David Davis and David Cameron have both been interviewed on Andrew Marr's new Sunday programme this morning (I don't think it's working by the way - bring back Sir David Frost!). I didn't learn much from Andrew Marr's frenetic, slightly breathless interviewing style. Marr's enthusiasm was great for three minutes on BBC1's Six'o'clock news but not for a full hour on a sleepy Sunday morning.
David Davis defended his tax-cutting plans and David Cameron wheeled out his "sharing the proceeds of growth" soundbite. It was all pretty predictable. Mr Cameron did look more comfortable than Mr Davis, however. The frontrunner's nervousness of Thursday night was not in evidence.
Mr Davis said that Blairism was a declining product - soon to be obsolete - and the Conservative party shouldn't opt for a me-too product. David Cameron, who appeared after Mr Davis, said that he would not make policies for newspaper headlines. He referred directly to Mr Blair's cashpoint-fines-for-yobs debacle but you were left with the impression that Mr Davis' £1,200 tax cut pledge was also on his mind. Mr Cameron said that another core vote/ right-wing agenda would be bad for the Conservative Party. Keep playing the same tune, he said, and you'll keep getting the same result. Asked if Mr Davis was playing that tune, Mr Cameron said it sounded like he was. David Davis had earlier rejected the charge and promised a speech on social justice for tomorrow night - a speech that would unpack his conservatism for the bottom 25% of Britons.
Sarah Sands - new editor of the new-look Sunday Telegraph - was also on the programme. She said that the leadership contest had been good for the Conservative Party. But an ICM poll in her paper reminds us all that the party would still trail Gordon Brown badly - whichever of the two Davids prevails. David Davis would trail Gordon Brown by 8% (41% to 33%) and David Cameron by 7% (41% to 34%).
PR, good communication, presenting policies in an effective manner, building the positives in your message, concentrating your forces on a real goal are not SPIN. Lets go all out to win 2009 starting now (I want a Tory PM at the 2012 Diamond Jubilee, the 2012 Olympics)
Spin is turning an event around so you present a false image - the black arts. I'm not so whiter than white that I would say never do that - we've been effective in the past doing it (spin we put on Labours Shadow Budget in 1992, tax bombshell etc) but we should be good enough to win without too much of it.
Labour isn't working was effective because it was true - after a winter of power cuts, strikes, transport difficulties who would believe they were.
Posted by: Ted | 06 November 2005 at 21:40
"Spin is turning an event around so you present a false image - the black arts."
A very narrow definition, which, obviously, no-one would want to endorse. If that is how you choose to define it, then clearly, in my opinion, this is not something DC would bring to the party.
He would bring "PR, good communication, presenting policies in an effective manner, building the positives in your message, concentrating your forces on a real goal", which could be defined by some as spin.
Posted by: Henry Cook | 06 November 2005 at 22:35
Spin to me is manipulation of a message. If the message actually delivered is anything different from the message originally then spin has been applied.
Posted by: James Maskell | 06 November 2005 at 22:43
"*One* Yougov poll (not their main monthly poll either) gave us a 5% lead at the time. Every other poll at the time (including by Yougov) put us behind Labour."
I fear this does not correspond to my recollection. We were some 2% ahead of Labour when Portaloo struck. Midway through the second term we should have been 7% ahead.
The 5% poll showed what was achievable. Ousting IDS upset lots of supporters, some of which I fear may be lost for ever.
The problem was that the Conservatives under IDS did not have a fair and equal presentation on the broadcast media.
Now that Blair is becoming a lame duck and the Tories look a better bet for knighthoods and OBEs etc, the situation is reversing.
Posted by: Sally Rideout Baker | 06 November 2005 at 23:41
Now I know you are a living in a parallel universe Sally!
The British media go where ever they think the wind blows. They are only reflecting the feeling that is coming from the country. And if it turned, so would they. You can't play the media game because they control it. Take Davis' speech at Party conference. As a Davis supporter, I can't say it was the best he's ever done and I questioned all the content re home affairs. However, the press saw this as their opportunity to 'get him' for past slights real or imagined and to 'create' a new king. I saw one BBC report where they edited the applause from a section of the speech where I know he received applause because I was there and know he did. I know journos who were ardent supporters who turned overnight and have now turned again since Question Time.
The only thing that will convince the public that the Conservatives are worth voting for is day in, day out pummelling away at policies which are in the interest of the common good. The media are too savvy and quite honestly, too vicious and better game players to fall for any more spin. Campbell caught them on the hop once and they won't fall for that one again.
As far as what somebody else mentioned that there is zero proof that people are tired of Blair and spin, there must be a THIRD parallel universe out there!
Posted by: Barbara Villiers | 07 November 2005 at 07:09
Sally wrote,
"The 5% poll showed what was achievable. Ousting IDS upset lots of supporters, some of which I fear may be lost for ever.
The problem was that the Conservatives under IDS did not have a fair and equal presentation on the broadcast media."
It is always good for a laugh this site. The idea that there are would-be -tory supporters voting Labour or Lib Dem because we got rid of IDS is truly the funniest thing I've heard since someone on here suggested Liam Fox is a 'statesman'.
Posted by: Gareth | 07 November 2005 at 08:26
Andrew Marr should be OK. He just needs to relax a bit more, and not try to ramp it up quite so much. It is a huge change of style for him to act as a relaxed, we've got plenty of time kind of presenter suitable for Sunday morning - coming from the two minute news interview role. He needs to be re-coached as to what style he should be using and he will be fine. He's likeable enough - just being wrongly directed.
Posted by: henry curteis | 07 November 2005 at 08:50
IDS was far too popular for the media elite to be able to bear. He showed his feelings on his face - and as a contrast to the stage managed media of Blair and Campbell, people loved the show. Reality TV for real.
IDS was eliminated in the end not by the Portillistas but by a coordinated media assault - Murdoch to the fore.
Why Murdoch wanted him gone, one can only guess. Probably he was not corruptible, and that would never do in a PM who has to deliver payback for media loyalty.
Blair has given Murdoch 100% of British satellite TV, the whole Premier League - and defended this from attack from the EU competition commissioners - and now of course for keeping quiet about election postal fraud, Murdoch has managed to grab all of Test cricket to add to his haul.
The EU wanted IDS gone as did Blair. He was exposing Blair's lies and Hutton was looking dangerous. Probably the EU did a deal that Murdoch would keep his satellite/football monopoly but the price was the exit of IDS.
Posted by: malcolm thomas | 07 November 2005 at 08:57
In July 1995 Tony Blair flew to Australia to address a News Corp management conference at Hayman Island on the Great Barrier Reef. There he made it clear that he had dumped Labour's longstanding policy to force News International to reduce its media holdings.
Since then Murdoch has enthusiastically supported New Labour and Blair in particular.
The resulting mass media support for New Labour is in the same vein to that which Thatcher recieved for breaking the unions who opposed the move from Fleet St. to the Wapping plant.
Posted by: Oberon Houston | 07 November 2005 at 09:13
Yes Barbara, how wonderfully insigntful. Let's determine everyone else's "common good" based upon the pleasure it produces within grey and bespecktackled Tory voting pensioners, and whilst the rest of the public successively (thrice), refuse to vote for it at General Elections, blame a media conspiracy, and shout the message even louder ("pummelling away" as you so eloquently put it), "like a doctor who looks at the patient, recognises for the past 8 years the medicine hasn’t been working, so decides to double the dose.” (Mark Fulford)
Evidently this "third parallel universe" that I live in is what the rest of the public recongize as the Modern Britain- they voted overwhelmingly for Blair's "Spin" only a few months ago (oh, and who has comfortably led every opinion poll since 1997, apart from one for 2 days). Take another look at how I defined "spin" in my posting and kindly remove yourself from cocoon and adjust the dial on your time machine to "Present Day".
Posted by: | 07 November 2005 at 10:48
Actually, I dont agree that Newscorp is (continuing) to conspire against Conservatives. Their journalists and comment team do more common good for our cause that all our opposition MPs do put together.
Matthew Parris, Peter Riddel, Patience Wheatcroft, Michael Portillo, Nick Robinson, Simon Jenkins, Daniel Finkelstein and many others are continualy writing good articles that constructively challenge the Conservative cause and, importantly, expose the stark failures of this Labour Government - something that we often seem to find difficult in opposition.
Posted by: Oberon Houston | 07 November 2005 at 13:56
"Blair has given Murdoch 100% of British satellite TV, the whole Premier League - and defended this from attack from the EU competition commissioners - and now of course for keeping quiet about election postal fraud, Murdoch has managed to grab all of Test cricket to add to his haul."
Although I tend to agree that Iain Duncan Smith was given a grossly unfair deal by the media, I think we should be careful not to throw around potentially libellous comments of this sort, Malcolm T.
Posted by: Daniel Vince-Archer | 07 November 2005 at 14:05
Malcolm's priceless insight:
"The EU wanted IDS gone as did Blair. He was exposing Blair's lies and Hutton was looking dangerous. Probably the EU did a deal that Murdoch would keep his satellite/football monopoly but the price was the exit of IDS."
This is up there with the Duke of Edinburgh being responsible for the death of Princess Di. All it needs is the involvement of some sinsiter gay drug-dealers and it has all the ingredients of a loony-right wet dream.
Posted by: Gareth | 07 November 2005 at 14:10
Oh, you of the no name - modern Britain? So tell me should we all be led by a snake oil merchant so that we can be modern?
Decency and good principles never go out of style - if you think Labour is so fantastic that we should ape them , why don't you just have done with it and vote for them. Or the Lib Dems? Your contempt for 'grey and bespectacled Tory pensioners' (I notice you can't spell properly either) is disgusting. Your generalisatons about them are puerile and you should only have as much dedication and loyalty as they have. I may not agree with all their views but by God, I respect them and the sterling work so many of them have done for the Party.
Do you think that just because the British public fell for the biggest con since Hitler that it is the right route to take? Are you and your generation so bereft of ideas and originality? If people like you are the future of the Party then we have no future.
Posted by: Barbara Villiers | 08 November 2005 at 22:04