hopes of winning even a one seat majority seem remote. They have to win 117 extra seats – a swing to them that hasn’t been seen since the 1930s.
And yet, like 1992, this might be a good election to lose. After the Conservatives won in 1992, the cuts they had to make to recover from the financial crisis led to widespread public disillusionment and anger. When they went to the polls in 1997, they were routed and have remained out of government since. Perhaps historical parallels aren’t always welcome.
Erik Geddes
A charge on freedom of expression
Officials at The Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre (SECC) had announced that journalists covering next month’s count would be offered ‘a media package’ for £100. That has since been cut to £50, but according to one media expert, the SECC proposal could still be breaking European law if it insists on the charge.
The SECC is 91% owned by Glasgow City Council, the client which organises the election events through its returning officer. A letter from John Sharkey, SECC group chief executive, dated 23 March, explained how a standard media package which now costs £50 comprises a table, two chairs, a double socket and high-speed wireless connection. The letter read: ‘I am sure you will agree that this represents excellent value for the whole evening’.
Of all the other major council area counts across Scotland not one that we spoke to will charge reporters for electricity use on election night. Local News Glasgow, a freesheet that covers the political landscape of the city, has been in circulation since 1997. Grace Franklin, its editor, says any fee is a barrier for her paper. She said: ‘There must be a simple way to report democracy freely. It is hard to take for local papers who are being made to pay for reporting news’.
But the SECC’s charge system runs a more serious risk than being just a financial inconvenience. Brian Pillans, lecturer in media law at Glasgow Caledonian University, explains that the charge on journalists is in breach of European law, which is interwoven into UK legislation. He said: ‘The media play a vital role in democracy – being the eyes and ears of the electorate when it comes to reporting a count. Here a fee has been imposed either directly or indirectly (through the SECC) by Glasgow City Council.
‘To impose such a fee it must be within the council’s powers. The Human Rights Act 1998 states that public bodies do not have the power to act incompatibly with the European Convention on Human Rights; and crucially Article 10 of the Convention provides a guarantee of freedom of expression. Since these charges act as a hindrance to the reporting of the democratic process this is a restriction on freedom of expression. Glasgow City Council requires to justify the restriction in the sense that it pursues a legitimate aim and is proportionate and necessary in a democratic society. I doubt if the local authority can justify this where it has not charged in the past; therefore the imposition of charges would be ultra vires (beyond the powers of) Glasgow City Council or the SECC and void.’
Bob Doris, SNP MSP for Glasgow, has been critical of the SECC’s power levy since its introduction in November last year. He said: ‘The SECC has clearly conceded that its previous charging regime was a barrier to reporting on the democratic process. Why else would it have reduced the fee? However a wider point of principle remains. That is whether any venue should ever charge journalists to report on the democratic process.’
Patrick Harvie, Green MSP for Glasgow, was equally unimpressed at the new offer by the SECC. He said: ‘A charge for power sockets and table usage is entirely unacceptable at any level. Imagine we charged journalists to attend party conference – they’d boycott completely, and rightly so. Larger media outlets may just prefer to pay up and forget about it, but this charge discriminates against precisely the smaller and more local papers and broadcasters we should be supporting, not squeezing out. Glasgow City Council needs to work with the SECC to eliminate this charge, or they need to use somewhere else for the count.’
Paul Holleran, NUJ organiser in Scotland, explained that the charge only limits the reporting of democracy in action. He said: “Politicians complain that the press in this country do not cover political stories on the scale they want, but if these types of charges are implemented they can rest assured there will be even less coverage of elections and conferences in future’.
Angus Logan
What does Brown stand for?
Kenneth Roy (SR 232) is right to suggest that Gordon Brown seeks to delude himself that he is an ‘ordinary’ citizen. However, I think that with Brown, being one of the 70s ‘prolier than thou’ generation, the attempt is more by design than accident.
Two years ago when he ducked an election, he justified it on the basis that he wanted time in which to lay out his political vision for the British people clearly to see. We still have seen no such wider vision. Brown seems more likely to be one of the opportunistic, managerial classes whom Max Weber and Joseph Schumpeter wrote of in their early 20th-century works on ‘competitive elitism’.
Hugh Wyper, the old Scottish trade unionist, said 20 years ago that he had no real idea what Gordon Brown actually stood for in terms of political principles. Mr Brown occasionally hints at holding Christian views but sounds more like one of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s ‘civic religionists’ in his failure to make a statement of any individual belief in Christian salvation. To make such a statement in a secular age would require courage and a certain admirable unworldiness. It is no surprise to me that our PM has articulated no particular credo in politics or in religion. He has shown no sign in his political career of being a man of courage or of deeply held principle in any field.
Gavin Lessells
Beeb bias
Recently I asked BBC Scotland a fairly simple question under the Freedom of Information Act. ‘How many complaints of bias have been received over the past year from supporters of the SNP, Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem? I would like figures for each.’
I thought it to be a fairly reasonable question assuming that there must have been some complaints, including my own. However, BBC Scotland in the shape of Ian Small, head of public and corporate affairs, declined to answer the question. Within a two-page blurb, I gathered that the reasons for non-disclosure were: ‘Despite the BBC’s obligation to be independent and impartial, many groups and individuals attempt to influence our output. The pressure takes many forms and has to be resisted by programme-makers across the BBC.’ And so on.
How could a simple request for information regarding complaints received put ‘pressure’ on programme-makers in general?
You may ask what grounds I had for asking the shocking question in the first place. Well, given that, had I received an answer, I would have expected that the majority of complaints would have been made by supporters of the SNP.
Sitting in a village in the French Pyrenees where I reside for the winter, with my satellite dish pointing at BBC Radio Scotland one morning, and listening dutifully to Good Morning Scotland, I almost choked on my croisssant. The occasion was an interview with nice John Swinney, cabinet secretary for finance, who was doing his best to explain why his party had decided to drop legislation on a local income tax. The interviewer, who shall remain nameless, was to my mind rude and abusive. Mr Swinney was, after all, only announcing the dropping of a tax, not the closing of all Scottish public houses.
Listening more closely thereafter, I was struck by the number of issues raised, often once a week, as criticisms of the Scottish Government in all manner of things. The criticisms turned out usually to be five-minute wonders with little or no substance and by the 10am news bulletin had usually disappeared. Nevertheless, they had been planted in the mind of the public, which may have been the object of the exercise.
Now, as an SNP supporter, all of this could be down to my paranoia. However, frequent visits to Brian Taylor’s blog on BBC Scotland’s website have convinced me that I am not alone. Indeed, if the bloggers carry out their threat to withhold their licence fee, we could have problems with prison overcrowding.
The unanswered question and refusal was passed to the Scottish Information Commissioner as an appeal. He advised passing the complaint to the UK commissioner as he was unable to deal with the matter in Scotland. Should we be surprised?
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16.04.10
Issue no 237
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