Abstract
Jeremy Corbyn's refusal to play the media game has taken lobby reporters by surprise. But will it win him votes?
IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS DARKNESS. Politicians with no convictions walked the land. They did pay homage to the gods of passion and integrity, but in truth they did say what focus groups did tell them to say, and the multitudes did applaud them, and they did prosper. They did equivocate, and they did say nothing save that agreed with the nabobs of the party and the great and venerable barons of the press. Great were their careers in the age of the weasel.
But most of all, they did keep the media beasts happy and fed, for great and frequent were the stories they did give them, particularly late on a Friday when they had some thin old nonsense they wanted to promote. And they did all live long and prosperously in this land of plenty, and the beasts of the lobby did benefit from playing this game and did in good times and bad have plenty to write about. And if the readers did feel they were being a little shortchanged by this cosy arrangement, verily that was tough. They had opinions for hire, but lo! they were professional and they had good careers.
And then one day into this land did come Jeremy. He was a man of the people, and he did have half a million supporters at his back. His hair was white and he was gentle, and he did have opinions and convictions, and he did state them quietly and thoughtfully. And because he believed in the power of ideas and he believed in things, he was a stranger in the land of the weasel and they understood him not. They did admit he was a breath of fresh air and a challenge to the accepted order, and they expected him to play the game but Jeremy had many supporters and he did not want to trick them with lies and spinning. He wanted to have a debate about policy, prompted by a question from Theresa in Enfield, and he wanted to do things. And he did decide to take his time and ignore the 24-hour news cycle. He did believe it was not a time for soundbites. He felt he had history not so much with its hand on his shoulder but on his side.
The above is of course an exaggeration, but I think it conveys a little of the bemusement felt by the mainstream print media about Labour's new leadership. For at least 35 years, the Downing Street spin machine has grown more sophisticated. Politics and media management are almost indistinguishable, and fighting for tomorrow's (and now today's) headlines is taken for granted. We are all sophisticated and know what “burying bad news” is. We assume the government is operating a grid, whereby announcements, favourable and unfavourable, are delivered so as to show the governing party in the best light. We know that some lobby reporters expect a ready-minted story in the form of a “drop”, which they can unquestioningly show off to their editors, and that much thought is put into how these goodies should be disseminated.
But Corbyn plays a different game. After several of Ed Miliband's key media people left, Labour simply didn't have the personnel. But nobody wanted to play in any event. The whole point of the Corbyn takeover was to do things differently. Immediately after his leadership victory of September 12, 2015, he made a point of criticising the British media three times; he showed little interest in kowtowing to the press. He felt they and the BBC had excluded him and his views, and it didn't occur to him to chase after them now. Further, with Tom Watson, scourge of phone hackers, as his deputy and latterly Maria Eagle, in the DCMS role, making hostile noises about press excesses, regulation and the need for Leveson 2, there is little sign of him soft-pedalling the antagonism.
After his election, he had three days of chaos, including the appointment of his shadow cabinet, which might in other circumstances be put down to teething troubles. The next day he got a major kicking for his failure to sing the national anthem at a service commemorating the Battle of Britain. It was an absurd, needless scrape for the leader to get into. It gave the papers a chance to harrumph about his disrespect towards war veterans, a charge that Corbyn, a vigorous anti-fascist and the most respectful and courteous of people, could easily have pre-empted or later seen off, had he chosen to. But when asked if he would in future be singing the anthem, he declined to say, protesting: “I'm going to be at many events and I will take part fully in those events. I don't see a problem about this.” His office three times refused to answer the question, dismissing the issue as tittle-tattle. Yes, precisely, but it is slightly more than custom to allow the press to decide what the questions are. It enabled one paper to add salt by asking whether he knew the words. It was one of many examples where the man in the grey tracksuit's heroic/cussed indifference to “how things look” verged on the suicidal.
Nonetheless, the mood among Corbyn's team remained “very heaven”. The feeling that “things are gonna change” as a result of his huge mandate from the Labour leadership was bolstered by opinion polls showing 52 per cent of people agreed he was making people more interested in politics and 41 per cent saying he was offering a “positive difference from other politicians”. Camp Corbyn would just carry on, speaking over the heads of the parliamentary party and the media to their people. It was as if Peter Mandelson had only ever been a bad dream.
Yet the papers still needed to be filled, with the result that all sorts of other stuff got hung round Corbyn's neck. He was anti-semitic. He would refuse to join the Privy Council. He wouldn't bow to the Queen. If he insisted on not caring about presentation, the right-wing press didn't have to pretend to like him. It was open season.
Someone needed to get a grip. Journalists would complain about inadequate briefings. Spoon-feeding was at a minimum. “We got conference speech briefings with no top line and no quotes,” complained one. “It was hopeless.” In late October 2015, Seumas Milne – though hardly the most conciliatory of choices, by all accounts – was brought in from The Guardian and the show began to get a bit more professional (although Milne does little front-of-house briefing himself). It came to be recognised that having a competent, professional media wasn't in itself a bad idea just because New Labour thought it a good one.
But Corbyn wouldn't be Corbyn if he stuck to a press minder's script. Within days of November's horrifying terror attacks in Paris, he was asked if he approved of shooting terrorists in the moments before they kill innocent civilians. He said: “I'm not happy with the shoot-to-kill policy in general – I think that is quite dangerous and I think can often be counterproductive. I think you have to have security that prevents people firing off weapons, where they can. There are various degrees of doing things as we know … but the idea you end up with a war on the streets is not a good thing. Surely you have to work to try and prevent these things happening, that's got to be the priority.”
Principled or short-sighted?
If you are not strap-hanging on a busy tube train and have time to consider his answer, it's fair enough – what he later called “the reply of liberty”. In an ideal world, of course, you don't allow grievances to get that far. But what a hostage to give to his detractors. Did he not realise that by offering a more cerebral if a little sleepy reply, he would be denounced as soft on terrorism? Did he not worry that he might come across as an idealistic bumbler who has never had to take executive action in his career, let alone make a split-second life or death call? Maybe that doesn't worry him, which is surely at the heart of the Corbyn enigma. Is it admirably principled not to compromise and play the percentages, or is it just short-sighted?
A day or so later, he hardened up his answer on shoot-to-kill, and some weeks on he told an interviewer he regretted how he had phrased it. Similarly, he seemed surprised by (but largely indifferent to) the media storm that followed his admission that he could never press the nuclear button. His greatest concern, it seems, is to find a compromise with his more Atlanticist MPs that allows a gradual winding down of Britain's nuclear arsenal, which would help us all down the road towards a nuclear-free world. Interesting discussions are taking place about how a scaled-down nuclear threat might be maintained at a lower cost, but he has said he would not use nuclear weapons in any event. The fact that he is surely disqualifying himself from heading a government that relies on the credible prospect of their use does not seem to worry him. For better or worse, a spin doctor might have seen to that.
Things changed after the first couple of months, as they had to, in terms of both policy and presentation. Corbyn is leader of a party divided over huge issues, such as the bombing of Syria, and Trident, and Libya is looming. He has a difficult hand to play, and those who wish him well recognise that he has to resolve the differences with his front bench to present a united face in parliament and nationally.
To this end, in January 2016 several of his friends briefed heavily that Hilary Benn, who unlike his leader had supported the Tory plan to bomb in Syria, would be sacked as shadow foreign secretary. For days, any number of others were tipped to go too, and those doing the briefing had flawless claims to be the voice of their master. There were threats of counter-resignations by allies of the presumed victims, but essentially the media was being warmed up for a bloodbath. Yet in the end, Benn stayed, and the reshuffle was minimal. Corbyn had “had a long conversation with Hillary” and not sacked him. Far from helping him, his briefers had sounded the drumbeats and ended up making their boss look weak. If this was the demonic spin of old, it was a pretty inept version.
Labour has lost its capacity to respond instantly, what one journalist calls its “muscle memory”. It is improving, but what was left of the New Labour spin machine has been dismantled. Where David Cameron and George Osborne, the ultimate professional politicians, will lap up any tips they can get on improving their image, Corbyn thinks the power of presentation is exaggerated. When he gets out of SW1 and is mobbed in the streets by people who think him a breath of fresh air, he sees little reason to change his view. No wonder the press doesn't know what to make of him.
